Ladybird is a BSD-2[0] project from Andreas Kling, the same person behind SerenityOS.
awesomekling does monthly progress recaps, January's[1] shows LB as the fourth most standards compliant browser, just behind Safari. For example, GMail, Google Calendar, and Figma all fully load now, though usability is not at 100% yet.
The updates also have video versions[2], which include demos of Ladybird's rendering.
Last year, Ladybird became an official non-profit[3] and received a $1mm donation from Chris Wanstrath (a Github founder). There's an optional Donorbox link in the upper-righthand corner of ladybird.org[4].
> Andreas Kling, the same person behind SerenityOS
Important context - Andreas isn't involved with SerenityOS much anymore. He decided to prioritize Ladybird, which is arguably the more important project here.
Also, he used to contribute to WebKit. Even ended up working at Apple for a period of time. Quite definitely the right person in the right place.
Ladybird is lucky in that it has someone who knows how important marketing is, even for opensource projects. There are other opensource browser engine projects languishing because of lack of PR, patronage and / or volunteers. For e.g. NetSurf https://www.netsurf-browser.org/ - website is outdated because of lack of volunteers but the project has active development - https://source.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/ (already has partial support for CSS3, and Flex layout). It can develop into a great alternative if it had some more volunteers. Servo (https://servo.org/) is another project but it has some decent PR because of its Rust codebase and the Rust PR team. There's the Goanna browser engine too ( http://www.palemoon.org/ ) but, like Mozilla Gecko, the project isn't truly modular to offer a stand-alone browser engine as Goanna also strives to be an XUL renderer.
I think that Ladybird's success has more to do with the fact that kling is one of the few people who knows how to write the whole browser than with marketing. But yeah, kling is also a great communicator.
SerenityOS was already quite successful before they started Ladybird. So successful that he was already making enough off sponsorship to do it full time. It was having the time to take on something as ambitious as a full web browser for SerenityOS that led to the project to begin with.
I agree that Ladybird is lucky to have a dev not only of his seniority but of his specific expertise. However, there is no denying that a huge reason for the success of his projects is non-technical and more about his ability to build community and engagement.
Also, I really, REALLY wish the devs don't surrender to user's pressure for the plethora of features offered by the commercial products, done ASAP.
Please maintain the tinkering, passion and devs-first codebase it has now, and don't end up as a huge mess just because users want things like VDPAU asap.
I don't mind waiting a few more years. For the "just works" part of my life, I already have chromium+Firefox
Thanks I forgot about NetSurf. After Microsoft abandoning Blink and Opera abandoning Presto to use Chromium, the internet needs these alternatives more than ether
Is Palemoon the most popular Goanna-based browser?
The data isn't available because PaleMoon doesn't collect any analytic or telemetry data. So they don't know how big their userbase is. (Recently though, I think they have started collecting some data on hardware because they wanted to revamp their code base. See this discussion - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=30909 - I however don't know how extensive, or persistent, this data collection is / was).
I will add to the hundreds of comments..
Whatever happened to the thin waist of the wasp, in interfaces..
So, we design a system, for showing and interacting with data over networks.
When we start with this, the outset is defining say a character set of 12-20-26 alphabet letters. Already with that, you could exchange information; at least the greeks could.
We also managed to design the gopher protocol, the early world wide web protocol, telnet, and (god forbid) X-Windows.
Early www already had some complications: Support for images, and form controls.
A lot of these things were possible to do, even on a commodore 64.
But still, take a look at the monstrosities we have built since,
presumably to serve the same purpose..
It now takes an effort apparently bigger than that required to land a controlled drone on the moon,
to deliver a working/full WEB BROWSER..?
An application supposedly intended to allow you to browse pages of mixed text and images, require approximately --two-- (nah, one?) full virtual OS environments to function, a turing-complete sub-language, and is more complicated to build than the OS's that host it..
I often wonder if all that was really necessary. It looks to me like we have made the 'interface' the most complex part of it all, leading to almost everybody just piggy-backing on the chrome investment (or what one chooses to call it.. It is an MS-like market control mechanism is what it is).
It's one thing to make a rocket to take a human being to space.
It's another thing entirely to make a "rocket" that will take a human being to space, or to school, or to work, or to the mall, or to the bank, or to church on sundays. And also it functions as a TV, a telephone, a radio, an encyclopedia, a games console, or anything else one can imagine. And then you wrap that up in a user interface that my grandmother can use without a NASA astronaut's level of training (YMMV).
Because browsers don’t just browse these days, they do all the heavy lifting and not just for the nerds like us, but actually make it accessible to the normies. They do all the compliance work to all the standards too. There is no standards of sending something to space yet.
I do so much in my browser these days, things I had to have 15 applications for back in the ie days.
You still have 15 applications, it's just that now they appear as tabs in your browser - which is actually a virtual machine in disguise.
I see the news in the front page of HN: Edge, Firefox, Ladybird. The problems with privacy, funding, etc. will remain as long as one refuses to do an "AT&T" on the Web, that is delegate the non-essential browser functions (text, image display) to other applications (e.g. VLC for video, audio).
With a strong emphasis on banning remote code execution (JS), the father of all evils.
It may be convenient to call a coworker from Teams in your browser, but it is not a sane way to do it because we end up to where we are now: browser oligopoly. Convenience can be a trap; scammers and phishing use it all the time by including "direct" links. People are told again and again to know better and use their bookmarks instead.
If you just want to display pages of mixed text and images, it would be much easier. However, browsers are closer operating systems, capable of supporting rich desktop apps, without the antiquated desktop APIs. Browsers have more sophisticated security than desktop systems, and provide direct access to hardware resources like cameras, microphones and GPUs. In fact, webGPU would probably be considered a much better interface for GPUs than the desktop APIs like DirectX, WebGL, though maybe Vulkan is just as good. Browsers are also forming the basis for WASM development, though there are other deployment platforms, browsers are the biggest.
Well said, I feel the same. While I never used gopher I still remember e.g. the usenet vs. web forums. I mean being able to add images and stuff like that to discussions was helpful in many cases, I prefer the user experience of the usenet.
The web specifications should have been written in Haskell with a test suite. From there, it should be just a matter of optimization. Still a big task, but completely doable in a package by package basis.
I applaud the effort but seriously though I just wonder...
For reference, Chromimum (and therefore Chrome) is a monster of a project and has at this point probably over 10 million lines of code and has taken +20 years to develop with thousands of developers involved.
I can only conclude that:
a) the modern WEB is so complicated that this is the minimum required level of complexity to run and render modern WEB safely
b) chromium is extravagantly over engineered and the actual amount of complexity and code needed to run and render modern WEB is actually much less
c) Ladybird is actually not targeting the same features but some "suitable" subset of features.
If the answer is A) how does the small team working on Ladybird think they can actually pull this off? Are they all 10000x developers?
Or maybe the answer really is C thus making this a toy/hobby project?
One could of course then hope that the answer is b) but somehow I don't feel like it is.
While the modern web is complicated, there's a few things working in Ladybird's favor.
Web Platform Tests (1) make it significantly easier to test your compliance with W3C standards. You don't have to reverse engineer what other engines are doing all the time.
The standards documents themselves have improved over time, and are relatively comprehensive at this point. Again, you don't have to reverse engineer what other engines are doing, the spec is relatively comprehensive.
Ladybird has chosen to not add a JIT compiler for JS and Wasm, reducing complexity on the JS engine. They're already reached (or exceeded) other JS engines on the ECMAScript Test Suite Test262 (2).
There's a big differential between the level of investment in Chromium and the other engines - in part because Chrome / Chromium are often doing R&D to build out new specifications, which is more work than implementing a completed specification. There's also a large amount of work that goes into security for all three major engines - which (for now) is less of a concern for Ladybird.
I'm confident that the Ladybird team will hit their goal of Summer 2026 for a first Alpha version on Linux and macOS. They'll cut a release with whatever they have at that point - it's already able to render a large swathe of the modern web, and continues to improve month-on-month.
The Chromium codebase also implements requirements that you may not need to take on for just a web browser, e.g. all of the infrastructure to make it ChromeOS, including for example being a Wayland compositor and a lot of other stuff. The projects are somewhat apples to oranges.
The answer is probably some combination of all 3. The modern web is indeed insanely complicated, Chromium is a massive enterprise project with all the resulting inefficiencies one would expect, and a competing web browser should likely aim to support the 90% use-case and ignore a large fraction of the total complexity in the process.
A ton of that code is web APIs that, although standardized and accepted, are not really what most would consider critical to a browser. Stuff like Speech Synthesis API[0] or Device Motion[1] might be important to a PWA but are rarely relevant to the web in general
As for C, the "suitable" subset really depends what we expect from a browser. In my experience, I was forced to use a Chrome based browser only for work, because mostly for google web apps (Google Cloud and Google Meet come to mind). For browsing the small web, I'm sure smaller browsers can work well. I tried some, but was usually put off because of the lack of adblockers, and I also quickly miss the element picker zapper feature of the ublock origin extension.
a) the modern WEB is stupidly complicated, it jumped the shark a while back
b) enterprise development practices make this an almost certainty (though I haven't studied the code)
c) it is targeting a subset, but this has 0 to do with it being a toy or not
Why does C automatically make Ladybird a toy/hobby project? Don't you think there can be room for specialized sofware? Let your Netflixes and whatever run in separate Chromium containers (they already do on your TV anway) and make the web browser efficient for browsing the web and just that.
The practical trade-off is that it is very, very difficult to secure a modern browser. Major vendors employ large teams of full-time security engineers and still ship vulnerable code with regularity. Companies such as Brave don't, but they get the benefit of getting many of the Chromium security features for free. Ladybird won't.
The thing that works in your favor is that Ladybird is very niche at this point, so unless some well-resourced adversary hates you specifically, it's unlikely that you'd be targeted.
Ladybird does have another slight advantage in that it only has an interpreter for JS and wasm, instead of maintaining multiple tiers of JIT compilation for both. That choice materially reduces the surface area for exploits.
Obviously there are many types of security vulnerabilities, but one thing that should start paying off for Ladybird eventually is the move to a memory and race safe language (Swift). Of course, that will be a gradual process (they haven't really started yet and they will be using the Swift C++ interop so there will be C++ parts of the browser for years to come).
They do also benefit from using off-the-shelf libraries like Skia, OpenSSL, image libraries etc. that the other browsers are using too. Previously they were rolling their own for everything but changed after the split from SerenityOS.
Well, it's hard to say because every browser engine is old. There are layers upon layers of code in every engine. And the old stuff wasn't really designed with security in mind.
Just installed Waterfox a couple hours ago. ( https://www.waterfox.net/ ) I'm getting fed up with all the latest Mozilla bullshit to the point I'm ready to switch browsers.
Ladybird is starting to look good too, from an end user daily driver perspective, technically it has been impressive for a long time.
One other thing I'm really hopeful is to embed Ladybird engine in a "first class" way. Think of if as an Electron alternative but in a sane way.
Waterfox looks worth a try, but I opted for LibreWolf because it's verified on Flathub and Waterfox is not. It looks like the Flathub version of Waterfox was packaged the same BrowserWorks Ltd that makes Waterfox, but they didn't take the extra steps to get verified so we can't be sure. Hopefully they can remedy that. Browsers are too important to install from untrusted sources.
For what it's worth, it's the opposite situation on Windows: The Waterfox installer is signed (even with an Extended Validation certificate), the LibreWolf installer isn't.
Another thing that surprised me is that there is a Waterfox Android build in the Play Store. Reviews of that are however mixed.
Andreas Kling is pouring his attention into this. He's a grit elemental. I believe he will accomplish this no matter how many people tell him it's a doomed effort, impossible, whatever. What happens in the longer term depends on if enough people value what he and his team does.
Looking at what FF has recently decided about selling out its users, I think demand will catalyze.
Companies like Shopify will invest because a healthy ecosystem is good for their bottom line in the long term. Monopolies are not good for them in the long term.
Why does it need to be accomplished without monetization?
I'd gladly pay for a good browser, that respects my privacy. Quite frankly we all need to start opening our pockets for this; the idea that big companies will benevolently supply stuff like this to us for free without trying to spy on us is naive.
Why the /s. The idea that you can only get qualified developers for silicon valley salaries is absurd. It's not like tech companies in europe generally pay that much and they do just fine.
Readit News
awesomekling does monthly progress recaps, January's[1] shows LB as the fourth most standards compliant browser, just behind Safari. For example, GMail, Google Calendar, and Figma all fully load now, though usability is not at 100% yet.
The updates also have video versions[2], which include demos of Ladybird's rendering.
Last year, Ladybird became an official non-profit[3] and received a $1mm donation from Chris Wanstrath (a Github founder). There's an optional Donorbox link in the upper-righthand corner of ladybird.org[4].
0. https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/LICE...
1. https://buttondown.com/ladybird/archive/this-month-in-ladybi...
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l8epGysffQ
3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40856791
4. https://ladybird.org/
Important context - Andreas isn't involved with SerenityOS much anymore. He decided to prioritize Ladybird, which is arguably the more important project here.
Also, he used to contribute to WebKit. Even ended up working at Apple for a period of time. Quite definitely the right person in the right place.
I agree that Ladybird is lucky to have a dev not only of his seniority but of his specific expertise. However, there is no denying that a huge reason for the success of his projects is non-technical and more about his ability to build community and engagement.
Please maintain the tinkering, passion and devs-first codebase it has now, and don't end up as a huge mess just because users want things like VDPAU asap.
I don't mind waiting a few more years. For the "just works" part of my life, I already have chromium+Firefox
Is Palemoon the most popular Goanna-based browser?
But still, take a look at the monstrosities we have built since, presumably to serve the same purpose.. It now takes an effort apparently bigger than that required to land a controlled drone on the moon, to deliver a working/full WEB BROWSER..? An application supposedly intended to allow you to browse pages of mixed text and images, require approximately --two-- (nah, one?) full virtual OS environments to function, a turing-complete sub-language, and is more complicated to build than the OS's that host it..
I often wonder if all that was really necessary. It looks to me like we have made the 'interface' the most complex part of it all, leading to almost everybody just piggy-backing on the chrome investment (or what one chooses to call it.. It is an MS-like market control mechanism is what it is).
It's another thing entirely to make a "rocket" that will take a human being to space, or to school, or to work, or to the mall, or to the bank, or to church on sundays. And also it functions as a TV, a telephone, a radio, an encyclopedia, a games console, or anything else one can imagine. And then you wrap that up in a user interface that my grandmother can use without a NASA astronaut's level of training (YMMV).
https://web.archive.org/web/20111108105207/https://www.iab.o...
I do so much in my browser these days, things I had to have 15 applications for back in the ie days.
I see the news in the front page of HN: Edge, Firefox, Ladybird. The problems with privacy, funding, etc. will remain as long as one refuses to do an "AT&T" on the Web, that is delegate the non-essential browser functions (text, image display) to other applications (e.g. VLC for video, audio).
With a strong emphasis on banning remote code execution (JS), the father of all evils.
It may be convenient to call a coworker from Teams in your browser, but it is not a sane way to do it because we end up to where we are now: browser oligopoly. Convenience can be a trap; scammers and phishing use it all the time by including "direct" links. People are told again and again to know better and use their bookmarks instead.
This has not been the intended scope of the World Wide Web for well over 20 years, so this is not a reasonable supposition to make.
Of course, you are free to make claims about what the intent of the World Wide Web ought to be.
1 year ago (625 points, 284 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39271449
2 years ago (1341 points, 473 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126
For reference, Chromimum (and therefore Chrome) is a monster of a project and has at this point probably over 10 million lines of code and has taken +20 years to develop with thousands of developers involved.
I can only conclude that:
If the answer is A) how does the small team working on Ladybird think they can actually pull this off? Are they all 10000x developers?Or maybe the answer really is C thus making this a toy/hobby project?
One could of course then hope that the answer is b) but somehow I don't feel like it is.
Web Platform Tests (1) make it significantly easier to test your compliance with W3C standards. You don't have to reverse engineer what other engines are doing all the time.
The standards documents themselves have improved over time, and are relatively comprehensive at this point. Again, you don't have to reverse engineer what other engines are doing, the spec is relatively comprehensive.
Ladybird has chosen to not add a JIT compiler for JS and Wasm, reducing complexity on the JS engine. They're already reached (or exceeded) other JS engines on the ECMAScript Test Suite Test262 (2).
There's a big differential between the level of investment in Chromium and the other engines - in part because Chrome / Chromium are often doing R&D to build out new specifications, which is more work than implementing a completed specification. There's also a large amount of work that goes into security for all three major engines - which (for now) is less of a concern for Ladybird.
I'm confident that the Ladybird team will hit their goal of Summer 2026 for a first Alpha version on Linux and macOS. They'll cut a release with whatever they have at that point - it's already able to render a large swathe of the modern web, and continues to improve month-on-month.
(1) https://web-platform-tests.org/ (2) https://test262.fyi/
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/SpeechSynth...
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/DeviceMotio...
I used to work a bit in that codebase, but I don't recall the core "blink" renderer portion being at all the largest part of the codebase.
As for C, the "suitable" subset really depends what we expect from a browser. In my experience, I was forced to use a Chrome based browser only for work, because mostly for google web apps (Google Cloud and Google Meet come to mind). For browsing the small web, I'm sure smaller browsers can work well. I tried some, but was usually put off because of the lack of adblockers, and I also quickly miss the element picker zapper feature of the ublock origin extension.
a) the modern WEB is stupidly complicated, it jumped the shark a while back b) enterprise development practices make this an almost certainty (though I haven't studied the code) c) it is targeting a subset, but this has 0 to do with it being a toy or not
The thing that works in your favor is that Ladybird is very niche at this point, so unless some well-resourced adversary hates you specifically, it's unlikely that you'd be targeted.
They do also benefit from using off-the-shelf libraries like Skia, OpenSSL, image libraries etc. that the other browsers are using too. Previously they were rolling their own for everything but changed after the split from SerenityOS.
It isn't as if Swift developer experience is that great outside Apple's ecosystem.
While I would definitly use it when on Apple's ground, I feel less inclined to thouch it for anything related to cross platform GUIs.
Ladybird is starting to look good too, from an end user daily driver perspective, technically it has been impressive for a long time.
One other thing I'm really hopeful is to embed Ladybird engine in a "first class" way. Think of if as an Electron alternative but in a sane way.
Another thing that surprised me is that there is a Waterfox Android build in the Play Store. Reviews of that are however mixed.
I have the same hope. If it were performant enough I would find reasons to use it for gamedev, even with quirks.
In the old thread I see the non-profit was seeded with $1M. That’s 5 good US developers for 1 year. What next?
Looking at what FF has recently decided about selling out its users, I think demand will catalyze.
They get sponsors through enthusiasm, which is the way it should be for a project like this.
After reading their website, I know that I am going to request my company to donate, so there’s at least one more contribution.
Companies like Shopify will invest because a healthy ecosystem is good for their bottom line in the long term. Monopolies are not good for them in the long term.
I'd gladly pay for a good browser, that respects my privacy. Quite frankly we all need to start opening our pockets for this; the idea that big companies will benevolently supply stuff like this to us for free without trying to spy on us is naive.
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