- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- technology@beehaw.org
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It would be really great if Mozilla could pick Servo back up, and make it Firefox’s engine, and make it like chromium, where the engine and browser are not so tighltly coupled together. GNOME Web could be so much better if it had the performance of Firefox.
What’s wrong with gecko?
It cannot be embedded the same way as blink to use other front ends, instead they need to be forks of Firefox with customisations that need to be maintained every update
GNOME Web stopped using Gecko as a backend when it was still embeddable. They decided on WebKit for other reasons.
If you like what you see, strongly consider contributing to Servo financially: https://opencollective.com/servo
I did and I feel quite happy about it. Here’s hoping there is more web engines out there 👍
I’m just learning there’s another web engine? I heard about Ladybird but not this. Now I need to try it.
Servo was an experimental ground for Mozilla in some ways (like testing out a new CSS engine and porting it back to Gecko if it works). So it’s quite normal for people to be unaware of it, it was not meant for the public.
But later on it was abandoned by Mozilla and stuck in a limbo, until it got picked up by the Linux Foundation. Now it’s a standalone project and I wish them well. We really need a new FOSS web engine.
I hate having to rely on Gecko alone to keep Google from having complete control of the web. Very happy to hear about Servo.
Gecko isnt?
One of the differences is that Gecko written in C++ while Servo is written in Rust
It’s also more optimized and modern
That may explain the language it was written in (if that even matters? Not a developer) but why is Gecko supposdely not open source?
The language doesn’t really matter, the important thing is that it’s a new codebase with a focus on memory safety and performance, and Rust helps servo achieve that goal. Gecko is an older codebase, so its focus would be more on compatibility.
Both are open source, servo is mostly exciting because it’s a ground-up reimplementation, so it’s not shackled by older decisions.
I don’t think he’s suggesting it isn’t open source, just we need more open source engines.
Gecko is open source. They were saying it would be good to have a new FOSS browser engine that isn’t Chromium or Gecko to add some competition to the mix
Ah you got my comment wrong! I didn’t mean to suggest Gecko is closed source. I just wanted another web engine that is also open source.
Happens. Sorry :D
Gecko is of course Open Source. It is also pretty much the oldest browser engine code base and written in C++. Servo is modern and Rust. Gecko started at Netscape.
The other problem is that Gecko is hard to embed.
Servo was codeveloped with rust by Mozilla, to get a faster and safer engine. Servo basically showed where improvements needed to be done and then rustc was modified to fit the need.
I tries it a couple months ago and it was horrible, didn’t even support flexbox back then and it kept crashing. The latest nightly builds are almost usable for basic web browsing though, it’s amazing how fast servo improves
Yeah, they mostly built the structure, and it seems they’re filling in the details now. It would be awesome to see it become usable for everyday browsing.
