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Question: Is there actually a good Independent browser for Windows at this time? That is, not Firefox, not Chrome, not Chrome-Opera, not Vivaldi (alias Chrome-

by Endy 9y ago

Question: Is there actually a good Independent browser for Windows at this time? That is, not Firefox, not Chrome, not Chrome-Opera, not Vivaldi (alias Chrome-Opera-2), and also not based on Chromium, WebKit, Blink, Gecko, Trident, or any of the major bits of one of the corporate browsers? The closest that I can see is Pale Moon, but even they are just a "better" fork of Firefox.

pcwalton 9y ago
There are exactly four major engines, each of which has a flagship browser: Blink/Chrome, WebKit/Safari, Gecko/Firefox, and EdgeHTML/Edge.
- BerislavLopac 9y ago
  Wouldn't introduction of Servo make it five? Gecko is not going away yet, IIRC it's used in some browsers, like Pale Moon. https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/
  - Sylos 9y ago
    Servo is not a major browser engine. It's a small research project. And Firefox continues to use Gecko. It has some bits and pieces from Servo in it and the Mozilla marketing team has dubbed everything "Quantum" for the Firefox 57 release to communicate that lots has changed, but it is still Gecko.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Manishearth 9y ago
    I work on Servo, I wouldn't count it here. It doesn't support everything to make the web work; i.e. you can't use it as a daily driver (for some sites, perhaps, but not all). We're getting there.
- Endy 9y ago
  That's fine that there are four "major" engines. I'm looking for a minor one anyway, whose dev does not need nor want to become part of a major flagship product, or who at least isn't tied to Mozilla or Google. The lack of real development in the browser field is kind of appalling.
  - rlanday 9y ago
    Do you think Google, Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft aren’t doing any “real development”? Did you miss all the stuff about Firefox Quantum? Or Microsoft Edge being released for the first time only a few years ago?
    - Endy 9y ago
      Firefox Quantum, and just about everything to do with the browser since Firefox first introduced both their rapid release cycle and Australis, have left me cold. As far as the others, sure there's development - all in a negative direction away from simplicity and into a grotesque and bloated Web into one entirely built on corporate marketing ideas.
Sylos 9y ago
You're asking for a completely new browser engine to be written. A browser with a completely new browser engine isn't going to be "good" for a long time, because most webpages will just be broken on it, until they've managed to implement some portion of the webstandards in a semi-decent way. The upfront-investment is ridiculous. Which is also why no one's done it since last millenium. There's only one project, that I'm aware of, that's semi-seriously trying to write a new browser engine: Mozilla is working on a completely new browser engine, called Servo, and they've been working on that since 2013 and it's still miles away from actually being usable for every-day-browsing. It is good in other ways, really good performance and security, but if you prefer Pale Moon over Firefox, that's probably not even what you're looking for either. Officially, it's a research project, some components from it have just recently been included into Firefox, and yeah, it's not even necessarily going to be turned into a complete browser. Mr. pcwalton (who also replied to you) is one of the core-devs on Servo, so if you have questions about Servo, he's probably more qualified to answer those than I am.
- Endy 9y ago
  The major issue there is that "Mozilla is developing" means that whatever browser discussed after that really is only as independent as the current Firefox, which is basically not Firefox anymore. It's "looks like Chrome, works like Chrome, branded as Firefox". So yeah, for the moment I guess Pale Moon is the best out there for me.

by Endy 9y ago

pcwalton 9y ago

There are exactly four major engines, each of which has a flagship browser: Blink/Chrome, WebKit/Safari, Gecko/Firefox, and EdgeHTML/Edge.

BerislavLopac 9y ago
Wouldn't introduction of Servo make it five? Gecko is not going away yet, IIRC it's used in some browsers, like Pale Moon. https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/
- Sylos 9y ago
  Servo is not a major browser engine. It's a small research project. And Firefox continues to use Gecko. It has some bits and pieces from Servo in it and the Mozilla marketing team has dubbed everything "Quantum" for the Firefox 57 release to communicate that lots has changed, but it is still Gecko.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Manishearth 9y ago
  I work on Servo, I wouldn't count it here. It doesn't support everything to make the web work; i.e. you can't use it as a daily driver (for some sites, perhaps, but not all). We're getting there.
Endy 9y ago
That's fine that there are four "major" engines. I'm looking for a minor one anyway, whose dev does not need nor want to become part of a major flagship product, or who at least isn't tied to Mozilla or Google. The lack of real development in the browser field is kind of appalling.
- rlanday 9y ago
  Do you think Google, Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft aren’t doing any “real development”? Did you miss all the stuff about Firefox Quantum? Or Microsoft Edge being released for the first time only a few years ago?
  - Endy 9y ago
    Firefox Quantum, and just about everything to do with the browser since Firefox first introduced both their rapid release cycle and Australis, have left me cold. As far as the others, sure there's development - all in a negative direction away from simplicity and into a grotesque and bloated Web into one entirely built on corporate marketing ideas.

Sylos 9y ago

You're asking for a completely new browser engine to be written. A browser with a completely new browser engine isn't going to be "good" for a long time, because most webpages will just be broken on it, until they've managed to implement some portion of the webstandards in a semi-decent way. The upfront-investment is ridiculous. Which is also why no one's done it since last millenium. There's only one project, that I'm aware of, that's semi-seriously trying to write a new browser engine: Mozilla is working on a completely new browser engine, called Servo, and they've been working on that since 2013 and it's still miles away from actually being usable for every-day-browsing. It is good in other ways, really good performance and security, but if you prefer Pale Moon over Firefox, that's probably not even what you're looking for either. Officially, it's a research project, some components from it have just recently been included into Firefox, and yeah, it's not even necessarily going to be turned into a complete browser. Mr. pcwalton (who also replied to you) is one of the core-devs on Servo, so if you have questions about Servo, he's probably more qualified to answer those than I am.

Endy 9y ago
The major issue there is that "Mozilla is developing" means that whatever browser discussed after that really is only as independent as the current Firefox, which is basically not Firefox anymore. It's "looks like Chrome, works like Chrome, branded as Firefox". So yeah, for the moment I guess Pale Moon is the best out there for me.