4 ms·

All I want is a bare metal browser. I don't want an operating system and I don't want to run chromium OS. It would be great to see a bare metal browser that imp

All I want is a bare metal browser. I don't want an operating system and I don't want to run chromium OS. It would be great to see a bare metal browser that implements something like Gecko.

pb82 5y ago
Any forks of Firefox OS still alive? That comes closest.
- spijdar 5y ago
  Unless GP's objection to chromium OS is entirely because it's chromium, I don't think Firefox OS would be any better as it's essentially the same thing, Firefox running on Linux (not on bare metal) Without writing the entire browser from scratch, I don't personally think there's much point to this. I suspect if you traced down the library/runtime requirements for Firefox and reimplemented them in a bare metal runtime, you'd end up with something remarkably complex and not much simpler than Linux + runtime in the end. This is assuming you want a full browser capable of everything Firefox and Chromium are, which includes things like WebGL. If you cut out components, you can definitely reach a point where a bare metal browser is sensible, the question is how much are you willing to sacrifice from "web standards" and how much work are you willing to do reimplementing a kernel, TCP/IP stack, device drivers, etc...
  - nine_k 5y ago
    I can imagine a unikernel running a browser. I cannot imagine a unikernel with all the drivers ready for a reasonable variety of PC hardware, unless it's able to reuse Linux or at least FreeBSD as a source of drivers.
- toast0 5y ago
  KaiOS is alive and well. You can probably find a phone or two using it wherever they sell phones.
marcodiego 5y ago
I don't know if this is exactly "bare metal". I think it uses GRUB as a hardware abstraction layer. AFAIK GRUB is not particularly high performant, so it will probably be somewhat slow.
- moonchild 5y ago
  It uses grub as a bootloader. At runtime, grub is gone. Linux also uses grub as a bootloader, and has never been called slow.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    Thanks for correcting me. I think I misunderstood this part: > The resulting GRUB module, mezzano.mod, is largely the KBoot Mezzano loader code, ported to use GRUB facilities for memory allocation, disk access, etc. It’s feature-complete, so I released it to Sourcehut. (I’ve only tested it on Libreboot GRUB, not GRUB loaded by other firmware implementations.)
throwawayboise 5y ago
You pretty much need an OS to run something as complex as a browser, it's just a question of whether it's included or separate.

All I want is a bare metal browser. I don't want an operating system and I don't want to run chromium OS. It would be great to see a bare metal browser that implements something like Gecko.

pb82 5y ago

Any forks of Firefox OS still alive? That comes closest.

spijdar 5y ago
Unless GP's objection to chromium OS is entirely because it's chromium, I don't think Firefox OS would be any better as it's essentially the same thing, Firefox running on Linux (not on bare metal) Without writing the entire browser from scratch, I don't personally think there's much point to this. I suspect if you traced down the library/runtime requirements for Firefox and reimplemented them in a bare metal runtime, you'd end up with something remarkably complex and not much simpler than Linux + runtime in the end. This is assuming you want a full browser capable of everything Firefox and Chromium are, which includes things like WebGL. If you cut out components, you can definitely reach a point where a bare metal browser is sensible, the question is how much are you willing to sacrifice from "web standards" and how much work are you willing to do reimplementing a kernel, TCP/IP stack, device drivers, etc...
- nine_k 5y ago
  I can imagine a unikernel running a browser. I cannot imagine a unikernel with all the drivers ready for a reasonable variety of PC hardware, unless it's able to reuse Linux or at least FreeBSD as a source of drivers.
toast0 5y ago
KaiOS is alive and well. You can probably find a phone or two using it wherever they sell phones.

marcodiego 5y ago

I don't know if this is exactly "bare metal". I think it uses GRUB as a hardware abstraction layer. AFAIK GRUB is not particularly high performant, so it will probably be somewhat slow.

moonchild 5y ago
It uses grub as a bootloader. At runtime, grub is gone. Linux also uses grub as a bootloader, and has never been called slow.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Thanks for correcting me. I think I misunderstood this part: > The resulting GRUB module, mezzano.mod, is largely the KBoot Mezzano loader code, ported to use GRUB facilities for memory allocation, disk access, etc. It’s feature-complete, so I released it to Sourcehut. (I’ve only tested it on Libreboot GRUB, not GRUB loaded by other firmware implementations.)

throwawayboise 5y ago

You pretty much need an OS to run something as complex as a browser, it's just a question of whether it's included or separate.