6 ms·

Does anyone actually use Servo for anything?

rpdillon 2mo ago
Not really. There's a parallel thread on the front page where everybody's talking about writing a browser engine in anything other than Rust is irresponsible, and ridiculous. And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. There seem to be some projects in GTK and QT to embed it, but other than a handful of pretty niche browsers, doesn't seem like there's much use.
- Rohansi 2mo ago
  Nobody is using it because it's not ready to be used. Compatibility with web standards is nowhere near the level of browsers people actually want to use.
- Xirdus 2mo ago
  Writing a new browser engine at all is irresponsible and ridiculous. Doing it in anything other than Rust just makes it slightly more irresponsible than it already is.
  - adzm 2mo ago
    I don't see how it is irresponsible or ridiculous. More browser engines is a good thing. It might be irresponsible to bet your company on it at this point, but on its own I think it is a worthy endeavor. Plus it looks like a lot of fun to work on! This is hacker news after all.
    - Xirdus 2mo ago
      Ridiculous because it's absolutely guaranteed to fail. Irresponsible because if it does succeed against all odds, the internet will actually become a worse place. If you can't implement most of the web standards (not even all, just most of them), then one of the following will happen: - your engine will never catch on (best case scenario) - your engine will be forever known as "this browser where nothing works" and will be perpetually ignored in all discussions about cross-browser compatibility, nullifying any positives that could come from its existence - worst possible outcome: your engine gains market share, gets treated seriously, and the global development of all new web standards stagnates until you can catch up, which means over a decade of zero innovations. And you CANNOT implement most web standards[1]. There's too many of them, they all interact with each other too much, the engineering effort required is comparable with rewriting all of Linux from scratch. And of course there's security. A massive project like that will have massive code complexity, which leads to enormous number of security holes. Chrome and Firefox are mostly secure because their maintainers spent literal decades fixing the holes. They have 20 year headstart over you in making it secure, and they don't have to play catch up with web standards like you do. Everybody using your engine is therefore at a much greater risk of getting hacked than if they sticked with Chrome. And that's assuming you use Rust. If you don't use Rust, then security would be so bad it's not even funny. None of it matters if you're just making a personal project for the heck of it, of course. Go do it! Have fun! It doesn't matter if you use Rust or not because nobody will use it anyway, so pick whatever tech stack you like the most. Node sounds like a fun choice - it solves the problem of running JS scripts basically for free! [1] https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-browser-with-a-completely-new-engine https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-...
      - GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
        >and will be perpetually ignored in all discussions about cross-browser compatibility If violence doesn't solve your problems, you use not enough violence. Also if you don't implement web standards, it's doesn't mean that nothing works. Adblock and noscript break web standards, but people use them just fine, they actually make web work better. >A massive project like that will have massive code complexity, which leads to enormous number of security holes. Presumably much of that is in network protocols like heartbleed, which has little to do with something like html parsing or google fonts. Also this is in fact a reason for a new browser engine: Chrome and Firefox lost security, because no matter how much they fix, they still have holes. >If you don't use Rust, then security would be so bad it's not even funny. Proofs?
        Xirdus 2mo ago
        I didn't say nothing would work. I said it'd be known as the one where nothing works. Think: IE6. It implemented like 95% of all web standards as of 2006. But this missing 5% was the difference between being at the forefront of progress and holding back the entire industry. Today, IE6's 95% would be less than 10%. So you'd need to implement several times more features than IE6 had to be even remotely close to the status of unworkable mess that webdevs are better off not supporting. Low-level exploits like heartbleed are quite rare actually. The vast majority of security bugs in Chrome and Firefox are in unsafely handling edge cases in parsing HTML and other media types, not isolating script execution enough, and bugs in runtime interfaces (cookies, local storage, mic&cam APIs, location APIs, etc.) Realistically, there's no way to avoid these bugs - browser engine has too much inherent complexity, statistically you're bound to mke amistake every so often. Moreover, IIRC about half of those bugs are caused by buffer overflows and similar memory bugs. So by using Rust, you can expect to have half as many security holes than you'd have otherwise. The number is still in the thousands either way.
        GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
        FWIW C++ can do bound checks aka hardened STL. On the other hand google did riir some of their programs and removed bound checks there for speed, welcome to real world, so absence of bound checks is not a mistake, but an intended performance goal.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- hn_submit 2mo ago
  I believe Ladybird is being ported to Rust as we speak.
  - kingwill101 2mo ago
    Nah, just individual components where memory haters
    - nicoburns 2mo ago
      > just individual components That kinda undersells it I think. It's really core components being ported: the JavaScript engine is already ported, with the style and layout systems underway.
  - IshKebab 2mo ago
    I thought they were going to use Swift? Huh they gave up on that apparently. https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/ https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/
- cyberax 2mo ago
  Up until ~2015 one of the world's most deployed browser engines was Sciter. A work of _one_ person. A fast embedded browser engine, a binary about 4Mb in size. It was used to render the UI in apps like our favorite McAfee antivirus. This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome.
  - Rohansi 2mo ago
    > This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome. I agree with you but throwing web standards out the window like Sciter is a non-starter. One of the benefits of Electron apps is still having the option to run it in your browser.
    - cyberax 2mo ago
      Yes, that's why Servo is so exciting. It doesn't have to implement _all_ the standards, just a subset that is compatible with the full set. So that if you can develop an app within that subset and have it working in other browsers. But not necessarily vice versa.
      - Rohansi 2mo ago
        If you're going by binary size then Servo is already as big as other browsers. 106 MB excluding dependencies, or 274 MB including dependencies.
        GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
        Does Servo still launch a herd of processes like Electron?
        Rohansi 2mo ago
        Doesn't look like it but if Servo wants to be a production-ready browser they will likely need to do the same. Better security and reliability having processes handling different roles.
- akiselev 2mo ago
  > And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. Mozilla Firefox merged Servo's Stylo CSS engine into Firefox 57 in 2017 and their WebRender renderer into Firefox 67 in 2019. I guess you could call that a "pretty niche browser" even then but that's a stretch. No one's rushing to pick it up because Servo was originally an experimental Rust project meant to incrementally replace parts of Firefox. Then Mozilla stopped funding its development, and only recently have people picked it back up again as an independent browser implementation.
  - rpdillon 2mo ago
    > Mozilla Firefox merged Servo's Stylo CSS engine into Firefox 57 in 2017 and their WebRender renderer into Firefox 67 in 2019. Well sure, but Firefox is still primarily powered by Gecko and SpiderMonkey. And they laid off the entire Servo team. I wanted this to succeed as much as the next guy, but the momentum just isn't there. I was stunned to hear they are getting close to $8k a month in donations though, so it's certainly not dead (obviously, since this is a realease announcement).
    - nicoburns 2mo ago
      It got dropped in 2020, picked up again in 2022/2023, and just hit the pre-2020 activity level (in terms of commits per unit time) this year.
Xirdus 2mo ago
Servo has always been a purely reasearch project with no intention to be ever used in production.
- stackghost 2mo ago
  I thought the original purpose was to rEwRiTe iT iN rUsT and replace gecko in Firefox?
  - steveklabnik 2mo ago
    From the presentation announcing Rust inside of Mozilla: https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf > We are not “rewriting the browser”. That's impossible. Put down the gun.
    - mohamedkoubaa 2mo ago
      Impossible in 2010, maybe
      - steveklabnik 2mo ago
        Regardless if it's still true or not, the original purpose was not to re-write Gecko.
ChrisSD 2mo ago
Maybe give them a second? Yes, it's usable for applications web views if you're willing to restrict yourself but for general purpose web browsing there's still a lot that needs doing (but work is progressing). Under Google's management, web tech has grown fast. And it's an ever shifting living standard. There is a lot for any alternative browser engine to implement, let alone keep pace with the changes.
- esprehn 2mo ago
  Servo is 14 years old, it's hardly a new project. Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time. The issue has always been Mozilla not being focused.
  - ChrisSD 2mo ago
    Servo was sparsely maintained for years after Mozilla abandoned the project. Just in the last year it has picked steam as an independent project with a range of third party sponsors. Work is now progressing apace and it's becoming increasingly compatible with real-world websites.
  - akiselev 2mo ago
    > Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time. That's hardly a fair assessment when large parts of Servo were mainlined into Firefox years before Ladybird even existed. Stylo, their CSS engine, landed in Firefox 57 in 2017 replacing ~160k lines of C++ with ~85k lines of Rust. Servo wasn't originally really intended as a browser competitor. It was the flagship experimental project of the Rust language to replace parts of Firefox with memory safe implementations, which it pulled off in style. It's only recently that people have picked it back up as a browser project, years after Mozilla killed the development.
  - dabinat 2mo ago
    Ladybird has far more funding. The original blog post said Servo brought in $7k last month. Compare that to Ladybird and the first donation on this list already exceeds Servo’s total: https://ladybird.org/newsletter/2026-06-30/ https://ladybird.org/newsletter/2026-06-30/
cyberax 2mo ago
I played around with it as a replacement for embedded WebKit in a desktop app. It's getting there! It's obviously not ready yet, but it's also not "infinitely far" anymore. I'm donating to them, because I think that they're the only realistic successor to the dying Firefox.
Permik 2mo ago
I've got a stripped down installation of win11 in a vm that has Servo as its only browser if there's ever a need to open a website in it. It's something!

Not really. There's a parallel thread on the front page where everybody's talking about writing a browser engine in anything other than Rust is irresponsible, and ridiculous. And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. There seem to be some projects in GTK and QT to embed it, but other than a handful of pretty niche browsers, doesn't seem like there's much use.

Rohansi 2mo ago
Nobody is using it because it's not ready to be used. Compatibility with web standards is nowhere near the level of browsers people actually want to use.
Xirdus 2mo ago
Writing a new browser engine at all is irresponsible and ridiculous. Doing it in anything other than Rust just makes it slightly more irresponsible than it already is.
- adzm 2mo ago
  I don't see how it is irresponsible or ridiculous. More browser engines is a good thing. It might be irresponsible to bet your company on it at this point, but on its own I think it is a worthy endeavor. Plus it looks like a lot of fun to work on! This is hacker news after all.
  - Xirdus 2mo ago
    Ridiculous because it's absolutely guaranteed to fail. Irresponsible because if it does succeed against all odds, the internet will actually become a worse place. If you can't implement most of the web standards (not even all, just most of them), then one of the following will happen: - your engine will never catch on (best case scenario) - your engine will be forever known as "this browser where nothing works" and will be perpetually ignored in all discussions about cross-browser compatibility, nullifying any positives that could come from its existence - worst possible outcome: your engine gains market share, gets treated seriously, and the global development of all new web standards stagnates until you can catch up, which means over a decade of zero innovations. And you CANNOT implement most web standards[1]. There's too many of them, they all interact with each other too much, the engineering effort required is comparable with rewriting all of Linux from scratch. And of course there's security. A massive project like that will have massive code complexity, which leads to enormous number of security holes. Chrome and Firefox are mostly secure because their maintainers spent literal decades fixing the holes. They have 20 year headstart over you in making it secure, and they don't have to play catch up with web standards like you do. Everybody using your engine is therefore at a much greater risk of getting hacked than if they sticked with Chrome. And that's assuming you use Rust. If you don't use Rust, then security would be so bad it's not even funny. None of it matters if you're just making a personal project for the heck of it, of course. Go do it! Have fun! It doesn't matter if you use Rust or not because nobody will use it anyway, so pick whatever tech stack you like the most. Node sounds like a fun choice - it solves the problem of running JS scripts basically for free! [1] https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-browser-with-a-completely-new-engine https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-...
    - GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
      >and will be perpetually ignored in all discussions about cross-browser compatibility If violence doesn't solve your problems, you use not enough violence. Also if you don't implement web standards, it's doesn't mean that nothing works. Adblock and noscript break web standards, but people use them just fine, they actually make web work better. >A massive project like that will have massive code complexity, which leads to enormous number of security holes. Presumably much of that is in network protocols like heartbleed, which has little to do with something like html parsing or google fonts. Also this is in fact a reason for a new browser engine: Chrome and Firefox lost security, because no matter how much they fix, they still have holes. >If you don't use Rust, then security would be so bad it's not even funny. Proofs?
      - Xirdus 2mo ago
        I didn't say nothing would work. I said it'd be known as the one where nothing works. Think: IE6. It implemented like 95% of all web standards as of 2006. But this missing 5% was the difference between being at the forefront of progress and holding back the entire industry. Today, IE6's 95% would be less than 10%. So you'd need to implement several times more features than IE6 had to be even remotely close to the status of unworkable mess that webdevs are better off not supporting. Low-level exploits like heartbleed are quite rare actually. The vast majority of security bugs in Chrome and Firefox are in unsafely handling edge cases in parsing HTML and other media types, not isolating script execution enough, and bugs in runtime interfaces (cookies, local storage, mic&cam APIs, location APIs, etc.) Realistically, there's no way to avoid these bugs - browser engine has too much inherent complexity, statistically you're bound to mke amistake every so often. Moreover, IIRC about half of those bugs are caused by buffer overflows and similar memory bugs. So by using Rust, you can expect to have half as many security holes than you'd have otherwise. The number is still in the thousands either way.
        GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
        FWIW C++ can do bound checks aka hardened STL. On the other hand google did riir some of their programs and removed bound checks there for speed, welcome to real world, so absence of bound checks is not a mistake, but an intended performance goal.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
hn_submit 2mo ago
I believe Ladybird is being ported to Rust as we speak.
- kingwill101 2mo ago
  Nah, just individual components where memory haters
  - nicoburns 2mo ago
    > just individual components That kinda undersells it I think. It's really core components being ported: the JavaScript engine is already ported, with the style and layout systems underway.
- IshKebab 2mo ago
  I thought they were going to use Swift? Huh they gave up on that apparently. https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/ https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/
cyberax 2mo ago
Up until ~2015 one of the world's most deployed browser engines was Sciter. A work of _one_ person. A fast embedded browser engine, a binary about 4Mb in size. It was used to render the UI in apps like our favorite McAfee antivirus. This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome.
- Rohansi 2mo ago
  > This niche is still wide open. Electron apps are just terrible, and a focused fast embeddable browser engine would be very welcome. I agree with you but throwing web standards out the window like Sciter is a non-starter. One of the benefits of Electron apps is still having the option to run it in your browser.
  - cyberax 2mo ago
    Yes, that's why Servo is so exciting. It doesn't have to implement _all_ the standards, just a subset that is compatible with the full set. So that if you can develop an app within that subset and have it working in other browsers. But not necessarily vice versa.
    - Rohansi 2mo ago
      If you're going by binary size then Servo is already as big as other browsers. 106 MB excluding dependencies, or 274 MB including dependencies.
      - GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
        Does Servo still launch a herd of processes like Electron?
        Rohansi 2mo ago
        Doesn't look like it but if Servo wants to be a production-ready browser they will likely need to do the same. Better security and reliability having processes handling different roles.
akiselev 2mo ago
> And yet, no one's rushing to pick up Servo. Mozilla Firefox merged Servo's Stylo CSS engine into Firefox 57 in 2017 and their WebRender renderer into Firefox 67 in 2019. I guess you could call that a "pretty niche browser" even then but that's a stretch. No one's rushing to pick it up because Servo was originally an experimental Rust project meant to incrementally replace parts of Firefox. Then Mozilla stopped funding its development, and only recently have people picked it back up again as an independent browser implementation.
- rpdillon 2mo ago
  > Mozilla Firefox merged Servo's Stylo CSS engine into Firefox 57 in 2017 and their WebRender renderer into Firefox 67 in 2019. Well sure, but Firefox is still primarily powered by Gecko and SpiderMonkey. And they laid off the entire Servo team. I wanted this to succeed as much as the next guy, but the momentum just isn't there. I was stunned to hear they are getting close to $8k a month in donations though, so it's certainly not dead (obviously, since this is a realease announcement).
  - nicoburns 2mo ago
    It got dropped in 2020, picked up again in 2022/2023, and just hit the pre-2020 activity level (in terms of commits per unit time) this year.

Xirdus 2mo ago

Servo has always been a purely reasearch project with no intention to be ever used in production.

stackghost 2mo ago
I thought the original purpose was to rEwRiTe iT iN rUsT and replace gecko in Firefox?
- steveklabnik 2mo ago
  From the presentation announcing Rust inside of Mozilla: https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf https://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf > We are not “rewriting the browser”. That's impossible. Put down the gun.
  - mohamedkoubaa 2mo ago
    Impossible in 2010, maybe
    - steveklabnik 2mo ago
      Regardless if it's still true or not, the original purpose was not to re-write Gecko.

ChrisSD 2mo ago

Maybe give them a second? Yes, it's usable for applications web views if you're willing to restrict yourself but for general purpose web browsing there's still a lot that needs doing (but work is progressing). Under Google's management, web tech has grown fast. And it's an ever shifting living standard. There is a lot for any alternative browser engine to implement, let alone keep pace with the changes.

esprehn 2mo ago
Servo is 14 years old, it's hardly a new project. Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time. The issue has always been Mozilla not being focused.
- ChrisSD 2mo ago
  Servo was sparsely maintained for years after Mozilla abandoned the project. Just in the last year it has picked steam as an independent project with a range of third party sponsors. Work is now progressing apace and it's becoming increasingly compatible with real-world websites.
- akiselev 2mo ago
  > Ladybird has come much farther in a shorter amount of time. That's hardly a fair assessment when large parts of Servo were mainlined into Firefox years before Ladybird even existed. Stylo, their CSS engine, landed in Firefox 57 in 2017 replacing ~160k lines of C++ with ~85k lines of Rust. Servo wasn't originally really intended as a browser competitor. It was the flagship experimental project of the Rust language to replace parts of Firefox with memory safe implementations, which it pulled off in style. It's only recently that people have picked it back up as a browser project, years after Mozilla killed the development.
- dabinat 2mo ago
  Ladybird has far more funding. The original blog post said Servo brought in $7k last month. Compare that to Ladybird and the first donation on this list already exceeds Servo’s total: https://ladybird.org/newsletter/2026-06-30/ https://ladybird.org/newsletter/2026-06-30/

cyberax 2mo ago

I played around with it as a replacement for embedded WebKit in a desktop app. It's getting there! It's obviously not ready yet, but it's also not "infinitely far" anymore. I'm donating to them, because I think that they're the only realistic successor to the dying Firefox.

Permik 2mo ago

I've got a stripped down installation of win11 in a vm that has Servo as its only browser if there's ever a need to open a website in it. It's something!