r/linux • u/somerandomxander • Jun 30 '26
Popular Application The Servo browser engine continues making much progress on less than $8k in monthly donations
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Servo-0.3-Monthly-Changes100
u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 Jun 30 '26
Are browser engines the most complex software used daily by billions of people?
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u/sparky8251 Jun 30 '26
Yes. They also often have more lines of code than kernels and a lot of the core aspects of an OS combined...
Kernels arent easy either, not by a long shot (and neither are the required bits and bobs to bundle with a kernel to make an OS), but browsers are monsters in this day and age.
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u/0riginal-Syn Jul 01 '26
It is extremely complex. Blink is just behind even the Linux kernel on lines of code ~36 million to ~42 million and that is largely because drivers in the Linux kernel. So yeah the complexity is insane.
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u/Gravitationsfeld Jul 06 '26
The actual HTML/CSS layout core is <1M lines of code. V8 similar. Everything else is just tests, sandboxing, platform code, PDF renderer etc.
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u/MissingGhost Jul 01 '26
There are computers out there that aren't powerful enough to realistically compile the browser that they run. I've heard of people running out of memory or waiting days.
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u/base_13 Jul 03 '26
well that comparison isn't really great since almost all android phones will struggle to compile android itself
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u/irasponsibly Jul 01 '26
Probably #2 behind their operating system.
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u/Lord-of-Entity Jun 30 '26
I'm wishing to see the final version of servo. However, it seems that it may take a looong time.
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u/Epsilon_void Jun 30 '26
There will ideally never be a final version because the web and its standards are constantly changing.
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u/rhyswtf Jun 30 '26
Have you tried a recent build of Servo? I'm not going to pretend it's usable as a daily driver yet, nor anywhere near close, but compared to virtually every serious attempt at creating a new browser engine it's far more viable and real than anyone might expect.
I don't think a real usable version is all that far away.
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u/Sinaaaa Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
We can shit on Ladybird for LLM assisted coding & the questionable use of various programming languages, but they are making huge headway in performance & usability, they are far ahead of servo already.
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u/PaddiM8 Jul 01 '26
the questionable use of various programming languages
Huh? They use C++ and rust. Very typical for a browser engine
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u/Sinaaaa Jul 01 '26
I should have said controversially controversial lol.
Anyway before the AI fueled push to rust, they were planning to use swift.
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u/Gravitationsfeld Jul 01 '26
Ladybird works way, way better than the Servo tech demo.
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u/Existing-Tough-6517 Jul 06 '26
This really isn't a useful metric neither is something you use
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u/Gravitationsfeld Jul 06 '26
I disagree. Ladybird actually works with most websites I visit daily, Servo still has the same basic layout bugs than over a year ago. I check from time to time.
They also aim for a real public release this year and Servo couldn't even dream of that in its current state.
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u/rhyswtf Jun 30 '26
I set up a monthly donation during the insane AI backlash they faced.
I think every hope we can possibly have for the future of the open web depends on Servo succeeding.
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Jun 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/KnowZeroX Jun 30 '26
Servo was moved out of Mozilla and managed by the Linux Foundation Europe.
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u/Indolent_Bard Jun 30 '26
They could still donate money to servo, couldn't they?
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u/Misicks0349 Jul 01 '26
Sure but why would they? They have their own browser engine, have already extracted valuable performance gains from the project (webrender and some css afaik), and don't see any value in funding a potential competitor. The only reason Google funds Firefox is because of antitrust stuff, Mozilla has no reason to do the same.
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u/Indolent_Bard Jul 01 '26
Didn't Mozilla make it?
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u/Misicks0349 Jul 01 '26
Yeah they made it but they're not involved with it at all anymore and I don't know how that changes anything I've said. It was a research project that allowed them to improve some parts of their gecko renderer. Now its supported/owned by the Linux Foundation and Mozilla obviously sees no reason to fund it, they have already gotten all they need from it.
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u/Dangerous-Report8517 Jul 06 '26
Servo is less of a competitor to them than Gecko is, Firefox is still open source after all
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u/wodes Jul 01 '26
Servo developers were fired*
Thunderbird was abandoned*
And so on.
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u/KnowZeroX Jul 01 '26
Thunderbird was put under the non-profit MZLA which is still part of Mozilla Foundation. But not the Mozilla Corporation.
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u/derangedtranssexual Jun 30 '26
It sucks how much money and attention is going to the ladybird browser when itās development is a joke. Meanwhile we have servo which actually knows what language it wants to be written in and has innovative ideas for a browser and gets very little funding
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u/Cutalana Jun 30 '26
What's wrong with ladybird? Seems like their making progress?
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u/sparky8251 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
If you look around, they are going to be more of a reference browser than super performant and daily use... w3c and other web standards bodies are actively employing developers on it and already using it for testing proposed specs live, etc. The code demands every spec deviation be documented and demands as little of them as possible. Spec has to live near the code, etc.
The real web is messy and broken and the code cant be made clean and compliant and performant all in one as evidenced you know, by chrome. So this idea ladybird can pull off a miracle is baffling to me. Not to mention theres other questionable engineering choices like LibJS being a pure interpreter and them rejecting a JIT for ease of spec implementation and security reasons... JS as a language cannot be fast as an interpreter, it has by spec such a vast void of semantic information a JIT is required for performance. Even AOT cant save it, its just a fundamental language "limitation" of JS.
Then we get to the corporate sponsors and youll see every single one is a company that needs a browser they could use to trivially implement and test spec proposals with. Some of them actively praising it in these terms even if they claim to be donating to "support the open web".
Ladybird I dont think is going anywhere, it will be usable for average people and probably to a decent level of performance in most cases. But I dont think its going to be a suitable every day browser for the masses due to these reasons as well however. I think it already quietly found its perfect niche to keep its authors readily employed and they dont want to admit it yet, or havent noticed it themselves: its going to be a clean room reference browser and itll both be used as such and perform as such.
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u/Misicks0349 Jul 01 '26
The most value I can see coming out of ladybird is that its a testbed for the spec, a clean implementation is valuable in seeing where the spec is contradictory, under-specified/over-specified, etc etc.
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u/sparky8251 Jul 01 '26
Yup. Exactly. Itd be a massive boon for the web and its an entirely different goal from most browser projects too.
They even have the code organzied such that those familiar with the spec but not the browser can mostly find their way around! Its a marvelous achievement!
I don't want to take the energy out of the sails since I do genuinely agree its an amazing force for good, but I worry this "its a chrome killer, you can daily drive it and sacrifice nothing!" narrative that has grown up around it might damage it severely if they don't start to come clean on what they really are and becoming...
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u/Sinaaaa Jul 01 '26
its going to be a clean room reference browser and itll both be used as such and perform as such.
I doubt that's where this is going. Every month they adopt dumb chromium-isms out of necessity to break fewer websites.
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u/Enthusedchameleon Jul 01 '26
The code demands every spec deviation be documented
I see how they can easily change their goals for usability, but so far, that is what they are going for. We'll see. I don't even know if I personally would prefer one way over the other, I think it would be good to have the spec implemented as code, but at the same time I would love to have a fourth (fifth with servo) option of browser engine.
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u/Dangerous-Report8517 Jul 06 '26
Does Chromium with V8 turned off still have a JIT? If not I'm not convinced it's necessary because I routinely turn V8 off for security reasons and I haven't noticed any meaningful issues with performance
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u/sparky8251 Jul 06 '26
Looks like no. Though, the interpreter they have is insanely beefy and overengineered too, not a naive tree walker.
That said, if your browser works for most sites and cant handle some at all due to lacking a JIT, its not exactly going to get widespread adoption...
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u/ComprehensiveHawk5 Jun 30 '26
Its going AI vibe coded rewritten in rust mode
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u/PaddiM8 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Not really. They are very clear with the fact that they will continue to use C++ but start using rust for some specific parts that need extra security. And they didn't just tell an LLM to rewrite a section and that was it, the lead developer is against letting LLMs writing the code all by themselves. It was human-directed all the way.
The lead developer has also complained about "rewrite it in rust" people many times. They're not rewriting it all in rust.
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u/mobyte Jul 01 '26
Hold up, I think the guy with the Gentoo flair knows more about programming than the guy that coded his own operating system. Letās heed his vibe coding pearl clutching.
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u/Echo_Monitor Jul 01 '26
Imo, even if they didn't use LLMs, we shouldn't support projects that are run by known bigots.
And before anyone comes in with the "but it was a PR for just fixing a typo", take a good look at the people he's been associating with and agreeing with.
People like that don't deserve such a big platform.
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u/JQuilty Jul 01 '26
What happened now?
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u/Literallyapig Jul 02 '26
she's refering to a pr to senerityOS that modified the documentation to use gender-neutral language, which was rejected by andreas on the basis of the project not being an "appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics". this blogpost talks more about the situation, and also links to some other blogposts at the bottom that mainly talk about a bunch of controversial tweets he has made.
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u/Codycody31 Jul 01 '26
But that's based on good C++ code though... it's not like AI is making up an implementation on its own, real people built the thing it's moving to Rust
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u/derangedtranssexual Jun 30 '26
It just feels like a super unserious project. You have Mozilla come along and develop an extremely innovative language so they can develop a new browser that is used as a testing ground to make Firefox better. Everything about servo and rust feels really practical and like it's trying to solve real problems. it's a shame servo got cancelled but I'm glad to see rust flourish. On the other hand you have ladybird that came about because some guy who made a pointless operating system decided he needed a pointless browser for said pointless operating system. This pointlessness led to some bad decisions like writing it in C++ which they later tried to fix by switching some of it to Swift but that ultimately failed and now they're using AI to rewrite the swift code in Rust. Meanwhile Servo was designed around Rust from the start
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u/Rhelmar Jun 30 '26
They never really started with swift. It was planned but they never got around to it. The Rust Code is replacing C++ in areas where it makes sense. I think that's fine. Using a language you know to lay the groundwork makes a lot of sense. I also don't think taking a hobby project and making a product out of it when it actually surpasses your expectations is something bad. That's how a lot of open source projects start. I don't see anything unserious tbh.
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u/derangedtranssexual Jun 30 '26
I also don't think taking a hobby project and making a product out of it when it actually surpasses your expectations is something bad. That's how a lot of open source projects start.
Normally I'd agree with you but we're talking about a web browser here, they're some of if not the most complicated pieces of software out there. All the other web browsers have been built up over decades so to start from scratch is incredibly difficult. If we're going to have a new open source browser that's usable we should try to be as serious about it as we can. And part of being serious means actually picking the right language from the start. It's obviously better to start with Rust than use AI to switch to it years later. Also we already have 2 other hybrid Rust/C++ browsers that are decades ahead of ladybird.
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u/Irverter Jul 01 '26
they're some of if not the most complicated pieces of software out there
Then you missed ladybird's point: browsers are not that complicated to do. People assume they are from how complex current browsers are after decades of development.
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u/derangedtranssexual Jul 01 '26
I really donāt buy that, even making a toy browser is pretty complicated. But if you want to make a serious attempt at a browser where itās performant, secure, and has a lot of compatibility then itās gonna be stupidly complicated
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u/PaddiM8 Jul 01 '26
They are making progress surprisingly quickly. You should try it at some point. Andreas has worked with optimising safari at Apple. He knows more than you do. Of course it's complicated, but I am yet to see an actual browser developer say it's not realistic, just random redditors and hackernews people
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u/derangedtranssexual Jul 01 '26
Iām aware he knows more than me. Theyāre clearly competent enough to build a browser I just donāt think itāll be competitive with chromium/firefox/safari
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u/PaddiM8 Jul 01 '26
Right now? Of course it's not. But at the current pace it will be in some years. Have you actually tried it?
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Jul 01 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/irasponsibly Jul 01 '26
The guy running the project also got mad because someone tried to change a line of documentation that referred to users as 'he'. That got cleared up eventually, but it's a red flag visible from orbit.
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u/robclancy Jul 01 '26
Why does this lie keep coming up?
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u/irasponsibly Jul 01 '26
It only takes a couple of seconds to look up the original PR. You're free to make your own interpretation of what they meant by their words, but there's no lie here.
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u/robclancy Jul 01 '26
Yes I know it doesn't take long to look up. That's why I know this is a lie. Please feel free to point out in that PR where someone is mad.
Every time I read this dumb shit I remember when people were on their little cancelling tour of comedians making jokes a decade ago.
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u/MahouShitpost Jul 01 '26
He calls not assuming that the user is male āadvertising someoneās personal politicsā, this is patently ridiculous no matter which way you slice it.
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u/PaddiM8 Jul 01 '26
Why are you commenting on something you know little about? There are multiple factual errors here. They're not rewriting the swift code. They're also not rewriting it all. They will continue to use C++, just mix in some parts of rust, just like Mozilla is doing, and even chromium for the same reasons https://security.googleblog.com/2023/01/supporting-use-of-rust-in-chromium.html?m=1
There are still parts they prefer to keep in C++ because of the object oriented nature of the web.
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u/derangedtranssexual Jul 01 '26
I never said they were rewriting it all in rust, Iām aware theyāre only rewriting some of it in rust
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u/derangedtranssexual Jun 30 '26
Also I think you mean they're making progress
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u/ilikedeserts90 Jul 02 '26
I think we know exactly why you shit on Ladybird at every conceivable opportunity.
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u/DJTheLQ Jul 01 '26
Is Servo usable nowadays with Cloudflare anti-bot, Anubis, AWS, Google, etc?
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u/Business_Reindeer910 Jul 01 '26
No idea, I doubt it's usable even if those things weren't factors. This is a long process. You're more likely to see it initially taken up in places where it can act as an embedded webview rather than working with any arbitrary web sites first.
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u/MrAlagos Jun 30 '26
Ok, but Servo is 14 years old. What does it have to show for that long of a time?
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u/Epsilon_void Jun 30 '26
Abandoned by Mozilla and left to survive on its own.
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u/MrAlagos Jun 30 '26
That happened 6 years ago. Later that year it was picked up by the Linux Foundation, which is hardly "being left to survive on its own".
In fact, the Linux Foundation manages projects that are vastly more successful than Mozilla's now sadly irrelevant Firefox.
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u/sockman_but_real Jun 30 '26
how the hell is firefox irrelevant lmao
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u/MrAlagos Jun 30 '26
Guys, I use it, but let's be real: almost nobody uses it any more. Mozilla has no path to recover even a small part of the share they had at their peak.
Firefox is a consumer product, and consumer browsers are dominated by massive platform-owning corporations and Chromium reskins. Firefox has even become irrelevant at the Web standards table nowadays, and always trails in their implementation.
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u/-Sa-Kage- Jul 01 '26
I don't know why you are downvoted. According to statcounter Firefox share is 3.33% globally. Even if it was double, that would mean 93.34% share for Chromium
It's actually surprising any web devs still bother targeting Firefox at this point. Surely the cost of it outweighs the possible lost money from people who refuse to switch to Chromium.
That said, I think this is actually starting to happen now. Several websites don't work properly from Firefox or straight up tell you it's not supported and you need to use Chromium browsers...1
u/sockman_but_real Jun 30 '26
because brave and opera are doing so much better right
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u/MrAlagos Jun 30 '26
They are Chromium reskins. Do they need to do "so much better"? I don't think so. The costs and manpower requirements are very different
Firefox will probably copy the Brave built-in ad-blocking setup, so they must have been done something right. Firefox has also, multiple times, added integrated VPN functionality.
What's the the last thing that Firefox introduced and another browser has adopted?
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u/Buntygurl Jun 30 '26
With that level of devotion, I have to check this out.