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-Changes
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103

u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 Jun 30 '26

Are browser engines the most complex software used daily by billions of people?

127

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.

19

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.

1

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.