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Ubuntu Will Stick With Firefox Over Chromium For Now

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  • Ubuntu Will Stick With Firefox Over Chromium For Now

    Phoronix: Ubuntu Will Stick With Firefox Over Chromium For Now

    While Canonical engineers keep raising discussions about swapping Mozilla Firefox for Google's Chromium as the default web-browser for Ubuntu Linux, the 13.10 release will continue using Firefox by default...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    As a dedicated firefox user who finds chromium just a limited uncustomizable browser can only salute this decision, at least some are still sticking to good old firefox.

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    • #3
      What's the reason for this? I mean, it seems like every few months, we get another article about Ubuntu proposing to switch to Chromium, and yet again, it's not actually happening. What's the drive behind this constant push?

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      • #4
        Also, last time I checked, Ubuntu's notification system did not work with Chrome (there some extensions that should do it, but they just don't work). While I have nothing against Chrome and Chromium there is no reason for this switch and so potential problems.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Delgarde View Post
          What's the reason for this? I mean, it seems like every few months, we get another article about Ubuntu proposing to switch to Chromium, and yet again, it's not actually happening. What's the drive behind this constant push?
          It was explained in one article. Ubuntu devs wanted to write a Qt wrapper for Chromium's rendering engine and use that in Ubuntu Phone (instead of QtWebKit) and for Ubuntu Desktop they wanted to use the same rendering engine.
          No idea if the wrapper project advanced in any way.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Awesomeness View Post
            It was explained in one article. Ubuntu devs wanted to write a Qt wrapper for Chromium's rendering engine and use that in Ubuntu Phone (instead of QtWebKit) and for Ubuntu Desktop they wanted to use the same rendering engine.
            No idea if the wrapper project advanced in any way.
            There is no need for it anymore. Digia is creatine QWebEngine based on chromium to supersede QtWebkit. Canonical just needs to wait for them to complete it rather than creating their own.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Awesomeness View Post
              It was explained in one article. Ubuntu devs wanted to write a Qt wrapper for Chromium's rendering engine and use that in Ubuntu Phone (instead of QtWebKit) and for Ubuntu Desktop they wanted to use the same rendering engine.
              No idea if the wrapper project advanced in any way.
              I read a couple of those articles but the connection wasn't clear to me. They're planning this wrapper (actually Canonical's post said they're considering forking a large part of WebKit/Blink, and making a wrapper for their fork) for Canonical and other people to build applications with limited web capabilities, right? Why does that affect the normal web browser? Chromium on Ubuntu wouldn't even be using Canonical's WebKit fork, it would be using Google's normal Blink version, which will be API-incompatible with Canonical's version. In fact Canonical said the reason they're doing their own Blink fork and Qt wrapper is because Google/Apple refuse to provide a stable API. That seems like a crazy reason to switch more stuff over to WebKit.

              Personally I don't get why many applications build in their own web browsers. If I click a link in Google Earth I want to read that link in Firefox. Why the hell would I want to surf Wikipedia in a globe application, which runs at half the speed and covers up my view of the actual globe until I close it?

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              • #8
                Firefox on mobile is quite good... can't that be used?

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by qlum View Post
                  As a dedicated firefox user who finds chromium just a limited uncustomizable browser can only salute this decision, at least some are still sticking to good old firefox.
                  Indeed. As a very very old timer from the phoenix days, I've tried to switch to chrome/chromium -- I love the speed and the integrated translation system for pages -- but all the configs and settings and habits I've piled up on firefox over the years are not available, or are only extensions that leave a lot to be desired.

                  Although for normal users, I'm a bit torn on which is better.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by jayrulez View Post
                    There is no need for it anymore. Digia is creatine QWebEngine based on chromium to supersede QtWebkit. Canonical just needs to wait for them to complete it rather than creating their own.
                    I didn't know that they now actually do that. I've read in a blog post about that as an experiment. Too bad we'll be required to swallow 100MB for Chromium dependencies because the Blink fork removed all those low level abstraction layers that makes integrating WebKit into various toolkits so easy.

                    Simply basing QtWebKit on Apple's stable WebKit branch probably was just too pragmatic?

                    Originally posted by Chaz View Post
                    Why does that affect the normal web browser? Chromium on Ubuntu wouldn't even be using Canonical's WebKit fork, it would be using Google's normal Blink version, which will be API-incompatible with Canonical's version.
                    The rendering engines would be closer nonetheless than Gecko and Blink.

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