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Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

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Re: Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

#81

http client, UI interactions logic, domain models, utilities like tree operations, browser domain logic and all of that inside single go file? I think you'd make your life 10 times easier by splitting it better

Did you even look at the repo? There are many files.

Re: Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

#82
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely impressive, and it shows it is possible to build a new browser. I don't think it shows it is possible to build a new browser that ordinary people will use though. That requires implementing a gazillion niche features that Chrome supports, and compatibility with a gazillion broken websites. Probably with web browsers the last 0.1% is 99.9% of the work.

A lot of us would be happy to have a browser that doesn't try to support the gazillion features of chrome and Firefox, if it instead gave us the ability to browse the web on our own terms instead of one company's vision of what the web should be.

I share the sentiment. Reality is often physical businesses now require visiting their website, sometimes even in person, and they just don't work unless the browser is Chromium based.

Literally today I had to upload a drivers license in person yet on my phone to rent a truck. Of course Firefox failed, and even Chrome glitched, yet Chrome could be made to work with it's alternate uploader.

Re: Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

#83
post #80
post #79

Serious question: is anyone here using Plan 9 for daily operation?

Posted from 9front (using netsurf). I also run https://shithub.us , which is hosted from plan 9, and more or less needs plan 9 for push access. It uses the hjgit:// protocol for push access, which requires plan9 auth to establish the channel. The fact that there are so many repos up should give a hint at how active the community is.

Follow up question then: why?

This isn’t meant to come off as judgmental, but a real question. Plan 9 looks pretty neat but I would think that the lack of driver support alone would make it pretty difficult to run for anything.

Re: Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with everything else, it depends on who you are and what you do. Email, typesetting, remote shells are all well within the bounds of what workflows work great out of the box.

Typesetting ? the linux-centric FOSS world has failed to produce a serious type-setting application for going on 30 years now, what's the offering here?

Johannes Gutenberg produced the primary, and, by far, the most serious, application for type setting 575 years ago, long before the era of the Linux desktop. It's called The Book. Read one some time, and maybe you'll learn what a comma is for.

Re: Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

#85
post #4

At this point in market concentration, any sufficiently brave or delusional soul that ventures into even the most rudimentary web browser development is a hero to me !

A modern web browser is comparable to an operating system in complexity.

Re: Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

#86
post #19

Curious to see how they will get WebGL and WebGPU over file handles.

Why do you believe it is impossible to display a web page of text on screen without a 3D graphics accelerator adapter card? Haven't you ever used a computer without a Nvidia in it before? A young kid like you might be surprised to learn that there was a time not so long ago when most computers didn't have 3D accelerator cards, and that they were still more than capable of rendering a page of information and driving their displays.

Re: Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

#87
post #19

Curious to see how they will get WebGL and WebGPU over file handles.

OpenGL already has a client/server model (i remember a friend of mine once showing me running some OpenGL stuff from his SGI to his Linux machine... or the other way around, it has been years :-P) and i can't think of anything in WebGL that couldn't work in the same way (though i only used WebGL very little). Sending commands and data over a file handle fits this fine. Note sure about WebGPU though.

Yes it did, if the only thing one cares about is OpenGL 1.x like performance.

X Windows did not come up with shared memory communication and hardware mapping extensions just for fun.

Re: Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

#88
post #50

I fully acknowledge that Plan9 had a cool vision, maybe a superior one to the world we’ve got. But is it practical as an operating system for day to day use, particularly when working with other people using conventional Linux/Mac/Windows?

> But is it practical as an operating system for day to day use [...]? It was never meant to be. Just like UNIX initially, it was a research operating system. UNIX turned out to be an accidental runaway success, and many of Plan9's greatest ideas (like synthetic filesystems, bind/union mounts, its threading library, the 9p protocol, etc) found their way to more "practical" systems. It also did have a commercial count…

With xls2txt(1) and the doc versions of the tool you can at least dump most of the text from the Office files

[1] https://man.9front.org/1/doc2txt

Re: Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

#89
post #83
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posted from 9front (using netsurf). I also run https://shithub.us , which is hosted from plan 9, and more or less needs plan 9 for push access. It uses the hjgit:// protocol for push access, which requires plan9 auth to establish the channel. The fact that there are so many repos up should give a hint at how active the community is.

Follow up question then: why? This isn’t meant to come off as judgmental, but a real question. Plan 9 looks pretty neat but I would think that the lack of driver support alone would make it pretty difficult to run for anything.

The term is 'recreational computing' ;)

But actually most older thinkpads are pretty well supported, you can even get Wifi with OpenBSDs drivers.

Re: Opossum: Cross-platform web browser written in Golang, optimized for Plan 9

#90
post #86
post #19

Curious to see how they will get WebGL and WebGPU over file handles.

Why do you believe it is impossible to display a web page of text on screen without a 3D graphics accelerator adapter card? Haven't you ever used a computer without a Nvidia in it before? A young kid like you might be surprised to learn that there was a time not so long ago when most computers didn't have 3D accelerator cards, and that they were still more than capable of rendering a page of information and driving t…

Sure it is possible to display the page with text, it is matter of what compatibility level one wants to achieve in regards to modern Web platform in pages that might have 3D and media content into them, which includes some forms of CSS styles as well.

Ultimately everything can be done via software rendering as well, depending on how much one is willing to wait.

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