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This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

ladybird.org

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31–40 of 52 posts

Re: This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

#31

Post by muyuu »

mindcrash wrote: post #11
bovermyer wrote: post #4

Good progress this month! Good to see it running on Windows now, even if I don't use Windows myself anymore. That'll help boost adoption once it releases.

True open source web browsers on Windows, and MacOS, are dead in the water. This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix and Spotify. They will also want to use a single browser for everything, which in practice means Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Ladybird will very likely not have access to Widevine, because of the cost, require…

> This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix and Spotify.

Well, there's a niche.

Personally I have zero interest in Netflix and Spotify and I don't even know what Tidal is.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

#32

Post by jeroenhd »

KaiMagnus wrote: post #5

I’m impressed how well Google maps works already. Seems though as if the WPT score is not super meaningful in measuring actual usability. The growth of passed tests seems suspiciously uniform across browsers, so I guess it has more to do with new passing tests being added and less with failing tests that got fixed.

A large amount of tests includes rendering text and basic elements correctly, which is an incredibly difficult problem. Getting JS to render right is one thing, but preventing bugs like "Google Maps works but completely breaks when a business has õ in its name" requires a lot of seemingly useless tests to pass.

Fixing a few rendering issues could fix all of the tests that depend on correct rendering but break, so I think the rate at which tests are fixed makes a lot of sense.

https://wpt.fyi/results shows that even the big players have room for improvement, but also has a nice breakdown of all the different kinds of tests that make up the score.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

#33

Post by binary132 »

RamRodification wrote: post #17
binary132 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about you but I am perfectly content to use a free browser and open either a nonfree browser or an app if I want to use a feature that is not available in my preferred software.

I don't know about you but I am very sad that I can't really recommend a browser not made by evil-mega-corp (or their associates) to friends and family because for some stupid reason that I can't explain to them, they aren't allowed to view high quality streaming video with it.

“It doesn’t work with Netflix, but I just open Chrome when I want that”

is that really so hard?

DRM is not a good thing

Re: This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

#34

Post by morcus »

mindcrash wrote: post #11
bovermyer wrote: post #4

Good progress this month! Good to see it running on Windows now, even if I don't use Windows myself anymore. That'll help boost adoption once it releases.

True open source web browsers on Windows, and MacOS, are dead in the water. This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix and Spotify. They will also want to use a single browser for everything, which in practice means Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Ladybird will very likely not have access to Widevine, because of the cost, require…

I don't know the usage numbers so I might be way off, but with Smart TVs becoming a more common thing I can't remember the last time I tried to stream video on my computer.

Am I in the minority here? Do we have stats on what the breakdown of streaming traffic is by Mobile / TV / Desktop?

Re: This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

#35

Post by ac29 »

skywal_l wrote: post #27
tmikaeld wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't, this is also the reason that streamers like Nvidia Shield or Apple TV are the only two choices if you want to view 4K content at all.

I have been using firefox on linux for a little more than a decade now and haven't realize I was missing on anything so I guess it's probably not a real problem.

Netflix et al work on Linux but are limited to 480p.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

#36

Post by doubled112 »

morcus wrote: post #34
mindcrash wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True open source web browsers on Windows, and MacOS, are dead in the water. This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix and Spotify. They will also want to use a single browser for everything, which in practice means Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Ladybird will very likely not have access to Widevine, because of the cost, require…

I don't know the usage numbers so I might be way off, but with Smart TVs becoming a more common thing I can't remember the last time I tried to stream video on my computer. Am I in the minority here? Do we have stats on what the breakdown of streaming traffic is by Mobile / TV / Desktop?

I'm another that tends to stream directly on a TV. Or a tablet.

It's very possible it's a workaround to the streaming on PC situation though.

Re: This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

#37

Post by gertop »

muyuu wrote: post #31
mindcrash wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True open source web browsers on Windows, and MacOS, are dead in the water. This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix and Spotify. They will also want to use a single browser for everything, which in practice means Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Ladybird will very likely not have access to Widevine, because of the cost, require…

> This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix and Spotify. Well, there's a niche. Personally I have zero interest in Netflix and Spotify and I don't even know what Tidal is.

Wanting to stream multimedia content from commercial streaming services is definitely not a "niche."

Re: This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

#38

Post by muyuu »

gertop wrote: post #37
muyuu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is because of the lack of Widevine CDM, and the majority of people wanting to stream stuff using services like Tidal, Netflix and Spotify. Well, there's a niche. Personally I have zero interest in Netflix and Spotify and I don't even know what Tidal is.

Wanting to stream multimedia content from commercial streaming services is definitely not a "niche."

never claimed such thing

people who are not interested in these things, or can use separate systems for those things, are a viable niche for a pure-OSS distribution of Ladybird

Re: This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

#39

Post by thiht »

throwaway34564 wrote: post #14
bovermyer wrote: post #4

Good progress this month! Good to see it running on Windows now, even if I don't use Windows myself anymore. That'll help boost adoption once it releases.

If they'd just have used an Electron stack from the get-go, it would have been cross platform already

That makes no sense, they're writing a browser engine...

Re: This Month in Ladybird – October 2025

#40

Post by ramon156 »

robinhood wrote: post #22
fguerraz wrote: post #21

While I truly admire how much progress they’ve made, and respect that everyone should pursue whatever they feel like doing with their time, it still feels to me like such a waste that it’s not written in a modern memory safe language. I fear it’s ultimately going to be the most promising, least safe browser to use. But hey, I want to be proven wrong, so I still gave them some money…

They've started to gradually use Swift in the last year or so.

There still isn't a solid plan, which worries me a bit. This is going to end up as a rewrite of a rewrite.

That's not to say it isn't realistic, but it's definitely going to be interesting.

I also think Swift will bring in more contributors

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