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Nordstjernen, Northstar, Southstar: minimalist webbrowsers in C and Rust

15 points Propelloni 1 hour ago 9 comments

Propelloni 1 hour ago | parent

Minimalist web browsers written from scratch in C (Nordstjernen, Northstar) or Rust (Southstar).

shevy-java 51 minutes ago | parent

I have recently started to wonder whether we can really create a browser that can dethrone Google.

Ladybird tries that, but Ladybird has made several really questionable decisions and has various strange policies. Now I am biased here since I was banned for "trolling" (I dispute that claim completely), but the issues go deeper.

Take the following:

https://github.com/ladybirdbrowser/ladybird

Or rather:

https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/blob/master/CONT...

"We reserve the right to reject issues and other interactions that appear to be motivated by bad faith.

Additionally, anyone found participating in social media brigading of Ladybird will be permanently banned from the project."

Why does the Ladybird team engage in pro-actively banning people they disagree with? Does this not defeat the purpose of an open web if Ladybird goes about censoring people?

And that's not the only issue here. A while ago they removed the ability, more or less, by people to report issues (or rather, contribute to the project) when they are outsiders. Or the "swift is great, we use it", then suddenly "Rust is great, we use it". A lot of this awkwardness has to do with Kling; I think it would be better if a browser would act in an agnostic manner rather than as a "brigading leads to perma-bans". That's a very user-hostile policy. Is it no longer possible to build a browser? You can't go about "we will dethrone chrome" while you pursue "brigaders will be perma-banned".

cinntaile 33 minutes ago | parent

Why are you posting this here? This thread is not about you?

krapp 19 minutes ago | parent

I mean, HN tells me it's trivial to one-shot any software of any complexity with AI, so I guess. And if it's open source, of course it was possible to fork it before AI came along. I never understood why HN took it as axiomatic that it was impossible to build a browser without millions of dollars of funding and an entire corporate staff, particularly when the entire core is OSS. People here are weirdly fatalistic about it.

It's obviously possible to build a browser, as it's possible to build any kind of software. We're here in a thread about a browser that someone other than Google built. Competing against Google has nothing to do with the viability of building a product to compete against Google.

bastawhiz 15 minutes ago | parent

> You can't go about "we will dethrone chrome" while you pursue "brigaders will be perma-banned".

The two things seem entirely unrelated

lysace 41 minutes ago | parent

So, is the creator Norwegian, Danish or neither?

bedstefar 24 minutes ago | parent

I went to figure that out. Norwegian

Deeg9rie9usi 34 minutes ago | parent

See: https://lwn.net/Articles/1102738/

netsharc 18 minutes ago | parent

Ha, nice homage to the Netscape "loading" GIF: the N in the corner. When Netscape was connecting to a website and loading the page (over your dozens of kilobits per second modem), there would be shooting stars behind the N (1). Because navigators relied on the night sky, I suppose.

(1) https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/6oqzjv/the_netsc...

I've managed to pimp my Vivaldi installation to have the animated N as well: it allows custom user profile icons, and when you set it to an animated GIF, it animates as well. Add a custom CSS for the browser UI so that the profile icon is square and not circular: we're back in the 90's!