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Cake day: June 30th, 2024

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  • On Linux most distros do not actually ship chrome but chromium which is the open source version of chrome.

    It also comes down to how different groups define FOSS. GNU considers even helper programs (like a package manager or firmware installer) to be “bad” for the user because they “encourage” its use so they dont want them included in GNU approved distros like trisqul or guix . this leads to those “freedom respecting” distros not having things like basic WiFi drivers or support for any 3rd party drivers.

    To a less extreme degree but similar is a distro like debian, where there is a “non_free” repository available but users can choose not to enable it.

    And so GNU sees having the playstore as a bad thing because its gateway to installing other non free software. Its also safe to assume most gnu evangelists probably don’t care much for chromium either.







  • I wish someone could explain to me how it is firefox, which is not chromium based but larely dependent on google for funding, has the ability and manpower to maintain not just the manifest v2+all the other stuff, while every single chromium fork has no choice but to use v3. Why can’t they just fork the last usable version of chromium and go from there as an independent fork? Is it just that no one wants to?

    Like firefox has lots of ports, some of the follow the main branch but then others like waterfox forked off older versions at some point and just kept going, why can’t chrome based browsers do a fork like that? How is it there are people making new browsers from scratch like ladybird, but this manifest stuff is just out of reach for everyone, except mozilla (and i guess other firefox forks).