Neal Gompa wrote: > We're not getting rid of Firefox. At least that is an answer, unlike the complete radio silence on: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1920298
Still does not explain why Firefox has to be the default though. But the thing is, this inevitably leads to: * unnecessarily including a redundant web engine on the Spin (because, as I explained, QtWebEngine cannot go away), a huge package increasing the download size for all users of the Spin, whether they want Firefox or not, * a non-native browser experience (with controls/widgets based on the XUL implementation and the GTK look&feel) instead of a native Qt/KDE one, and * a hindrance in getting critical QtWebEngine showstoppers fixed in time for the release, because they are not considered Blockers if they do not affect the default browser: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2001261#c7 > It's the premier open source browser, That is arguable, considering that Chromium is also Open Source (*) and that there are many users of Chromium derivatives (though not necessarily Open Source (*) ones). But either way, it is not a KDE browser. The KDE Spin should be about shipping KDE applications wherever possible. > well-supported So is QtWebEngine. Chromium gets a lot of development, and Qt backports security fixes and important bug fixes to the stable QtWebEngine branches. Even the LTS releases of QtWebEngine are publicly available under the LGPL from git.qt.io. > and well-liked by the community, So "well-liked" that it has a fraction of the market share of Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers nowadays. I think there need to be more objective criteria for picking a default browser than allegedly being "well-liked by the community". > and most things on the Internet will at least accept Firefox as a browser. "Most things on the Internet" will also accept any Chromium-based browser, such as Falkon. The latest QtWebEngine is in fact more standards-compliant than Firefox, see the evidence under: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1920298 Falkon even works for some sites that only officially support Chrome and do not work with Firefox. (E.g., the Microsoft Teams web interface. Last I checked, when I tried it with Firefox, it offered me only to download the desktop client. With Falkon, I can connect in the browser just fine.) Now, admittedly, one issue is that Falkon is currently stuck on QtWebEngine 5, hence on 5.15 LTS, which gets security backports, but not feature backports, so a handful websites are now causing problems with it. (It is unfortunate that the web has evolved to such a moving target that web developers are unwilling to support even supported LTS versions of browsers. They are also complaining about having to support Safari iOS branches, Firefox ESR, etc.) For Falkon, that issue should be solved as soon as a Qt 6 port of Falkon is released. > It also works on all Fedora architectures, unlike anything Chromium-based. QtWebEngine works on all architectures for which a Fedora KDE deliverable is actually shipped: * The KDE Spin is shipped only for x86_64 on the main mirrors. * On alt.fedoraproject.org, the KDE Spin is shipped only for aarch64. * Kinoite is shipped only for x86_64 and aarch64. So the KDE Spin needs to support only x86_64 and aarch64, both of which are fully supported by QtWebEngine (and we also build -freeworld for both of them at that other repository nowadays, I fixed that a couple years ago). Kevin Kofler (*) I personally prefer the term "Free Software", but since you talked about the "premier open source browser", I am replying with your terms. _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
