[HN Gopher] Google Chromium, sans integration with Google
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Google Chromium, sans integration with Google
Author : thunderbong
Score : 115 points
Date : 2021-11-29 20:31 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ungoogled-software.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (ungoogled-software.github.io)
| ssss11 wrote:
| This or something similar I believe is the best Chrome competitor
| option in the near future. As others have commented it would need
| to be run by a group that can consistently and quickly put out
| new versions to correspond to new Chromium versions.
| mvexel wrote:
| Is this browser preferable, from a privacy perspective, over
| using regular Chrome without signing in to Google, disabling any
| built-in convenience services (such as Safe Browsing) that phone
| home, and switching your default search engine to DDG?
| kccqzy wrote:
| You _can_ disable Safe Browsing in a regular build of Google
| Chrome. But besides Safe Browsing there are other things that
| are harder to disable, if your goal is to make your browser
| never talk back to Google.
|
| I took a look at https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-
| chromium/tree/master/pa... and saw some surprising removals.
| webmobdev wrote:
| The technical stuff - https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-
| chromium/blob/master/do...
|
| (I wish someone would do this with Firefox too. I am tired of all
| the useless or meaningless services being added to Firefox - from
| pocket to monitor to even ads now.)
| bashonly wrote:
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js
|
| plus rm
| /usr/lib/firefox/browser/features/*.xpi
|
| takes care of pretty much all of the firefox bloat for me
| pluc wrote:
| HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT WHAT MOZILLA VPN CAN DO FOR YOU?
| laurent92 wrote:
| THERE, LET ME OPEN A TAB TO TELL YOU. _Closes tab_ _Presses
| Cmd+T_ "MOZILLA MAKES THE WORLD BETTER FOR YOU. BIG BROWSER
| CARES FOR YOU, AND ALWAYS WILL."
| gruez wrote:
| >(I wish someone would do this with Firefox too. I am tired of
| all the useless or meaningless services being added to Firefox
| - from pocket to monitor to even ads now.)
|
| Is that really needed considering that about:config flags fixes
| all/most of the issues?
| webmobdev wrote:
| > about:config flags fixes all/most of the issues?
|
| How do I even keep track of all this? What if my personal
| data has been uploaded to some service that I am not even
| aware is running in the background.
|
| I'd like all that unnecessary code stripped from the browser.
| (It's like we are going backwards - we seem to have removed
| browser plugins in favour of bundling everything into a big
| bloat of a browser ... yeah, I know some of these are
| "special" firefox addons. The only thing that makes them
| "special" is that they are bundled into the browser by
| Mozilla, do not show up in the addons / extension page and
| cannot be removed like other user-installed addons.).
| Teever wrote:
| Mozilla can remotely kill extensions which means that privacy
| enabling features of firefox that are served as extensions
| like the containers feature can suddenly and without warning
| stop working.
|
| No amount of config flag fudging will fix that glaring design
| choice.
|
| And make no mistake, it's a choice, not an error.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Once upon a time, I used icecat, based on the conclusion that
| it was basically just firefox but with all the settings pre-
| set to what I would have had to manually set them to. A soft
| fork, or repackaging, of firefox that just tunes about:config
| values to somewhat more conservative presets would be lovely.
| mbakke wrote:
| GNU IceCat is a "de-mozillaed"[^] Firefox LTS:
|
| https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
|
| It seems it is mostly maintained within GNU Guix now (which has
| 91.3.0).
|
| [^]: It comes with its own set of opinionated (but privacy-
| friendly) add-ons.
| gundamdoubleO wrote:
| Librewolf might be in a similar vein to what you're looking
| for? https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/
|
| Been using it on my work machine for a few months and I'm quite
| happy with it
| snihalani wrote:
| I had trouble downloading chrome extensions. sad
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| There's been a glitch that breaks extensions and stops pages
| loading if you have an adblocker. I stopped using it.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Related: what options are there to avoid a dependency on either
| Google or Microsoft when it comes to productivity apps? I feel
| like the only two "real" options are G Suite (or whatever it is
| called now) and Office. Are there others that are compatible-
| enough that they are realistic options, particularly with online
| (in browser) experiences?
| narrator wrote:
| There's http://libreoffice.org . It's not a web collaboration
| suite though.
| PeterisP wrote:
| It's usable in isolation, but at least the last time I used
| it, it did not fit the parent post's criteria for
| "compatible-enough that they are realistic options"; it did
| break document layouts when exchanging work to/from people
| using MS Office.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| FreeOffice is closed-source, but free, and available on
| Linux, macOS and Windows. It works pretty well and I think
| it's better than what LibreOffice currently offers.
|
| [1] https://www.freeoffice.com/en/
| kube-system wrote:
| > closed-source, but free,
|
| That's the scariest combination possible IMO. Regardless of
| the trustworthiness of the developer, it stacks incentives
| in a bad way. Even if LibreOffice is worse, at least it'll
| be around longer than one single developer.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Next cloud has integration with collabora
|
| https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/
| clircle wrote:
| Without defining what "real" means, I think you've answered the
| question for yourself.
| webmobdev wrote:
| I've been impressed with the recent versions of LibreOffice. If
| you don't need collaboration, it's quite good.
| jbj wrote:
| There is Onlyoffice for nextcloud, but it was a bit laggy when
| I tried it myself
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Check out FreeOffice[1]. It's closed-source but zero cost.
|
| [1] https://www.freeoffice.com/en/
| chongli wrote:
| I use Apple's iWork suite (mainly Pages and Numbers). It's
| closed source, obviously, but very usable for my needs. It also
| has collaborative editing built in without involving the
| browser. I'm pretty generally anti-browser as a person though.
| If there's a desktop application I can use instead of the
| browser, I'll use it.
| evv wrote:
| See also: VSCodium if you like VSCode but don't like sending
| sensitive telemetry info to Microsoft.
|
| It is ironically hosted for free on Microsoft's popular git
| hosting website.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Or perhaps we could all stop using software written by people
| with the express intent of reducing our overall freedom?
|
| It's easy, just don't use Google, Microsoft and Apple stuff.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's not that easy. Computing is a collaborative effort for
| many; these decisions are not made at the margin and in
| isolation.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| One of these things is not like the others. I really wouldn't
| put Apple in that group.
|
| The only reason I can think of even putting them in a nearby
| group is because of App Store restrictions, but you can still
| sideload your own code, and it doesn't apply to Macs at all.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.en.html
|
| https://stallman.org/apple.html
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| >but you can still sideload your own code
|
| Unless something has changed very recently, you can't
| sideload apps to your iOS device without getting a
| developer account from Apple and owning another apple OSX
| product from which to do the installation.
|
| Not to mention being unable to use non-safari browsers on
| iOS and the scanning your images for illegal stuff they're
| planning on rolling out, and the extremely egregious anti
| right-to-repair lobbying they're doing.
|
| Apple is not your friend. The less control we have over
| their device, the more money they can make from us.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > One of these things is not like the others. I really
| wouldn't put Apple in that group.
|
| Apple is an order of magnitude worse at "with the express
| intent of reducing our overall freedom".
| kmeisthax wrote:
| It's easy, just don't use a computer.
| etqwzutewzu wrote:
| It's called Edge.
| kobalsky wrote:
| I really hope the privacy-conscious people downloading this
| aren't just downloading these binary blobs and instead compiling
| it from source. Especially after seeing this disclaimer on their
| download page:
|
| >>>IMPORTANT: These binaries are provided by anyone who are
| willing to build and submit them. Because these binaries are not
| necessarily reproducible, authenticity cannot be guaranteed. For
| your consideration, each download page lists the GitHub user that
| submitted those binaries.
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| Well that's the thing - I'm not willing to build them. I
| wouldn't know where to start, even. And no ambition to learn,
| whilst Firefox and uBlock keep going. Seriously why should I?
| Maybe someone more able than I can share their knowledge with a
| pointer to a guide that says why this is better than what I
| have, and how to get it running on my Windows box.
|
| My current position is to step wide and rather carefully around
| _anything_ by /from Google.
| deusum wrote:
| Have some fun, make your own delta script. Download only what
| you need, recompile!
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I am baffled that they would accept binaries, instead of, oh,
| say, pull requests helping set up builds.
| onion2k wrote:
| There is exactly such a PR -
| https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/pull/1693 - as
| you might imagine building a complex binary for many target
| OSs and flavors within OSs, it's a little complicated and
| requires some discussion about the right approach. In the
| mean time, binaries are available.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > I really hope the privacy-conscious people downloading this
| aren't just downloading these binary blobs and instead
| compiling it from source.
|
| Those would be on a _nix (linux /_bsd/other) free source OS
| with distro specific binaries (or rolling their own and would
| be better off compiling it themselves anyways)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Anyone know how the Flatpak builds of this project[1] are
| built? Does FlatHub have a CI pipeline that builds Ungoogled
| Chromium binaries?
|
| [1]
| https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.Eloston.Ungoogle...
| wjt wrote:
| They are built by Flathub, just like the vanilla Chromium
| build on Flathub.
|
| Here is the most recent build logs for x86_64
| https://flathub.org/builds/#/builders/12/builds/8123 which I
| found from the GitHub green-tick status icon on the latest
| commit on https://github.com/flathub/com.github.Eloston.Ungoo
| gledChrom....
| iszomer wrote:
| Took a few hours to compile on a ryzen 2600.
|
| Worth it until the next "update", I think.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Does Chromium have `make -j$(nproc)` or equivalent? Because a
| few hours on a fairly recent processor with a whole bunch of
| cores sounds long.
| gjs278 wrote:
| it does. that's just how long chromium takes.
| ghoward wrote:
| Not GP, I am a Gentoo user that compiles ungoogled-chromium
| from source. I have a 16-core AMD CPU.
|
| Despite that, it takes 4-8 hours to compile, due to two
| factors: 40,000+ separate targets, of which most are C++
| files (famously slow to compile anyway).
|
| And yes, 40,000+ separate targets is no exaggeration;
| ninja's first run claims about 18,000 targets, and after it
| finishes those, it generates a second ninja file that has
| to compile 23,000 targets.
|
| I personally think it's worth it. Others may disagree, and
| I can't blame them. I have to run it overnight.
| ronnier wrote:
| I just use Brave browser now. It's very good. I can use chrome
| extensions.
| keyle wrote:
| I've had a horrible experience on PC with early Brave. I'll
| never install that again. Just understand this, you don't
| trust Google, fine... Now do you trust some randos telling
| you you should trust them instead of Google...
| ronnier wrote:
| Yeah, because they don't control half of the internet.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Vivaldi Browser is a better Chrome clone than Brave.
| 1_player wrote:
| Vivaldi is the definition of bloat. What was that saying,
| that all software grows until there's it bundles an entire
| mail client? Yeah, that's Vivaldi.
| keyle wrote:
| Interesting, that source code is growing FAST though, I
| wonder why that is...
|
| https://vivaldi.com/source/
|
| edit: "integrated email client" Ok now I see why ;)
| MrWiffles wrote:
| I thought Vivaldi was closed source for some reason, so
| thank you for this! I may be using that more often now!
| theduder99 wrote:
| because reasons?
| smoldesu wrote:
| I think I trust a random binary blob more than I do Brave's
| random binary blob, with all of it's crypto lug-alongs.
| ronnier wrote:
| The crypto stuff does weird me out. But I'd rather use it
| than a google product.
| FinalBriefing wrote:
| Couldn't they (or someone) set up a Github Action to compile
| the project on every release?
| kccqzy wrote:
| What's surprising to me is that this product not only removes
| Google services integration, but also adds rather opinionated
| "Enhancing Features" of its own. Many of these are pretty good,
| but not everyone will like all of them. I, for example, doesn't
| like the "Force all pop-ups into tabs" change.
|
| https://ungoogled-software.github.io/features/
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| If you have Homebrew on your Mac, this is available by installing
| "eloston-chromium".
| gigel82 wrote:
| The problem with this is updates: there is no trusted publisher
| of binaries, and even if you pick one person to trust, oftentimes
| builds are 6 - 8 weeks out of date with Chromium which means
| you're susceptible to all the published zero-days.
|
| Tried building it myself and it takes 4 hours on my 32-core
| 5950x, and you still depend on someone actually porting a version
| bump because their patches need to be regenerated for every new
| chromium build.
|
| I like the idea of it in principle; if someone donates some CI
| time and we get official CI builds, plus getting more active with
| picking up new builds it'll be a real contender. I'll stick with
| Firefox for now.
| lvass wrote:
| It's packaged by Nix, should be more convenient.
| gigel82 wrote:
| In my case I was running Windows, but even the Linux binaries
| are based on Chromium 91 (from back in May).
| lvass wrote:
| 96 in Nixpkgs right now.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Flathub has it for Linux based on version 96.x.
| trucekill wrote:
| > 32-core 5950x
|
| damn, that's twice as many cores as a regular 5950x
| gigel82 wrote:
| Got the special sku... :)
|
| Threads, vCores, etc. ... used to working in VMs not bare
| metal; but you got the point.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Because I previously worked on the Chromium codebase at Google
| I have a 'specialist' dev workstation, an HP Z840 dual 18 core
| Xeon with 256GB of RAM. And that's a model from many years ago
| now, the newer specialist workstations are even heftier. To
| work on chrome @ Google you absolutely need one.
|
| That said, if you're using cached builds via goma and have a
| nice fat pipe it can go quite fast without making your machine
| sweat much.
|
| It's an absolutely massive code base. I wish I could explain
| why, but it is. No single part sticks out as bloat to me. I
| could never get CLion (among other tools) to index it properly.
| gigel82 wrote:
| Maybe someone can create a Goma-equivalent for ungoogled
| chromium, but it's the project's explicit goal to not depend
| on Google stuff (they actually apply hundreds of patches to
| the code to remove built-in google service references) so a
| Google-supplied Goma cache won't be of much use to this
| project's builds.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| These days I work on a team at Google that provides
| distributed build infrastructure for non-Google3 projects,
| including goma. But unfortunately it's not available to the
| outside world, despite being built with that in mind.
| gruez wrote:
| >Tried building it myself and it takes 4 hours on my 32-core
| 5950x,
|
| That seems excessively long? For me it only takes around 2.5
| hours on a 8c/16t processor. This is with optimizations
| enabled, with plenty of free ram and building on SSD.
| gigel82 wrote:
| It took 2 hours on a pristine 48-core Azure VM from start to
| finish; wrote some details here when I was playing with it:
| https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-
| win...
|
| It's likely it'll be faster if I build on bare-metal on my
| box; spun up a VM because the build does all kinds of stuff
| (downloads binaries, spits up temporaries all over the place,
| etc.).
| gruez wrote:
| >pristine 48-core Azure VM
|
| 1. it's actually 24 physical cores, since azure counts
| hyperthreads as "vCPUs". still, that still seems slow
| compared to my own build times.
|
| 2. azure VMs have horrendous IO on the persistent data
| drives. You can probably get a small to medium speed
| improvement by moving your build to the D: drive.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| 4 hours on a 32-core modern CPU? If this isn't the strongest
| indictment of browsers getting out of control with regards to
| features and complexity, I don't know what is.
|
| Browsers are a window into the internet. Browsers should be
| simple enough to be implemented by a single person in a week.
|
| I want the web to be re-constructed from scratch starting with
| the TCP/IP stack all the way to gifs with modern hindsight.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Browsers should be simple enough to be implemented by a
| single person in a week."
|
| They are. It all depends on who defines what a "browser" is
| and what it can do.
|
| The browser I use as a "daily driver" is a 1.3M static
| binary. It is 5.7M of C code, including graphics stuff I do
| not utilise. It compiles in under a minute on a low-end
| computer.
|
| This browser allows me to "browse" hypertext. It displays
| HTML tables beautifully in textmode. I can download files. I
| can save HTML as formatted text. It supports FTP. The program
| has various settings for cache size, character set and so
| forth. I can script the browser using tmux.
|
| This browser is all I really need.^1 I read HTML then decide
| if I want to download or save something. Simple. What else is
| there, really. When I want to run programs I do not do that
| using this browser. I have separate compilers and interpeters
| for that. When I want to listen to audio or watch video, I do
| not try to listen or watch using this browser. I have
| separate programs for that. And so on. I do not try to live
| inside a single pogram. In every case of a non HTML-
| reading/saving or www/ftp browsing task, the separate
| programs do a better job than the browser could. If this
| sounds something like the "UNIX principle" maybe that is not
| a coincidence.
|
| Sure, we can take each of those individual programs and
| integrate them into a single program, and still call it a
| "browser" but why would anyone want to do that.^2 What is
| that concept in programming called "separation of concerns".
| Someone once called it "an ordering of one's thoughts". When
| people use browsers written by web advertising-supported
| organisations, then the "organisation of thoughts" is going
| to revolve around advertising (requisite tracking and
| personal data/metadata collection) and how to integrate it
| into the browser. When I use the text-only browser I choose,
| the ordering of thoughts is quite different. I see no
| advertising. Ever. I still consume the same amount of
| "content", maybe even more because this 1.3M browser is quite
| fast.
|
| 1. Major corporations operating on the web today, e.g.,
| banks, can obviously force people to use certain browsers for
| business and important personal matters. For recreational web
| use, however, people can choose any browser.
|
| 2. The answer is not "For everyone's convenience and free
| enjoyment." That is why we have people trying to "un-google".
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| GIFs alone would take more than a week for a single person. I
| think you are severely underestimating the necessary
| complexity.
| LogonType10 wrote:
| TCP/IP is not part of "the web".
| putlake wrote:
| PSA: Please don't download random binaries. Ungoogled Chrome
| already exists. It's called Microsoft Edge. And it has a cousin
| called Brave.
| lvass wrote:
| Poe's law, my friend.
| notum wrote:
| Chromium is the opensource project Google based Chrome on, there
| should be no need to explicitly stress it's Google free, Chromium
| is vanilla until google's APIs are added in. I guess the name
| persists for additional clarity though.
|
| I personally use Henry's chrlauncher:
| https://github.com/henrypp/chrlauncher
|
| Some trust is needed but if given it automatically checks for
| builds on an automated build server and updates Chromium before
| launching it.
| redmare80 wrote:
| Chromium contains google services, and significant google
| integration. It does not contain any of the closed source
| components, including some security components and DRM.
| anaisbetts wrote:
| This is Factually Inaccurate, there are many services in
| Chromium code that require Google services (and a special API
| key for them that is effectively impossible to use at scale)
| funnyflamigo wrote:
| This is absolutely not the case.
|
| You can find some of the some of the patches here but there's
| more patches in the parent dir -
| https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/tree/master/pa...
|
| There's a lot of telemetry, and a few other services such as
| time checking.
|
| The features you're mentioning include the user syncing,
| translation, and DRM platforms (though you can add widevine to
| chromium, you cant add the others). Those are not the only
| things that call home to google.
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(page generated 2021-11-29 23:00 UTC)