Chrome for UBports?
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Hi everyone,
How can I install a chrome (or chromium) web browser on UBports?
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@mbzadegan
Hi, I suppose you can use anbox or libertine...
But not sure it will work as you expect.
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why does not develop the main web browser programs such as Chrome or Firefox for UBports? Is there any technical or License problem?
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@mbzadegan
Why bother ?
What is wrong with Morph Browser ?
Firefox and Chrome despite all their qualities have both many flows and one of many is memory usage, I'm happy with morph and don't need an alternative right now.
Plus all webApp are based on morph allowing light weight and efficient apps
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@mbzadegan Google owns Chrome, so we don't get to choose what platforms it supports.
For Chromium, the Morph browser is based on the open source engine used in Chromium, via QtWebEngine.
Neither Chromium nor Firefox support Mir as a rendering back-end, therefore they cannot run natively. Also, neither browser has a responsive UI by default, so they are not friendly on phone/tablet devices.
Even with QtWebEngine, with upstream Qt maintaining and doing the work, there are still many missing points of integration between the Chromium engine and Qt, which result in lack of WebGL, video acceleration, and camera support in our environment. Getting those solved would be far more beneficial than having Google ship a version of Chrome for UT, or other "alternate" browsers which are not installed by default. Firefox would also have many of these same issues even when it becomes possible to build a native version of it.
Once we are able to switch to using the Wayland client protocols, it will be possible to get a native build of Firefox working. However, there will still be many integration points required so that Firefox properly requests access to microphone, camera, location, etc… None of these things are trivial tasks.
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@mbzadegan - Chromium is available in the default Libertine repos but it crashes on launch due to it being incompatible with UT currently.
You can run Firefox in Libertine but it runs very slowly and is prone to crashing. If you want to try this for yourself, instructions on how to install it are at
https://blog.arubislander.nl/2018/10/running-firefox-in-1604-libertine.html?m=1
and
https://github.com/jdonald/firefox-armhf/releasesThere is a native UT web browser that is an alternative to Morph that works well in the Open Store called "Demo Browser" - https://open-store.io/app/demobr.mateo-salta
Best regards,
Steve Berson
