Serious Discussion I built and briefly tested a pre-alpha version of Ladybird—the new, completely independent browser

[Miravi]

Many consider Ladybird the most significant development in the web browser space in over a decade. It's an ambitious, open-source browser aiming to disrupt the internet monoculture that undeniably solidified: approximately 80% of the browser market is dominated by Chromium. The other two competitors, WebKit and Gecko, are similarly tied up with corporations.

As their website succinctly reads:

The web is the most important platform in computing, yet only a small number of browser engines power the entire thing, each controlled by a company with its own agenda.

Ladybird is building something new: an independent engine, driven by web standards, and free from conflicts of interest.

Initially started as an HTML viewer for SerenityOS, its creator greatly broadened the scope and established the Ladybird Browser Initiative in July 2024 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The project entered into yet another phase in February 2026 with the decision to adopt Rust as a modern, memory-safe language for critical components of the browser otherwise written in C++. The JavaScript engine was the first subject of their efforts with assistance from Claude Code and Codex:

The requirement from the start was byte-for-byte identical output from both pipelines. The result was about 25,000 lines of Rust, and the entire port took about two weeks. The same work would have taken me multiple months to do by hand. We’ve verified that every AST produced by the Rust parser is identical to the C++ one, and all bytecode generated by the Rust compiler is identical to the C++ compiler’s output. Zero regressions across the board.

[..]

This is not becoming the main focus of the project. We will continue developing the engine in C++, and porting subsystems to Rust will be a sidetrack that runs for a long time. New Rust code will coexist with existing C++ through well-defined interop boundaries.

The regex engine and image decoders are currently being ported as well. In the long term, they also plan to migrate networking and the layout engine over to Rust.

Building a modern browser from scratch is a monumental task, which is why you're most likely just to encounter Yet Another Chromium Fork™. Seeing a small, non-profit team pass nearly 2 million Web Platform Tests (WPT) is thought of as an incredible "David vs. Goliath" story. The roadmap indicates plans to ship the true alpha this summer, the beta in 2027, and the stable release in 2028.

I built the latest Ladybird pre-alpha on my Fedora Linux desktop in "release" mode (vs. debug) with the Qt6 GUI framework and Wayland explicitly enabled. A pre-alpha version like this is only intended for experimental use by developers. It is not for any serious browsing. The codebase is moving so fast that static build scripts fail, so you have no choice but to build the most recent code yourself.

It has a long way to go, but as I discovered for myself, it already works on complex websites like GitHub and YouTube!

 

[LinuxFan58]

The first mountain to climb is getting the code written and tested. The second mountain to climb is getting it up to (performance and rendering) speed with Chrome (if ever), The third mountain to climb is establishing an on-going development framework with (automated) regression testing and (large enough user base and) community willing to do exploration testing om new features. The fourth mountain to climb is the second phase jump (acquiring enough means and manpower to gear up). The fifth mountain to climb is establishing some sort of business model when you position your product having "no monetization" to fund sustainable growth. The sixth mountain to climb is getting their development cycle on speed with Google (if ever). .... by the time the reach the seventh mountain every software company wants their Sherpa-Ninja developers, because they are the best and fastest designers and Claude code whisperers in the world. Many of the enthousiastic developers can't resist the lurking big ticket rewards and this great initiative will be abandoned as yet another Lunatic Linux idea.

 

[cartaphilus]

NICE!!!!

I guess I will give it a whirl when I get home.

Thank you!

"Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old, I bade her come. What, lamb! what, ladybird! God forbid! Where's this girl? What, Juliet!" and yes Juliet was 12 during Romeo & Juliet.

Imagine your 12 year old kiddo going all love death pact on you.

 

[Zero Knowledge]

Is this another vibe coded A>I. inspired project? If so...

 

[Miravi]

Is this another vibe coded A>I. inspired project? If so...

No, not at all. It's artisanal, handcrafted software sponsored by the likes of Cloudflare, Shopify, and Proton. It's been in the works for years. I don't believe it would have generated remotely this much excitement if that were the case, nor would a vibe-coded project be likely to pass ~2 million web platform tests.

Chris Wanstrath, co-founder of GitHub, put $1 million behind the project and publicly stated that he views Ladybird as a "tremendous gift to the internet" and a necessary step to reclaim the open web from corporate control. Simon Willison, co-founder of Django, noted that project's ability to pass the Acid3 standards test so early tells you the team "really knows their stuff."

As Ladybird has shifted to Rust, AI is primarily taking the role of a high-speed translator (C++ → Rust) rather than an "autonomous" developer, and this was conducted in a meticulous, granular way where micro-prompts were guided by a real developer at every step. This saves a lot of precious time so the team can continue the desired pace of development. The results of this translation work were tested exhaustively.

Engineers of the big three browser engines (Blink, WebKit, Gecko) have remarked how difficult Ladybird's undertaking is. Time will tell how quickly this newcomer is destined to grow.