Offspring of the browser: the free engine competes against the de facto monopoly of Google

Andreas Kling has built a first version of a new Linux web browser. It is based on the self-developed browser engine LibWeb, which is already the basis of the web browser in the SerenityOS operating system pioneered by Kling. The development calls the Linux Ladybird browser, based on the logo of its open source operating system.

Kling documented the development process in a 100-minute YouTube video. After a little over an hour, he arrives at a first presentation of the results and notes, “When was the last time you saw a new web engine running on Linux? It’s been a long time, but here we are.”

Serenity LibWeb proprietary engine

The Serenity LibWeb engine has so far only been used in the SerenityOS browser itself. SerenityOS is a Unix-like operating system that Kling started in 2018 and is visually reminiscent of systems from the 1990s. All components of the operating system, including the kernel, are developed by Kling together with members of the community, not used third-party codes or packages. The developer provides the above Ladybird code. ready on GitHub.

The port comes at a time when there are increasing demands for a wider variety of web engines alongside the dominant Blink, Gecko, and WebKit. The LibWeb browser engine is making its way from Serenity’s relatively small user base to larger Linux distributions.

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