OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Internet

Mypal68: A possible alternative browser?

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mauro:
here is another 32 bit browser recently appeared:
 "Supermium is a Chromium-based web browser designed to support older Windows versions while offering enhanced security, performance, and customization options"
Now, said that my knowledge in porting software is near to zero and this browser fits to Windows only, it raise to me two basic user questions:

- Chromium is open source - multi platform browser ?
- does multiplatform browser 32 bit means theoretically portable in OS2/ArcaOS ?

even if I realize that both "yes" answers do not mean automatically that it can be simply ported to OS2/ArcaOS, I'd like to learn -if possible-  comments from you.

https://www.supermium.org/

their contact email has a funny address : emmawatsofficial54@gmail.com

and the street address 1600 Grand Avenue, London, NW1 6XE, UK  brings several companies link if you research it by Google.
Most of them shares same email address : prorevitaa@gmail.co  , but some others also have emmawatsofficial54@gmail.com.

who are them ?

https://github.com/win32ss/supermium

provided by

https://win32subsystem.live/

please donate to

https://www.patreon.com/win32

......

Martin Iturbide:
Hello mauro

Thanks for sharing it, I didn't knew about this project.


--- Quote ---- Chromium is open source - multi platform browser ?

--- End quote ---
As far as I know is open source.


--- Quote ---- does multiplatform browser 32 bit means theoretically portable in OS2/ArcaOS ?

--- End quote ---
Yes and No. But I prefer someone with more experience to reply this.

For what I see this project support 32bits and 64 bits Windows XP, Vista, and 7. I think we should check the source code of it, the libraries that it uses and see how portable it is to OS/2.

The source code seems to be here: https://github.com/win32ss/supermium

Maybe, as a first step, we can get the Windows 32bits version and see if it runs with Odin.

Regards

Dave Yeo:
Some browser basics first. Most browsers have a backend and a frontend. Mozilla for example uses Gecko and the SpiderMonkey JS engine, with Gecko doing the all the rendering stuff. We use Gecko 45 in our Mozilla apps. The front end with Mozilla is Firefox, also SeaMonkey and Thunderbird, all using the same rendering engine and JavaScript engine. Web pages look basically the same whether viewed in FF, SM or even TB. SM and TB also use MailNews, another backend.
So the frontend is basically the UI. To be portable, the frontend uses OS specific widgets to draw the graphical stuff. Mozilla has widgets for each OS it supports to look native. Mozilla's license is MPL, similar to GPL or LGPL. The backend is usually more portable, though now a days uses some advanced OS stuff.
Chromium is BSD licensed with the source available. Chrome adds a bunch of closed source Google stuff. Chrome/Chromium is the frontend, the backend is Blink and the V8 JavaScript engine. There are a lot of browsers that use Blink and are usually considered Chrome based. This includes our Dooble port.
The problem with Chrome is the widget set. In open source there are 2 main widget sets, GTK, currently usually GTK3 and Qt, mostly Qt6 today.. Chrome and most of the other browsers based on the same backend uses GTK3, which we do not have a port of and porting it would take a lot of time and energy by a knowledgeable developer or team. So most of these Chrome based browsers are not going to work.
The Qt people have ported the backend and some of the Widgets to Qt, latest to Qt6, which also has the SimpleBrowser as a proof of concept. We do have the Qt widget set thanks to years of work by Bitwise, with current work on Qt6 being done by Paul. Wasn't that many changes between Qt5 and Qt6.
So basically most Chrome based browsers including Supermium would need GTK ported to OS/2, a huge job and is not going to happen without a lottery win or such.
We can use the same backend with Qt based browsers, we're doing it with Dooble, which sadly seems the only Qt based browser being worked on. And it only has one developer behind it. The frontend works great on OS/2 but we still need more work on the widgets, drag'n'drop for example needs to be implemented.
Bitwise, and now Paul have also done work on porting the backend but we've run into limits of our OS, including being 32 bit. Until someone very knowledgeable, like dmik of Bitwise can figure out how to proceed, we're stuck.
Another advantage these Win32 browsers have is they can be built on a 64 bit system. We don't have that option, which is one of the big problems, lack of address space for building.

Roderick Klein:

--- Quote from: mauro on August 28, 2025, 09:09:18 am ---here is another 32 bit browser recently appeared:
 "Supermium is a Chromium-based web browser designed to support older Windows versions while offering enhanced security, performance, and customization options"
Now, said that my knowledge in porting software is near to zero and this browser fits to Windows only, it raise to me two basic user questions:

- Chromium is open source - multi platform browser ?
- does multiplatform browser 32 bit means theoretically portable in OS2/ArcaOS ?

even if I realize that both "yes" answers do not mean automatically that it can be simply ported to OS2/ArcaOS, I'd like to learn -if possible-  comments from you.

https://www.supermium.org/

their contact email has a funny address : emmawatsofficial54@gmail.com

and the street address 1600 Grand Avenue, London, NW1 6XE, UK  brings several companies link if you research it by Google.
Most of them shares same email address : prorevitaa@gmail.co  , but some others also have emmawatsofficial54@gmail.com.

who are them ?

https://github.com/win32ss/supermium

provided by

https://win32subsystem.live/

please donate to

https://www.patreon.com/win32

......

--- End quote ---

Its a fair question and it comes up more often. But the first issue with such a port is that its missing OS/2 specific code. I do not know how much work it would be to apply the patches from a Firefox browser to get to compile or write code. (A none Firefox or QT based browser port to OS/2 is a none starter in my mind).

We have something like WINE for OS/2 called ODIN, a system that can run Windows sources on OS/2. But yet again this was last updated oooh 20 years ago. Using Wine is most likely a none starter and debugging the code will be pretty time consuming in my opinion. So we are back to porting the code as the option above.

But even when you get the platform specific code added to the current code base of any browser then the debugging starts.  A compiling browser is not a warranty for a stable browser.
Now I only skimmed the pages of this browser but what do I see:
https://github.com/win32ss/supermium
There is a V8 directory. V8 is a javascript engine also used by the current Dooble browser.
That is one of the things Dmitry is going to work on again to fix (from BWW).

So its possible if you port this browser we bump into the same V8 issue.

Also thinking more about this I think this talk about a 32 bit browser is partly, well not very helpfull. You can maybe trim the memory usage but the other issue is that webpages have become WAAAAY more complicated in terms of code your PC and how much CPU is needed to display it on your system.  I am not saying a 32 bit OS is not useable with an older CPU. But a 32 bit browser still needs memory to store the webpages.

My overall assessment is that with the limited human resources we have in the OS/2 community its a waste of time to look at other browsers to port. We would simply be spinning our wheels.
I am gladd to be proven wrong.  Any port would take 1 person full time and take about 1 year at least to get something workable (beta stage). And it might even be much longer!

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 VOICE


Dan Eicher:
Thank you Dave for the summation.

You really helped improve my understanding of browser tech, and the challenges for older platforms.

Also, I loved:
>without a lottery win or such.

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