Proposal: Defer browser decision until QtWebEngine's fate is clear

[Jaroslav Reznik]

On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 11:48 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I noticed that there have been 2 recent developments that make it much more
> likely for QtWebEngine (and Chromium) to become acceptable for Fedora:
>
> 1. Samsung developed a multimedia backend for Chromium that uses GStreamer
>    instead of FFmpeg:
>    http://blogs.s-osg.org/announcing-a-new-gstreamer-backend-for-chromium/
>
> 2. V8 upstream is working on a bytecode interpreter in their master branch,
>    which can serve as a fallback for architectures (non-SSE2 i686, secondary
>    architectures) not supported by the V8 JIT:
>    https://chromium.googlesource.com/v8/v8/+log/master/src/interpreter
>
> In addition, the people who were at Akademy are reporting that at least the
> QtWebEngine upstream is cooperative when it comes to unbundling libraries,
> and there has been significant progress on that.
>
> The Qupzilla browser is working on a QtWebEngine-based version, and there
> are also first plans (and some experimental code) for a KDE QtWebEngine
> browser under the name "Fiber".
>
> I propose that we stick to Konqueror/KWebKitPart at least until it is clear
> whether we can get QtWebEngine in. If it works out, then we can plan a move
> to Qupzilla, Fiber, or a new browser if one comes out (or maybe even stick
> to Konqueror if somebody writes a KWebEnginePart for it). If we KNOW it
> doesn't work out, and if we have no way to keep KWebKitPart up to date, THAT
> would be the moment to consider non-KDE alternatives (e.g. Firefox).
> Shipping Firefox as a one-time stopgap is not worth it when a better
> solution may actually be round the corner.
>
>
> Therefore:
>
> Proposal: For Fedora 23, we stick with Konqueror. Evaluation of QtWebEngine
> is still ongoing, due also to recent upstream developments. We will
> reconsider the default browser decision after that.
>
> +1 from me for this proposal, obviously.
> The other voting members, please vote.

+1. But I'd say we're alone. I'm looking forward to what will come in the next
few months. And another few days on poorly performing Firefox :(.

Jaroslav

>
>         Kevin Kofler
>
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Jaroslav Řezník <jreznik at redhat.com>
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