[conspire] Chromium vs. Google Chrome feature (and antifeature) comparison

[Rick Moen]

Brief comparative discussion triggered by OCLUG regular Kyle Terrien
pimping for proprietary Google Chrome over Chromium, and acting shocked
that I would eschew the former.

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2020 20:35:25 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: oclug at mailman.oclug.org
Subject: Re: [OCLUG] Future topics: was: What the Tech World Can Learn from
	St. Philomena
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Kyle Terrien (kyleterrien at gmail.com):

> I don't know much about Jitsi, but Zoom is a matter of extracting a 
> binary package from upstream into a place such as /opt.

Jitsi Meet leverages the WebRTC capabilities of leading Web browsers, 
and thus doesn't require a specialised client.  More at:
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/2020-September/011111.html

Bespoke (open-source) client software is also available from the Jitsi
Project, as an alternative to using a WebRTC-supporting Web browser.
Reportedly, that is lighter on CPU load, among other things.  (I don't
bother, and just use Chromium.)

> (I think these days it's probably easiest to have a copy of Google 
> Chrome sitting around, because most web developers develop and test for 
> Google Chrome.

Personally, I'm amazed at how many people go straight to Google Chrome 
(a proprietary variant of the open source Chromium browser) when
Chromium is available.  Proprietary-software myopia is alive and well,
obviously.

-- 
Cheers,                 "My hot flight attendant asked how I like my coffee.  
Rick Moen               And that's when she told me:  'That's cute, honey, but 
rick at linuxmafia.com     the coffee's free.  You don't have to pay for it, here."
McQ! (4x80)                                            (seen on Twitter)

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2020 00:13:05 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: oclug at mailman.oclug.org
Subject: Re: [OCLUG] Future topics: was: What the Tech World Can Learn from
	St. Philomena
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Kyle Terrien (kyleterrien at gmail.com):

> Cool!  More video conference software to check out.  I think Steve was 
> talking about running a Jitsi Meet server though.

You might like it.  I recently set up and ran on AWS a Jitsi Meet server
instance for the five-day World Science Fiction Convention, which was
supposed to be in Wellington, NZ this year but was obliged to shift
suddenly to a virtual convention when the world broke.  (Ironically, NZ
was one of the few places that rose to the challenge and competently
chased down and eliminated the pandemic from their country -- but all of
us foreigners who has planned to travel there found that we suddenly
could not, unless we were prepared to undergo two weeks of quarantine.

Anyway, Jitsi Meet got used alongside Zoom for some of the convention's
major functions, and worked well.

> The reason I said Chrome instead of Chromium is because Chrome != 
> Chromium, and web developers (or at least the ones I see in professional 
> environments and tech meets) are testing in Chrome, not Chromium. 

Just to make sure readers understand background, here:  Chromium's the
_exact same browser, just without a handful of proprietary add-ins and
antifeatures (detailed below).  From the user perspective, you get
everything worth having, IMO (except some patented codecs that can be
retrofitted), _and_ you get to run genuine open source.


> Chrome has a few proprietary bits (such as the PDF reader, Flash, and 
> EME; correct me if I mistook anything) that are not in Chromium.

Thank you.  That's just short of half the list.  I supply the other
four, below.  But let's talk about those three, first:

1.  Nobody's cared about Macromedia^W Adobe Flash since the famous Steve
Jobs letter in 2010, which among other things reminded the world of how
incredibly buggy the stuff is, and the software world pulled together
and collectively said 'You know, we actually don't need this stuff.'

(Fun fact:  My wife Deirdre provided pretty much all of the inside data
on which Jobs based his letter.  She was a software engineer on the
Apple Safari team at the time, and was able to document that an
amazingly high percentage of Safari crashes were in the Flash
interpreter and not in Safari.)

Some people in the past I know who favoured Chromium over all the
Googlised stuff in Chrome did the trick of saving Chrome's Pepper API
(PPAPI) Flash interpreter binary, and then installing it as an extension
into Chromium.  This reportedly works great; I never bothered.  And, a
decade ago, the Internet as a whole walked away from Flash, so
fortunately it became a non-issue.

2.  Nobody actually needs a browser-integral PDF reader:  There are
better PDF readers usable _with_ any Web browser for all common OS
platforms.

3.  EME (Encrypted Media Extensions):  Sure, if you're dealing with
Netflix or other copyright barons on the Web, you need to volunteer to
wear DRM handcuffs, and that pretty much necessitates a proprietary Web
browser.  I personally choose not to, but I understand people knuckling
under to Our Lords in Hollywood and turning their computers into
proprietary platforms so they can watch _The Umbrella Academy_.

But if I did that, I'd certainly wait _until_ I needed the DRM handcuffs
before resorting to Google Chrome -- and then I'd definitely confine it
to a virtual machine or otherwise carefully sandbox it, and not use it
for anything _but_ the DRMed Hollywood stuff.


Add to the list:  

4.  A small set of patent-problematic codecs, to support AAC ('MP4'),
H.264, and MP3.  (The base browser has inline support for Opus, WebM,
Theora, Vorbis, VP8&9, and WAV.)  The omission of H.264 is irksome --
but it should be noted that Google is phasing out H.264 across the
board, including in Google Chrome, in order to push WebM.

But anyway, the missing codecs can be retrofitted if necessary by
installing packages chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra and
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-nonfree, which are open source, just problematic
because of the patent problems.

5.  Google Update (built into the browser, making the browser able to 
phone home to Chrome Web Store, to check for and download newer versions
of itself).  Oh noes!  Whatever will we do?  Oh, right, apt-get (and
kin) isn't broken.  Never mind.

6.  Hey, lookie, an anti-feature!  Google Chrome has been modified and
compiled, unlike the Chromium browser on which it's based, to refuse to 
accept any extension that's not provided by the Chrome Web Store and
signed by Google.  I expect that this was a condition dictated by 
Our Lords in Hollywood, to ensure that clever technical users could not 
use an extension to interfere with DRM handcuffing.

7.  Hey, lookie, an _arguable_ anti-feature!  Google Chrome sends
detailed state data on crashes and errors to Auntie Google.  Chromium
does not.  Yes, in consequence Chromium users don't have potentially
highly private and security-sensitive diagnostic data conveyed behind
the scenes to the loving arms of the second most nosy corporation in the
world of software (next to Facebook).  Implications are left as an
exercise for the reader.


So, with the three features you mentioned, and the four things I
mentioned (largely antifeatures, other than the patent-problematic
codecs and the DRM subsystem), that's the whole list.


But, frankly, the _real_ reason desktop users opt for Google Chrome and 
bypass Chromium is that Chrome has a big advertising budget, and
Chromium has none.  In fact, "gushes about Google Chrome but is puzzled
by references to Chromium" is a pretty reliable marker for "is a Windows
user" in 2020 -- in my experience.


Anyway, I hope the above proves interesting to some.


----- End forwarded message -----