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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What are your thoughts on Zen Browser becoming a lot more popular than Floorp? (api.star-history.com)

submitted 16 hours ago by TheTwelveYearOld@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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Right now is the best period of time yet for Firefox-based browser, especially when most alternative browsers are Chrome-based.

While there are a bunch of forks like Librewolf and Palemoon, they provide features mainly for power users like hardened privacy and tweaked user-prefs. A year ago the only fork I knew of, based on recent stable versions of Firefox and added productivity features on top was Floorp. I was very surprised at the hype and sudden popularity of Zen Browser in the past few months and have been curious why it grew so much faster than Floorp which has been around for much longer, look at the Github star graph: https://star-history.com/#zen-browser%2Fdesktop=&Date=. Zen Browser currently has 19.3K stars while Floorp has 6.1K.

Reasons I can think of are the following: heavy promotion of the browser by the devs and community on places like Reddit along with emphasizing its 'zen' philosophy, really fast development (it now has way more features than Floorp), and the Zen mods store, where you can install CSS mods.

What are your thoughts and reasons for Zen Browser becoming so popular so fast? (while its not mainstream, it did grow fast in among Firefox and power users)

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[–] nyan@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 hours ago

Money isn't important. Some complex software is, in fact, maintained by unpaid volunteers who feel strongly about the project. That doesn't mean it's easy (in fact it's quite difficult to keep the lights on and the code up-to-date), but it is A Thing That Happens despite being difficult.

What is important is the size of the codebase (in the case of a fork, that's the code either written for the fork or code that the fork preserves and maintains that isn't in the original anymore), the length of time it's been actively worked on, and the bus factor. Some would-be browser forks are indeed trivial and ephemeral one-man shows. Others have years of active commit history, carry tens or even hundreds of thousands of lines of novel or preserved code, and have many people working on them.