Chromium fork that would continue supporting Windows XP

[The]

Hi,

As you all might already know, in April of this year Google ended support for Windows XP, Vista and 32-bit Linux, leaving millions of users behind and/or forcing them to spend their money on hardware/software upgrades if they want to continue using Chrome. Chrome is the fastest full-featured web-browser, this is why it should've been important to keep working on older platforms with lower computing resources.

Since the changes also affect Chromium, I would like to ask if anyone knows about a forked Chromium project that will intendedly support Windows XP and 32-bit Linux. One I heard about is SlimJet, however it has problems with H.264 playback and the developers don't seem they want to fix it, they tell you to install bloated codec packs and stuff like that.

I'm looking a for a Chromium fork that is as fast as Chrome and is (and will be) supported under 32-bit Windows XP.

Thanks

Pál

[PhistucK]

On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 2:56 AM, The <palik...@gmail.com> wrote:

One I heard about is SlimJet, however it has problems with H.264 playback and the developers don't seem they want to fix it

​H.264​ playback comes with a fee, which is probably why they do not want to "fix" it. :)

☆PhistucK

[PhistucK]

Chrome (and Chromium) does not use VFW, as far as I know. It perhaps uses Media Foundation and even that may have been dropped so it might just be using FFMPEG.

Perhaps SlimJet added VFW or Media Foundation support, who knows.

☆PhistucK

On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 9:43 AM, The Palikacska <palik...@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, it's definitely a reason for not including it into the browser.
However, H.264 is theoretically supported through external VFW codecs
but I could not make it work, then posted to their forum and was told
to install codec packs. Tried but still no success. So we're talking
about a feature that costs no extra fee to them but isn't working.

[PhistucK]

Oh, I just remembered - Media Foundation is not supported in Windows XP, so, FFMPEG is the only way to render H.264, unless SlimJet actually wrote (much, I would guess) code to support it.

☆PhistucK

[Adi]

I'd be interested in such a fork too, if it had FIDO U2F support. Slimjet has no U2F support from what i read in their features list...

also tried as chromium-based browsers:

Opera 36
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.110 Safari/537.36 OPR/36.0.2130.65
- has no FIDO U2F support at all

Avast SafeZone
- has no FIDO U2F support at all
- is running inside a custom kernel-mode driver (sort of a virtual machine) that supposedly filters all interaction between the browser and the OS.. wtf.. a browser running inside a kernel-mode driver?

[Pál Ács]

So then the lacking support for MF might be a reason why it's impossible to make H.264 work on XP with SlimJet.

Do you mean that if I integrated FFMPEG into a Chromium fork and used it only as a decoder, I wouldn't have to pay the license fees for H.264?

[The Palikacska]

Well, it's definitely a reason for not including it into the browser.
However, H.264 is theoretically supported through external VFW codecs
but I could not make it work, then posted to their forum and was told
to install codec packs. Tried but still no success. So we're talking
about a feature that costs no extra fee to them but isn't working.

On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 10:34 PM, PhistucK <phis...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

[PhistucK]

I am not a lawyer, but I believe you will have to pay the royalty fee anyway. The implementation does not matter.

Unless you are using software that is licensed to play H.264 for free, like OpenH264 by Cisco (I do not remember whether it is free for WebRTC purposes only, or for any H.264 decoding).

☆PhistucK

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