Can Chromium run without an XServer?

[mwalters]

I was curious if Chromium/Linux can run (especially on the ARMv6)
without the XServer? That is, can it write directly to the Linux
Frame buffer or does it have to use the X11 / XServer. I noticed that
it includes a lot of X11 libraries, but I was wondering if it had to
use them.

Thanks!

[Nico Weber]

Yes, chromium depends on X11.

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[mwalters]

Are you saying that its graphics output can't use the Linux Frame
buffer directly?

[Nico Weber]

Yes.

On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 10:54 AM, mwalters <macro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you saying that its graphics output can't use the Linux Frame
> buffer directly?
>

[mwalters]

Could you explain how you know the graphics output can't write to the
linux frame buffer directly or could not be made to write the linux
frame buffer?

Also, thanks for the reply's!

[Nico Weber]

On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 1:52 PM, mwalters <macro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Could you explain how you know the graphics output can't write to the
> linux frame buffer directly or could not be made to write the linux
> frame buffer?

Chrome uses GTK (v2) for its widgets, and GTK (v2) has a pretty hard
dependency on X11. It's not just graphics output, it's also input
handling.

>
> Also, thanks for the reply's!
>

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

This is generally not done for anything except games on Linux (who
often stil actually use X but go direct to X's ogl support).

You give up a lot of windowing support and compatibility for not a lot
of practical gain. Its better to tune X and get the performance
across all of Linux's business type apps.

About the only reason I could see to do this would be an embedded
situation where you don't want to spend the memory on X...

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[mwalters]

Hi Jeffery - I think you know where I'm going...I'd like to use the
Chromium browser in an embedded situation and would like to not spend
the memory on X. Plus, I have other apps that need to run that can't
use X - either because I have no control over them, etc..

I haven't looked deeply into Chromium source - do you think it's
possible (or is what I'm asking hard to do?) to get it to write to the
linux frame buffer?

On Apr 8, 2:56 pm, Jeffrey Kesselman <jef...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is generally not done for anything except games on Linux (who

> often still actually use X but go direct to X's ogl support).

[Mattias Nissler]

On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 10:54 PM, Nico Weber <tha...@chromium.org> wrote:

On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 1:52 PM, mwalters <macro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Could you explain how you know the graphics output can't write to the
> linux frame buffer directly or could not be made to write the linux
> frame buffer?

Chrome uses GTK (v2) for its widgets, and GTK (v2) has a pretty hard
dependency on X11. It's not just graphics output, it's also input
handling.

To be fair, we should mention that there have been efforts for running GTK on the framebuffer in the past. There actually is a GDK DirectFB backend still present in the GTK source tree, which theoretically enables you to run GTK apps on the framebuffer. See here http://directfb.org/wiki/index.php/Projects:GTK_on_DirectFB, but it seems to be pretty much inactive the last couple of years :)

That said, the chromium source is not your mother's GTK app. It also has dependencies to lots of other X11-related stuff, and porting it would be an awful lot of work.

[Peter Jodeleit]

Since it's a top search hit on google this question deserves an update: see here http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/ozone

It's work in progress, but at least it's worked on ;)

[Tao Zhang]

It's hard to believe this thread is 10yrs old

Ozone has matured quite a bit in recent years. The official Google Chrome now natively supports wayland since 2020.

Besides wayland, ozone supports [DRM/GBM](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/ozone_overview.md#drm_gbm) as well. Although they're claimed to be used by Chrome OS, but this really looks like the solution for running chromium without an extra graphic layer.