this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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I accidentaly stumbled upon this newish browser (even has IPFS support) called LibreWeb Any thoughts ?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

I don't really get the idea of decentralized internet.

The internet is already decentralized. There are millions of websites hosted on thousands of separately-owned machines.

"Decentralized" services like the fediverse use thus exact same structure and bind them together by a search/aggregation API.

The "centralized" part of the internet is DNS/IP Assignments, Service providers, and search.

You are perfectly allowed to go your whole life without using search, or by self-hosting searX.

If we go back to the age of webrings, that is essentially decentralized internet. It seems like every decentralized internet idea is just a rehash of this with some Tor ideas sprinkled in.

You are never going to be able to pull a "Silicon Valley" and make every device into a mini server. The ping and uptime would be horrific.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

I like the idea but it doesn't seem incredibly usable rn

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It not only supports IPFS, it is "built on top of" it, according to the website.

This makes me wonder if it's usable for regular web browsing or only IPFS sites. The latter would sort of make it a splinternet browser, and way less interesting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

It's definitely the latter. The sites it renders are just markdown files stored on the IPFS network. I don't think it can render HTML let alone a modern web app on the internet

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 minutes ago

I do love markdown files myself, so a browser-side parser is very interesting. Definitely skips some Jekyll/Hugo exports πŸ™‚

Limiting that feature to IPFS is sort of one sided for my taste, though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

InterPlanetary File-System basically an upgraded version of torrenting

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is the de-mozillaed Firefox right? I’ve heard of it recently too. IPFS sounds really cool but isn’t it a dud because it uses a singular gateway or something?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (2 children)

No, you're thinking of LibreWolf. This is like an IPFS browser that interprets markdown to render simple sites within the IPFS network

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

If you have a moment, could you enlighten me as to what this singular gateway LibreWolf uses refers to per the top level users comment? Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

They weren't talking about LibreWolf when making the comment about the singular gateway, they were talking about IPFS. But it's right there, you can read it again. Or even ask the original commenter, either by directly replying to them or by tagging them, e.g. @[email protected] can you answer @[email protected]'s question?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Now Markdown needs a decent spec, but that is cool

[–] [email protected] 1 points 56 minutes ago

I always forget, is CommonMark good enough? Like with table and image support?