The release of the Thorium 110 project has been published, developing a periodically synchronized fork of the Chromium browser, extended with additional patches to optimize performance, improve usability and enhance security. According to developer tests, Thorium outperforms stock Chromium by 8-40%, mainly due to the inclusion of additional optimizations during compilation. Ready builds are generated for Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi and Windows.
Main differences from Chromium:
- Compile to include loop optimizations (LLVM Loop), code profiling optimizations (PGO), link-time optimizations (LTO), and use of SSE4.2, AVX, and AES processor instructions (Chromium only uses SSE3).
- Porting additional functionality to the codebase that is present in Google Chrome but not available in Chromium builds. For example, the Widevine module for playing protected content (DRM) has been added, multimedia codecs have been added, and plug-ins used in Chrome have been included.
- Added experimental support for adaptive streaming of MPEG-DASH multimedia content.
- For Linux and Windows, support for the HEVC/H.265 video encoding format is included.
- Support for JPEG XL images is enabled by default.
- Support for automatic subtitles (Live Caption, SODA) is included.
- Added, but not enabled by default, experimental support for PDF annotations.
- Ported patches to Chromium supplied by the Debian distribution and solving problems with font rendering, support for VAAPI, VDPAU and Intel HD, providing integration with the notification display system.
- Enabled VAAPI support in Wayland-based environments.
- DoH (DNS over HTTPS) is enabled by default.
- Enabled by default Do Not Track mode to block movement tracking code.
- The address bar always shows the full URL.
- Disabled the FLoC system promoted by Google instead of tracking cookies.
- Disabled Google API key warnings, but still supports API keys for syncing settings.
- Disabled the suggestion to use the default browser in the system.
- Added search engines DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, Ecosia, Ask.com and Yandex.com.
- Enabled permanent use of only the local page shown when opening a new tab.
- Added context menu for page reload button with additional reload modes ('Normal Reload', 'Hard Reload', 'Clear Cache and Hard Reload').
- Added default Home and Chrome Labs buttons.
- Pre-load content settings have been changed to enhance privacy.
- Added patches to the GN build system and sandbox implementation.
- By default, support for loading in multiple streams is enabled.
- The pak utility is included, which is used to pack and unpack pak files.
- The .desktop file at startup includes the experimental features of the web platform and offers additional launch modes: thorium-shell, Safe Mode and Dark Mode.
Among the changes in the Thorium 110 version:
- Synchronized with the Chromium 110 codebase.
- Returned support for the JPEG-XL format.
- Added support for AC3 audio codec.
- Implemented support for all profiles of the HEVC/H.265 codec.
- Added new optimizations when building the V8 engine.
- Experimental features enabled chrome://flags/#force-gpu-mem-available-mb, chrome://flags/#double-click-close-tab, chrome://flags/#show-fps-counter and chrome: //flags/#enable-native-gpu-memory-buffers.
- Linux has added a startup mode with a temporary profile (the profile is stored in the /tmp directory and cleared after a restart).
Additionally, the development by the same author of the Mercury browser, which conceptually resembles Thorium, but is based on Firefox, can be noted. The browser also includes additional optimizations, uses AVX and AES instructions, and carries many patches from the LibreWolf, Waterfox, FireDragon, PlasmaFox, and GNU IceCat projects that disable telemetry, reporting, debugging features, and additional services such as Pocket and contextual recommendations. By default, Do Not Track mode is enabled, the Backspace key handler (browser.backspace_action) is returned, and GPU acceleration is activated. According to developers, Mercury outperforms Firefox by 8-20%. Mercury builds based on Firefox 112 are offered for testing, but they are still positioned as alpha versions.
Source: opennet.ru