I wish to award massive kudos to the Author, because it's about time that somebody began the onerous (yet absolutely necessary!) task of backporting Chrome/Chromium to older simpler/more understandable -- systems.

I don't think that everyone truly understands the nature of the larger problem, so I'll briefly explain it here...

You see, a long time ago in computer history, OS adoption -- drove corresponding software development.

That was the case with various versions of Microsoft Windows -- for many years.

These days, it's not the Operating System but the Browser -- of which (Google) Chrome (and its open-source counterpart, Chromium) -- which drives corresponding OS adoption...

Basically,

if a given OS can't run the latest version of Chrome / Chromium -- then it's basically a dead OS!

That's a huge problem because by way of this, Chrome/Chromium unintentionally forces adoption of increasingly complex newer OS'es on the general public...

That's a problem because these increasingly complex newer OS'es are orders of magnitude more lines of code (LOC) than their predecessors.

If the complaint is that older OS'es are not secure, then guess what? That complaint also applies at least doubly (and perhaps exponentially!) to newer OS's as well, which comprise exponentially more lines of code than the older OS'es!

In the future, it would be great to see the simplest (least amount of lines of code) OS that could successfully run Chrome/Chromium -- but even going a step farther than that, it might be an idea to freeze the Chrome/Chromium source at a certain point, then simplify Chrome/Chroumium such that its dependencies on an underlying OS were minimized!

In other words, develop a fork of Chrome/Chromium in lock-step with developing the simplest OS that Chrome/Chromium could possibly run on, with the corresponding idea of refactoring all of that software into the simplest, cleanest, most documented, most modular piece of software that is or could exist.

It is not in that form now.

That is because Chrome/Chromium has incorporated source code from a lot of third party software.

Does any single person, much less a single person at Google (as bright as everyone is at Google?) truly understand ALL of those lines of code?

?

Based on the source code hierarchy -- I highly doubt it.

That's because if they truly did -- then all repeated functionality in all third party libraries would be merged in the most minimum form necessary.

Don't get me wrong, I love Google, I love everyone that works for Google, I love their products -- but I have to believe after looking at the Chromium source that there isn't a single person (compare to Linus Torvalds and the BDL concept) "running the show"...

In other words, Chrome/Chromium is a "diffusion of responsibility" system, with multiple parties taking responsibility for different parts of Chrome/Chromium at different times...

Compare that concept to that of a Maintenance Programmer Vs. a Chief Architect...

A Maintenance Programmer typically changes a few lines of code at a time in a system in response to support tickets and customer requests.

A Maintenance Programmer might very well implement the change or feature requested -- but with their changes they also might introduce subtle future bugs into the system because their view is local in scope, and they lack full global awareness of all of the rules and constraints that the entirety of the system must obey.

A Chief Architect on the other hand -- will have that global knowledge -- and will harmonize any changes they make with the broader rules, constraints, goals and caveats of the entire system...

In other words, the changes they make to a system, should they make them -- will be more finessed, more nuanced, more filled with understanding -- than those made by a Maintenance Programmer in response to a support ticket, customer request, or bug fix...

Anyway, great job (so far!) with Supermium!!!

We need Chrome/Chromium on those older OS'es!