LINUX AND WINDOWS MIGRATIONS

Since I am always making AVX2 and SSE3 Linux releases now, I decided to conglomerate the repos, and now all the Linux builds will be released in the same repo > https://github.com/Alex313031/thorium/releases

(Except the Raspberry Pi releases which can still be found at https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Raspi)

Same goes for Windows > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Win-AVX2/releases/tag/M120

WINDOWS MIGRATIONS

Since we are always making AVX2 and SSE3 windows releases now, I decided to conglomerate the repos, and now all the Windows builds will be released in the same repo > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Win/releases

(Except the Windows on ARM releases which can still be found at https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-WOA )

M119.0.6045.214 - SSE3 Linux Release

First, to address the easter egg and website stuff, here is my explanation/apology post > https://alex313031.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-good-bad-and-ugly.html (it also addresses why I was gone for a month).

M119 (M118 was too old, so skipped that version)

• Fixes multiple CVEs including GHSA-xm5p-7w7v-qqr5
• Better HLS support
• Better JavaScript compilation performance due to new Thorium compiler flags as well as upstream V8 re-workings.
• Updated Widevine versions
• The search engine choices that Thorium adds are now available in more locales. (Notably not in Russia or China because ya know, their governments not allowing certain URLs. Hong Kong and Ukraine are not affected).
• Live Caption should now finally work (English only, sorry. The .grdp files for other languages are closed source for now).
• ChromeCast can now use VP8 and VP9 codecs for less bandwidth consumption if you have slower internet. (Note that this is disabled by default in Chromium, I enabled it, but it is still experimental).
• New chrome://flags flag chrome://flags#disable-aero This disables transparency effects and GPU accelerated window frame compositing (while still leaving GPU acceleration for the actual web contents intact). It is useful if you dislike transparency, or are getting glitches on Windows 11 with the window frame.
• Thorium on Linux with multiple monitors should now restore Thorium to the last monitor it was open on.
• Storage Access API was disabled because the security risk is more than the usability improvement. If you need this, use the new chrome://flags/#storage-access-api flag I added to enable it.
• Keyboard shortcuts in ThoriumOS now align better with Linux.
• Portable version now also sets the cache dir to ./.config/cache, to prevent any disk writes outside of the dir.
• Rejoice! If you are like me and hate the new "Download bubble" and want the old "Download shelf" back, well I reverted a commit from upstream, and now there is a flag for it! > chrome://flags#download-bubble
• Windows builds are now more hardened against memory overflows by enabling the arg "win_enable_cfg_guards = true"
• PGO is now more effective (thanks @RobRich999) > Alex313031/thorium@5fe3937
• New flag from Ungoogled-Chromium chrome://flags#tab-hover-cards Allows removing tab hover card images, and instead replace with a tooltip (the behavior before M106).

M117.0.5938.157 - SSE3 Windows Release

• Removed Linux middle click autoscroll by default because it caused bugs for some people. You can still enable it by using the cmdline flag --enable-blink-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll (and I removed the warning bar for people who do). Fixes > Alex313031/thorium#199
• You can now choose to not show full URLs. Previously it was forced to true, and selecting/unselecting "Always show full URLs" would do nothing. It is now still enabled by default, but you can choose to unselect it. I will be making a PR to Ungoogled Chromium about this.
• HEVC/H.265 decoding is now multi-threaded. Thanks to @RobRich999 for pointing this out and where to enable it.
• Two major security vulnerabilities in libwebp and libvpx were fixed. See the new security policy for info about submitting security bugs, and a list of fixed vulnerabilities (which will be updated henceforth). If you use any of my Electron apps, those were also recently fixed.
• On top of my Thorium-Win7 fork, which will soon be updated to be based on Supermium M118 (me and @gz83 are working on a unified patch for this), I also made a new repo: https://github.com/Alex313031/chromium-xp with ongoing work to resurrect Chromium on XP. I currently have fixed google search, compiling with the windows 10 sdk, and added Thorium's optimizations (minus AVX).
• chrome_management_service should work properly now, if any of you out there are using Thorium with enterprise policies set.
• Slightly higher Speedometer scores, due to both upstream optimizations, and me tweaking rustflags in the compiler config.

Windows on ARM releases are now here > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-WOA

M117.0.5938.157 - SSE3 Linux Release

• Removed VDPAU patch as Chromium has unified the VAAPI backend. It didn't work half the time anyway. If you have an Nvidia card like me, sorry but we're stuck with software video decoding (except for H.264 with the FOSS nouveau drivers). This also removed 4 files that were always alot of work for me to rebase.
• Removed Linux middle click autoscroll by default because it caused bugs for some people. You can still enable it by using the cmdline flag --enable-blink-features=MiddleClickAutoscroll (and I removed the warning bar for people who do). Fixes > Alex313031/thorium#199
• You can now choose to not show full URLs. Previously it was forced to true, and selecting/unselecting "Always show full URLs" would do nothing. It is now still enabled by default, but you can choose to unselect it. I will be making a PR to Ungoogled Chromium about this.
• HEVC/H.265 decoding is now multi-threaded. Thanks to @RobRich999 for pointing this out and where to enable it.
• Two major security vulnerabilities in libwebp and libvpx were fixed. See the new security policy for info about submitting security bugs, and a list of fixed vulnerabilities (which will be updated henceforth). If you use any of my Electron apps, those were also recently fixed.
• On top of my Thorium-Win7 fork, which will soon be updated to be based on Supermium M118 (me and @gz83 are working on a unified patch for this), I also made a new repo: https://github.com/Alex313031/chromium-xp with ongoing work to resurrect Chromium on XP. I currently have fixed google search, compiling with the windows 10 sdk, and added Thorium's optimizations (minus AVX).
• chrome_management_service should work properly now, if any of you out there are using Thorium with enterprise policies set.
• Slightly higher Speedometer scores, due to both upstream optimizations, and me tweaking rustflags in the compiler config.

Windows on ARM releases are now here > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-WOA

M116.0.5845.184 - Windows on ARM Release

First off in case you missed it:

MacOS, Raspi, and Android builds have moved! As per > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Special/releases/tag/migrate-final

Now onto this release.

M116

• chrome://whats-new page has been re-enabled by me, after Google made it "Chrome only". You will see it launch in a new tab on every version upgrade.
• I enabled an experimental setting in Appearance to toggle tab hover cards. This can also be controlled via the traditional chrome://flags flag
• I enabled an upcoming UI design change that was supposed to land in M117, but I enabled it early. This moves the Extensions submenu from "More Tools" in the main menu, into its own dedicated menu item.
• New "Name Window" item in "More Tools". This allows you to manually override the window name, i.e. what appears in the window's title and what appears in the taskbar.
• initial_preferences file is now included in the Windows installer, to show the Welcome page on first launch after the first install.
• New internal variable specifying the type (i.e. AVX, AVX2, SSE3, etc.) is being shipped to facilitate the new Thorium-Win-Updater project me and ltguillaume have been working on, to allow auto update for Windows (Linux users already have it, if you are using the deb repo).

Thanks @gz83 @ltguillaume for helping.

Also, on another note, people have been complaining about me not releasing a new version on the exact same day as a new major Chromium version. To those people, I say, every major version takes me about 6+ Hours of intensive work to rebase. This is followed by many more hours for both me and @gz83 and @midzer to build each version, and this is assuming we are using all of our CPU cores pegged at 100% usage, which also slows our machines to a crawl for if we want to do anything else. Please be patient. If people still make issues or discussions about this, my response will be going forward: Then you try maintaining a Chromium fork!

M116.0.5845.169 - SSE3 Windows Release

First off in case you missed it:

MacOS, Raspi, and Android builds have moved! As per > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Special/releases/tag/migrate-final

Now onto this release.

M116

• chrome://whats-new page has been re-enabled by me, after Google made it "Chrome only". You will see it launch in a new tab on every version upgrade.
• I enabled an experimental setting in Appearance to toggle tab hover cards. This can also be controlled via the traditional chrome://flags flag
• I enabled an upcoming UI design change that was supposed to land in M117, but I enabled it early. This moves the Extensions submenu from "More Tools" in the main menu, into its own dedicated menu item.
• New "Name Window" item in "More Tools". This allows you to manually override the window name, i.e. what appears in the window's title and what appears in the taskbar.
• initial_preferences file is now included in the Windows installer, to show the Welcome page on first launch after the first install.
• New internal variable specifying the type (i.e. AVX, AVX2, SSE3, etc.) is being shipped to facilitate the new Thorium-Win-Updater project me and ltguillaume have been working on, to allow auto update for Windows (Linux users already have it, if you are using the deb repo).

Thanks @gz83 @ltguillaume for helping.

Also, on another note, people have been complaining about me not releasing a new version on the exact same day as a new major Chromium version. To those people, I say, every major version takes me about 6+ Hours of intensive work to rebase. This is followed by many more hours for both me and @gz83 and @midzer to build each version, and this is assuming we are using all of our CPU cores pegged at 100% usage, which also slows our machines to a crawl for if we want to do anything else. Please be patient. If people still make issues or discussions about this, my response will be going forward: Then you try maintaining a Chromium fork!

FIRST FUNCTIONAL Windows on ARM Release - M115.0.5790.172

First off in case you missed it:

MacOS, Raspi, and Android builds have moved! As per > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Special/releases/tag/migrate-final

Now onto this release.

This is the first fully functioning Windows ARM64 Release!. Tested with Windows 10 on a Raspberry Pi 4
It also includes a Chromium build, with the same args.gn as Thorium, but without Widevine Support (WidevineCdm.zip is included if you want to unpack it in the install directory to enable it, the Thorium build has Widevine integrated and tested working). I made this while investigating build issues with Windows on ARM, and figured since it was already built, why not release it too.

M115

• Storage Access API enabled by default upstream. I actually have a web app on the Thorium website that can make use of this new web standard > https://thorium.rocks/misc/vector-icon-app/
• Profile picker crash fix. This was a major bug that occurred on all platforms, causing the browser to crash when trying to select a different profile other than the default one or guest one. Fixes Alex313031/Thorium-Win#58 and Alex313031/Thorium-Win-AVX2#95. The cause of it was narrowed down to this line, something completely unrelated code wise, but somehow caused a segmentation fault in the memory manager.

Might also fix other strange tabstrip bugs that people experienced in M114.

Next release we are planning to update libjxl and add a "Close tabs to the left" menu item.

SSE3 Windows Release - M115.0.5790.172

First off in case you missed it:

MacOS, Raspi, and Android builds have moved! As per > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Special/releases/tag/migrate-final

Now onto this release.

• First SSE3 Windows release since M110
  M115 : This release is all about bug fixes, rather than new features.

• Storage Access API enabled by default upstream. I actually have a web app on the Thorium website that can make use of this new web standard > https://thorium.rocks/misc/vector-icon-app/

• Added Middle Click AutoScroll for Linux (normally only enabled on Windows). Please report any bugs encountered - Fixes Alex313031/thorium#199

• REMOVED Wayland VAAPI patch as it was causing too many bugs for too many people to be worth it. - Fixes Alex313031/thorium#162

• Tabstrip window dragging bug fix for Windows (and possibly Linux and Mac, pending further investigation). - Fixes Alex313031/thorium#197

• Profile picker crash fix. This was a major bug that occurred on all platforms, causing the browser to crash when trying to select a different profile other than the default one or guest one. Fixes Alex313031/Thorium-Win#58 and Alex313031/Thorium-Win-AVX2#95. The cause of it was narrowed down to this line, something completely unrelated code wise, but somehow caused a segmentation fault in the memory manager.

• NTP Discovery fix for Android (Not so much a "fix" but just removing it so it doesn't look ugly). - Fixes #16 (comment)

• Fixed potential building problems on MacOS.

Might also fix other strange tabstrip bugs that people experienced in M114.

Next release we are planning to update libjxl and add a "Close tabs to the left" menu item.

!Repository Migrations!

!! Attention All Thorium Users !!

As per https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Special/releases/tag/migrate. I will only be publishing SSE3 releases here from now on. This is to make it less confusing and easier to download the latest version for the platform you are wanting.

I have now made separate thorium-macos, thorium-android, and thorium-raspi repositories for the publishing of MacOS, Android, and Raspberry Pi releases respectively. Other than that, the releases will be formatted the same way, and the main source code (and Linux releases) are still hosted in the main repo > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium

I will be updating links on the website, and in the source code docs and Readme. Update your links if necessary.

---

Thorium for MacOS > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Mac

Thorium for Android > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Android

Thorium for Raspberry Pi > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-Raspi

Thorium for Windows on ARM (arm64) > https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium-WOA

Thorium M115 SSE3 builds are below.