Chromium alternative: how do I replace Chromium?

Upstream Chromium is a build you still have to turn into a product

Chromium.org gives you source, a multi-hundred-megabyte build output and a moving security treadmill. That is valuable if you are a browser vendor. It is a trap if you only wanted a small browser on a stick. Capsule ships as the thing you run: Komby Limited owns the product stance — zero tracking, portable by design — rather than a GN flags exercise. Searching for a Chromium alternative often means “I am tired of Chrome-shaped installs.” Building Chromium does not shrink the install; it just makes you the maintainer of GN args, component builds, Widevine debates and a release cadence that exists for millions of Chrome users none of whom asked you to babysit a checkout. A genuine daily driver is a file with a vendor. Capsule is that file. Chromium is the quarry the other brands mine.

Fifteen megabytes versus a compile farm

A Chromium checkout and its output directory will never sit comfortably next to a DJ crate on a cheap USB 2.0 stick. Capsule does. Copy about 15 MB, launch and leave — no Google update service, no component-updater theatre, no “just sync your profile.” If you already compared Chrome, start on the Google Chrome alternative page; if you already tried a de-Googled tree, read the Ungoogled Chromium alternative. Those pages are still Chromium-family products. This page is the fork in the road: stay in the family, or take a native portable that was never part of it.

Audio: a Chromium sandbox versus Nightclub PRO

Anything that remains Chromium keeps sandboxed Web Audio, which sits around 50 to 100 ms as documented on the pro-audio page — unusable as a live DJ clock. Capsule’s PRO path (Komby Nightclub) is a Rust native bridge: ASIO under 5 ms with 128 samples at about 2.7 ms for DJ work, WASAPI Exclusive near 10 ms, CoreAudio under 10 ms and JACK under 5 ms, all configured in Settings > Audio at 44.1 or 48 kHz. MIDI covers more than fifty mappings across Pioneer, Denon, Hercules, Numark, Native Instruments, Roland, Reloop and Rane, with USB auto-detect, MIDI Guard, Learn and LED feedback. DVS reads Serato, Traktor Scratch, rekordbox and MixVibes timecode as a bridge, not as a clone. Komby DJ runs four decks inside Capsule, with a two-deck Web Audio version at komby.music; Demucs stems are extra, Icecast needs a network and the PRO licence has a seven-day offline grace. Patching a Chromium flag will not grow ASIO.

Replace Chromium as your daily binary

• Stop treating “I run Chromium” as an identity. Running Chromium means you accepted the desktop-browser shape: a large tree, an updater and a Web Audio sandbox. The replacement is a 15 MB folder on USB. Open the same sites, keep Chromium in a lab VM if you still test web engines, and stop carrying it into a venue. Bookmarks can live in the password manager you already trust; the Chromium profile directory does not need to travel as a surprise several hundred megabytes.
• If your real complaint was Google account glue, an Ungoogled build still leaves you in the tree; if the complaint was AVX, Thorium still leaves you in the tree. Capsule is the exit from the tree. The Chrome-the-product discussion remains on the Google Chrome alternative page.
• Lock down the machine story if you need to: Capsule can sit on encrypted storage you own, with history on this PC. That is not a Chromium enterprise policy pack. It is a small binary you chose to copy, not a source tree you promised to rebase every six weeks.
• The Capsule home page and the download sit together, with the audio facts linked out to the pro-audio page.

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