I've created an unofficial FreeBSD port for Zen Browser, a Firefox-based browser
focused on privacy and productivity, running via the Linux compatibility layer
(linux_base-rl9 / Rocky Linux 9).
Repository: https://github.com/Richard7987/zen-browser-freebsd-port
What works
- Full audio (PulseAudio)
- AAC/H264 decoding — Spotify, Crunchyroll free tier
- Widevine DRM — Netflix, Crunchyroll premium (auto-detected from existing installations)
- System notifications via DBus (dunst, mako, etc.)
- GTK theming
How it works
The port compiles stub libraries for the dependencies of the system libavcodec.so.59
(libmfx, libzvbi, libSvtAv1Enc, AMR codecs, libsoxr) and installs them into
/compat/linux/usr/lib64/ so the ldconfig cache makes them visible to all Linux ELF
processes — including Firefox's Utility process, which decodes audio/video with a
clean environment and cannot use LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
Requirements
Installation
See the README for Widevine setup and recommended user.js settings.
Feedback and bug reports welcome.
focused on privacy and productivity, running via the Linux compatibility layer
(linux_base-rl9 / Rocky Linux 9).
Repository: https://github.com/Richard7987/zen-browser-freebsd-port
What works
- Full audio (PulseAudio)
- AAC/H264 decoding — Spotify, Crunchyroll free tier
- Widevine DRM — Netflix, Crunchyroll premium (auto-detected from existing installations)
- System notifications via DBus (dunst, mako, etc.)
- GTK theming
How it works
The port compiles stub libraries for the dependencies of the system libavcodec.so.59
(libmfx, libzvbi, libSvtAv1Enc, AMR codecs, libsoxr) and installs them into
/compat/linux/usr/lib64/ so the ldconfig cache makes them visible to all Linux ELF
processes — including Firefox's Utility process, which decodes audio/video with a
clean environment and cannot use LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
Requirements
- FreeBSD 13.0+ (tested on 15.1-RELEASE)
- Linux compat layer enabled (linux_base-rl9 pulled in automatically)
- PulseAudio
- X11 session
Installation
git clone [URL]https://github.com/Richard7987/zen-browser-freebsd-port[/URL] /usr/ports/www/zen-browsercd /usr/ports/www/zen-browserdoas make install cleanSee the README for Widevine setup and recommended user.js settings.
Feedback and bug reports welcome.