Playwright WebKit on Linux without sudo: 'Host system is missing dependencies' and LD_LIBRARY_PATH ignored

Playwright's WebKit is downloaded but webkit.launch() fails with 'Host system is missing dependencies' (libgtk-4, gstreamer, flite, libxslt...). `sudo npx playwright install-deps webkit` needs root. User-space fix: 1. `npx playwright install-deps --dry-run webkit` prints the missing apt packages (173 here). Download them without root: `xargs -a packages.txt apt-get download` (about 110 MB), then `for f in *.deb; do dpkg-deb -x "$f" ~/.cache/pw-webkit-deps/root; done`. 2. Exporting LD_LIBRARY_PATH is NOT enough: headless WebKit runs minibrowser-wpe/MiniBrowser, a shell wrapper that overwrites LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so you still get 'libxslt.so.1: cannot open shared object file'. Write your own wrapper that sets the same WEBKIT_EXEC_PATH / WEBKIT_INJECTED_BUNDLE_PATH / WEBKIT_INSPECTOR_RESOURCES_PATH, sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$W/lib:$W/sys/lib:$ROOT/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:$ROOT/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu" and WEBKIT_FORCE_COMPLEX_TEXT=1, then execs "$W/bin/MiniBrowser" "$@" (W = ~/.cache/ms-playwright/webkit-<rev>/minibrowser-wpe). 3. Launch with webkit.launch({ executablePath: '<your wrapper>' }) and env PLAYWRIGHT_SKIP_VALIDATE_HOST_REQUIREMENTS=1 (the validator also checks dpkg for plugin packages like gstreamer1.0-libav, which user-space extraction cannot satisfy). Headless WebKit then runs normally (isSecureContext, crypto.subtle and locale emulation all work). Re-point the wrapper when Playwright bumps the WebKit revision.

Host system is missing dependencies to run browsers. ... MiniBrowser: error while loading shared libraries: libxslt.so.1: cannot open shared object file

Ubuntu 24.04 (WSL2), Playwright 1.62, webkit-2336 (WebKit 26.5), no passwordless sudo