In light of Mozilla’s recent policy changes, we no longer feel assured that Firefox aligns with our commitment to protect your privacy. This prompted us to revisit the choice of default web browser in Zorin OS 17.3.
Why not fork firefox
I think maintaning a Firefox fork is pretty demanding especially considering you are already maintaining a distro. And there are already a lot of Firefox forks out there.
A bad move. But again i hate that many distros have a default browser and they don’t let you choose.
one of the worst distros ever so I guess this is pretty obvious choice and telling to some.
No, that would be manjaro.
Define worst? It does what it says, it’s an easy stable distro for windows refugees. Slow updates doesn’t make something bad
“we replaced the browser with ad ware, that we even admit we had to ship settings to minimise its malware effect”
Brave hates gays
the everyday linux distro that is famous for asking people for money for their pro version, cause they know most of the userbase is coming from windows and doesnt know that everything is free?
They don’t force you to buy anything. Almost all distros have a donation button on their site/git.
Nothing wrong with supporting projects you adore.
“Mozilla has a bit been shady lately, so we are making the difficult decision to change our default browser to something significantly more shady. We are confident our users will feel safer knowing their data is in even worse hands than before"
Brave marketing has gone crazy to convince people it’s less dodgy than Firefox. Come on!
Every time someone says anything positive about Brave I assume they’re part of the Crypto scheme, or love Brave’s CEO.
They should’ve picked LibreWolf which ships with uBlock Origin. Brave is a disappointing choice because it supports multi-level marketing pyramid schemes which says enough about their moral compass.
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✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.I kinda dislike the default LibreWolf settings. Unsure if they changed it, but I remember that you have no history except you change it in the settings.
A Windows refugee wants a history. Addituonally, many pages just dont work.
My University also does capture a picture and reads it from the Canvas or something, which LibreWolf blocks. It doesnt show again if something is okay or wrong. I just got a Mail that I need to reupload it and go by myself to pickup my University-Card.
I wasnt the only one as Informatics has many Linux users and some Librewolf users.
While FF’s evil quotient has been on the rise, Brave definitely isn’t a better option. If anything, librewolf is the way to go.
As a Librewolf user I wouldn’t make it default for casual users this kind of distro is aiming for. Sure enabling logins to use it as a main browser is piss easy, but that’s still more work than the average person wants to put into setting up their system.
Waterfox would be the better choice since it’s just default Firefox in every way besides Mozilla’s spyware.
Agreed, I wouldn’t recommend Librewolf for casual users. I understand why Librewolf makes those decisions, and I’m glad that it exists, but you definitely run into some quirks when using it. I’m thinking about switching from Librewolf to Waterfox myself.
there’s Zen also. that also has normie defaults, however the drastically changed UI/Uxmight not be for everyone.
Doesn’t Librewolf log you out of every site when you close it, by default? I don’t think that’s a good default
That is the default behaviour, but it’s pretty trivial to change. Also, I’d imagine the distro maintainer could choose to change the default settings as part of a post-install script, if they wanted to.
Edit: Not sure why you’re being downvoted, as I do think it’s a valid concern.
It has to be the default tho, bc the whole point of Librewolf is that it’s trying to by default be untraceable and private.
It’s very easy to disable that and re-enable cookies and the like, but your default experience will fundamentally be private, which is its goal
That’s not the only point though. IIRC, they also remove telemetry, and pocket as well as some other things. I personally turn back on persistent sessions and history, but leave all the other privacy features there.
I personally turn back on persistent sessions and history
I did as well.
My point is just that it makes sense to be the default in that browser given its inclination towards privacy.
Ok but like, that makes a terrible default for Zorin OS users. They’re gonna be confused and think it’s some hot garbage
Right. So perhaps Librewolf isn’t a good choice for Zorin OS
What’s wrong with Brave?
- Based on Chromium so good web support
- Decent privacy
- Built-in adblock
- Easy to customize
- Open Source
It’s the browser I’ve chosen to use after getting fed up w/ Gecko’s terrible web compatibility these days (coming from Librewolf).
What’s wrong with it? How is it evil?
The thing I dislike about Brave is that Brave intends to be an advertising company. Brave’s original idea for revenue was that the browser itself should be the ad platform. Brave doesn’t block ads because it has a pro-user manifesto; it blocks ads because it dislikes competition.
That’s why it makes no sense for people to abandon Firefox for Brave. I understand the backlash against Mozilla’s recent ad-focused shift, but Brave invented that idea. So leaving Firefox for Brave is not an improvement.
It’s the browser I’ve chosen to use after getting fed up w/ Gecko’s terrible web compatibility these days (coming from Librewolf).
I’m curious about what those compatibility issues are. It’s been years since I’ve noticed any problems – and back when I was seeing problems, it was mainly because Google could afford to implement new standards faster than Mozilla could, not because Mozilla was doing anything wrong. Could it have been because of Librewolf? Librewolf has a ton of privacy-focused settings that can sometimes make pages behave in strange ways. (It doesn’t use your real time zone, it ignores dark mode, it lies about which OS you’re on, and it constantly clears your cookies to name a few.)
And on a meta-note: I dislike Brave, but I don’t think the parent here is a comment that needs to be downvoted. We can just explain why Brave is a bad idea.
Could it have been because of Librewolf?
Some issues definitiely were, but I also noticed issues when going back to regular Firefox and on Firefox mobile and Mull (which is sorta like Librewolf principles but for FF Mobile).
it was mainly because Google could afford to implement new standards faster than Mozilla could
I think that’s exactly what happens.
It definitely wasn’t Firefox’s fault for the compat issues.
Websites would work for months, and then one day only work in Chromium browsers. Sometimes they’d come back. Sometimes only parts would fail. Sometimes they’d never come back. These sites were changing things and breaking Gecko compatibility, but never Blink compatibility. I’d try turning off all the privacy settings, disabling ad blockers and extensions too, but nothing could fix it except using a Blink browser.
So I don’t blame Firefox/Librewolf for this, but it also means I suddenly couldn’t, say, access my loan payment as an example in Firefox. That’s one that broke. I need that to work. It works in Chrome, but not in FF (actually I think it came back to working in FF eventually)
I was always having to have 2 browsers installed, Firefox-based for most things and a Chromium-based backup.
One day I realize that it doesn’t make sense to use a FF-based browser, since if I have to have a Chromium-based backup anyway, I might as well just use a Chromium browser. I didn’t want to use a it, I’m generally against it Blink, but I feel that Gecko has already lost the war. I have no choice. FF is not long for this world
Asides from the kinda-shady crypto stuff and the other things that’ve already been mentioned, just philosophically it should be kinda evident that over-concentration on one corporate controlled rendering engine isn’t a good thing. Google wants the internet to be a walled garden with themselves as the sole decision makers so they can stuff ads down your throat.
Gecko’s web compat is bad largely because of this over-concentration.
just philosophically it should be kinda evident that over-concentration on one corporate controlled rendering engine isn’t a good thing
Totally with you on that point.
However, I feel now that Gecko has already lost. I was a long-time FF and later Librewolf user, but Websites don’t care to support FF as much, so I’d have important sites break. I’d have to have a Chromium-based backup anyway.
So I’ve now given up on that from. I have no real choice but to use Blink in some capacity.
I’m actually not familiar with this distro. But if I installed a Linux distro, and it had brave installed. I would immediately switch.
Brave is a fairly recent outlier, and while it isn’t quite proprietary, it stinks a fair bit of something capitalist/crypto.
How is brave the lesser of those two evils?
Crypto scam browser is never a better evil…
Based on absolutely nothing, I feel like it isn’t…
It isn’t.
Brave sucks Google balls.
Chromium is more secure, so if you add privacy tweaks, it is arguably better: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html#jit-hardening
(Btw I use Firefox)
While the company has a questionable record and a controversial business model, Brave Browser is an open-source browser with good privacy features.
You could replace “Brave Browser” with Firefox and the statement would still be true.
At least Firefox wasn’t caught hijacking affiliate links.
Is privacyguides wrong?
https://www.pcmag.com/news/brave-browser-caught-redirecting-users-through-affiliate-links
I’m not going to defend Mozilla by any means, but if you care about privacy, you wouldn’t use a browser based on Chrome anyway.
Seems like a strange choice. If anything i would’ve expected them to just use a firefox fork or something.
Zen is literally the best browser around right now, I do understand the UI isn’t for everybody but if you vibe with it, it rocks
How’s the ad blocking or add-ons? Last I looked there was none.
Zen is based on Firefox, it supports 100% of firefox addons, as well as supporting its own community mods system for changing the browser itself
That’s a clown makeup moment for Zorin OS
That’s gonna be a no from me, dawg
