A little admiration of how easy UI customization is on Firefox, and how shitty Chromium looks.
Personally I find it far more important that it’s not run by a company that will try its hardest to track your every movement on the web, but to each their own, I suppose.
¿Por qué no los dos?
Hooray! 🌮
También tenemos que entender que hay algunos que solo entran para tener con quien discutir, porque con su esposa no se atreven, así que entran aquí a eso 🤣
Always better to argue with strangers than family.
Maybe better, certainly easier than having to sleep on the couch or in the Garage 🤣🤣🤣
I am also pretty sure Firefox is equally if not more secure than Chromium. They just got some really bad reputation for not sandboxing everything.
The only issue they have with sandboxing is on Android, as they have yet to implement per-site process isolation despite it being present on desktop Firefox and Chromium Android for many years now. I’ve been tracking the development of Project Fission on Android (Firefox’s per-site process isolation) for years now and it still isn’t even ready for testing. Additionally, Firefox Android does not use Android’s isolatedProcess flag for sandboxing, which is another area in which it is behind Chrome. For that reason, I cannot recommend Firefox on Android, and instead recommend Cromite (fork of Bromite after its development was abandoned) which is based on Chromium.
Firefox shipped sandboxing on Android years ago (before chrome) and then removed it. I’m not sure you gain much from it on Android. It eats up ram making performance crap on cheap phones and apps already run in their own app user context to isolate what they can access.
If you’re referencing an isolatedProccess implementation, the benefit is that each site is isolated in its own process, and any exploit would only have access to its own process (the data that the site sees anyways) without further escape (kernel exploit or meltdown, for instance). Without this isolation flag, sites are not sandboxed from each other or from the browser’s process itself, meaning an exploit could access any data from any other active site or from the browser’s process (such as accessing browser settings, bookmarks, history, or the built-in browser password manager). This has a massive implication on security. I’m unaware of the sandboxing you mentioned before Chrome, so I can’t comment on that, but you gain a lot of security from proper per-site process isolation. Yes, the app lives inside its own sandbox, but there’s plenty of data within that sandbox that you may not want a site to access, hence the importance of the isolatedProcess flag.
Yes very poorly true. The lack of any sync makes other mobile browsers hard to use for me though. Often start stuff on mobile, and continue on a real browser on Laptop.
Ah yes the trust worthy browser without tracking that comes with Google search by befault. lol
Browser and search engine are completely different, plus you can change it.
the great thing about foss projects, is that people fork them! try librewolf!
LibreWolf FTW! 👍
When I was running it every other website would break, switched over to Mullvad Browser instead.
Mullvad Browser is the same but worse.
If you have websites break without noscript, you visit some really shady websites.
Be happy they break and dont claim the browser.
For my websites nearly never cause problems, and if they do Firefox tells me that they want to read my canvas data, send push ads and more, so its obvious.
If you have websites break without noscript, you visit some really shady websites.
not necessarily shady… probably designed specifically for Chrome.
Bad websites then. Do you have examples? Thats really bad.
Google, for example, did many demo websites that only worked on chrome in the past… I’ve also seen government website that only worked in Chrome… but unfortunately I don’t keep a list. A company I worked at in the past also had a training website that only worked in Chrome (I’m not revealing this one though…).
Edit: Just stumbled on this website: http://Thai5sushibar.com … not sure if it’s my extensions, but it doesn’t load in Firefox and loads in Chrome. Good rainbow rolls.
Uhm that site has no https and redirects somewhere else, dont feel like enabling javascript for that one.
And Ublock blocks it too. So yeah not a positive example
I just came about it today… but still, it works in Chrome and not Firefox. I have seen many others in the past though.
Why is it worse?
It always uses private browsing mode, read the other comments.
When I was using Librewolf maybe 4 years ago, it was never up to date with Firefox. I thought it could be a potential security risk, sometimes it took months to incorporate Firefox security updates. Has that improved recently?
I had the same impression at least 4 years ago as well. More privacy maybe but less security definitely.
LibreWolf updates follow Firefox updates pretty soon nowadays is my impression.
Except Firefox’s bookmark system on android is absolute crap and looks hideous.
Mobile browsers all suck.
What is your alternative? I want E2EE sync. Is vivaldi better? But honestly I wouldnt use their browser.
Firefox has E2EE sync??
Yup
Do you have a link to that info? Would that also work with Mullvad browser?
Yeah
Brave
Full of nonremovable crypto stuff, and it comes from a very shady company and CEO
It’s also running on Chromium
Nah its free software
Not really, they sued a group of students because they forked it.
So, no, not really.
Their building docs seem way easier than Firefoxes.
homophobic
Use iceraven, it’s a 🍴 of 🦊
Iceraven is a mess. Their extension list is totally random, has tons of duplicates and fundamentally incompatible ones. I went through all of them and tested them and reported what was broken and what was missing.
That alone is enough to convince me not to use their browser. Mull is based.
I actually started using Firefox in my early teens just because I liked the look of the Ui and themes better than Chrome.
I’ve also recently switched to Librewolf ;)
I started using it in my early 20s when it was still called “Firebird” because I was still salty that Netscape was dead and using IE sucked donkey balls (There was stuff like Konqueror and Lynx on Linux, but Konqueror and Lynx were…well they were Konqueror and Lynx). Mozilla 4 lyfe. “Technically” (with huge quotation marks) I’ve been more or less using the same browser since 1997.
Wolves got to stick together
Similar reason for me except I was like 10-11. Also another reason was browsing the web with firefox just felt much better to me back then.
I would probably still be on Librewolf if Floorp’s Tree Style Tab integration wasn’t as good as it is.
Source: One person’s opinion on their personal Fediverse account
… Not that I disagree, mind. I’ve been on FF since like. 2007? Which was the moment I figured out that other web browsers besides IE7 existed?
Never saw reason to hop to Chrome(ium) even before I knew/cared about datamining or enshittification or any of that stuff. Back then it just looked like “another browser, that does things a bit different but has no features that entice me that Firefox lacks”. Then as I learned about the political side of things I was like “Huh, guess I’m glad for myself then!”
I used Netscape “back in the day”. With some interim transition attempts including the likes of Opera, I eventually switched to Chrome because it was genuinely more featureful and faster.
I was a happy Chrome user until they decided to deprecate manifest V2 and fuck up my ad blocker, at which point I switched to Firefox and haven’t looked back.
Everything in this industry is circular I guess.
I used Opera when it used Presto instead of becoming a yet another chromium. I miss that one.
What would you consider an authoritative source on if something looks nice?
Me, I’m the certified niceness decider
You know that famous The Dude meme? Applies here.
Not a chrome fan and I use Librewolf and I like how I’ve customised it. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
i love firefox but honestly right now i find edge to be much more aesthetically pleasing, especially with vertical tabs and grouping. if firefox can add these two items, i’d switch to firefox in a heartbeat (and they’re already adding tab groups)
Somewhere in this thread is a userchrome.css file on how to remove the “tree style tabs” header bar.
Install that addon.
Place that file in
~/.mozilla/firefox/XXXX-default-release/chrome
asUserChrome.css
(create that folder).Enable legacy customization in about:config
aren’t there extensions for this?
there is sidebery but i just like the edge version more. the extension wasn’t as fluid, plus i like how i can have native profiles for work, uni, and personal built in without extensions like profile switcher, which relies on a third party program. nothing against it; and i still donate to mozilla and firefox. i’m looking forward to seeing mozilla’s approach to tab groups though.
yup vertical tabs are the dealbreaker for me, edge got me hooked. Floorp is a fork that has it, haven’t used it a ton yet but i keep hearing more about it. I’ve been using Arc which i’m enjoying.
not using Gnome Web smh /s
Falkon Ultras!
I like my Firefox more: https://i.imgur.com/AWO9ss1.png … got rid of the title bar
thanks
Double thanks.
#sidebar-box[sidebarcommand="treestyletab_piro_sakura_ne_jp-sidebar-action"] #sidebar-header { display: none; }
Add this to your userChrome.css file to hide the “Tree Style Tab” header at the top of the sidebar.
thanks! works great… here is my new userChrome.css:
/* hides the native tabs */ #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse; }
#sidebar-box[sidebarcommand=“treestyletab_piro_sakura_ne_jp-sidebar-action”] #sidebar-header { display: none; }
Did the same thing, though I’m handling the tabs with Sway
I’m doing that in arch.
Never heard of LibreWolf but they say on their website that features like DRM are disabled, what does that mean if I want to view DRM content in my browser? I may be confused but currently with Firefox I already have problems with DRM sometimes. For example on Dell’s website I had difficulties viewing product videos on there, will they simply not play on LibreWolf or how does that work?
There is a toggle for DRM in both Firefox and LibreWolf that is off by default. It will prompt you when site would like to use it, so you can happily say no and launch your favourite file sharing software.
It means that any website which using drm for playing content will not work by default,but u can enable it a again by modyfing config file.
from my experience there will be a popup asking to enable drm for this site when it requests it. no need to modify a file.
Don’t even have to edit the config file anymore, it’s a checkbox in the options menu now.
Create a second profile that you only use for DRM crap and enable DRM in the settings. Firefox also doesnt have DRM pre-enabled so that claim of them makes no sense.
See my post on konsole on how to make a desktop entry in Linux, where you can put profiles on the right click actions with icons and all.
Yes, Librewolf is basically a fork of Firefox that makes different trade-offs, where it accepts more breakage than Firefox does, to gain a bit more privacy.
Yeah it would be nice if there was a way to completely remove the DRM.
Why don’t I use Firefox he says? Because Edge is better than both!
It’s objectively worse than Firefox. For example, Firefox recently passed all minimum security requirements by the German Federal Office for Information Security. No other browser meets them.
Where those tab groups at tho? Sounds like your hot dog is objectively small.
Firefox’s extensions actually let developers do stuff, so we have tons of tab groups extensions. My favorite is Simple Tab Groups. But if you dont like that one, you can swap it out for a different one! DO YOU GET THAT KIND OF CUSTOMIZATION IN EDGE?
they’re working on it https://news.itsfoss.com/mozilla-firefox-tab-grouping/
For the second time
Go back to kindergarten.
lol did you forget to see which sub you walked into here before shouting?
I knew what I was in for lol
Edge is better if you are wanting to always have your data mined by Microsoft, for sure.
If you use Edge than you probably use Windows, which means that Microsoft can already mine your data. I guess it’s better to have your data mined by only Microsoft than to have it mined by both Microsoft and Google?
Not sure of this is still true, it often feels like edge is the main spyware feature of windowless in general, integrated into windows search.
Everytime you search for an app or file it doubles as a edge search query to present in the results. You can try disable all the spyware on windows if you want. Edge still stores it in the microsoft cloud so you can sync.
Copilot is a golden ticket for them now. Its literally an edge based application.
As opposed to your data being mined by Google or sold by Mozilla? Dude you’re cracking me up.
Mozilla literally doesn’t do that. If you’re concerned about them lying about it you can compile the browser yourself.
You can packet inspect and watch them do it in real time. I think you mean Brave.
I can packet inspect and watch them sell data? No lol they collect telemetry but you can use a derivative that doesn’t because it’s open source. That’s not the point though, the point is they don’t sell data. You can look at the finances yourself https://stateof.mozilla.org/
Hmm guess they’re running a charity then. Your tracking is not data? I guess you and I have different definitions of what data is. Sure, you can lock it down if you really want. But so can every other browser.
troll
Or you can use browsers that can be set to not “phone home” - e.g.Brave, Librewolf - there are in fact a few privacy respecting options in this.
This is a joke right? There is not a single feature it could have that weights against the fact that its still Chromium-spyware.
Edge works better with specific vm coursework but not sure why. On Firefox I would press a key and it would input 0-2 times. On edge, it worked just… Normal. That’s the one up that edge has had for me.
Some people Firefox and some people just love to edge. They get close but don’t really get it all the way.
Can Firefox install websites as web apps?
Desktop? No
Android? Yes
Well, there’s PWAsForFirefox
Yes, but in an unsupported manner.
https://github.com/filips123/PWAsForFirefox
Or as an extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/
No and thats not nice. Webapps work really well, I use hardened Chromium for Element until Firefox gets their shit together.
Just use Floorp. Gives you even easier UI customisation by allowing you to switch to the old UI via the settings, and also includes Webapp support and support for Workspaces.
That support sounds very interesting, can you attach screenshots of the webapps and workspaces?
There is a tool called webappmanager or something that I used in the past. Pretty overcomplex but works well.
I use GNOME Web for webapps.
Librewolf doesn’t respect your choice in system fonts if you uncheck “Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above”. I don’t use it for that reason.
Cant you set a custom font within Librewolf?
You can but it won’t be respected. It will continue to default to their included Noto fonts despite whatever font you select. You can test this yourself. I’m sure they do it for some “privacy reason” but if I wanted that trade off I’d simply use the Tor Browser or one of those hardened firefox profiles.
Strange, no local font should not be fingerprintable.
These are not the only two available browsers, you know?
Do you mean Safari?
Name one other browser that is not based on Chromium. If it is based on Chromium, it has to deal with what Google throws at them.
I say this as an enthusiastic Brave user. Brave is great at what it does currently, but the more terrible stuff Google builds into Chromium, the more patches they’ll have to maintain. This can make it harder to maintain their fork.
Worse than that, most Chromium-derivative users aren’t Brave users. Many web apps already don’t work as well with Firefox’ JavaScript Engine (Gecko) as they do with Chromium. This gives Google immense power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Browsers_based_on_Chromium
Brave is extremely shady. Really, I used it and even created a script to install it on rpm-ostree distros, but damn that is shady.
That’s a solid criticism. Firefox + uBlock Origin or Librewolf are good desktop alternatives. But what’s the alternative on Android? Last time I checked, there wasn’t any on privacyguides.
Btw I do always turn off all their rewards and wallet stuff and follow most of the https://privacyguides.org recommendations.
Thanks for your help in making privacy-focused software available on Linux btw!
I use Firefox + uBlock Origin on Android. You can still install add-ons for the app the same way you do on desktop.
Cromite has adblock. Vanadium too but it may break on on-GrapheneOS as it has security patches that break on regular android.
Mull is very fine for me, I use Vanadium and Mull, Vanadium for crappy sites (because mobile hardened firefox doesnt support as much sites as desktop for some reason). Vanadium is very likely more secure, unlike on Desktop where that is not easily said.
Cromite is the best recommendation I can give. It is currently under consideration to be added to privacyguides.org (you can find it on their issues page on the GitHub), and it is expected to be added (as was Bromite, which is where Cromite forked from after development on Bromite was stopped). The main developer of Cromite (uazo) has actually asked the evaluation to be paused until the licensing for aac and h264 are figured out, as licenses are very expensive, and a recommendation on the PrivacyGuides website would likely draw many more users to the project, potentially causing legal trouble. You can track progress on this issue here. It’s worth noting that the dev of Cromite was an active dev of Bromite before Bromite’s lead dev abandoned the project.
Of course there’s other browsers! There’s Opera…uhh that now based on Chromium. Oh, how about Edge…that’s Chromium based too now. I know, there’s the KHTML engine!..no, that’s been officially discontinued.
GNOME Web technically, based on WebKit. Idk if anyone uses that though.
GNOME Web, qutebrowser, Konquerer and Falkon. While they are pretty obscure, I personally use Falkon regularly on low end systems/RPi
Both qutebrowser and Falkon run on the QtWebEngine, essentially Chromium.
deleted by creator
qutebrowser uses chromium
Both OP and the author of the linked post explicitly say “Chrome”, not “Chromium”, and seem to imply those are the only two choices available to users.
If it is based on Chromium, it has to deal with what Google throws at them.
Fair point, but the engine is important.
I understand their blog post, and if I were to build a browser today, I’d probably do the same.
But that doesn’t mean this situation isn’t problematic. It’s similar to car-centric infrastructure: in this situation, for any individual, choice X makes sense, but that will make the situation even worse for the whole population. A cumulation of many tiny Prisoner’s Dilemmas.
I wrote Chromiun in the description too. Chrome is simply what people use.
Plain Chromium, even with all GUI settings, all degoogle policy configs and flags enabled, contacts Google like hell.
I tried googeeteller and its scary.
Have not tried Vivaldi for a long time, but its fingerprinting resistance was nonexistent, it is filled with useless features and has no container support, so nah.
Or just use multiple browsers? If one size fits all for you then good for you but there is no Firefox based browser that can replace Vivaldi for me. So I use both, one for my power user needs and other for private browsing (hardened Firefox, normal FF isn’t great for privacy either)
Havent used Vivaldi in some time. Have a look at floorp but of course they dont have all the addons vivaldi has like notes and stuff.
And yes, regular FF is simply a “just works” browser but with lots of stupid bloat. Librewolf is actually great as they have a modern CI/CD build pipeline and do all the hardening for you, its more sustainable and secure to share effords.