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I use several, depending on use case:
- Tor Browser for general and anonymous web browsing (e.g. reading news, looking up stuff, and so on)
- Mullvad Browser as a clear web alternative for general use
- Librewolf for generally logging into sites with personally identifiable accounts (e.g. to buy stuff)
- Ungoogled Chromium for those few sites which only work with a Chromium-based browser, or other specific cases
- On Android (GrapheneOS): Tor Browser and Vanadium
All regular browsers have some hardening applied and uBlock Origin installed.
I still use firefox despite their questionable leadership, for one major reason: it prevents Google from setting whatever web standards they want. Sites that aren’t standards compliant will usually still work in Chromium-based browsers, but they will break in Firefox, and then I can report the bugs.
Zen, absolutely love the workflow and the fact that it is not chromium based.
Waiting excitedly for ladybird, it is already very impressive but still years left until it is daily drive able
I use FireDragon, because it’s the only browser I could find that has a vertical tab-bar that collapses. Supposedly Zen does it, too, but I couldn’t get it to work.
FireDragon also has a toolbar to the side with a notepad and other neat stuff. I haven’t used that yet, but it could be cool.
I have found Mozilla’s sync across devices handy, but now I’m in the process of moving over to using Vanadium on my GrapheneOS phone and FireDragon on desktop.
FireDragon started out as a Librewolf fork, but is more recently based on Floorp. They are still keeping in sync with Librewolf’s privacy enhancements, with some of their own thrown in. I like that the default search engine is Garuda’s instance of Searx, with Whoogle as another option if you don’t want to self host. FireDragon will also sync your Firefox account off Garuda’s server instance if you like (which would be more useful if I weren’t going with a Chromium fork on mobile). The Garuda project is certainly looking more trustworthy than Mozilla these days.
Firefox with Arkenfox. I’m not going to help the Chromium monopoly. The changes suck, but oh the hell well.
Edit: Switched to Librewolf because I was too lazy to reinstall Arkenfox. It’s great!
Firefox. Equally concerned as well.
Looking into Librewolf and Waterfox now!
Long time Firefox user. Installed Librewolf today and so far so good. I used Firefox sync to get all my settings, bookmarks, open tabs, etc. back. At some point I will probably find an alternative yo Firefox sync but it’ll do for the time being.
The only thing that sucks about it is some sites just flat out don’t work well. For example, in Librewolf I cannot login to my banks website. The site loads, but the login just hangs. Firefox it works immediately.
I believe Librawolf defaults to “strict” fingerprinting blocking. Try setting it to moderate and see if that works with your bank
OK! You’ve had 1 hour to check them out. :D What’s the difference between the two? They’re both Firefox forks, right?
I found a decent answer here https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/18g8tez/what_am_i_gaining_if_i_switch_from_librewolf_to/
That mod sums up a lot that I found. I don’t know the answer because they both have odd downsides.
Yes they’re both forks!
Didn’t Waterfox get bought out by an ad company?
yes and then sold and FOSS again!
Brave.
Because I installed it when it was pre-alpha version. Ended up to an ugly window with just an addresse bar. I though “this shit will never worked, yet another utopistic project, too bad…”
Then, came back 2 years later, gave him a 2nd chance and “OMG ! They fucking did it !”. So I keep it as a redemption for not having believed in the project at first.
…Brave is just chromium by techbros, right?
I use Firefox. I don’t like the changes but I don’t want to use any downstream browsers and I don’t think any of the not-downstream alternatives do better.
They are better in most of the case, Firefox only is not that good…
I just don’t care for downstream projects on browsers, with software so critical I want to get the updates in as fast as possible. I know some of those mentioned in OP had issues with that in the past. And not much reason to anyway for me to switch, Firefox works perfectly fine for me, so there’s not much added benefit.
I’ve been using the Firefox mod Zen Browser on Linux Mint. When Firefox released an update in February, my Zen had it the next day. People depending on the “official” Firefox were left waiting over a week, with multiple threads in the forums asking “when is it coming?”
Also when I looked into mods updates for a critical security fix in November, practically all the mods had updated within 24 hours of FF’s update. (Exceptions: Midori and Mercury.) https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2554267&sid=4f140800c5d62939af8e6394514b9aab#p2554267
Did Zen come from flatpak and Firefox from deb?
Zen: On one machine, Flatpak. On the other, AppImage through AM. Firefox: Mint-maintained version from Mint repo (deb).
I can’t remember the exact differences between Firefox upstream and Mint version. But I believe Mint began maintaining their own deb at a time when upstream Ubuntu was only offering Firefox as a snap, which Mint is against, and Mozilla hadn’t yet begun offering their own deb repo.
That’s where the delay comes. Though I guess it does point out that even with just Firefox the differences are small in how quickly you get updates.
Understand your point of view but in fact the 2 problems you mentioned are mainly not problems :
1 - Updates? The main downstream browsers received updates the same time as Firefox the same day and sometime the same hour
2 - Benefits? The benefits are mainly under the hood, removing Mozilla telemetry and annoying features (account, pocket…) AND the biggest advantages are the gain in term of privacy due the increase of anti fingerprinting methods
But who’s making these “updates”? Who’s doing the actual work of keeping the software secure? Mozilla is.
If everybody moves to a free-riding fork, Mozilla goes to 0% and there will be no browser let alone updates.
This needs to be higher up. We need firefox as an alternative to a chrome engine monopoly. ToS and telemetry are miniscule issues compared to what we are up against
Firefox is literally the last thing standing between google controlling the entire browser landscape and having control over all web standards (as if they dont already have too much influence)
People ditching firefox over tos, telemetry, AI, CEO pay, etc. are cutting off their nose to spite their face. Do i wish mozilla would stop doing stupid shit? Of course. But the alternative is far worse. Dont let perfect be the enemy of good. Mozilla will never be as ideologically pure as we want them to be, but that’s OK (for now)
Depends on which way the Firefox ditchers jump - jumping to Chrome, yeah… not great. Jumping to more privacy respecting options… it’s your data, you should be able to choose (if you care…)
Read the post above mine… “Privacy respecting options” are almost always downstream forks of firefox. Abandon/kill the source, and downstream dries up
Waterfox is based on esr, so quite outdated. Just use librewolf and some css. You have firefox-one that will make it look pretty and similar to zen. Zen is no good if you care about privacy.
“Zen is no good if you care about privacy.”
How so?
It doesn’t have good privacy defaults and is easily fingerprintable with all the mods and tweaks it has… You will have to use a user.js at least but it will probably not get as good as mullvad or librewolf
Thanks for the info.
My issue is that while i am concerned about privacy, i’m more concerned with security patching. And none of these smaller browsers have the resources to turn around security fixes as quickly as firefox or chrome.
Firefox is the least of the concerns as long as we have the config options to disable anything deemed not privacy-respecting.
This is the only good critique in this entire thread (thank you) BUT librewolf is on the exact same version as Firefox. It appears their updates are pretty fast.
Would you have config recommendations beyond the obvious?
I’m probably not the best person to talk to about Firefox hardening. Because… I don’t. I only go as far as using firefox containers.
My threat model is to counter:-
- ISP data logging
- government filters
- region blocking
- hyper-personalised marketing
I use a VPN for the first three, and I use Ublock, and don’t use google/meta/twitter/amazon/ebay for last.
I personally believe it is impossible to escape fingerprinting unless you’re on Tor Browser, but using Tor paints you as a target in my country per the first item above.
I also work in financial services, and am a user of my company’s product. We do significant ‘device intelligence’ and ‘behavioral intelligence’ on client devices, auth attempts, and actions taken in sessions. Log in too many times from too many different (seemingly) devices, user agents, IP addresses, regions, etc and it increases our customer risk assessment of you. Tick over a threshold and your account falls under enhanced customer due diligence. Tick over another threshold, and we’ll set auto-blocks until we can investigate. I assume that any other financial services provider worth their salt would do the same to counter fraud, money laundering, and meeting sanctions.
I basically use a split tunnel VPN. VPN traffic for general browsing, email, etc. And looking as much as a regular user as possible when accessing financial services, government websites, etc.
And yeah, agree LibreWolf is great. Only downside for the average user is the lack of an auto-updater. So the only tweak i’d do with LibreWolf would be to set up a cron/systemd timer to update it nightly.
Thank you for typing this out! :) It was helpful
I was thinking of switching to one of the Firefox forks but have only tried Waterfox so far and not super impressed. I guess Firefox is the best out of the bad bunch until I find an alternative I like.
Interesting. What did you dislike about waterfox?
The UI and dialogue boxes look a bit dated, not sure why
Ah fair enough, can’t argue with personal preference.
You sure you weren’t using waterfox classic though? That has a more dated UI than the current version.I personally use librewolf anyway, but waterfox is still a pretty decent step up from Firefox, privacy-wise.
I’ll give librewolf a go. Can I just copy my profile with all my extensions across?
