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UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

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Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#21

Post by lossolo »

nathancahill wrote: post #5

Great start. Although I think we need to reverse the trend of Chrome becoming the single browser web developers use. The amount of sites that unnecessarily[0] work only in Chrome is growing daily. And that's not even counting browser extensions. I think this, more than anything else, will determine if Chrome becomes the "Internet Explorer"[1] of this decade or not. Skipping testing in IE is one thing. Skipping testin…

> simply include CSS prefixes besides -webkit and use standardized JS APIs.

You mean like when I spent 30 minutes figuring out that text area in chrome is counting new line as 1 letter and firefox is counting it as two ?

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#22

Post by superkuh »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #10
eth0up wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any opinions on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Moon_%28web_browser%29 ?

No good reason to run that instead of Firefox. It looks like their main motivation to fork was to preserve XUL and XPCOM, but since Firefox doesn't plan to keep those, almost no addons will continue using them; every maintained addon will update to work with current Firefox. And using an unmaintained addon is dangerous .

Except for Mozilla's policy of trying to making Firefox race Chrome to be the best browser for the lowest common denominator. You can't even edit your addons in Firefox anymore. They have to be signed by Mozilla.

> And using an unmaintained addon is dangerous.

And this is the kind of thinking I'm talking about. Firefore/Chrome/etc are all about protecting tech ignorants from themselves rather than allowing adept users to do what they want.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#23

Post by amyjess »

technion wrote: post #9
nathancahill wrote: post #5

Great start. Although I think we need to reverse the trend of Chrome becoming the single browser web developers use. The amount of sites that unnecessarily[0] work only in Chrome is growing daily. And that's not even counting browser extensions. I think this, more than anything else, will determine if Chrome becomes the "Internet Explorer"[1] of this decade or not. Skipping testing in IE is one thing. Skipping testin…

The thing about "Internet Explorer", is that using IE Edge, I often run into websites that demand I "Upgrade" to Chrome and won't let me use them. Fudging the user agent however, allows that website to work perfectly fine. Not testing in IE is one thing. Presenting an nonintrusive message warning you don't test in IE is another. Paying money to advertise your website, then, when I click your link, greeting me with a…

Add this to the fact that Edge is still the only browser on Windows that's suitable for use on a device with a touchscreen, and it's downright insulting.

I have Chrome on my Surface. I choose to use Edge instead because Chrome is unusable without my Type Cover plugged in, and I'm not doing that while laying on the couch.

Hey Google, want me to use Chrome on my Surface? Then give me the Android version of Chrome running in a container. Phone UI, please.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#24

Post by sunnyps »

NeutronBoy wrote: post #4

While I applaud the effort that's gone into this, I urge people to consider (and use and contribute to!) Firefox. It's one of the last truly open-source browsers - both in terms of source code visibility (which Chrome(ium) has), and in terms of being able to contribute (which Chrome(ium) has not).

Why do you say that it's not easy to contribute to Chromium? Also the "last truly open-source" browser is hyperbolic given that Chromium is both open-source and is also developed in the open[1][2][3]. If anything over the past few years it has become more open-source as many components have been upstreamed (e.g. pdfium, android/ios stuff, etc.)

[1] Chromium bug tracker: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list [2] Chromium code reviews: https://codereview.chromium.org/ [3] Chromium development mailing lists: https://www.chromium.org/developers/technical-discussion-gro...

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#25

Post by a3_nm »

NeutronBoy wrote: post #4

While I applaud the effort that's gone into this, I urge people to consider (and use and contribute to!) Firefox. It's one of the last truly open-source browsers - both in terms of source code visibility (which Chrome(ium) has), and in terms of being able to contribute (which Chrome(ium) has not).

I agree with your claim, but I don't think it is a good idea to claim that Chromium is not "truly open-source" because (you claim) it is hard to contribute. This may cause more confusion about what "open source" really means. In fact, it's perfectly OK for open-source software to refuse outside contributions altogether! (Aka the "cathedral" model, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar#....)

In other words, open-source software maintainers are under no obligation to accept outside contributions. The only freedom you are guaranteed in this respect is the freedom to start a fork.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#26

Post by fowlerpower »

NeutronBoy wrote: post #4

While I applaud the effort that's gone into this, I urge people to consider (and use and contribute to!) Firefox. It's one of the last truly open-source browsers - both in terms of source code visibility (which Chrome(ium) has), and in terms of being able to contribute (which Chrome(ium) has not).

I second this opinion.

I think Chrome has a lot of interesting parts from a technological perspective. However, I think Firefox as an organization has done more for JavaScript and that community as far as fostering an open environment than any other browser maker. So providing a good browser plus fostering and growing the development community are both great things.

Another advantage is that it is not tied to some large conglomerate that is now engaged in questionable practices. That you need to rip entire parts of the code base out in this manner. This sort of thing has never been a concern with Firefox.

In general I think people ought to look at Google much more skeptically than they used to and all of the technologies that they push for. They all in some way push their agenda forward.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#27

Post by nathancahill »

foob wrote: post #19
nathancahill wrote: post #5

Great start. Although I think we need to reverse the trend of Chrome becoming the single browser web developers use. The amount of sites that unnecessarily[0] work only in Chrome is growing daily. And that's not even counting browser extensions. I think this, more than anything else, will determine if Chrome becomes the "Internet Explorer"[1] of this decade or not. Skipping testing in IE is one thing. Skipping testin…

Slightly tangential, but on the topic of browser extensions: the Chrome extension API served as the basis for Mozilla's somewhat recent Web Extension API [0]. Many, if not most, Chrome extensions can run in Firefox out of the box right now (there's even a Firefox extension that lets you install these from the Chrome Store [1]). This has been an incredible development for anybody doing cross browser extension developm…

"Web Extension API" is exactly the issue at stake here. Chrome develops a new API for extensions. Everyone jumps on it. Firefox abandons it's powerful (although insecure) extension API, and re-writes it to follow Chrome's. There's a lot of marketing-speak around the reasons FF did that, but it really boils down to: Chrome is winning in the extension ecosystem, let's make them all compatible with FF too. At the loss of the entire existing extension catalog.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#28

Post by trollian »

NeutronBoy wrote: post #4

While I applaud the effort that's gone into this, I urge people to consider (and use and contribute to!) Firefox. It's one of the last truly open-source browsers - both in terms of source code visibility (which Chrome(ium) has), and in terms of being able to contribute (which Chrome(ium) has not).

Have you ever tried contributing to Firefox from outside Mozilla Corp? My experience was not positive.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#29

Post by striking »

michel-slm wrote: post #13
JoshTriplett wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never try to install a package intended for Debian or Ubuntu on another distribution that just happens to use .deb files, unless you have experience dealing with package dependency issues and similar problems. Either use a package intended for the distribution, or use a binary, or build from source. That looks like a version of libavcodec specific to one version of Ubuntu; that package will never work on Debian, anot…

Can't wait for Flatpak or Snappy to make end-user binary distribution a breeze

I can, they're not really all that great as an alternative.

Use a better distro with a better packaging mechanism. Instead of inventing something new, use something that already exists.

Re: UnGoogled Chromium: Chromium with enhanced privacy, control and transparency

#30

Post by sunnyps »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #18
technion wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about "Internet Explorer", is that using IE Edge, I often run into websites that demand I "Upgrade" to Chrome and won't let me use them. Fudging the user agent however, allows that website to work perfectly fine. Not testing in IE is one thing. Presenting an nonintrusive message warning you don't test in IE is another. Paying money to advertise your website, then, when I click your link, greeting me with a…

So much this. While on Firefox, Google only pulls that on you once, they constantly reoffer it to Edge users on a nearly weekly basis. And recently, they actually made the bar bigger and more obtrusive. I filed an issue on the Chromium bug tracker, they assigned someone to look into it, and of course, nothing has been said since.

That's because it's not a Chromium bug. You should file feedback with the product you're using, most (all?) Google products have a way of doing this.
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