Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs • Hacker News Board

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#351

Post by tomohawk » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 10:25 AM UTC

ggjkvcxddd wrote: post #165

masfoobar wrote: post #148

I have been a happy Firefox user for 15 years... maybe more. I have seen people use and complain Internet Explorer in my younger days, from version 6 to 7, etc. Even though I mention Firefox to them, they stay with IE. What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009. It amazes me how quick people jump to something especially when it has a big company behind advert…

>I just don't understand why people would use Chrome. Really? That seems hard to believe. I stuck with FF until around 2016 or so before being compelled to switch. The performance was just very clearly worse than Chrome's at the time. Not sure what the state of things is now. This is HN, so another huge reason to use Chrome is for the devtools, which I've always had a very good experience with and know pretty well. I…

That was, what, 7 years ago? That's about 5 CPU generations ago. Any performance differences were solved a long time ago, although chrome seems to use a lot more memory last time I looked (I use both on a regular basis). It's worth revisiting tooling once in a while instead of getting stuck in time.

If chrome does it for you for dev tools, then use it for that. No need to use it for general browsing.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#352

Post by mort96 » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 10:25 AM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #246

nomilk wrote: post #73

FWIW I got annoyed with chrome's distracting home screen, and pondered how long it would take for a 10+ year chrome user to switch to firefox. The answer (on macOS) was 5 minutes. I was shocked how easy it was (and, frankly, how similar it was). When you first open firefox, it gives options to import all your chrome settings (including saved passwords etc). Super cool.

The way profiles (or tab containers) work in Firefox sucks compared to Chrome honestly. I could never find a way to open in the correct profile from external applications.

I find it annoying how I need a separate window for each profile in Chrome, I like that I can have one window and some windows are in the work container and some are not. You do need the (official) containers extension though.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#353

Post by medv » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 10:26 AM UTC

An interesting thing about posts like this: you would recommend, and you think everybody is using Firefox. But in fact everybody’s using Chrome Firefox user base is just so tiny

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#354

Post by ochronus » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 10:27 AM UTC

Zekio wrote: post #339

ochronus wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, one nice-to-have: built in, performant ad blocking which is extensible (preferably compatible with existing lists), like e.g., Brave or Vivaldi does.

sounds a waste of time to build considering how well uBlock Origin works

I disagree. For me (can't speak for others), ad/tracker blocking is an essential part of the browsing experience. I want a built-in, performant solution instead of depending on a 3rd party addon.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#355

Post by RadixDLT » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 10:28 AM UTC

I think you mean, Time so switch to Brave!?

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#356

Post by DanielHB » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 10:29 AM UTC

Anyone knows if that manifest v3 is going to be pushed into Brave and similar chromium browsers?

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#357

Post by pyrale » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 10:30 AM UTC

dark-star wrote: post #197

pyrale wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009. The power of endless money for advertising. Some users think it doesn't have that much impact, but being nudged on every other web page to make the switch is much more powerful than that nephew who talks to you about it once.

My guess is that i wasn't marketing. It was because FF was dog-slow back then and Chrome was (still is) blazingly fast

Your guess would be wrong. Chrome mostly replaced old IE installs at first. And firefox was also miles ahead of old IE. The reason FF took many years to gain market share when Chrome took the same market share in months is advertising budget.

All the people coming up with revisionist bs about firefox being bad just don't realize that 1) there wasn't only Firefox, Opera was also present (chrome was basically a ripoff of Opera's ux) and that 2) the incumbent back then was IE. The gap between IE and firefox/opera was way larger than whatever people claim the difference was between firefox/opera and Chrome.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#358

Post by Slartie » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 10:32 AM UTC

insanitybit wrote: post #281

mariusmg wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you're switching browsers not 3D modelling software. It's easy people. Switch to Firefox today.

I don't use 3D modeling software, but I use a browser for like... 95% of my day. Any minor UX differences are going to be like nails on a chalkboard, given that. It's no wonder why people don't want to switch, really.

Browsers are just a window to display web apps and pages, though. And these display identically in Chrome as they do in Firefox. Hence the interactions, which 95% of the time are with the web app, not the browser, are practically identical for the most part as well.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#359

Post by devnullbrain » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 10:32 AM UTC

insanitybit wrote: post #281

mariusmg wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you're switching browsers not 3D modelling software. It's easy people. Switch to Firefox today.

I don't use 3D modeling software, but I use a browser for like... 95% of my day. Any minor UX differences are going to be like nails on a chalkboard, given that. It's no wonder why people don't want to switch, really.

The differences are bigger between Chrome on Windows and Chrome on Mac than between Chrome and Firefox on one OS. At least all of the keybindings are the same.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#360

Post by JonathanBeuys » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 10:32 AM UTC

GTP wrote: post #266

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you using root terminals in the first place? This has always been considered poor security practice. Consequently, your workflow is a very peculiar one, and while you personally might feel inconvenience, I don’t think that this frustrates many other Firefox users out there.

He's using 'su' to switch to desktopuser, that's not necessarily, and quite likely not, an account with root privileges. 'su' stands for 'switch user', it's not just to become root.

Correct.

I use a script in a root terminal to control a lot of my workflow. One thing is that I start browser windows from it when needed. I start them with

    sudo -u desktopuser chromium example.com

Because

    sudo -u desktopuser firefox example.com

does not work.

I thought that is relevant to the question "Why bother with Chrome".

desktopuser of course is the normal user which would also start Firefox if I did it via the Desktop gui.