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What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

neilzone.co.uk

31–40 of 149 posts

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#31
post #12

I moved to Waterfox on Android and, in a couple of small things, it works better for me than Firefox; but being a soft fork it has some of the problems of LibreFox. As the post is saying: I'm disappointed, but there is no technical reason to drop Firefox for now. Yet I feel like I must do something when the ToS is still hot, although I don't expect any change from Mozilla.

I have to say Firefox (and forks) for Android is several levels inferior to chrome (forks). Just slower and consumes way more battery - and does not even have the customizability of alternatives.

It supports web extensions.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#32
post #8

There is Waterfox that syncs with the Firefox bookmark service. Testing it out for the last day, also looking for an option on iOS otherwise will stick with Firefox.

I'd love to know the results of your test. Plese let me know if there's a social media account where you'll post your results.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zen Browser is the closest thing to Vivaldi in Firefox fork land. https://zen-browser.app

Can one copy a firefox profile to Vivaldi? Do you think it's possible?

Probably not since they are based on completely different browsers. You can import bookmarks, passwords, etc. though.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#35
post #12

I moved to Waterfox on Android and, in a couple of small things, it works better for me than Firefox; but being a soft fork it has some of the problems of LibreFox. As the post is saying: I'm disappointed, but there is no technical reason to drop Firefox for now. Yet I feel like I must do something when the ToS is still hot, although I don't expect any change from Mozilla.

I have to say Firefox (and forks) for Android is several levels inferior to chrome (forks). Just slower and consumes way more battery - and does not even have the customizability of alternatives.

FF has ublock origin, so already end of story there. But it also does a better job of allowing me to request desktop site and actually get it, and thus around some website bugs.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#36
post #18

I'm not sold that avoiding Chromium is any sort of win. It seems to be BSD licensed. The code comes from a long and storied OSS tradition. It is unclear why that having multiple different browser engines is strategically important. As far as I know we've long left behind the world where a hobbyist project could reasonably expect to implement modern JavaScript. Brave's existence and success suggests that competitors b…

The problem with Chromium is that it's controlled by Google. Given they control the engine in the majority of browsers, they get to call the shots on the direction of the web as a whole.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#37

I decided to just stay with Firefox and disable any rubbish that Mozilla adds as it comes. I tried Librewolf, but the unstable RPM repository was very annoying, because zypper disallows system updates if even one repository fails to refresh. I also had some weird issues keeping it pinned to my desktop environment's dock. It also didn't want to save its window geometry (very annoying for me), and the only way to trans…

If not LibreWolf, why not use Mullvad Browser, Floorp or Zen Browser, both based on Firefox?

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#38
post #30

I've switched to Waterfox (yet another Firefox fork) and so far I'm happy with that choice https://www.waterfox.net/

While these forks are nice and all, I'm not sure how meaningful it is in the bigger picture if 99% of the work done on it is still done (and paid) by the same people. Similarly, I don't get those "I use brave instead of Firefox", as if that wasn't 99% chromium. Don't get me wrong, I know there's not much choice. But that whole direction of "action" that people take just seems like a working marketing tarpit to me.

At least Brave is a profitable company that employs multiple people and they can keep up with Chromium's changes (Some manifest v2 extensions are kept available or certain UI features are reverted).

Most of the Firefox forks are 1-5 person gigs. They are not sustainable.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#39

** To clarify - looking for any Firefox alternative, not restricted to the Gecko engine Is Brave at all a viable alternative? Or do their own ads and all the crypto-shmypto make the switch moot? Tangentially - has anyone tried building Firefox from the source? [1] I wonder how feasible this would be as an alternative if coupled with disabling all unwanted parts of the browser. [1] https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.…

I built Firefox from source recently, it took under 15 mins to compile on a 7800X3D.

Do websites using akamai work with that browser? Try checking prices on Radisson hotels (their own website, not OTAs), for example. Do prices load, or is it only static resources which work? Same question for Marriott hotels, I can't see any of their rooms unless using an original build.

Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

#40

** To clarify - looking for any Firefox alternative, not restricted to the Gecko engine Is Brave at all a viable alternative? Or do their own ads and all the crypto-shmypto make the switch moot? Tangentially - has anyone tried building Firefox from the source? [1] I wonder how feasible this would be as an alternative if coupled with disabling all unwanted parts of the browser. [1] https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.…

There are many Gecko-based browsers: Zen, Floorp, Mullvad, LibreWolf, IceCat. Why not use them instead?
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