Firefox Browser: best for a free web • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#191

Post by edly » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 12:41 PM UTC

yabatopia wrote: post #64

errantmind wrote: post #46

I've used Firefox since release but I'm curious what other less popular browsers people are using these days? For example, I have tried Bromite on my phone but the adblocking is limited. I've tried ungoogled-chromium on desktop and the speed is impressive. The main things I want: 1. Speed 2. Speed 3. Native plugins that can preempt network requests 4. Configurable for privacy (referrer, first party isolation, etc) Al…

Vivaldi on desktop. On Android switching between Vivaldi (sadly no support for extensions) and Kiwi Browser (supports extensions). The add-on massacre on Firefox for Mobile a few months ago pushed me over the edge.

+1 to Vivaldi. I use tiled tabs all the time.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#192

Post by blacktriangle » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

kaba0 wrote: post #183

tigroferoce wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, since they never found a proper business model. So far, how do they make money? How do they pay the developers? How do they plan to be sustainable? Is there any place where I can see who donated them? Which share of donations is given by large companies that are constantly breaking the values the Mozilla foundation stands for? Was the news that Google will pay $400M per year to be the default search engin…

Do you use any open source software? Since most of it is made by people unable to sustain themselves from their projects.

Much of it is sustained by people who are paid by employers who use said open source in their profit centers.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#193

Post by toastal » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

creese wrote: post #80

I've been a FF user for years. This week, FF became so unusable under Wayland I had to install Brave.

The patches are in place if you wait just a bit longer. NixOS merged patches into their main branch and the teams between Wayland and Mozilla have already resloved the issue. The only bit that rubs me is that this has been an issue since 92, has been out. I moved from beta to stable and then stable to ESR (v91 luckily) while I await the patches.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#194

Post by fragileone » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

jvzr wrote: post #150

I'd been using Firefox ever since the Phoenix days. And somehow, sometime, I moved to Chrome like everyone did... until I had enough of Google, and came back to Firefox right at the start of the Quantum days. Haven't left since. Firefox is a really good browser (at least on Linux, even though the lack of HW-acceleration on NVIDIA cards is a pain) made even greater with best-in-class uBlock Origin support, and of cour…

HW acceleration on Linux was fixed about a year ago https://9to5linux.com/firefox-81-enters-beta-gpu-acceleratio...

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#195

Post by toastal » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

lucasyvas wrote: post #130

shp0ngle wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure accessibility of source code is the biggest problem. You can get the code very easily. Also github is another kind of Microsoft lock-in, ironically.

I don't necessarily disagree with your Microsoft comment. I'm merely trying to say that I think Firefox needs more than features to reclaim some of its popularity. Where we're at, is that most people are happy running a Chromium variant. It's open source and there are enough downstream consumers that you can pick your poison. If Mozilla is going to push the "private browser, for you" angle, they are going to need to…

If you don't disagree with the monopoly statement, then start altering your speech to reflect it. You can use the phrase “(public) Git forge” and avoid using the trademark generically and encompass all alternative forges.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#196

Post by eric_cc » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #31

dont__panic wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still ask myself: has FF browser share actually dropped that much, or has FF's privacy focus caused browser share estimates to mostly miss FF users in their counts? Most of these stats come from the exact kind of skeevy companies that I (and many other FireFox users) are using FireFox to avoid.

Firefox has less users than desktop Safari. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. When you factor in mobile it gets worse because Chrome (the Android default) and Safari (the only real choice on iOS) are so dominant. Also, the market share numbers reported by client side trackers like StatsCounter are very close to log file collection and analysis by companies like Kinsta.

How are you so sure? You really didn’t address OP’s point about content blocking and privacy tools.

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#197

Post by dgdfg » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#198

Post by happynacho » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

Mozilla does really love to milk "Open source" and "free" for Firefox marketing. How about about if they actually gave users what they wanted?

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#199

Post by jvzr » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

fragileone wrote: post #194

jvzr wrote: post #150

I'd been using Firefox ever since the Phoenix days. And somehow, sometime, I moved to Chrome like everyone did... until I had enough of Google, and came back to Firefox right at the start of the Quantum days. Haven't left since. Firefox is a really good browser (at least on Linux, even though the lack of HW-acceleration on NVIDIA cards is a pain) made even greater with best-in-class uBlock Origin support, and of cour…

HW acceleration on Linux was fixed about a year ago https://9to5linux.com/firefox-81-enters-beta-gpu-acceleratio...

It appears to work for Netflix, but not YouTube videos. Are there restrictions in the implementation?

Edit: following this¹ (without installing any driver though) was enough to make it work for YouTube, apparently. Thanks for the info!

[1] https://askubuntu.com/a/1291873

Re: Firefox Browser: best for a free web

#200

Post by lucasyvas » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

toastal wrote: post #195

lucasyvas wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily disagree with your Microsoft comment. I'm merely trying to say that I think Firefox needs more than features to reclaim some of its popularity. Where we're at, is that most people are happy running a Chromium variant. It's open source and there are enough downstream consumers that you can pick your poison. If Mozilla is going to push the "private browser, for you" angle, they are going to need to…

If you don't disagree with the monopoly statement, then start altering your speech to reflect it. You can use the phrase “(public) Git forge” and avoid using the trademark generically and encompass all alternative forges.

In this case, I think that the leading Git provider is where it should be hosted, due to community size. And that's GitHub for now. That can absolutely change in the future.