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Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#21

Post by gragas »

bilbobeer wrote: post #3

What is most strange is that on linux, mint to be specific, on a recent install they advised to install 'chrome', even if you didn't plan to use it, the logic went "It's better to have a back-up browser" I say never have a GOOGLE PRODUCT of any kind near you, or on any electronic device in your control. What gives to tell people to put Chrome on their OS, note also that mint comes pre-installed video tools that are c…

It's already gg, man. Even if you don't use Google products, if the NSA or CIA want to know everything about you, they can. You have two choices:

   1. Do unimportant things that don't intersect with the interests of the NSA/CIA/FBI

   2. Do things that intersect with the interests of the NSA/CIA/FBI and expect to lose
Or, you could seek protection from other governments (read Russia), but that's essentially useless from a privacy standpoint because the US still knows almost everything about almost all foreign actors anyways.

Your best bet is to just do things deemed unimportant by the agencies that pull the strings.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#22

Post by idobai »

pjmlp wrote: post #19
rvern wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you believe Chromium has better sandboxing than Firefox? That may have been true in the past, I doubt it has much truth to it today. Furthermore, if you use GNU/Linux it should be trivial to give your web browser better sandboxing than what it does by itself. (You can use AppArmor or SELinux, you can run it in a systemd-nspawn container, you can use Firejail…)

Not something that the average joe and jane can do.

The average joe and jane will click on large "DOWNLOAD ME!" buttons and download torrents without an antivirus.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#23

Post by rvern »

Chromium is free software too, but that does not justify any usage of Chrome. If you use Chrome, you can't justify it on Chromium being open source. As for Chromium itself, it is very obvious that it is not actually meant to be used by anyone: it has no stable releases, no binary downloads (except the nightlies published by the build system), and its website is hosted on nothing else than… Google Sites.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#24

Post by apatters »

rvern wrote: post #8
anilgulecha wrote: post #7

The only reason chromium is my primary browser is the developer tools (it's a pain to use Firefox for normal browsing, but Chromium for debugging.) I can only hope for chrome's devtools to be ported to firefox. (firebug is close but slow).

For every person who says Chromium's developer tools are better than Firefox's, you can find another person who will say exactly the reverse. It's possible one of the two positions is correct and the other is not, but I find it more likely that people are just used to particular developer tools and that there is no significant difference between the two. People get work done with Firefox and Chromium's developer tool…

No, he shouldn't have to learn to use them. When open source fails this type of thinking is often why. Firefox makes a product and therefore should improve that product so that more people want to use it.

Vendors in a market are rarely in a position to tell the customers in that market what they should and shouldn't do. We don't want them to be in that position either, even Mozilla. They have to improve their offering.

I for one also think that Chrome's dev tools are better and am 100% in the camp of wanting to see Firefox gain market share.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#25

Post by warcode »

Did Firefox fix their performance degradation over time yet?

Every time I try to switch back its fine for 2 weeks and then starts to get slower, like the internal database breaks or something. This is two weeks with 2-3 windows, with 5-20 tabs each, without restarts.

So far Vivaldi has been the best chrome replacement for me.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#26

Post by 6nf »

optforfon wrote: post #16
viraptor wrote: post #5

Unfortunately Chrome/ium has the best security story at the moment. Mainly due to good separation/sandbox. Firefox is only now catching up, slowly. So while I'd like to use FF, it's simply not a reasonable choice for me.

Do people really get viruses through their browsers still? Can't think of that happening to anyone I know

Yes it's still a major vector. The sheer size of the code base needed for a modern browser makes for a significant surface to attack.

http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/18/pwn2own-2016-chrome-edge-a...

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#27

Post by rvern »

pjmlp wrote: post #19
rvern wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you believe Chromium has better sandboxing than Firefox? That may have been true in the past, I doubt it has much truth to it today. Furthermore, if you use GNU/Linux it should be trivial to give your web browser better sandboxing than what it does by itself. (You can use AppArmor or SELinux, you can run it in a systemd-nspawn container, you can use Firejail…)

Not something that the average joe and jane can do.

Neither the article nor Hacker News are intended for the average Joe.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#28

Post by Sylos »

anilgulecha wrote: post #7

The only reason chromium is my primary browser is the developer tools (it's a pain to use Firefox for normal browsing, but Chromium for debugging.) I can only hope for chrome's devtools to be ported to firefox. (firebug is close but slow).

Mozilla is currently working on this: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/09/introducing-debugger-html/

Re: Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)

#29

Post by AgentME »

tbrock wrote: post #4

I wish Mozilla would refocus efforts on making Firefox best in class again. It's been at least 5 years since Firefox was truly relevant. Interest started to wane when Chrome's JavaScript execution blew it out of the water on release but continues to erode mindshare as the development tools languish.

The devtools were just overhauled recently, and Firefox is finally adopting a multiprocess architecture which will eventually lead to major performance and security improvements.
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