I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back • Hacker News Board

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#361

Post by wruza » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #236

wruza wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot to tell another half of this story where this cafe used all sorts of tactics to kill competition and uses semi-related businesses to ensure its dominance. Then they nicely suggested everyone to pay what they can, or else. It's not an innocent local cafe as you paint it. It is a corporate network monster whose win strategy is "leave no survivors".

And rather than stop going to this evil cafe, people just go and don't pay. So as long as you make out your flavor of the month business as "greedy and evil" you can paint yourself a moral crusader by going there and taking things for free. How convenient, eh? "This coffee shop is a terrible place, therefore I will eat there for free everyday in protest!"

And rather than blocking me access, like in “please pay to watch it”, they squiggle and babble incomprehensibly. Note that I’m not freeloading Nebula etc.

Your analogy was shallow from the start. Continuing it makes little sense.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#362

Post by assimpleaspossi » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #214

rileymat2 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never had a manager that said “don’t make it work for firefox”. What I have seen is developers do it wrong to start, then tasks to fix it get low priority due to market share based priority.

I had one who did say "don't make it work for firefox" but he was the only one. The basic mechanic is that the off brand browser has to work hard to be compatible whereas the dominant browser works hard to be incompatible. If you develop Firefox first (have some really ideological devs) you'll find Chrome related bugs eat up 1% of your time if that. If you develop Chrome first you'll find supporting other browsers is…

This is why I always develop to web standards and not to any browser. You follow the web standards and then check to see which browsers do it right. Then adjust for that browser if necessary.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#363

Post by evanjrowley » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

surajrmal wrote: post #184

squarefoot wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. I would add to the list the Linux Foundation too. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-annou...

Note that the effort there is to shift chromium to a more open governance model. This would mean Google has less influence on the project.

I don't believe splitting Chromium governance model across Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Opera will help Firefox in any way.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#364

Post by segasaturn » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

nh2 wrote: post #332

segasaturn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually agree with you that Linux development has been captured by corporations. Except that I believe it's not sustainable. Eventually the Shareholders are going to come knocking and ask why so much engineering time and money is being wasted on some hippie-dippy Open Source junk and not returning value to them. It needs AI in it, or maybe a Linux Pro subscription with ads for the freeloaders. This is why I'm glad…

> ask why so much engineering time and money is being wasted on [Linux] Most likely the corporations will say "because that is much cheaper than developing our own; 10 of our devs on Linux an 99% of devs from other corporations are much cheaper than 1000 of our devs on our own OS". And the shareholders will likely accept that. The key thing is that for most corporations that contribute to Linux, Linux is not the prod…

> You can fork but you likely cannot maintain Linux as-is. Where do the 1M hours/year come from? That's hard to do in free time.

Maybe a question too radical for Hacker News, but why does Linux need 1M hours/year? How much "worse" would Linux be for the end user if this year, that time spent dropped to 100k or even 10k? And which "type" of Linux user was benefiting most from that time spent (person or corporation)? Why is more automatically treated as better than less?

> The GPL is great in that it gives large power to users of the software, no matter if those users are corporate or personal, and even if the makers of the software are mostly corporations.

Indeed, I respect the wisdom and forethought of Stallman greatly in drafting the GPL.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#365

Post by amelius » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

Today I tried to start Firefox on a file:// type of url. It said the file could not be reached while I was sure it was there, as md5sum could read it.

Then it turned out that because Firefox was installed using Snap, and the file was apparently on a mount point that was out of reach of Snap, the file could not be read.

I think Mozilla should refuse package managers that are clearly broken.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#366

Post by pif » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 6:01 PM UTC

p3rls wrote: post #207

tapoxi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. Why would I, as a developer whose income stream is based on advertising, intentionally cater to users who are costing me money? There is a web based on hobbyist platforms like PeerTube and Mastodon, and you can clearly see why they haven't captured the masses.

You can tell who has never been in control of a budget and had to fire people because more than half their audience is using adblockers.

I get your points, but have you tried with less invasive advertising? Like, you know, static pictures downloaded from your domain with a HREF on them?

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#367

Post by apricot » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 6:02 PM UTC

tapoxi wrote: post #66

ustad wrote: post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

> It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. Why would I, as a developer whose income stream is based on advertising, intentionally cater to users who are costing me money? There is a web based on hobbyist platforms like PeerTube and Mastodon, and you can clearly see why they haven't captured the masses.

> Why would I, as a developer whose income stream is based on advertising, intentionally cater to users who are costing me money?

Thank goodness you're not a doctor.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#368

Post by joelthelion » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #365

Today I tried to start Firefox on a file:// type of url. It said the file could not be reached while I was sure it was there, as md5sum could read it. Then it turned out that because Firefox was installed using Snap, and the file was apparently on a mount point that was out of reach of Snap, the file could not be read. I think Mozilla should refuse package managers that are clearly broken.

I think people should also stop using distributions that have been pushing this broken shit for years.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#369

Post by politelemon » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 6:05 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #11

internet_points wrote: post #3

It's the closest we have to a browser not controlled by the corporate giants. Sometimes Mozilla makes unpopular choices and people raise a stink about it, but we do that because we hold them to a higher standard. With Microsoft and Google, we just expect them to Do More Evil, with Mozilla we expect Good and will complain loudly when they fail to uphold our principles, and we recommend Firefox because we feel like it…

I actually really like Safari… sometimes tabs sync across devices is buggy, reloads a lot. But other than that I’m quite content.

To continue GP's comment,

> With Microsoft and Google, we just expect them to Do More Evil, with Mozilla we expect Good

And with Safari, a loathsome browser that's intent on recreating the IE6 conditions of yore, we give it a free pass.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#370

Post by hintymad » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 6:07 PM UTC

I had two issues, possibly due to my own perception, with Firefox. One is that it still froze in the same way Netscape did: the UI had no response whatsoever and a there was a hanging process in the process viewer. Granted, it didn't happen often, but it was noticeable enough that I got back my PTSD of using Netscape back. The other is somehow Firefox still feels less responsive than Chrome. This may well be just my unfounded perception, but pager loading, typing, and opening on a new tab somehow always felt a little delay, compared to using Chrome.