I've been thinking about this question myself. It's just a matter of time before Mozilla ends Linux support. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the whole Mozilla leadership team runs everything like a regular corporation with Windows and MS Office and Teams and uses Edge as their primary browser. We're one cost-cutting decision away from not having Firefox as an option on Linux.
What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox
91–100 of 149 posts
Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox
#92I'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…
IMO the critical factor will be whether any Chromium forks keep support for Manifest V2 alive. If yes, it will be a viable alternative to Firefox (or FF forks), but I haven't seen indication that a project will pick up the slack. A browser without proper support for uBlock Origin or similar extensions isn't a browser I'm willing to use, even if ad-blocking is integrated into the browser itself. The freedom to actuall…
It'll be gone the moment upstream drops it. Maintaining this in a fork will be a lot of work. Fortunately it's still available even in Chrome for a while, but that's just an ultimatum
Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO the critical factor will be whether any Chromium forks keep support for Manifest V2 alive. If yes, it will be a viable alternative to Firefox (or FF forks), but I haven't seen indication that a project will pick up the slack. A browser without proper support for uBlock Origin or similar extensions isn't a browser I'm willing to use, even if ad-blocking is integrated into the browser itself. The freedom to actuall…
It'll be gone the moment upstream drops it. Maintaining this in a fork will be a lot of work. Fortunately it's still available even in Chrome for a while, but that's just an ultimatum
That's my expectation too, but it makes avoiding Chrome & Chromium unavoidable.
Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox
#94There are more Gecko-based alternatives to Firefox: Mullvad Browser, Zen Browser, Floorp, GNU IceCat, next to LibreWolf. There used to be also Pulse Browser and Flock Browser.
Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So does MS Edge but you get Microsoft ads and tracking.
Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox
#96There are more Gecko-based alternatives to Firefox: Mullvad Browser, Zen Browser, Floorp, GNU IceCat, next to LibreWolf. There used to be also Pulse Browser and Flock Browser.
+1 for icecat, it's the way to go until ladybird is ready. you'll need to disable some of the default extensions to make it usable.
Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox
#97I 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…
> mainly, I'm still dependant on Mozilla no matter where I go. They are the ones actually doing the hard work of developing the browser engine You are being reasonable. Firefox is an essential application in my day. I support Mozilla directly -- in a small way, this helps to ensure that Firefox is available to me and others. Consider -- Browser Market Share Worldwide - February 2025 Chrome 66.29% Safari 18.01% Edge 5…
> I support Mozilla directly -- in a small way, this helps to ensure that Firefox is available to me and others.
Money you send to the Mozilla Foundation cannot be used on Firefox, because Firefox is a project of the Corporation and money can only flow from the Corporation to the Foundation, not vice versa. There is no way to help support Firefox development directly, Mozilla employees will always point you to buying one of the Corporation's side projects instead.
Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 this point, "marketing tarpit" seems like a pretty accurate description of Mozilla's stewardship of Firefox as well, so if I'm going to get sucked one, I'd rather it be the one that's taking a maybe untenable stand for something that I agree than the one that's trying to gaslight me about whether "disseminating user data to a third party for valuable consideration" is what most people would consider "selling user…
That is an unreal standard to hold anyone to while using Microsoft or Google products, because this wouldn't even register compared to what these companies do on a regular basis. People are just less dependent on Mozilla so moral outage doesn't feel as pointless.
Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox
#99I'm testing Zen ( https://zen-browser.app/ ) on macOS since a while back. Updates seem to lag behind the upstream by everything from 2 to 10 days. Every now and then a Zen-specific update shows up. So far the experience has been good. I don't know how true to their word of protecting privacy the authors really are, as my web proxy shows that the browser connects with Google infrastructure at sporadic intervals throug…
I think most FF forks are dependent on Google Safe Browsing and some of Googles DRM services.
Re: What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox
#100I moved to LibreWolf - https://librewolf.net/
How are they funded? Or, in other words, how do we know they won't end up in the same situation?
I respect what they do, but it's a bunch of patches and scripts on top of Firefox, maybe less demanding that the real deal. Also:
> no donations means no expectations
Which is very healthy way to take care of a personal project. And if Firefox ever closes, all the forks will have to close at the same time anyway.