The title is err, not correct because the top 2 alternatives Opera and Arc are based on Chromium engine. I have seen tons of people swear by Arc, but I am seriously asking (since as a Linux user I can’t use it), how much good can a browser be in this day and age if ultimately it’s ad blocking breaks and it will since Manifest v2 will go soon(unless Arc folks have a solution for it)
The rest alternatives are Firefox, Zen (FF fork but honestly Atleast this was something new I learned from this article) and Tor (which is weird since it is not meant for normal web browsing and using it will not only be slow but put additional strain on the nodes, correct me if I am wrong).
Do any of these sync with the Firefox Android app? Or do they have their own?
Firefox sync works on all Firefox forks (I’m using LibreWolf on Linux and Fennec on Android for example)
Same here, best combo
Firedragon (a Floorp-Firefox mod) has its own sync server by default. But “Share/Send to” from Android Firefox to PC Firedragon works out of the box.
Oh wow, thanks! How do they sustain the hosting costs? Donations?
You’re welcome.
I don’t know about hosting costs. I do know that Firedragon is a side project of Garuda Linux, a volunteer-developed distro with a Donate page.
Don’t tempt me into distro-hopping again ;)
Did Fennec resurrect?
Was it dead? If it was: Yes. Last update 15d ago (on the F-Droid version).
It was. I was using it for a year or two until a couple of months ago when it seemed abandoned. Moved to IronFox in the meantime.
Good to hear it’s up and running. Thanks!
Anyone have any thought on Orion? I know it lets you use chrome and Firefox extensions and safari/macos features. Is this the right direction or a triple hitter of danger?
No Linux or Android support, so I literally can’t tell you.
I use Firefox and Firefox forks.
That’s what I was assuming till I got curious. I found this an hour later I posted my first comment: https://lemm.ee/post/52205220 About a year ago they started working on a Linux version. I think I saw a GitHub repo on a quick search.
If they make a flatpak available, I’ll give it a shot.
Linux
GitHub
Org here. They have four repos:
- Notes - readme and a license, no code
- iOS app open - blank readme
- DarkMode - <30 line script
- Programmable buttons - random macOS-specific XML files, no actual code
I hope that changes, but for now their repo is essentially empty.
Of that list, Zen is the only one really worth considering. And then you have the “but the best one that supports widevine” issue.
Firefox is still great, and Tor Browser is fantastic.
I’m personally checking out Mullvad Browser.
Tor is good for onion sites, but do people use it for general web browsing? Wouldn’t it be super slow?
Yes, and you should too because more “natural” traffic helps protect people who need it (journalists, political dissidents, etc). For mostly text content, it’s fine.
Sure, if you want to wait 3 minutes for your all-text site to load.
Zen is also being developed by an asshole who doesn’t even understand the code he’s working on, by his own admission. I wonder if he’s fixed the backdoor he added to it yet.
I didn’t see Waterfox mentioned in the article or comments, so I’m giving it a shout out now. Firefox is still my #1 browser, which I have synced to all my critical accounts, and use very cautiously, only using a few trustwothy extensions. However, when I want to explore unfamiliar domains or experiment with lesser-known browser extensions, I’ve relied on the equally dependable Waterfox browser. It’s fast, free, and 99% the same as Firefox except it’s a completely different app so you can basically have 2 Firefoxes set up and customized for completely different roles. Between the two, I can keep Chrome frozen on my phone and off my desktop (although I have a portable Chromium on USB for emergencies).
You do know Firefox has profiles you can use to effectively make it two (or more) separate browsers?
Not shitting on Waterfox, just FYI.
Chrome !=Chromium. The tite is correct.
Google could close the Chromium source at any time. There might be promises and provisions that they’ll never do that, but if they do, who has the money to sue them? And who, of those, can’t be bought?
“So what, people can run with the last good codebase!”
Sure, until there’s a critical bug that Google don’t publish which then cripples Chromium until the maintainers figure it out, or else Google (deliberately or otherwise) take web standards down an unexpected path requiring massive changes, also making life hard for the fork maintainers.
And don’t say “that’ll never happen”. Need I gesture broadly at the state of the world?
Whatever. Chromium is not Chrome, at the moment, so the title is correct. What may happen in 2,5 or 10 years from now is largely irrelevant at this time.
Nobody is going to ditch their favourite browser (or any other tool) because of the rants of some random netizen/website.
Strawman.
Your argument is that Chrome and Chromium are bad
The discussion being had is that Chrome != Chromium
My roof and my walls are not the same thing, but if demolish my walls, will my roof hover there magically?
I really don’t know what’s so difficult about this. It does’t matter what happens to the walls or roof, the fact remains that they’re not the same thing. I mean unless you take your roof off and make it a wall and vise versa, then yes!
Ironically, I could not reach the end of the list because the fucking ads kept reloading the page and scrolling me to the top. Anyone know which of these 6 would block that?
Anything Firefox based with uBlock origin. Don’t see a single ad or anything on mine.
I saw a thing for their newsletter and some related articles. But that’s it. uBlock Origin FTW.
Additionally I have noscript extension so no JavaScript running as well
Chrome is not the same thing as Chromium.
Its as good as. when Google decides to remove manifest v2 support, it is removed from chromium, right?
Putting aside whether it’s “as good as”, it’s still not.
Ok. But what’s the problem with chrome right now? They’re killing ad block. But they’re not actually, chromium is.
So anytime someone says “I’m leaving chrome because they suck for killing ad block” they mean “I’m leaving chromium because they suck for killing ad block”.
Does that clarification help then?
There is no clarification required. Nothing you said indicates that Chrome = Chromium.
Chrome in a trench coat, if you will
I’ve really been enjoying Vivaldi. It’s also Chromium-based. It’s easy to customize and it has really good tab management. You can group tabs into workspaces, open split panes, and – this one I really appreciate – you can stack tabs by domain. Added bonus is that the company behind it, Vivaldi Technologies, is Norwegian, which ticks the ‘shop European’ box for me.
As for ad blocking, the shittiness of manifest v3 made me look at options outside the browser rather than rely on extensions. These days I pass all my traffic through adguard, which filters out ads from the request responses. All in all this has been a positive step, because now I can play around with any browser without ever seeing ads.
Gotta say, it’s kind of a bummer to be downvoted for sharing my own experience. Are those ‘disagree’ or ‘doesn’t contribute to discussion’ votes?
I’ll link an unpopular opinion I posted yesterday: https://lemm.ee/post/59167603
My own comment has been: “Don’t you dare to have opinions that don’t align with mainstream thinking here”.
Here either you praise Mozilla/Firefox/Gecko or you are insulted and treated like a pest. And that’s a deterrent for me to even look at Mozilla/Firefox/Gecko. I prefer not to be part of that community.
And that’s a deterrent for me to even look at Mozilla/Firefox/Gecko. I prefer not to be part of that community.
That’s a very childish mentality. You don’t have to be part of a community. It’s just a browser.
Let me rephrase it, then: I prefer not to give market share or voice to Mozilla and their shitty community. I consider FF a mediocre browser anyway.
And I didn’t insult you, so you can shove that “childish” elsewhere.
I didn’t see it as an insult… The mindset of, “I don’t like the people who like x, so I won’t even try x before trashing it,” is objectively childish.
They’re “how dare you tout a chromium browser” votes. The FF circlejerk is and has been crazy for a while now
It’s not crazy. Google is doing the damndest to destroy the internet as we know it and using those browsers makes you complicit in that destruction.
Don’t take it to heart, bro. I saw people downwoting for an honest “thanks”. 😄
I like Vivaldi but all the manifest V3 stuff just pushed me to Librewolf for everything whether it works or not, so maybe I should “thank” Google
I’ll second Vivaldi! There’s no other browser with that kind of tab and workspace management. It’s how my brain works. The mobile app is great too with tab groups and the sync between the two is fast. I keep Librewolf on my laptop as well for the odd website that only likes FF.
DNS blocking (such as AdGuard) doesn’t work for everything. Ad blocking extensions are the only way to block YouTube ads in your browser as far as I know.
AdGuard does more than DNS blocking. It strips ads from the response content.
Haven’t seen a single YT ad
I only know the DNS blocking from them.
ETA: Not sure if their app does more.
It does.
AdGuard (the app, not the extension or the DNS) should do it. I guess.
Vivaldi is great, but because of manifest v3 i’m looking for alternatives. Firefox is not an alternative for me because of the privacy stuff they changed recently.
ZDnet 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
Great opportunity to mention Brave is owned by a dipshit right-wing homophobe.
And funded by a right-wing billionaire who owns the largest corporate intelligence agency on the planet. Your data is not safe with Brave.
Except your data not being safe with Brave doesn’t depend on who owns it. It’s a technical conclusion that should follow from technical traits of a system. Those are such that using a modern web browser to do modern web things is not secure period.
You identify as a liberal politically, don’t you?
Always has been.
Right beside the fact that their monetary model relies on user activity tracking. Yet they advertise privacy.
A browser that had a seemingly unlimited budget for advertising before it even had users is suspicious as hell.
I’ve never trusted brave.
Firefox
Firefox
Firefox
Firefox derivatives
…I may get some hate for this but Safari is superior IMO. Especially with the private relay I get with my iCloud+ plan.
Yep. Edge for work, Safari for personal.
lol why are people downvoting this? Safari is a great browser.
People just love to hate on Apple. The true premier US American company.
Me using Firefox until Orion comes out:
Orion will be restricted to Apple ecosystems, no?
It currently is, but they are shipping a Linux version this year.
Honestly I wish Kagi would build their own full Firefox fork and maintain it independently. I already pay for search, I wouldn’t mind paying for my browser if it actually respected me!
mullvad’s browser is based on firefox.
Hm…not sure, if I want to support another Webkit browser
We need more diversity in web engines
Arc is very nice for my workflow, quite a different take on what a browser can be. But I’d say you’re not missing out too much as it’s, unfortunately, no longer in active development.
They still update chromium regularly, but they’re no longer working on functionality or bug fixes because it’s “done” or something. 🤷♂️
I am surprised they abandoned it. It was originally launched as a macOS variant only, correct? And Mac users praised it a lot, on the Web. I thought with that level of traction they will keep going.
In contrast, there are projects that have a much lower user base though vocal (read: Pale Moon) and despite struggling with half of the available modern Web pages, those projects still keep going.
Yeah I was surprised as well, but apparently they’re working in a new browser.
It’s an interesting approach where you can take all the learnings from the first product and then put it into a follow-up product.
I hope they’re continuing the ARC direction, just not based on Chromium. But I’m afraid they’re going all in on some sort of AI browser…
Afaik they are going headfirst into the AI craze, which I imagine won’t improve the experience, and will probably cost money to use.
TBF the AI features in Arc are actually pretty good! Just quality of life-stuff like renaming downloads and getting summary previews when hovering search results. I have a suspicion they’ll push it farther with Dia, though…
Yea, the way they talk about Dia really puts me off.
Opera is and always was trash.
I beg to differ, when Opera had its own engine and wasn’t Chinese owned - back in the early '00s.
this era of the internet was such a fun time.
I suspect that we may be looking back with rose tinted glasses, but the main stream internet is pretty crap atm
Opera was so good. Disable images, force custom CSS, gestures! Stuff no one else had at the time.
And the ability to switch browser engines on the fly. That was a great feature.
User agent spoofing, tabs back when nobody had them, sidebar…
And it has some options to interpret data following strict W3C standards. Which was incredibly helpful when learning, as it encouraged me (and a lot of others) to don’t go down the IE/Netscape and later Chrome “specialities” road. (Yes,I am that old…I still remember MS fucking FrontPage)
Yeah I was 100% Opera on desktop and mobile until they switched to chromium and broke everything from before. Still pissed about that, lost all my bookmarks and notes at one point.
Opera also was a good alternative on Symbian phones right or whatever OS Nokia used before they switched to Windows Phone, I think.
Opera mini was also great when I had very little MBs of internet traffic in my plan. Nowadays I have pretty much infinite traffic, so I haven’t used it in ages
I think I remember Opera Mini’s layout though I didn’t much use it. It was a great alternative especially on mobile more than a decade back.
But yes especially after changing ownership, switching browser engines and years down the line; things have changed.
I think I gave their desktop variant a try sometime ago but didn’t find it compelling enough. I haven’t even used their Android fork. I keep using a Firefox fork only :p.
Opera Corp. is Norvegian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(company)
The browser was sold to Chinese investors though.
As someone who used Opera 2002-2013 (Presto era), I quibble with the “always”.
But I do not quibble with the “is”.
I loved opera back then.
Exactly. I loved Opera and bailed when they abandoned their engine.
Yeah, me too. Never used it since.
So I was glad when Opera co-founder von Tetzchner announced Vivaldi, and I did use it for a couple of years. But I don’t want to become dependent on something not completely FLOSS, so lately using mainly Firefox mods like Floorp, Zen and Firedragon.
My history w/ browsers:
- IE - everyone started here
- Firefox - switched once I heard about it
- Chrome - when it came out, it was fast, which was cool
- Opera - switched as soon as I heard about it; was about as fast as Chrome
- Firefox - switched when Opera became a Chromium browser
Since I came from old IE days and started my career having to backport stuff to IE, I care a lot about engine competition, because IE owning everything made everything worse. So that’s still my #1 concern today, hence why I use Firefox.
I do dabble with Firefox forks though. I use Fennec on my phone, am trying out Mullvad on my laptop, etc. But I’m going to stay within the Gecko-family of browsers until a viable alternative to Blink (Chrome’s engine) emerges (e.g. Servo or LadyBird).
Same for ZDNet.
Many sites have become worse. I think stuff like Cnet, PCMag (which still has a digital magazine I think)were much better in the previous era.
Yep. Dont use Opera. They are known for being an incredibly scummy company that has done illegal things. Im 98% sure opera gx is spyware
It was an excellent standalone install porn browser for a couple of decades. God seed Opera… God speed.
