Let’s try LibreWolf, Floorp and Zen until Mozilla decides they want to make a browser again
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Been using LibreWolf for a few months and before that just regular Firefox with the ArkenFox user.js.
Basically the exact same experience just with the peace of mind I won’t end up with some weird Ai crap after an update.
Just downloaded it now with flatpak. I’m pleased that it looks and feels pretty much the same. Just more to the point. Exactly what I want.
Last I know they were still debating whether they’ll remove the AI or not
Here’s the issue of the discussion:
Ethics is just politics with a less unpleasant name. Personally, I don’t feel a browser should be political. Anything that’s political forces a choice, or perhaps the lack of choice, on the user. IMO the user should always have a choice.
So for me, AI should be opt-in and disabled by default, BUT I’d like the option to enable it when I choose, whether that’s through the AI or through ‘librewolf.overrides.cfg’ doesn’t matter.
The one sane voice in that thread
Zen is really good but I’ve found it likes to crash my Gnome session when it’s open at the same time as regular Firefox. It also likes to crash my Gnome session at random. Other than that I really like it, I’ll try it again soon
I had a girlfriend like that. She liked to beat me up and give me a few kicks in the ribs, but other than that, she was lovely.
(just kidding)
Gnome moment /hj
Everyone always whines about anything Mozilla does with Firefox. These additions are at least much less intrusive than their addition of Pocket.
And Pocket isn’t very intrusive either, is the point you were trying to make, right?
To my knowledge, it’s the recommendations on about:home, which can easily be disabled, and then just a glorified bookmark to access Pocket. If you want it gone from the UI, set
extensions.pocket.enabledto false in about:config.
Forks are pretty valuable to Firefox development, and it’s helpful for Firefox marketshare too because they use the same UA as Firefox, so website must support Firefox.
Even Firefox devs said they observe Firefox forks to see their idea and bring back to Firefox, just compare recent new features of Firefox to Zen/Floorp, you would see that the idea of:
- Profile Manager is from Zen/Floorp
- Vertical Tab is from Zen/Floorp
- Sidebar is from Zen/Floorp
And many small things.
I’m glad that forks are becoming a thing, again. The community (including myself) have slacked off for far too long, just taking it for granted that a browser was provided to them.
And people got seriously offended by any choice Mozilla made, even though the source code is right there. I get that not everyone has the skill to modify the source code, but enough people do that we should be able to cover various different preferences.
Would be even cooler, if the grassroots community started pushing the browser forward more, rather than just doing things different from Mozilla, but it’s a good first step.
Palemoon was a thing for a long time before Librewolf and such
Oh yeah, I wasn’t trying to say no forks existed beforehand. There just weren’t as many active ones.
I’ve been running into more and more bugs with Zen, often around tab management.
- The other day I tried moving some tabs between windows and the tabs just disappeared. They were still accessible with CTRL+tab but otherwise hidden.
- It seems to make new tabs randomly when closing other tabs.
- The workspaces are confusing and linked to individual browser windows. If you move out of a workspace, you can’t get it back unless you open it in the same window you left it from.
Might switch back to Firefox and wait for more development, or Firefox’s native vertical tabs.
Cool experiment nonetheless
If any of those would be available on iOS, I would.
It literally doesn’t matter what you use on iOS, as everything uses WebKit.
Not anymore.
Only in the EU which only happened because Apple was forced to do so
Only in EU, the rest of the world is still stuck with WebKit. Apple geo locked App Store, so it only works for EU users.
Good enough for me. Maybe pressure your politicians to follow suit?
Or I could not use iOS
Been using Floorp for about a year. Been good so far, though I’m definitely just a casual user.
Zen is very good
I just wish it had normal top bar tabs (or maybe it does and I haven’t found the option), because I love the overall style, but vertical tabs take up too much space after widening the side bar enough to see the tab names easily.
Those are all Firefox based…
You currently only have three choices in web rendering engine, unless you want to go REALLY esoteric:
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Blink
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WebKit
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Gecko
Blink is Chromium, meaning Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Arc, Vivaldi, ug-c, Konqueror, etc. It is built, maintained, and controlled by Google, and currently has an approximately 81% market share on the internet.
WebKit is Safari, and is only really usable on Apple products (and is the only engine available on Apple’s mobile products outside the EU). It enjoys about a 9% market share as a result of its wide install base.
Gecko is developed by the Mozilla Foundation for Firefox, yes. But if you want any sort of web independence, you have to have a browsing engine that is not controlled by a major corporation. Otherwise, you’re just going to have a duopoly that can make whatever web decisions they want to.
I don’t really consider Firefox soft forks to be alternatives. I use librewolf but I consider myself a Firefox user. In reality you could make Firefox work exactly like all of these browsers with just config changes
Maybe so, but I would say they’re more alternatives to Firefox than any of the Chromium forks are to Chrome (except Arc, I guess) by nature of the fact that you don’t have to strip telemetry out of the Gecko codebase in order to ship a private fork.
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