A little admiration of how easy UI customization is on Firefox, and how shitty Chromium looks.
Source: One person’s opinion on their personal Fediverse account
… Not that I disagree, mind. I’ve been on FF since like. 2007? Which was the moment I figured out that other web browsers besides IE7 existed?
Never saw reason to hop to Chrome(ium) even before I knew/cared about datamining or enshittification or any of that stuff. Back then it just looked like “another browser, that does things a bit different but has no features that entice me that Firefox lacks”. Then as I learned about the political side of things I was like “Huh, guess I’m glad for myself then!”
I used Netscape “back in the day”. With some interim transition attempts including the likes of Opera, I eventually switched to Chrome because it was genuinely more featureful and faster.
I was a happy Chrome user until they decided to deprecate manifest V2 and fuck up my ad blocker, at which point I switched to Firefox and haven’t looked back.
Everything in this industry is circular I guess.
I used Opera when it used Presto instead of becoming a yet another chromium. I miss that one.
What would you consider an authoritative source on if something looks nice?
Me, I’m the certified niceness decider
Except Firefox’s bookmark system on android is absolute crap and looks hideous.
Mobile browsers all suck.
What is your alternative? I want E2EE sync. Is vivaldi better? But honestly I wouldnt use their browser.
Firefox has E2EE sync??
Yeah
Yup
Do you have a link to that info? Would that also work with Mullvad browser?
Brave
homophobic
Full of nonremovable crypto stuff, and it comes from a very shady company and CEO
Nah its free software
Not really, they sued a group of students because they forked it.
So, no, not really.
Their building docs seem way easier than Firefoxes.
It’s also running on Chromium
Use iceraven, it’s a 🍴 of 🦊
Iceraven is a mess. Their extension list is totally random, has tons of duplicates and fundamentally incompatible ones. I went through all of them and tested them and reported what was broken and what was missing.
That alone is enough to convince me not to use their browser. Mull is based.
These are not the only two available browsers, you know?
Do you mean Safari?
Name one other browser that is not based on Chromium. If it is based on Chromium, it has to deal with what Google throws at them.
I say this as an enthusiastic Brave user. Brave is great at what it does currently, but the more terrible stuff Google builds into Chromium, the more patches they’ll have to maintain. This can make it harder to maintain their fork.
Worse than that, most Chromium-derivative users aren’t Brave users. Many web apps already don’t work as well with Firefox’ JavaScript Engine (Gecko) as they do with Chromium. This gives Google immense power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Browsers_based_on_Chromium
GNOME Web technically, based on WebKit. Idk if anyone uses that though.
GNOME Web, qutebrowser, Konquerer and Falkon. While they are pretty obscure, I personally use Falkon regularly on low end systems/RPi
qutebrowser uses chromium
Both qutebrowser and Falkon run on the QtWebEngine, essentially Chromium.
That’s true, but QtWebEngine still is it’s own thing. Essentially everything (except Gecko) is KHTML
Both OP and the author of the linked post explicitly say “Chrome”, not “Chromium”, and seem to imply those are the only two choices available to users.
If it is based on Chromium, it has to deal with what Google throws at them.
Fair point, but the engine is important.
I understand their blog post, and if I were to build a browser today, I’d probably do the same.
But that doesn’t mean this situation isn’t problematic. It’s similar to car-centric infrastructure: in this situation, for any individual, choice X makes sense, but that will make the situation even worse for the whole population. A cumulation of many tiny Prisoner’s Dilemmas.
I wrote Chromiun in the description too. Chrome is simply what people use.
Plain Chromium, even with all GUI settings, all degoogle policy configs and flags enabled, contacts Google like hell.
I tried googeeteller and its scary.
Have not tried Vivaldi for a long time, but its fingerprinting resistance was nonexistent, it is filled with useless features and has no container support, so nah.
Of course there’s other browsers! There’s Opera…uhh that now based on Chromium. Oh, how about Edge…that’s Chromium based too now. I know, there’s the KHTML engine!..no, that’s been officially discontinued.
Brave is extremely shady. Really, I used it and even created a script to install it on rpm-ostree distros, but damn that is shady.
That’s a solid criticism. Firefox + uBlock Origin or Librewolf are good desktop alternatives. But what’s the alternative on Android? Last time I checked, there wasn’t any on privacyguides.
Btw I do always turn off all their rewards and wallet stuff and follow most of the https://privacyguides.org recommendations.
Thanks for your help in making privacy-focused software available on Linux btw!
Fennec, F-Droids fork with proprietary bits removed. & uBlock of course.
Mull is even better, it’s hardened Fennec. It’s basically like LibreWolf but for Android.
Cromite is the best recommendation I can give. It is currently under consideration to be added to privacyguides.org (you can find it on their issues page on the GitHub), and it is expected to be added (as was Bromite, which is where Cromite forked from after development on Bromite was stopped). The main developer of Cromite (uazo) has actually asked the evaluation to be paused until the licensing for aac and h264 are figured out, as licenses are very expensive, and a recommendation on the PrivacyGuides website would likely draw many more users to the project, potentially causing legal trouble. You can track progress on this issue here. It’s worth noting that the dev of Cromite was an active dev of Bromite before Bromite’s lead dev abandoned the project.
I use Firefox + uBlock Origin on Android. You can still install add-ons for the app the same way you do on desktop.
Cromite has adblock. Vanadium too but it may break on on-GrapheneOS as it has security patches that break on regular android.
Mull is very fine for me, I use Vanadium and Mull, Vanadium for crappy sites (because mobile hardened firefox doesnt support as much sites as desktop for some reason). Vanadium is very likely more secure, unlike on Desktop where that is not easily said.
You know that famous The Dude meme? Applies here.
Not a chrome fan and I use Librewolf and I like how I’ve customised it. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
Personally I find it far more important that it’s not run by a company that will try its hardest to track your every movement on the web, but to each their own, I suppose.
You never tried to listen for stock Firefox’s traffic with Wireshark for sure.
People speak very good thing about Firefox but they like to hide and avoid the shady stuff. Let me give you the un-cesored version of what Firefox really is. Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances and they also do stuff like adding unique IDs to each installation.
Firefox does is a LOT of calling home. Just fire Wireshark alongside it and see how much calling home and even calling 3rd parties it does. From basic ocsp requests to calling Firefox servers and a 3rd party company that does analytics they do it all, even after disabling most stuff in Settings and config like the OP did.
I know other browsers do it as well, except for Ungoogled and because of that I’m sticking with it. I would like to avoid programs that need no snitch whenever I open them. ungoogled-chromium + ublock origin + decentraleyes + clearurls and a few others.
Now you’re free to go ahead and downvote this post as much as you would like. I’m sorry for the trouble and mental break down I may have caused by the sudden realization that Firefox isn’t as good and private after all.
Yes but no. Firefox does some creepy stuff, and I will need to verify this. But it also matters how much data websites get about you, and Ungoogled Chromium has no fingerprint protection
and Ungoogled Chromium has no fingerprint protection
More or less, but you know as we all as I do that there are extensions for that… and Ungoogled Chromium doesn’t snitch on me so…
No extension can change the core of how a browser interacts with the web, especially not with manifest v3.
I think librewolf scrubs most of that stuff out. I’m basing that off of using burpsuite’s proxy server though. On vanilla firefox it captures so much crap going out. I havent tried with wireshark though.
Librewolf is my second browser, but I don’t see me using it everyday. I like chromium rendering more and the dev tools.
Chrome devtools are just bullshit. Firefox has the better implementation imo
Let me ask you, how much do you use the dev tools and for what?
I use them for security assessments and completely agree with the other person. I find Chrome so unintuitive and ugly compared to Firefox.
Not OP, but every single day, for web development. I find them quite a bit more intuitive and easier to use then the ones Ungoogled-Chromium comes with.
That’s all true, but why take a modified chromium instead of a modified Firefox?
Also clearurls and decentraleyes would be pretty much useless with Firefox and uBlock Origin.
That’s all true, but why take a modified chromium instead of a modified Firefox?
Because chromium rendering is better than Firefox’s and I personally like the dev tools better and my usual target audience in dev uses Chrome. I have LibreWolf as the secondary browser but I don’t see me ever liking the way Firefox renders the web.
Because chromium rendering is better than Firefox
Got any examples of popular websites that render better on Chrome?
Usually it’s not about entire websites, it’s the small detail like the font rendering smoothness and a few others.
I personally prefer Firefox’s rendering, or even Edge’s old and long deprecated EdgeHTML (Trident fork) renderer.
IME Chrome performs way too much antialiasing on graphics that are not to scale, and their default font hinting technique doesn’t match Windows or even common Linux distro defaults.
It feels a lot like the enhanced speed and performance come from the shortcuts taken in the renderer, akin to Safari… except that Safari also opts to just refuse implementing new APIs and draft specs.
Text heavy sites in particular are not really that nice to read in Chrome for me personally.
Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances
So I went ahead and read that article and goodness gracious, does anybody actually read these links??? Because that link is a complete nothingburger. It’s a blog post from someone who never read a 990 before (standard nonprofit disclosure form) who thinks every other line of is proof of a scandal. But it’s not, it’s just a big word salad that is too long to read, so nobody will bother.
The most significant charge is (1) that the CEO makes too much and (2) the author doesn’t like that they contract out work to consultants who think diversity is good. Every point made, so far as I can tell:
- Have assets worth $1.1 billion as of 2021
- Mozilla spent less on “expenses” from 2021 relative to 2020
- Revenue went up over the same time
- A lot of revenue was from royalties (e.g. agreements
- They disagree with the wording on a donate form about whether Mozilla “relies” on individual donations
- The CEO made $5.6MM
- They pulled out one expense, which appears to have been training/education relating to social justice topics
- They pull out a few more individual expenses and weren’t sure what they were.
This isn’t secret documents being handed to Deep Throat in a dark parking lot. There’s no smoking gun, no smoke, just a PDF with ordinary tables of expenses and revenue, and consultants who did diversity training. If that’s shady then, get ready to be mad about every non-profit ever.
It’s a blog post from someone who never read a 990 before (standard nonprofit disclosure form) who thinks every other line of is proof of a scandal.
Only in the USA a “non profits” turns profit. 😂
Pretty sure all non-profits strive to be cash flow positive, in the United States and otherwise.
There is a distinct type called a not-for-profit.
Should Mozilla be a not-for-profit instead? Trying to figure out the upshot of that distinction as it relates to this thread.
I’ve never wiresharked my workstation to verify but I absolutely review my DNS logs on my pihole and I have never seen what you’re describing.
Go ahead then.
Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances.
I’m not going to refute this because it seems to me that article are right in several points. Also, we have to be honest, Mozilla is kind of stupid sometimes.
But if you care about the default search engine or privacy settings, you really just need to do some hardening and tweaks to make it very private in general. Chromium doesn’t have any of these settings, it even doesn’t have RFP btw.
and they also do stuff like adding unique IDs to each installation.
Looks like you can download Firefox through the Mozilla’s official HTTP/FTP repository that doesn’t trigger this ID token generation. Also this article motivates people to download Firefox installer from Softonic’s page:
Firefox users who prefer to download the browser without the unique identifier may do so in the following two ways:
- Download the Firefox installer from Mozilla’s HTTPS repository (formerly the FTP repository).
- Download Firefox from third-party download sites that host the installer, e.g., from Softonic.
Softonic have a really nice and privacy respectful privacy policy (obviously that’s not the case) in contrast with randomized pretty anonymous unique ID triggered by Firefox installer download. Mozilla’s generated ID feels more like a download counter than a tracker indeed.
I’m not trying to justify the Mozilla’s problems. They makes silly things sometimes, but being realistic, they do a better job taking care of their users privacy more than Google or even Brave.
we have to be honest, Mozilla is kind of stupid sometimes.
Yes.
Looks like you can download Firefox through the Mozilla’s official HTTP/FTP repository that doesn’t trigger this ID token generation. Also this article motivates people to download Firefox installer from Softonic’s page:
Yes, but still having to go around the main download page to get an untracked version is kind of annoying. Fuck Softonic, the rest of the information about the IDs still holds true.
Chromium-based browsers have inherently weaker extensions due to Manifest v3 and many other targeted attacks on adblockers. If you want a browser that works far better and provides a much higher level of privacy, use Mullvad Browser (worked on in collaboration with the Tor Browser, just without Tor integration) or LibreWolf. Both are Firefox forks with Firefox telemetry removed and anti-fingerprinting measures. You don’t need and absolutely should not install any extensions beyond the default installed in those 2 browsers (except perhaps a password manager), as that will dramatically damage the fingerprinting protection they provide. Both will have a much higher level of protection than you could ever realistically expect from any Chromium-based Browser.
I’d really rather have some harmless telemetry by Mozilla with a stronger ad blocker than Chromium bullshit. Ngl some people take privacy too seriously
I’m not ever going to use Mullvad Browser, I would rather use stock Firefox than that. I have LibreWolf installed as second browser and I like it at that, but I don’t see myself going away from ungoogled-chromium anytime soon.
Can we ask why you wouldn’t use Mullvad Browser? I’m honestly curious about that. From my wireshark tests, that thing only hits what you tell it to hit, nothing else. Am I missing something?
So… you don’t trust Google but you trust some shady VPN company? You aren’t wrong about quick wireshark tests, it does seem cleaner but long term trust and VPN companies are not something that go into the same sentence.
shady VPN company
First off, everything Mullvad deploys is open source, from their clients to their servers. They have been audited and checked by 3rd parties to ensure their servers are running the source code they released. They are not some “shady VPN company” like Nord. They have a continual commitment to transparency that has been tested and true for many years.
Second, MullvadVPN has very little to do with the development of the Mullvad browser. It’s just a fork of Tor Browser maintained by the Tor Project as a collaborative effort towards a uniform browser with the benefits of Tor Browser, but to be used without the Tor network. It is funded by Mullvad, but maintained mostly by the Tor Project. Do you not trust the Tor Project? The non-profit that has been open source and audited constantly throughout its lifespan? Here’s the source code on the Tor Project’s repo: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/mullvad-browser
The only Mullvad affiliation is the Mullvad extension that comes preinstalled (which you can uninstall, of course), the name, and the logo. That’s about it. No need to use their VPN, no need to buy anything from Mullvad, it’s basically just the Tor Browser without Tor.
I dont use Mullvad VPN, only the browser. I do use NordVPN when I need to show as being in another country, but mostly to circumvent geolocation and keep some stuff from my ISP. I know commercial VPNs are just switching who sees your data, but I’m good having a company that’s not my ISP and in my country looking at that. And yes, I distrust Google to no end. The same applies to Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, etc. There are not many names out there I trust. At the end of the day, anything not under your control, you need to choose how much you trust it, if at all.
I know commercial VPNs are just switching who sees your data,
Oh yeah.
And yes, I distrust Google to no end.
Me too, the reason why I use ungoogled-chromium is mostly because of that and because when you take Chrome and remove all the tracking and spyware it runs way faster ahah. There are many people and projects that came together in the ungoogled-chromium community and the source code is scrutinized and cleaned up like nothing else.
I first noticed that the installer has trackers when I uploaded it to virustotal and it didn’t recognize it. Definitely very shady. I don’t think I’ve used anything else that did this.
I guess this specifically isn’t an issue on linux anymore, but yeah you have to read through the settings. I’m sure I’ll abandon it for something better … one day …
I will never understand how people expect software to gather no telemetry or metrics whatsoever.
We did fine without it for a very long time. We still do with a lot of software. It’s called voluntarily submitting a bug report and/or core dump.
If you ask a user to show you a “core dump” they’re more likely to shit on their floor and send you a photo than do what you actually mean.
Telemetry is absolutely crucial in determining what to focus on in development, to fix issues the users might not even realize exist. Especially for projects that aim at the general public. As long as it’s communicated clearly, used truly only for development purposes and an opt-out is available there’s nothing wrong about it.
You don’t use the technical term, but you do ask.
I’m not against telemetry, I’m against making it hundreds of different hidden options.
Especially software with hundreds of millions of users, that constantly has to deal with bleeding edge attack vectors and compatibility.
I am also pretty sure Firefox is equally if not more secure than Chromium. They just got some really bad reputation for not sandboxing everything.
The only issue they have with sandboxing is on Android, as they have yet to implement per-site process isolation despite it being present on desktop Firefox and Chromium Android for many years now. I’ve been tracking the development of Project Fission on Android (Firefox’s per-site process isolation) for years now and it still isn’t even ready for testing. Additionally, Firefox Android does not use Android’s isolatedProcess flag for sandboxing, which is another area in which it is behind Chrome. For that reason, I cannot recommend Firefox on Android, and instead recommend Cromite (fork of Bromite after its development was abandoned) which is based on Chromium.
Firefox shipped sandboxing on Android years ago (before chrome) and then removed it. I’m not sure you gain much from it on Android. It eats up ram making performance crap on cheap phones and apps already run in their own app user context to isolate what they can access.
¿Por qué no los dos?
Hooray! 🌮
También tenemos que entender que hay algunos que solo entran para tener con quien discutir, porque con su esposa no se atreven, así que entran aquí a eso 🤣
Always better to argue with strangers than family.
Maybe better, certainly easier than having to sleep on the couch or in the Garage 🤣🤣🤣
Ah yes the trust worthy browser without tracking that comes with Google search by befault. lol
Browser and search engine are completely different, plus you can change it.
the great thing about foss projects, is that people fork them! try librewolf!
That tweet is so weak, how are hundreds of people here upvoting and commenting on this?
Librewolf doesn’t respect your choice in system fonts if you uncheck “Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above”. I don’t use it for that reason.
Cant you set a custom font within Librewolf?
You can but it won’t be respected. It will continue to default to their included Noto fonts despite whatever font you select. You can test this yourself. I’m sure they do it for some “privacy reason” but if I wanted that trade off I’d simply use the Tor Browser or one of those hardened firefox profiles.
Strange, no local font should not be fingerprintable.
And Waterfox looks even better also by virtue of preferences to change userChrome.css
Mind sharing screenshots?
I’ll have to get home. https://github.com/WaterfoxCo/Waterfox/blob/0068b0438b9bd6fb9761882154e7a339d96186af/waterfox/browser/locales/en-US/waterfox.ftl#L160 shows all the options, and Waterfox by default uses the older (initial quantum release) look for Firefox tabs. As a TreeStyleTab user, I love hide sidebar headers and auto-hide tabs
Can Firefox install websites as web apps?
No and thats not nice. Webapps work really well, I use hardened Chromium for Element until Firefox gets their shit together.
Just use Floorp. Gives you even easier UI customisation by allowing you to switch to the old UI via the settings, and also includes Webapp support and support for Workspaces.
That support sounds very interesting, can you attach screenshots of the webapps and workspaces?
There is a tool called webappmanager or something that I used in the past. Pretty overcomplex but works well.
Yes, but in an unsupported manner.
https://github.com/filips123/PWAsForFirefox
Or as an extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/
I use GNOME Web for webapps.
Well, there’s PWAsForFirefox
Desktop? No
Android? Yes
not using Gnome Web smh /s
Falkon Ultras!
Or just use multiple browsers? If one size fits all for you then good for you but there is no Firefox based browser that can replace Vivaldi for me. So I use both, one for my power user needs and other for private browsing (hardened Firefox, normal FF isn’t great for privacy either)
Havent used Vivaldi in some time. Have a look at floorp but of course they dont have all the addons vivaldi has like notes and stuff.
And yes, regular FF is simply a “just works” browser but with lots of stupid bloat. Librewolf is actually great as they have a modern CI/CD build pipeline and do all the hardening for you, its more sustainable and secure to share effords.
I have no idea why people use #Chrome. #Firefox looks so much better,
Reason n1: Firefox’s font rending sucks; Reasons n2: Chrome dev tools are better and way more supported by whatever ecosystem you develop in.
Chrome dev tools are better and way more supported by whatever ecosystem you develop in.
But what if you’re not a web dev?
That’s fair, but I still wouldn’t trade the amazing font rendering that chromium offers.
For frameworks treating Chromium as app development platform like Android. Firefox dev tools are much better for typical web development.
Firefox dev tools are much better for typical web development.
Not true, not even close. That was true like 15-20 years ago, but nowadays, especially when I’m debugging Angular (yes the extension for chrome is better) and developing stuff that will be used by people who go for Chrome.
You say Angular. But what else can we expect for a framework for making WebKit/Chromium apps. Angular working in Firefox is an afterthought because it has very much similar featureset.
Try these settings on Firefox in about:config
gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.enhanced_contrast = 100
gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.pixel_structure = 5
gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode = 5
gfx.font_rendering.fallback.always_use_cmaps = trueI cannot use Firefox without them. They adjust the text rendering to be more… normal, I don’t understand why they aren’t default, but maybe things change at higher resolutions (but I don’t own a 2160p monitor to test).
Cleartype is not there on my Fedora Firefox on KDE?
I’ve accidentally fell into a Linux space, my bad! This will work on Windows, I’m not sure of alternatives on Linux, I gave up using it before I could play around with Firefox.
Try looking for aliasing options under gfx.font_rendering and trying them out.
Sooo you mean “Windows has horrible font rendering” ;D I think on KDE its fine, some say GNOME is better but idk.
No, Windows has good font rendering actually. It’s very much just a Firefox issue on Windows.
No offence, but I used to think Windows had good font rendering while I was using it. That was until I started using Linux distros. Now every time I boot into Windows, I again remember how awful Windows looks in comparison - washed out, pixelated, gives me eye strain…
Linux’s looks more blurry to me, Window’s is much sharper. Maybe at different resolutions it changes though, you need less aliasing at higher res.
never in my years of using Linux have I ever thought that it was rendered clearer. let’s be honest with ourselves, no need to lie.
That’s interesting… it makes a difference indeed.
Chrome dev tools are better for JS debugging, but Firefox wins with everything else, IMO. Especially their flexbox, grid and font visualizations and debug tools are amazing.
i love firefox but honestly right now i find edge to be much more aesthetically pleasing, especially with vertical tabs and grouping. if firefox can add these two items, i’d switch to firefox in a heartbeat (and they’re already adding tab groups)
Somewhere in this thread is a userchrome.css file on how to remove the “tree style tabs” header bar.
Install that addon.
Place that file in
~/.mozilla/firefox/XXXX-default-release/chromeasUserChrome.css(create that folder).Enable legacy customization in about:config
aren’t there extensions for this?
there is sidebery but i just like the edge version more. the extension wasn’t as fluid, plus i like how i can have native profiles for work, uni, and personal built in without extensions like profile switcher, which relies on a third party program. nothing against it; and i still donate to mozilla and firefox. i’m looking forward to seeing mozilla’s approach to tab groups though.
yup vertical tabs are the dealbreaker for me, edge got me hooked. Floorp is a fork that has it, haven’t used it a ton yet but i keep hearing more about it. I’ve been using Arc which i’m enjoying.
They both use hundreds megabytes of RAM just to render my static page. But for hydrogen web chromium use ~35M. This is shitty.
(w3m use 10M and in most case for searching we only need text-based browser)
I like my Firefox more: https://i.imgur.com/AWO9ss1.png … got rid of the title bar
#sidebar-box[sidebarcommand="treestyletab_piro_sakura_ne_jp-sidebar-action"] #sidebar-header { display: none; }Add this to your userChrome.css file to hide the “Tree Style Tab” header at the top of the sidebar.
thanks! works great… here is my new userChrome.css:
/* hides the native tabs */ #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse; }
#sidebar-box[sidebarcommand=“treestyletab_piro_sakura_ne_jp-sidebar-action”] #sidebar-header { display: none; }
Double thanks.
thanks
Did the same thing, though I’m handling the tabs with Sway
