Sometimes I wonder if this folks that are so aggressively against Firefox but ready to eat up on Chrome, might be just bots. I mean I hope so.
Cause otherwise we will have so many options and Google will have the best intersts for all of us 😇
Most people aren't doing fresh installs often enough to get annoyed. There's also an understanding that Mozilla will need to do things we don't necessarily like to generate revenue and stay viable. Google isn't going to fund them forever. As long as we can turn those things off and configure firefox to our liking, we can tolerate such changes.
Also, the browser engine needs to be maintained anyhow. Moving to something like Waterfox or Librewolf doesn't change the necessity to support Mozilla.
This.
I know they need to make money to thrive and compete against the competitors, but there is too much to tweak after each update. And it's really disturbing just because of how Firefox once was.
But by not doing what users need, how is it actually going to stay? Is money the only needed thing for Firefox to survive? Not users?
If every update required users to tweak something to restore a setting to a previous state, that should drive users away from firefox. I haven't had firefox as my daily since late last year (zen now) but that wasn't my experience during my decades with firefox and my fairly frequent visits to the firefox subreddit indicate that isn't the case either. I don't remember an update causing a major issue since the opt-out AI controversy (v145?) so please let me know if other updates since then have had any serious pushback with opt-out features.
I'll never switch to Chromium no matter what happens, not on an ideological basis, but because Firefox is the only browser that allows me to create duplicate bookmarks without manually copying and pasting it.
Librewolf is a good browser. Not bloated with features and doesn't have AI installed by default.
My problem with librewolf is that, despite having RFP (Resist Fingerprint) off, it doesn't allow me typing accents from my ABNT2 (Brazilian) keyboard (I cannot type words such as "ração", "óbvio", "maltês", etc, I have to type them using kde plasma then copy and paste inside the browser), as if librewolf were US-centric. The devs didn't point me a solution when I opened an issue ticket, so I went with Waterfox instead. Waterfox allows me to type accents the way I'm accustomed as a Brazilian.
Seconded. Yay for librewolf! That's my go-to browser now too.
Tho I also agree with blackbeans@lemmy.zip, we still need moz to maintain the engine. There are only 2 (?) cross platform browsers engines left.
This is the prob with the web becoming a highly complex app engine. The technical reqs to make a browser engine are so high, only a few huge companies can do it. Even MS gave up. G now has a lock on desktop browsers, esp if you count all the rest like Edge that use G's engine. That gives G monopoly power to dictate web standards. And pull hostile acts like HW attestation that could lock out open OSs like Linux unless you "authenticate" with Android or IOS.
Honestly, Chromium seems to have the basic features like history and passwords figured out way better than Firefox (or rather, Chrome does), while stripping most of the junk away, as it luckily happens to be proprietary Google bullshit.
Firefox has a bunch of telemetry and bloat, but the fact that my only real dealbreaker for a browser is quality adblock makes Firefox pretty much my only "vanilla" choice.
Imho history is fine on Both (tho I prefer ff) and passwords feels better to use on ff
I think the sponsored links, promotions and Ai efforts come from their crisis trying to make money and to depend less on Googles money. While trying to focus on privacy and not sell user data. That's a tricky situation to be in, if the browser isn't making money. I wouldn't call Firefox bloatware, as it is bloated like any other modern browser.
And it's not like I wouldn't have an issue with Firefox either. For long time I am looking for an alternative, and almost switched over to Librewolf. But unfortunately Librewolf have removed the internal password manager of Firefox, and they recommend to use an external manager. Which is the deal breaker for me. So even if Firefox is flawed, I'll stay with it and do the customization and settings myself, which is a lot.
I don't have any issue with Firefox trying to make some money by doing such things, but all these features are causing the system to use a lot of RAM too. Once we praised Firefox as being the less memory-hogging browser in Linux, but if it is going this way, not anymore.
I called it bloatware because nowadays it is filled with bloat features no matter what.
We said Vivaldi is closed source just because they didn't publish some part (the unique design) of their code.
We call Brave Bloat because of its crypto stuff.
Now Firefox has promotional links, suggestions, tracking stuff, etc.; then why not call Firefox a bloatware?
By the way, if the contract with Google ended, then why is the default search engine still Google? Also, what is perplexity doing there?
I guess its fair enough. My point was just to sympathize with Firefox a little bit, to explain their situation and why they are in it. And as said, I also have issues with Firefox, such as integration of Ai in all sort of stuff, just for the sake of Ai. So maybe I shouldn't be so defensive about it.
It was not about the contract with Google being ended, but governments involved to block Google from paying money to control the market as their default search engine. Looks like they did not block it yet. I think Mozilla wants the money, because otherwise Firefox would stop to exist. Google wants to give money too, because in the grandscheme its little money for them. But Google want to support Firefox, so they can say "look we even support our competition, we are not a monopoly, we are good".
You can re-enable the integrated password manager of librewolf, it's just a setting; be aware of the risk though
Ironfox seems to take a fair bit of RAM and spin up my fans. Even if it's one tab doing nothing.
I do have some addons and sync setup though (with the adjust canvas setting on as recommended).
Ungoogled chrome dosnt seem to have an issue. And like another commenter said so many sites break in IronFox I need backup anyway.
But maybe waterfox or zen is better for my use.
Is Ironfox on Linux too?
Nah. I should have been saying LibreWolf through the comment.
Install, change settings, use.
installing and opening Firefox seems like a time-consuming, very bloated experience.
It takes like 2 minutes to go through the settings and disable things you don't want.
filled on the homepage
Why are you exaggerating so badly?
Unmozillaed Firefox for me is also non-woke...
What?
that's why you use librewolf or waterfox (though waterfox isn't completely anti ai which is a detriment)
I look at Waterfox as the "backup" option because of things like that. It's not nearly as strong, but if a site's broken or I'm setting up a device where I don't nearly care as much, it's a decent choice that's better than base Firefox or anything Chromium-based
Kinda like Ironfox vs Fennec on Android, the former is my go-to, the latter is the backup
So many websites don't seem to work on Firefox or Librewolf, always have to keep Chrome handy somewhere
There is an extension called chrome mask on Firefox. It helps Firefox pretend to be Chrome on certain websites.
Yea few years ago but nowadays 99% of sites i visit are working well
My firefox is set to restore my last session, so I never see the homepage.
Try out Brave. AFAIK, Morphe has a patch where it unlocks the Brave Origin features for free, so you can turn off all the bloat like Brave News, Wallet etc.
You should take a look at Just The Browser, though you have to run it regularly to keep up with new Firefox releases.
Otherwise, Zen is a Firefox fork that disables all the bloat, in addition to a fresher UX.
Can we please stop the sh -c "$(curl or curl xyz.com |sh thing? If the connection is spotty, the remainder of the script can cause mayhem.
Absolutely agree on every point. I felt this for the last few years, not just with the latest updates. I haven't updated Firefox for months (a year?), and when I decided to do it after convincing my friend to switch to it because he said he couldn't find the option in settings I told him about, I was basically ~10 versions behind. So updating it and seeing the redesigned settings that looked less intuitive and completely unnecessary, I felt really frustrated.
There's a new browser in the making called Ladybird, I don't know if it's going to be available on Windows (they say the alpha is for Linux and macOS). Yeah, I am on Windows, sadly, and I don't plan on switching to Linux, yet. Mozilla was praised for being a non-profit "good guys", but they've been really annoying, perhaps trying to appeal to the mainstream. Truth is, the mainstream does NOT care about Firefox. You need to spend all your funds on marketing it, not making it uglier with each update.
You are running a browser that's months out of date? 😐
Yeah. I have automatic updates disabled, I would have to download the new version in order to update it. I am using lots of software that is years "out of date". Because they are better. The newer they are, the more bloated they are. And good things break and get deprecated. I am still on Windows 10 and I can't be bothered switching to 11. If you think that jeopardizes my security, it really isn't. My PC isn't a web server that needs constant updates to keep the service secure; I maintain backups in case things go sideways.
But it is not secured. You do you and I won't claim to know your full setup and threat model, but in 99% cases, no. There's no advantage to running out of date software in terms of security or privacy unless it's offline and air-gapped, and even then. For something like a web browser you absolutely want to keep it updated at all times. I would genuinely recommend reviewing the logic and this decision. If you don't trust the browser, use a different one. If you don't want W11, go Linux or Mac but choosing to run end-of-life software because you feel you are getting less bloatware is misinformed.
gemini protocol
Is Firefox Focus not a thing anymore?
Waterfox!
Zen browser is Firefox based and is okay. Floorp was also okay when I used it.
Haven't used stock Firefox for a while. Only on my phone when ironfox refuses to load for god-knows-why.
I would say this is most browsers from what i've seen. Just let me do my searches, stop trying to advertise to me, stop trying to get my data...and get the fuck out of the way.
Waterfox on android is a good option, much better than Firefox now
I'm quite sick of my browsers auto-updating and adding stuff I don't need.
I'm pretty much at the point where I'm going to turn browser updates off. It's perfectly functional for me as is, and if I ever hear of some crippling browser security issue I'll consider its impact myself before thinking about updating.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)