Hey Lemmy, what browser do you use and why?
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I'm what's known as a chronic hopper. I'm always on the lookout for new software, especially when it comes to browsers and Linux distros, but I'm here to ask you about browsers specifically. I'm fairly sure I know most of them, but I want to really know why you run what you do. In return, I will give you my experiences with the browsers that I have tried and why I hopped from them if I did.
Don't feel the need to read the list. I'll be more than happy to just hear your answers!
- Firefox: One of the grand-daddy browsers. I honestly didn't hop from it due to anything specific, but more that I've used it so much that I needed a change.
- Chrome: I used this very little. Just being on it made my skin crawl. However, I still keep it around in a container because some sites straight up tell you that you have to use it to access their dashboards or application forms. While that is now much less these days (as most things will now ask for Chrome or Firefox now), it still does happen, especially on dated government sites that get updated like... once a decade...
- Opera GX: Yup, I fell into the hype. I think I used this for all of a month before recognizing it as over-engineered and needlessly bloated. It pulls you in with gimmicks and pretty lights and that's pretty much all it has. A browser that's literally built on smoke and mirrors and pushy advertising.
- Brave: There's been a lot of huff about Brave lately, but back when it launched and wasn't very mainstream it was the smoothest and a relatively more secure browser than the competition. There was a time when nearly everyone ran Brave. The problem started when they began to opt you into gimmicks and extra things you didn't need without your permission. That was a turnoff for me. I outed before things really went downhill.
-Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I've never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it's core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It's fairly vetted and trusted from what I've researched. - Vivaldi: Still one of my favorite browsers when I went back to Windows, but probably has the most bugs I've seen in any browser. It got better once they swapped to React portals, but Vivaldi (Windows version) would occasionally freeze my whole PC or else I'd BSOD. This was a combination of the browser's stability and making my own custom CSS for it, but overall it frustrated me more than other browsers.
- Qutebrowser: Still one of my favorites, and a must-have for me even if its not my main browser. I was diving into the Vimium extension for Firefox, which in turn led me to Neovim, which led me to Qutebrowser. There's a few main points as to why I don't use it as my go-to. First, its not very good at squashing first-party ads. Even though you can combo custom ad block lists, Brave adblock, and python-adblock, it just can't seem to get them all. Second, I rely on my history when browsing YouTube and if you want to get around ads, your best bet is to write a custom shortcut that opens links in MPV/VLC. There are Greasemonkey scripts that should increase ad speed to a fraction of a second and auto-skip, but none of them ever worked for me and most are ancient.
- Nyxt: My next logical step after Qutebrowser was Nyxt. However, I've never managed to figure out how to work it. I haven't really done any extensive bug testing, but when it opens its just a blank window and there's not much I could find for documentation on it. Part of me wonders if there's something that only trusted people know that gets it working, the other part wonders if I'm just missing some sort of library or dependency. From here I went back to Floorp for a while.
-Zen: I was very excited when I found this browser. Another Firefox fork, it aims to be much like Arc browser, but adds a lot more on top of that. However, in recent months I find they've become a little too ambitious. If you asked me two months ago, I would tell you that Zen felt just as smooth as Floorp, but these days its much, much laggier. The scrolling is choppy, the pages load slow. I use the same exact extensions on Zen as I do Floorp and the difference now is night and day. I've also tested this on fresh, no-extras no-extension installations and the results are the same. Zen tends to change things and instead of letting the user opt into the additions or changes, they force the changes in their updates. That type of development model just isn't really for me. I don't want to have to re-figure out how to use my browser every few days.
So there it is. I hop a LOT. Honorable mention is Ladybird and I've tested it a little. It is extremely alpha, being just a portal with the basics you need for browsing, but I'm amazed at what they've done so far and very excited for it's release. For now I've returned to Floorp and am very happy with it. I'm very curious to know why you like what you do, whether its just because its what you've used for a long time or if there's something that you can't do without.
Also, please excuse me if this question has been asked before. I didn't want to necro an old post and I want to be able to reply and ask more questions! I've seen many posts discussing a single browser, but I want a more general view. I'm very interested, because the Lemmy community often values their privacy and their rights, which is a major factor in choosing software for me.
Edit: I feel like I'm answering very quickly, but want you to know that I'm not a bot nor using AI. I type at 110wpm in Dvorak. Typing is a huge hobby of mine and would never use AI to do something I love to do for me. I'm set on getting to 200wpm (100 was my first goal). That being said, I can't answer everyone, so I'm sorry if I missed your reply!
Waterfox because of the UI customizations and built-in vertical tree-style sidebar without needing to fiddle with userchrome.css everytime, as well as automatic Betterfox (Firefox config for speed and privacy) and the settings ToC
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Waterfox because of the UI customizations and built-in vertical tree-style sidebar without needing to fiddle with userchrome.css everytime, as well as automatic Betterfox (Firefox config for speed and privacy) and the settings ToC
I almost forgot about Waterfox, which is strange because it was one of the first if not the first Firefox fork, if I'm remembering right.
-
I'm what's known as a chronic hopper. I'm always on the lookout for new software, especially when it comes to browsers and Linux distros, but I'm here to ask you about browsers specifically. I'm fairly sure I know most of them, but I want to really know why you run what you do. In return, I will give you my experiences with the browsers that I have tried and why I hopped from them if I did.
Don't feel the need to read the list. I'll be more than happy to just hear your answers!
- Firefox: One of the grand-daddy browsers. I honestly didn't hop from it due to anything specific, but more that I've used it so much that I needed a change.
- Chrome: I used this very little. Just being on it made my skin crawl. However, I still keep it around in a container because some sites straight up tell you that you have to use it to access their dashboards or application forms. While that is now much less these days (as most things will now ask for Chrome or Firefox now), it still does happen, especially on dated government sites that get updated like... once a decade...
- Opera GX: Yup, I fell into the hype. I think I used this for all of a month before recognizing it as over-engineered and needlessly bloated. It pulls you in with gimmicks and pretty lights and that's pretty much all it has. A browser that's literally built on smoke and mirrors and pushy advertising.
- Brave: There's been a lot of huff about Brave lately, but back when it launched and wasn't very mainstream it was the smoothest and a relatively more secure browser than the competition. There was a time when nearly everyone ran Brave. The problem started when they began to opt you into gimmicks and extra things you didn't need without your permission. That was a turnoff for me. I outed before things really went downhill.
-Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I've never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it's core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It's fairly vetted and trusted from what I've researched. - Vivaldi: Still one of my favorite browsers when I went back to Windows, but probably has the most bugs I've seen in any browser. It got better once they swapped to React portals, but Vivaldi (Windows version) would occasionally freeze my whole PC or else I'd BSOD. This was a combination of the browser's stability and making my own custom CSS for it, but overall it frustrated me more than other browsers.
- Qutebrowser: Still one of my favorites, and a must-have for me even if its not my main browser. I was diving into the Vimium extension for Firefox, which in turn led me to Neovim, which led me to Qutebrowser. There's a few main points as to why I don't use it as my go-to. First, its not very good at squashing first-party ads. Even though you can combo custom ad block lists, Brave adblock, and python-adblock, it just can't seem to get them all. Second, I rely on my history when browsing YouTube and if you want to get around ads, your best bet is to write a custom shortcut that opens links in MPV/VLC. There are Greasemonkey scripts that should increase ad speed to a fraction of a second and auto-skip, but none of them ever worked for me and most are ancient.
- Nyxt: My next logical step after Qutebrowser was Nyxt. However, I've never managed to figure out how to work it. I haven't really done any extensive bug testing, but when it opens its just a blank window and there's not much I could find for documentation on it. Part of me wonders if there's something that only trusted people know that gets it working, the other part wonders if I'm just missing some sort of library or dependency. From here I went back to Floorp for a while.
-Zen: I was very excited when I found this browser. Another Firefox fork, it aims to be much like Arc browser, but adds a lot more on top of that. However, in recent months I find they've become a little too ambitious. If you asked me two months ago, I would tell you that Zen felt just as smooth as Floorp, but these days its much, much laggier. The scrolling is choppy, the pages load slow. I use the same exact extensions on Zen as I do Floorp and the difference now is night and day. I've also tested this on fresh, no-extras no-extension installations and the results are the same. Zen tends to change things and instead of letting the user opt into the additions or changes, they force the changes in their updates. That type of development model just isn't really for me. I don't want to have to re-figure out how to use my browser every few days.
So there it is. I hop a LOT. Honorable mention is Ladybird and I've tested it a little. It is extremely alpha, being just a portal with the basics you need for browsing, but I'm amazed at what they've done so far and very excited for it's release. For now I've returned to Floorp and am very happy with it. I'm very curious to know why you like what you do, whether its just because its what you've used for a long time or if there's something that you can't do without.
Also, please excuse me if this question has been asked before. I didn't want to necro an old post and I want to be able to reply and ask more questions! I've seen many posts discussing a single browser, but I want a more general view. I'm very interested, because the Lemmy community often values their privacy and their rights, which is a major factor in choosing software for me.
Edit: I feel like I'm answering very quickly, but want you to know that I'm not a bot nor using AI. I type at 110wpm in Dvorak. Typing is a huge hobby of mine and would never use AI to do something I love to do for me. I'm set on getting to 200wpm (100 was my first goal). That being said, I can't answer everyone, so I'm sorry if I missed your reply!
wrote on last edited by [email protected]No one mentioned Floorp yet, so I guess it's on me.
It's Firefox, but with more customization options right out of the box. I also have an ungoogled Chromium on standby for those sites unwilling to work well with Firefox (and forks).
EDIT:
Oh, it's mentioned in the OP:
- Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I’ve never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it’s core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It’s fairly vetted and trusted from what I’ve researched.
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I hear you. It really is that smooth. Some may disagree, but I don't think there's anything wrong in choosing Brave. Just be sure to go through your settings and make certain that there's nothing on that you don't want on. They have a tendency to do that to their users.
I believe there was an update a while back that even turned things on that had been turned off by the user previously, but they claim it was an accident. But with any browser you should always keep an eye on your settings after updating, anyway.
What exactly is confusing you? Is it the obsession with cryptocurrency? Yes, the Brave browser is filled with crypto stuff, but it still works quite well
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No one mentioned Floorp yet, so I guess it's on me.
It's Firefox, but with more customization options right out of the box. I also have an ungoogled Chromium on standby for those sites unwilling to work well with Firefox (and forks).
EDIT:
Oh, it's mentioned in the OP:
- Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I’ve never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it’s core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It’s fairly vetted and trusted from what I’ve researched.
Yeah, Floorp is my go-to right now. Its incredibly lightweight and has a lot of customization for how smooth it is. I am liking Librewolf though, just from how completely stripped down it is. There's barely anything unneeded in the options, its crazy. I think I'll still mainly use Floorp, though.
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What exactly is confusing you? Is it the obsession with cryptocurrency? Yes, the Brave browser is filled with crypto stuff, but it still works quite well
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Ah, no that's not it at all. I gotta see if I can look back to what happened. I think it was the Brave Rewards auto-contribute, though I'm seeing things like it accessing webcams without explicit permission. Ah, wait, it was the VPN. In 2023 they made an update that installed a paid VPN service on user's computers as well as turning on telemetry even for users that had turned it off. That caused a huge stir.
They also have a long loooong history of putting ads into their browser and their homepage and keeping the revenue, selling scraped data, and leaking DNS queries in their built in TOR browser from what I'm reading here.
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Yeah, Floorp is my go-to right now. Its incredibly lightweight and has a lot of customization for how smooth it is. I am liking Librewolf though, just from how completely stripped down it is. There's barely anything unneeded in the options, its crazy. I think I'll still mainly use Floorp, though.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Same with Floorp. Was using Zen for a short time but the ui was buggy as shit.
-
I'm what's known as a chronic hopper. I'm always on the lookout for new software, especially when it comes to browsers and Linux distros, but I'm here to ask you about browsers specifically. I'm fairly sure I know most of them, but I want to really know why you run what you do. In return, I will give you my experiences with the browsers that I have tried and why I hopped from them if I did.
Don't feel the need to read the list. I'll be more than happy to just hear your answers!
- Firefox: One of the grand-daddy browsers. I honestly didn't hop from it due to anything specific, but more that I've used it so much that I needed a change.
- Chrome: I used this very little. Just being on it made my skin crawl. However, I still keep it around in a container because some sites straight up tell you that you have to use it to access their dashboards or application forms. While that is now much less these days (as most things will now ask for Chrome or Firefox now), it still does happen, especially on dated government sites that get updated like... once a decade...
- Opera GX: Yup, I fell into the hype. I think I used this for all of a month before recognizing it as over-engineered and needlessly bloated. It pulls you in with gimmicks and pretty lights and that's pretty much all it has. A browser that's literally built on smoke and mirrors and pushy advertising.
- Brave: There's been a lot of huff about Brave lately, but back when it launched and wasn't very mainstream it was the smoothest and a relatively more secure browser than the competition. There was a time when nearly everyone ran Brave. The problem started when they began to opt you into gimmicks and extra things you didn't need without your permission. That was a turnoff for me. I outed before things really went downhill.
-Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I've never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it's core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It's fairly vetted and trusted from what I've researched. - Vivaldi: Still one of my favorite browsers when I went back to Windows, but probably has the most bugs I've seen in any browser. It got better once they swapped to React portals, but Vivaldi (Windows version) would occasionally freeze my whole PC or else I'd BSOD. This was a combination of the browser's stability and making my own custom CSS for it, but overall it frustrated me more than other browsers.
- Qutebrowser: Still one of my favorites, and a must-have for me even if its not my main browser. I was diving into the Vimium extension for Firefox, which in turn led me to Neovim, which led me to Qutebrowser. There's a few main points as to why I don't use it as my go-to. First, its not very good at squashing first-party ads. Even though you can combo custom ad block lists, Brave adblock, and python-adblock, it just can't seem to get them all. Second, I rely on my history when browsing YouTube and if you want to get around ads, your best bet is to write a custom shortcut that opens links in MPV/VLC. There are Greasemonkey scripts that should increase ad speed to a fraction of a second and auto-skip, but none of them ever worked for me and most are ancient.
- Nyxt: My next logical step after Qutebrowser was Nyxt. However, I've never managed to figure out how to work it. I haven't really done any extensive bug testing, but when it opens its just a blank window and there's not much I could find for documentation on it. Part of me wonders if there's something that only trusted people know that gets it working, the other part wonders if I'm just missing some sort of library or dependency. From here I went back to Floorp for a while.
-Zen: I was very excited when I found this browser. Another Firefox fork, it aims to be much like Arc browser, but adds a lot more on top of that. However, in recent months I find they've become a little too ambitious. If you asked me two months ago, I would tell you that Zen felt just as smooth as Floorp, but these days its much, much laggier. The scrolling is choppy, the pages load slow. I use the same exact extensions on Zen as I do Floorp and the difference now is night and day. I've also tested this on fresh, no-extras no-extension installations and the results are the same. Zen tends to change things and instead of letting the user opt into the additions or changes, they force the changes in their updates. That type of development model just isn't really for me. I don't want to have to re-figure out how to use my browser every few days.
So there it is. I hop a LOT. Honorable mention is Ladybird and I've tested it a little. It is extremely alpha, being just a portal with the basics you need for browsing, but I'm amazed at what they've done so far and very excited for it's release. For now I've returned to Floorp and am very happy with it. I'm very curious to know why you like what you do, whether its just because its what you've used for a long time or if there's something that you can't do without.
Also, please excuse me if this question has been asked before. I didn't want to necro an old post and I want to be able to reply and ask more questions! I've seen many posts discussing a single browser, but I want a more general view. I'm very interested, because the Lemmy community often values their privacy and their rights, which is a major factor in choosing software for me.
Edit: I feel like I'm answering very quickly, but want you to know that I'm not a bot nor using AI. I type at 110wpm in Dvorak. Typing is a huge hobby of mine and would never use AI to do something I love to do for me. I'm set on getting to 200wpm (100 was my first goal). That being said, I can't answer everyone, so I'm sorry if I missed your reply!
LibreWolf, because Mozilla makes bad decisions.
-
I'm what's known as a chronic hopper. I'm always on the lookout for new software, especially when it comes to browsers and Linux distros, but I'm here to ask you about browsers specifically. I'm fairly sure I know most of them, but I want to really know why you run what you do. In return, I will give you my experiences with the browsers that I have tried and why I hopped from them if I did.
Don't feel the need to read the list. I'll be more than happy to just hear your answers!
- Firefox: One of the grand-daddy browsers. I honestly didn't hop from it due to anything specific, but more that I've used it so much that I needed a change.
- Chrome: I used this very little. Just being on it made my skin crawl. However, I still keep it around in a container because some sites straight up tell you that you have to use it to access their dashboards or application forms. While that is now much less these days (as most things will now ask for Chrome or Firefox now), it still does happen, especially on dated government sites that get updated like... once a decade...
- Opera GX: Yup, I fell into the hype. I think I used this for all of a month before recognizing it as over-engineered and needlessly bloated. It pulls you in with gimmicks and pretty lights and that's pretty much all it has. A browser that's literally built on smoke and mirrors and pushy advertising.
- Brave: There's been a lot of huff about Brave lately, but back when it launched and wasn't very mainstream it was the smoothest and a relatively more secure browser than the competition. There was a time when nearly everyone ran Brave. The problem started when they began to opt you into gimmicks and extra things you didn't need without your permission. That was a turnoff for me. I outed before things really went downhill.
-Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I've never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it's core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It's fairly vetted and trusted from what I've researched. - Vivaldi: Still one of my favorite browsers when I went back to Windows, but probably has the most bugs I've seen in any browser. It got better once they swapped to React portals, but Vivaldi (Windows version) would occasionally freeze my whole PC or else I'd BSOD. This was a combination of the browser's stability and making my own custom CSS for it, but overall it frustrated me more than other browsers.
- Qutebrowser: Still one of my favorites, and a must-have for me even if its not my main browser. I was diving into the Vimium extension for Firefox, which in turn led me to Neovim, which led me to Qutebrowser. There's a few main points as to why I don't use it as my go-to. First, its not very good at squashing first-party ads. Even though you can combo custom ad block lists, Brave adblock, and python-adblock, it just can't seem to get them all. Second, I rely on my history when browsing YouTube and if you want to get around ads, your best bet is to write a custom shortcut that opens links in MPV/VLC. There are Greasemonkey scripts that should increase ad speed to a fraction of a second and auto-skip, but none of them ever worked for me and most are ancient.
- Nyxt: My next logical step after Qutebrowser was Nyxt. However, I've never managed to figure out how to work it. I haven't really done any extensive bug testing, but when it opens its just a blank window and there's not much I could find for documentation on it. Part of me wonders if there's something that only trusted people know that gets it working, the other part wonders if I'm just missing some sort of library or dependency. From here I went back to Floorp for a while.
-Zen: I was very excited when I found this browser. Another Firefox fork, it aims to be much like Arc browser, but adds a lot more on top of that. However, in recent months I find they've become a little too ambitious. If you asked me two months ago, I would tell you that Zen felt just as smooth as Floorp, but these days its much, much laggier. The scrolling is choppy, the pages load slow. I use the same exact extensions on Zen as I do Floorp and the difference now is night and day. I've also tested this on fresh, no-extras no-extension installations and the results are the same. Zen tends to change things and instead of letting the user opt into the additions or changes, they force the changes in their updates. That type of development model just isn't really for me. I don't want to have to re-figure out how to use my browser every few days.
So there it is. I hop a LOT. Honorable mention is Ladybird and I've tested it a little. It is extremely alpha, being just a portal with the basics you need for browsing, but I'm amazed at what they've done so far and very excited for it's release. For now I've returned to Floorp and am very happy with it. I'm very curious to know why you like what you do, whether its just because its what you've used for a long time or if there's something that you can't do without.
Also, please excuse me if this question has been asked before. I didn't want to necro an old post and I want to be able to reply and ask more questions! I've seen many posts discussing a single browser, but I want a more general view. I'm very interested, because the Lemmy community often values their privacy and their rights, which is a major factor in choosing software for me.
Edit: I feel like I'm answering very quickly, but want you to know that I'm not a bot nor using AI. I type at 110wpm in Dvorak. Typing is a huge hobby of mine and would never use AI to do something I love to do for me. I'm set on getting to 200wpm (100 was my first goal). That being said, I can't answer everyone, so I'm sorry if I missed your reply!
Including browser names in bold.
My strong preference is toward Pale Moon, but I have been using it less and less lately. Instead when I want to use a more standards-compliant (i.e non-Blink) rendering engine, I use SeaMonkey, which includes a browser, an email/newsgroup/RSS client, and an IRC client.
Lately though, I flip between Firefox, Waterfox, Librewolf, and Tor Browser - they're all just "Firefox, and this thing that could be an addon if addons still worked right". I truly despise the fact that they moved to Google WebExtensions, and have so many other Google shackles - so I'm glad that they're losing the money.
Oh, I also use Links in my terminal. It's a good alternative to curl.
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There was a time when nearly everyone ran Brave
Wut
For real - I didn’t know what to make of such a completely false statement.
-
I'm what's known as a chronic hopper. I'm always on the lookout for new software, especially when it comes to browsers and Linux distros, but I'm here to ask you about browsers specifically. I'm fairly sure I know most of them, but I want to really know why you run what you do. In return, I will give you my experiences with the browsers that I have tried and why I hopped from them if I did.
Don't feel the need to read the list. I'll be more than happy to just hear your answers!
- Firefox: One of the grand-daddy browsers. I honestly didn't hop from it due to anything specific, but more that I've used it so much that I needed a change.
- Chrome: I used this very little. Just being on it made my skin crawl. However, I still keep it around in a container because some sites straight up tell you that you have to use it to access their dashboards or application forms. While that is now much less these days (as most things will now ask for Chrome or Firefox now), it still does happen, especially on dated government sites that get updated like... once a decade...
- Opera GX: Yup, I fell into the hype. I think I used this for all of a month before recognizing it as over-engineered and needlessly bloated. It pulls you in with gimmicks and pretty lights and that's pretty much all it has. A browser that's literally built on smoke and mirrors and pushy advertising.
- Brave: There's been a lot of huff about Brave lately, but back when it launched and wasn't very mainstream it was the smoothest and a relatively more secure browser than the competition. There was a time when nearly everyone ran Brave. The problem started when they began to opt you into gimmicks and extra things you didn't need without your permission. That was a turnoff for me. I outed before things really went downhill.
-Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I've never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it's core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It's fairly vetted and trusted from what I've researched. - Vivaldi: Still one of my favorite browsers when I went back to Windows, but probably has the most bugs I've seen in any browser. It got better once they swapped to React portals, but Vivaldi (Windows version) would occasionally freeze my whole PC or else I'd BSOD. This was a combination of the browser's stability and making my own custom CSS for it, but overall it frustrated me more than other browsers.
- Qutebrowser: Still one of my favorites, and a must-have for me even if its not my main browser. I was diving into the Vimium extension for Firefox, which in turn led me to Neovim, which led me to Qutebrowser. There's a few main points as to why I don't use it as my go-to. First, its not very good at squashing first-party ads. Even though you can combo custom ad block lists, Brave adblock, and python-adblock, it just can't seem to get them all. Second, I rely on my history when browsing YouTube and if you want to get around ads, your best bet is to write a custom shortcut that opens links in MPV/VLC. There are Greasemonkey scripts that should increase ad speed to a fraction of a second and auto-skip, but none of them ever worked for me and most are ancient.
- Nyxt: My next logical step after Qutebrowser was Nyxt. However, I've never managed to figure out how to work it. I haven't really done any extensive bug testing, but when it opens its just a blank window and there's not much I could find for documentation on it. Part of me wonders if there's something that only trusted people know that gets it working, the other part wonders if I'm just missing some sort of library or dependency. From here I went back to Floorp for a while.
-Zen: I was very excited when I found this browser. Another Firefox fork, it aims to be much like Arc browser, but adds a lot more on top of that. However, in recent months I find they've become a little too ambitious. If you asked me two months ago, I would tell you that Zen felt just as smooth as Floorp, but these days its much, much laggier. The scrolling is choppy, the pages load slow. I use the same exact extensions on Zen as I do Floorp and the difference now is night and day. I've also tested this on fresh, no-extras no-extension installations and the results are the same. Zen tends to change things and instead of letting the user opt into the additions or changes, they force the changes in their updates. That type of development model just isn't really for me. I don't want to have to re-figure out how to use my browser every few days.
So there it is. I hop a LOT. Honorable mention is Ladybird and I've tested it a little. It is extremely alpha, being just a portal with the basics you need for browsing, but I'm amazed at what they've done so far and very excited for it's release. For now I've returned to Floorp and am very happy with it. I'm very curious to know why you like what you do, whether its just because its what you've used for a long time or if there's something that you can't do without.
Also, please excuse me if this question has been asked before. I didn't want to necro an old post and I want to be able to reply and ask more questions! I've seen many posts discussing a single browser, but I want a more general view. I'm very interested, because the Lemmy community often values their privacy and their rights, which is a major factor in choosing software for me.
Edit: I feel like I'm answering very quickly, but want you to know that I'm not a bot nor using AI. I type at 110wpm in Dvorak. Typing is a huge hobby of mine and would never use AI to do something I love to do for me. I'm set on getting to 200wpm (100 was my first goal). That being said, I can't answer everyone, so I'm sorry if I missed your reply!
Ironfox here, through Tor and ProtonVPN.
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Ah, no that's not it at all. I gotta see if I can look back to what happened. I think it was the Brave Rewards auto-contribute, though I'm seeing things like it accessing webcams without explicit permission. Ah, wait, it was the VPN. In 2023 they made an update that installed a paid VPN service on user's computers as well as turning on telemetry even for users that had turned it off. That caused a huge stir.
They also have a long loooong history of putting ads into their browser and their homepage and keeping the revenue, selling scraped data, and leaking DNS queries in their built in TOR browser from what I'm reading here.
Yeah, I did some research and you’re right, Brave has a questionable reputation. They don’t really care about security and privacy as much as they care about money. Well, we only have LibreWolf
(and maybe floorp) -
I'm what's known as a chronic hopper. I'm always on the lookout for new software, especially when it comes to browsers and Linux distros, but I'm here to ask you about browsers specifically. I'm fairly sure I know most of them, but I want to really know why you run what you do. In return, I will give you my experiences with the browsers that I have tried and why I hopped from them if I did.
Don't feel the need to read the list. I'll be more than happy to just hear your answers!
- Firefox: One of the grand-daddy browsers. I honestly didn't hop from it due to anything specific, but more that I've used it so much that I needed a change.
- Chrome: I used this very little. Just being on it made my skin crawl. However, I still keep it around in a container because some sites straight up tell you that you have to use it to access their dashboards or application forms. While that is now much less these days (as most things will now ask for Chrome or Firefox now), it still does happen, especially on dated government sites that get updated like... once a decade...
- Opera GX: Yup, I fell into the hype. I think I used this for all of a month before recognizing it as over-engineered and needlessly bloated. It pulls you in with gimmicks and pretty lights and that's pretty much all it has. A browser that's literally built on smoke and mirrors and pushy advertising.
- Brave: There's been a lot of huff about Brave lately, but back when it launched and wasn't very mainstream it was the smoothest and a relatively more secure browser than the competition. There was a time when nearly everyone ran Brave. The problem started when they began to opt you into gimmicks and extra things you didn't need without your permission. That was a turnoff for me. I outed before things really went downhill.
-Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I've never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it's core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It's fairly vetted and trusted from what I've researched. - Vivaldi: Still one of my favorite browsers when I went back to Windows, but probably has the most bugs I've seen in any browser. It got better once they swapped to React portals, but Vivaldi (Windows version) would occasionally freeze my whole PC or else I'd BSOD. This was a combination of the browser's stability and making my own custom CSS for it, but overall it frustrated me more than other browsers.
- Qutebrowser: Still one of my favorites, and a must-have for me even if its not my main browser. I was diving into the Vimium extension for Firefox, which in turn led me to Neovim, which led me to Qutebrowser. There's a few main points as to why I don't use it as my go-to. First, its not very good at squashing first-party ads. Even though you can combo custom ad block lists, Brave adblock, and python-adblock, it just can't seem to get them all. Second, I rely on my history when browsing YouTube and if you want to get around ads, your best bet is to write a custom shortcut that opens links in MPV/VLC. There are Greasemonkey scripts that should increase ad speed to a fraction of a second and auto-skip, but none of them ever worked for me and most are ancient.
- Nyxt: My next logical step after Qutebrowser was Nyxt. However, I've never managed to figure out how to work it. I haven't really done any extensive bug testing, but when it opens its just a blank window and there's not much I could find for documentation on it. Part of me wonders if there's something that only trusted people know that gets it working, the other part wonders if I'm just missing some sort of library or dependency. From here I went back to Floorp for a while.
-Zen: I was very excited when I found this browser. Another Firefox fork, it aims to be much like Arc browser, but adds a lot more on top of that. However, in recent months I find they've become a little too ambitious. If you asked me two months ago, I would tell you that Zen felt just as smooth as Floorp, but these days its much, much laggier. The scrolling is choppy, the pages load slow. I use the same exact extensions on Zen as I do Floorp and the difference now is night and day. I've also tested this on fresh, no-extras no-extension installations and the results are the same. Zen tends to change things and instead of letting the user opt into the additions or changes, they force the changes in their updates. That type of development model just isn't really for me. I don't want to have to re-figure out how to use my browser every few days.
So there it is. I hop a LOT. Honorable mention is Ladybird and I've tested it a little. It is extremely alpha, being just a portal with the basics you need for browsing, but I'm amazed at what they've done so far and very excited for it's release. For now I've returned to Floorp and am very happy with it. I'm very curious to know why you like what you do, whether its just because its what you've used for a long time or if there's something that you can't do without.
Also, please excuse me if this question has been asked before. I didn't want to necro an old post and I want to be able to reply and ask more questions! I've seen many posts discussing a single browser, but I want a more general view. I'm very interested, because the Lemmy community often values their privacy and their rights, which is a major factor in choosing software for me.
Edit: I feel like I'm answering very quickly, but want you to know that I'm not a bot nor using AI. I type at 110wpm in Dvorak. Typing is a huge hobby of mine and would never use AI to do something I love to do for me. I'm set on getting to 200wpm (100 was my first goal). That being said, I can't answer everyone, so I'm sorry if I missed your reply!
Firefox, used to switch to edge to get hevc HDR to work from my jellyfin server. But now Firefox will pass it through AV1. So it my only browser now
-
I'm what's known as a chronic hopper. I'm always on the lookout for new software, especially when it comes to browsers and Linux distros, but I'm here to ask you about browsers specifically. I'm fairly sure I know most of them, but I want to really know why you run what you do. In return, I will give you my experiences with the browsers that I have tried and why I hopped from them if I did.
Don't feel the need to read the list. I'll be more than happy to just hear your answers!
- Firefox: One of the grand-daddy browsers. I honestly didn't hop from it due to anything specific, but more that I've used it so much that I needed a change.
- Chrome: I used this very little. Just being on it made my skin crawl. However, I still keep it around in a container because some sites straight up tell you that you have to use it to access their dashboards or application forms. While that is now much less these days (as most things will now ask for Chrome or Firefox now), it still does happen, especially on dated government sites that get updated like... once a decade...
- Opera GX: Yup, I fell into the hype. I think I used this for all of a month before recognizing it as over-engineered and needlessly bloated. It pulls you in with gimmicks and pretty lights and that's pretty much all it has. A browser that's literally built on smoke and mirrors and pushy advertising.
- Brave: There's been a lot of huff about Brave lately, but back when it launched and wasn't very mainstream it was the smoothest and a relatively more secure browser than the competition. There was a time when nearly everyone ran Brave. The problem started when they began to opt you into gimmicks and extra things you didn't need without your permission. That was a turnoff for me. I outed before things really went downhill.
-Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I've never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it's core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It's fairly vetted and trusted from what I've researched. - Vivaldi: Still one of my favorite browsers when I went back to Windows, but probably has the most bugs I've seen in any browser. It got better once they swapped to React portals, but Vivaldi (Windows version) would occasionally freeze my whole PC or else I'd BSOD. This was a combination of the browser's stability and making my own custom CSS for it, but overall it frustrated me more than other browsers.
- Qutebrowser: Still one of my favorites, and a must-have for me even if its not my main browser. I was diving into the Vimium extension for Firefox, which in turn led me to Neovim, which led me to Qutebrowser. There's a few main points as to why I don't use it as my go-to. First, its not very good at squashing first-party ads. Even though you can combo custom ad block lists, Brave adblock, and python-adblock, it just can't seem to get them all. Second, I rely on my history when browsing YouTube and if you want to get around ads, your best bet is to write a custom shortcut that opens links in MPV/VLC. There are Greasemonkey scripts that should increase ad speed to a fraction of a second and auto-skip, but none of them ever worked for me and most are ancient.
- Nyxt: My next logical step after Qutebrowser was Nyxt. However, I've never managed to figure out how to work it. I haven't really done any extensive bug testing, but when it opens its just a blank window and there's not much I could find for documentation on it. Part of me wonders if there's something that only trusted people know that gets it working, the other part wonders if I'm just missing some sort of library or dependency. From here I went back to Floorp for a while.
-Zen: I was very excited when I found this browser. Another Firefox fork, it aims to be much like Arc browser, but adds a lot more on top of that. However, in recent months I find they've become a little too ambitious. If you asked me two months ago, I would tell you that Zen felt just as smooth as Floorp, but these days its much, much laggier. The scrolling is choppy, the pages load slow. I use the same exact extensions on Zen as I do Floorp and the difference now is night and day. I've also tested this on fresh, no-extras no-extension installations and the results are the same. Zen tends to change things and instead of letting the user opt into the additions or changes, they force the changes in their updates. That type of development model just isn't really for me. I don't want to have to re-figure out how to use my browser every few days.
So there it is. I hop a LOT. Honorable mention is Ladybird and I've tested it a little. It is extremely alpha, being just a portal with the basics you need for browsing, but I'm amazed at what they've done so far and very excited for it's release. For now I've returned to Floorp and am very happy with it. I'm very curious to know why you like what you do, whether its just because its what you've used for a long time or if there's something that you can't do without.
Also, please excuse me if this question has been asked before. I didn't want to necro an old post and I want to be able to reply and ask more questions! I've seen many posts discussing a single browser, but I want a more general view. I'm very interested, because the Lemmy community often values their privacy and their rights, which is a major factor in choosing software for me.
Edit: I feel like I'm answering very quickly, but want you to know that I'm not a bot nor using AI. I type at 110wpm in Dvorak. Typing is a huge hobby of mine and would never use AI to do something I love to do for me. I'm set on getting to 200wpm (100 was my first goal). That being said, I can't answer everyone, so I'm sorry if I missed your reply!
wrote on last edited by [email protected]On laptop:
- Primary LibreWolf, as it does everything I need, and I don't 100% trust Mozilla anymore after recent incidents so I wanted a non-Mozilla fork of Firefox
- Secondary Chromium, when something refuses to run on Firefox and derivatives
On phone:
- Primary FOSS Browser, I think it might be some guy's passion project... It works so yeah
- Secondary Vanadium, basically GrapheneOS' in-house Chromium fork. For when the primary browser doesn't do the job, which happens more often because I have FOSS Browser set on blocking all JavaScript...
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Yeah, I did some research and you’re right, Brave has a questionable reputation. They don’t really care about security and privacy as much as they care about money. Well, we only have LibreWolf
(and maybe floorp)There's a good amount of Firefox forks to tide us over, plus you could always check out QTWebEngine browsers. I hear Falkon has a decent reputation, and as a Vim user I love Qutebrowser. I got curious and just tried Falkon. The integrated adblock is quite good and I got a greasemonkey script that at least silenced and blacked out ads (it did not skip them, though).
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Including browser names in bold.
My strong preference is toward Pale Moon, but I have been using it less and less lately. Instead when I want to use a more standards-compliant (i.e non-Blink) rendering engine, I use SeaMonkey, which includes a browser, an email/newsgroup/RSS client, and an IRC client.
Lately though, I flip between Firefox, Waterfox, Librewolf, and Tor Browser - they're all just "Firefox, and this thing that could be an addon if addons still worked right". I truly despise the fact that they moved to Google WebExtensions, and have so many other Google shackles - so I'm glad that they're losing the money.
Oh, I also use Links in my terminal. It's a good alternative to curl.
I gotta check out some TUI browsers someday, I like the idea of being able to browse through my terminal. I've never heard of Pale Moon! I'm excited now and will be going to check it out ASAP.
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You're the first other user I've seen to mention IronFox. I have it as a backup. Its relatively new, isn't it? And it goes beyond to make sure it's privacy first. To the point where it won't even connect to third party apps for login purposes. Definitely my dark horse Android browser.
Iirc, you have to add the repository to F-Droid, which keeps it from being recognized more.
Ah that's why it doesn't show me the KeePassX logins, I was wondering if I broke something
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Same with Floorp. Was using Zen for a short time but the ui was buggy as shit.
Zen is still buggy, unfortunately. It was great when it was hot off the press, but they slowly pushed UI changes. They'd give you options to roll back the changes, but I would have preferred if they made the changes and gave you the option to opt into them.
I checked it out again the other day, and the newest update caused compact mode to disable every time I restarted the browser. Now I just use Floorp with in-line tabs activated. I love having one hybrid URL and tab bar, but I've never been a 100 tabs kind of guy so I have the room. I don't save my previous tab sessions.
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Ah that's why it doesn't show me the KeePassX logins, I was wondering if I broke something
Yeah, that's what I've noticed, anyway. There's a massive amount of settings to mess with, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if you could change it to work. But that would just make it like any other fork, so I mainly stick with Fennec.
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On laptop:
- Primary LibreWolf, as it does everything I need, and I don't 100% trust Mozilla anymore after recent incidents so I wanted a non-Mozilla fork of Firefox
- Secondary Chromium, when something refuses to run on Firefox and derivatives
On phone:
- Primary FOSS Browser, I think it might be some guy's passion project... It works so yeah
- Secondary Vanadium, basically GrapheneOS' in-house Chromium fork. For when the primary browser doesn't do the job, which happens more often because I have FOSS Browser set on blocking all JavaScript...
I've tried a few of the FOSS branded apps on F-Droid from the same dev, I believe. I like FOSS Calendar. It's just simple and does what I need. I don't need syncing or anything fancy.
