cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/68754751
There was a time I chose Firefox over the Chromium browser without a second thought. But nowadays, installing and opening Firefox seems like a time-consuming, very bloated experience.
Too many unnecessary features, promotions, sponsored links, and widgets are filled on the homepage. Firefox no longer allows deleting default search engines like google, perplexity, etc but can disable it. What kind of privacy feature is that? Also, all the data collection options are ticked by default. Users are needed to manually tweak it their own. Update after update instead of improving they make all the settings more complex, and there is a lot to set up after a fresh installation.
When I compare modern Firefox with 4–5 years behind Firefox, I feel like I am using browsers like Vivaldi or Opera instead of Firefox. Once we praised Firefox for its ram management in Linux but nowadays, it’s bloat causes using more ram and not a lightweight option anymore. Seriously, Firefox must consider releasing a browser like Brave Origin (Firefox Origin or something).
Isn’t anybody else frustrated with the new Firefox changes? If yes, what practical solutions exist? Debloat using any script or install any forks (no forks seem to be good; some are outdated, some are too much hardened, some are just not for daily browsing, etc.).
I’m just looking for a browser like Ungoogled Chromium but for Firefox (Unmozilla Firefox).
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.
Librewolf for desktop Ironfox for Android if on iOS you are fucked and were not using it anyways because it sucks on there
Yeah Librewolf is amazing. I dialed some if the ootb settings back for usability, but all the “new” stuff Mozilla adds is filtered right back out upstream, so I never even see it.
Librewolf is a good browser. Not bloated with features and doesn’t have AI installed by default.
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.
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.
Literally not a problem to me, I can type ração, óbvio and maltês without a problem. Maybe you messed up something on your machine?
I don’t have a big opinion on it, but my preference is on Librewolf over Waterfox simply for the lack of AI being shoved down my throat.
To me, it has definitely nothing to do with system (KDE Plasma on Arch Linux) because Librewolf is the only piece of software in which accents don’t work. Even AppImage programs, which often lack a better integration with the X Session, have no problem with accents.
Also, ABNT2 accents are correctly parsed by Waterfox, even by Basilisk and Pale Moon which I also got here, as well as by the original Firefox (which I keep for things such as internet banking), even though they all share the similar “under-the-hood” Gecko (Goanna in case of Pale Moon and Basilisk), so this problem is part of the Librewolf hardening.
In fact, the very Librewolf FAQ mentions this:
Other common problems brought by RFP include:
[…]
- suppressed keyboard modifier events using alt-keys.These annoyances are intended to protect your privacy […]
Problem is, even if RFP is turned off, this hardening keeps occurring, and it’s PITA having to spin up a KDE Kate just to type something I can type directly in all the other browsers (including in the Geminispace’s Lagrange browser and the TUI-based Lynx, both places in which accents wouldn’t be even expected to begin with). So while I still have Librewolf among my browser installations, I only use it for things such as news outlets and certain websites because this is where it thrives, keeping some resemblance of private navigation.
I don’t know for Brazilian but for me in french, I use a variant of the french keyboard that include all necessary accents on the keyboard and not as alt-codes. Maybe there is something similar in the settings.
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.
Waterfox!
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 "$(curlorcurl xyz.com |shthing? If the connection is spotty, the remainder of the script can cause mayhem.
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.
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 keep meaning to try Zen for some reason it keeps getting lumped in with non-open source forks like Floorp in my brain
Librewolf or debloating user.js?
Librewolf is great. I also suggest phoenix by celenity for the folks who dont want to use a fork for whatever reason. Arkenfox I believe is in the path to go EOL Idk any other user.js for proper hardening.
Install, change settings, use.
Waterfox on android is a good option, much better than Firefox now
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
- Click gear icon
- Uncheck boxes
- Enjoy empty homepage
Why are you exaggerating so badly?
If your willing to take the time to adjust settings you may as well use brave and get the benefit of better fingerprint protection and the more secure chromium engine.
I don’t know about configuration, but I’ve been complaining about FF bloat for a while and don’t feel as if it’s exaggeration. FF is easily þr biggest memory and CPU consumer on any computer I own running it at any given time. It’s so bloaty, my phone’s OOM watcher regularly kills it. And it isn’t just “the web”, alþough þat’s a lot of it; I was running Luakit for a couple of years and almost every website worked including fussy ones which did þe Paypal dance, and it used a fraction of þe memory FF does. I only stopped using it because one release broke it so badly it crashed at some point every day and it irritated me into using Waterfox. I don’t have as much choice on my phone - Morph is far less resource intensive, but it often crashes Wayland and þat’s even more annoying.
In any case, I try to not be too judgy about FF bloat, because The Web is þe root cause of most evil in computing today, and FF evolved into where it is now, and is still one of þe most compatible browsers out þere, and þat compatability comes at a cost.
Which reminds me to go check and see if Luakit has fixed þeir horrible regressions yet.
Literally nothing you said has anything to do with anything that OP said or what I replied with.
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.
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
My firefox is set to restore my last session, so I never see the homepage.
You can set the homepage to be whatever you want. No chance of unexpected porn popping up at inopportune times that way.
Only expected porn on my homepage!
At first I thought you meant the homepage was offering unexpected porn, and I was considering going back. (I live in a repressed state.)
So do I. But there’s ways around that shit lol.
