Doth be ye Browser o' choice?

[AlphaObeisance]

So I need a minute to think about less complicated things in life, and I figure rather than resorting to the top 100 "Best browsers for linux!" blogs that really just recite the same ol same ol; I figured I'd post inquiry here and ask ya'll what browser you use, and why?

I've used Firefox for yeaaaaaaaars, but for whatever reason I've been inclined to consider alternatives out there. I think Vivaldi appealed to me at one point, but tbh I don't really know much about the browser space. I like light weight, I prefered Firefox because of the adblocker extensions and dark reader. Ideally a browser with dark mode support.

I think I installed Falcon once which seemed to be an alright browser, but I think at the time I'd tried it, I didn't see a dark mode theme available by default after install.

Anyway, what say you?

 

[Terminal Velocity]

FF ESR is pre-installed here, it updates automatically along with the OS. The Debian devs trust it to put it here so I trust it. To tell you to ''stay with FF'' is somewhat boring, I'm bored with it too.

Try Brave, it receives updates as soon as they came out but you have to manually apply them and restart, it is not automated like FF, but is something different and more functional in some cases

 

[f33dm3bits]

I figured I'd post inquiry here and ask ya'll what browser you use, and why?

Firefox because I don't want Firefox to die and for Chromium-based browsers to get 100% market-share since it will give Google all the power over future web-developments. As a backup I use Vivaldi because lots of features I use are already built in and the Vivaldi developer seem to actually care more about privacy than Brave where it seems more like a word they use for marketing from quite a few places.

 

[Terminal Velocity]

As a backup I use Vivaldi because lots of features I use are already built in and the Vivaldi developer seem to actually care more about privacy than Brave where it seems more like a word they use for marketing from quite a few places.

I thought that Brave is all about privacy... If you have sources for further reading please post

 

[AlphaObeisance]

All good points. It'd take a lot to get me to leave FF tbh, it's been a part of my daily work flow for a very long time lol. I'd used brave in the past and it was alright. Maybe I'll go the route of @f33dm3bits and just slap Vivaldi on here for that "change of pace" i need on occasion lol. If I recall I really liked some of the UI choices on Vivaldi.

 

[f33dm3bits]

I thought that Brave is all about privacy... If you have sources for further reading please post

The main reason is is that over the years more and more people have lost trust in Brave, not exactly the same as privacy but you need to trust in order to trust in their privacy.

Why I stopped Using Brave Browser

Was using Brave on and off for a couple of years. I liked the idea of the privacy and security of the browser sure. But to me it’s mainly about the trust. Can I trust Brave, from many things that I have seen, I can certainly say that I do not trust them. Recently saw an article explaining how...

community.brave.com

Breach of trust by Brave

In the case of the Brave browser and its Basic Attention Token (BAT) withdrawal hold, we can see how capitalism can lead to exploitation of users. Brave is a web browser that uses blockchain technology to track user attention and reward content creators with BAT. Users can earn BAT by viewing...

community.brave.com

Are there any valid privacy or security concerns in this discussion?

https://web.archive.org/web/20210618144519/https://www.ebin.city/~werwolf/posts/brave-is-sh1t/ Replace 1 with i in this link… I couldn’t post without changing it because of the word sh1t Brave is a chromium based browser, which comes with a built-in adblocker and with a “rewards” program, that...

community.brave.com

Brave has become Malware

You know, when I install a browser I expect a nice UI, an up to date engine, some privacy and a few additional features that a vanilla browser doesn’t come with. What I don’t expect is an eco system of binaries and services that is slowly creeping into my system while it updates itself in the...

community.brave.com

And enough topics on Reddit on different sub-reddits why people don't trust Brave and why they say they also don't trust Brave with their privacy. Yes they aren't official sources but Brave developers will never say that privacy doesn't matter to them or else they are done for. Same reason Microsoft will never say that Windows is full of spyware.

 

[MikeWalsh]

@AlphaObeisance :-

I'm afraid I'm mostly a Chromium & 'clones' man. I switched to it in 2008 at the first release; at that time, Firefox crashed whenever it felt like it and had MAJOR memory leak issues. Chrome was a revelation; it was sleek, it was lightweight & it was so fast it 'sizzled'..!

I have nothing against Firefox. At that time, most of the Firefox team spent more of their time back-stabbing each other on IRC than they did actually working on the browser. I've also found Firefox to be somewhat "clunky" compared to the 'clones'.

I'm sure it's subjective.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

These days, Firefox has improved so much that it's finally the browser it should have been years ago. It's now got so's I honestly don't care WHAT I fire up for the day. So long as it works, and I can access my regular sites, I'm good with that.

For quite a while now, my favourite 'clone' has been Opera. I love the 'workspaces' feature, 'cos it's just like the workspaces I'm already used to on my desktop. It's a very good way of organising tabs in my view.

Out of the several 'zilla-based browsers, my favourite is probably SeaMonkey........which is strange, because I used to hate it. It's a full 'suite' of tools in the same space or less than Firefox itself. A web browser, email client, chat client, HTML editor, etc. All in one. Very good for those rocking older, low-resource systems....and that's why it always used to come in Puppy by default.


Mike.

 

[dos2unix]

Firefox because I don't want Firefox to die

Similar for me, I do run edge on my Windows PC, but use Firefox on my Linux systems.
Is it faster or more secure? I don't know, but the main thing for me, is that Mozilla Firefox is
still open source. You can download the source code and compile your own binaries if
you want to.

Google chrome? No.
MS Edge? No.
Brave? No.
Safari? No.

Why all the hidden secrets? What are they hiding? At least with Firefox
I can see what they are doing in the source code.

 

[ron.alan]

Pale Moon for over 12 years. And for the crappy sites that don't work on it I use Chromium.

 

[Vimmer]

i hate to admit this here, but i will anyway in case someone can offer insights: recently, i have just been using chrome because it has none of those static issues you get with audio. I can't stand that, it's really annoying. I also switched over to MPV player because VLC media player also has those problems on linux.

I wonder: if chromium doesn't have that issue, can you easily transfer your bookmarks? I have recently been diligently organizing them (and it's awesome)

 

[AlphaObeisance]

i hate to admit this here, but i will anyway in case someone can offer insights: recently, i have just been using chrome because it has none of those static issues you get with audio. I can't stand that, it's really annoying. I also switched over to MPV player because VLC media player also has those problems on linux.

I wonder: if chromium doesn't have that issue, can you easily transfer your bookmarks? I have recently been diligently organizing them (and it's awesome)

I'm not sure what you mean as unfortunately I don't have either of those issues fortunately.

vlc --version

VLC media player 3.0.21 Vetinari (revision 3.0.21-0-gdd8bfdbabe8)
VLC version 3.0.21 Vetinari (3.0.21-0-gdd8bfdbabe8)
Compiled by builduser on  (Aug  5 2024 13:11:10)
Compiler: gcc version 14.2.1 20240802 (GCC)

This is what I'm using atm, which to my knowledge is up to date and doesn't have any static issues. I do seem to recall I ran into some static issues when using pulseaudio, but after switching to pipewire the issue was seemingly resolved.

As for the bookmarks, I think you can export them as .csv and import them to most browsers. Pretty sure I import mine to firefox that way.

 

[dos2unix]

I don't have either of those issues fortunately.

Neither do I. It amazed me when I hear people say this doesn't work or that doesn't in Linux.
I've never found a video that chrome plays, that firefox doesn't. If you have a URL of one, send it to me.

The same with VLC, I've never found an audio file it wouldn't play. If you have a URL, or file format
that it doesn't work with, send it to me, and I'll change my mind.

 

[davinci74]

All good points. It'd take a lot to get me to leave FF tbh, it's been a part of my daily work flow for a very long time lol. I'd used brave in the past and it was alright. Maybe I'll go the route of @f33dm3bits and just slap Vivaldi on here for that "change of pace" i need on occasion lol. If I recall I really liked some of the UI choices on Vivaldi.

Hey man, If you don't mind me asking where did you obtain those HOST/SPECS from? I'd like to copy and add to my post so ppl will know my device info when I ask question. And thanks for your assistance.....

 

[AlphaObeisance]

Hey man, If you don't mind me asking where did you obtain those HOST/SPECS from? I'd like to copy and add to my post so ppl will know my device info when I ask question. And thanks for your assistance.....

I seem to get asked this somewhat frequently lol. Tbh man I just got bored one day and played around with it until I got it to look the way I wanted it too. It was kind of a mess but I finally got it. Just gotta come up with an idea for a pattern and throw symbols at it until the right ones stick and it turns out as desired hah. Glad you dig it.

 

[MikeRocor]

Currently using Firefox 123.0 because I finally managed to get it to stop nagging about updates and I can set privacy options so as to let me handle privacy concerns externally and that happened to be the current version the last time I manually updated.

 

[davinci74]

I seem to get asked this somewhat frequently lol. Tbh man I just got bored one day and played around with it until I got it to look the way I wanted it too. It was kind of a mess but I finally got it. Just gotta come up with an idea for a pattern and throw symbols at it until the right ones stick and it turns out as desired hah. Glad you dig it.

Hell yeah dude. It does capture the attention for sure.... thanks buddy

 

[MikeRocor]

I seem to get asked this somewhat frequently lol. Tbh man I just got bored one day and played around with it until I got it to look the way I wanted it too. It was kind of a mess but I finally got it. Just gotta come up with an idea for a pattern and throw symbols at it until the right ones stick and it turns out as desired hah. Glad you dig it.

Seems a bit verbose to me - takes up 14 more lines of screen space after a 3 line post... But even my sig is sometimes bigger than my posts.

 

[davinci74]

Seems a bit verbose to me - takes up 14 more lines of screen space after a 3 line post... But even my sig is sometimes bigger than my posts.

So you suggest to save space and shorten

 

[AlphaObeisance]

Seems a bit verbose to me - takes up 14 more lines of screen space after a 3 line post... But even my sig is sometimes bigger than my posts.

I mean, if you live on mobile then yea for sure lol. But I live behind a PC haha, I have no mercy on mobile users. You should see peoples faces when I send em messages on signal! lol! I hear all the time how I "write novels" but the hilarious part is if they'd get off their dang phone and glance at a PC, it's only 2 paragraphs lol.

That said. If I recall, the signature pushes the character limit to the max lol. Anyway, we digress from the OP lol. Glad to have had the laugh though xP

 

[CaffeineAddict]

I've been user of IE, then google chrome, then Firefox, then MS Edge then Firefox again all of which for years.
Also been using Brave and Opera but only for short time.

I'll be sticking with Firefox primarily because web browser is not like other software that for the most part is working offline, web browser is used to connect to other computers so for my taste it has to be one of the main stream ones because they receive the best maintenance.

I'm skeptic toward newly born web browsers or any newly born software, it's questionable how many testings are done on these.
Main stream browsers already stand the test of time and have huge financial support behind them to fix issues ASAP and that's what matters for me, shiny UI is not priority.