6mo ago

Mozilla is a sinking ship.

Mastodon Toot.

Source.

214 comments

Damnit. I love Firefox. What is the best alternative?
- There really isn't one. The closet would be Konqueror with KHTML and one of Mozilla's discarded projects called Servo (which is a beta project now run by the Linux Foundation). The rest are Chrome in a wig and Safari.
  
  There is also this which might be viable in the future, https://ladybird.org/
  
  The lady bird dev is a musk fellating tech bro
  EDIT: I can't remember where I learned this, but I swear someone on lemmy had shown some tweets that were showing support for the musk era changes and were in some way endorsing web3 garbage. Take everything anyone says on the internet with a grain of salt.
  
  That sucks but if it's open source it doesn't matter imo
  
  There was a comment thread a month ago about the attempted refusal to use gender neutral language because that's political: "This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics."
  It's not the same thing, but it does match the pattern. Still take everything with some salt though.
  
  That much I certainly remember and is easily verifiable, I wish I had a source for the musk support though.
  
  Andreas Kling? How so?
  
  Well fuck. There goes that one.
  
  We'll see how it goes in a few years. I did forget about it so thanks for reminding me about it.
  
  FYI: KHTML became Safari that became WebKit that became Chrome.
- Reports of its death are GREATLY exaggerated. I would suggest continuing to simply use firefox and disable any future crap you don't prefer.
  That said librewolf which is intended to be firefox with stronger privacy settings by default that said
  Default settings break more websites
  You have to get extensions manually from for instance github because it doesn't use mozillas addon (it can probably be enabled)
  It doesn't use the built in password manager which is in fact privacy preserving so you have to enable it or use something else
  you don't get syncing via firefox sync which is in fact already privacy preserving so you have to enable it if you want it
  It doesn't remember cookies without manually adding an exception to each site this is extremely obnoxious. I'm sure its configurable though
  At this time it is far easier to disable the few things that may be undesired from firefox vs turning librewolf into an acceptable option.
  
  I experience little breakage with Librewolf, and when I do, maybe 75-85% of the time it is because the site only works with Chromium. I get extensions directly through the browser, I have not enabled anything as far as I am aware. And of course you can configure the cookie clearing. I quite like it, there are (in my case at least) not many exceptions you need to add before it works quite smoothly, but of course that depends on your usage.
  
  I use plain old firefox there are few sites that require chromium. I have noticed that enhanced tracking protection and adblock can both break some sites. Whether it makes sense to turn them off or use a different site depends on the site.
- Forks of it.
  
  Fireforks
- Im using LibreWolf. Its a fork of firefox. For me its the perfect balance between compatibility and privacy friendliness.
  
  Is it a true fork, or is it a project that follows the Firefox tree and builds a customized browser from it?
  The difference being, if it's a true fork, they have to do all their own browser engineering starting at the time it was forked off. That sounds like a monumental effort.
  
  Project fork
  
  Strange, because they say it's a "custom version" of Firefox. That normally means it's a custom build, not a true fork.
  
  I started using librewolf about a month ago but I've (unfortunately) switched back to Firefox because of multiple compatibility issues.
  Edit: I should add that I switched from Firefox to Fennec (a fork of Firefox) on my phone and that has been working fine.
  
  Someone should ship librewolf with less stupid defaults
  
  They do, its called Firefox.
  
  Which is what I suggested they continue to use but for those who are concerned about privacy by default I would still suggest something in between.
- All browsers are either based on Chrome or Firefox. There's no alternative.
  
  Well, there’s Chromium and then there’s Chrome.
  
  All browsers are either based on KHTML or Netscape. There's no alternative.
  You see that's a sort of weird way of looking at it?
  
  Doesn't Safari use a different codebase? It's not available on non-Apple platforms, but it's good to know that there are still engineers working on a different codebase.
  
  Chrome is definitely a fork of Safari in a way. Or more accurately, Blink is a fork of Webkit.
  
  So really, all modern browsers are either forks of KHTML / KJS or are based on the Mozilla codebase. But, at least right now, there are 3 separate engineering teams working on 3 independent codebases. Which hopefully will mitigate some of the issues you get when one company completely controls a software "ecosystem".
- I love it too. No chance I'm changing any time soon
- Google Chrome! It’s nice that it syncs with my existing Google account instead of needing a new one, plus it has updates built in!
  
  Are you paid by Google? That's what we're trying to escape by using Firefox.
  
  I'm gonna go with failed attempt at satire.
  
  Shit, i ruined the joke
  
  Not like anyone else is reading it as satire. If everyone misses the point, that's on the writer.
  
  And it blocks adblockers! I can't know what to spend my money on without ads!
  
  My copy hasn’t started doing that
  
  🤮
  
  As I notice this comment is satirical, unlike the (currently) 49 plebeian downvoters, I feel my massive genius brain undulating and pressing upon my skull.

214 comments