Brave Software has announced plans to deprecate the 'Strict' fingerprinting protection mode in its privacy-focused Brave Browser because it causes many sites to function incorrectly.
I've been having a pretty good experience with Mullvad, however I don't hear many people talking about it. I wonder why is that, IIRC it's being developed with Tor Foundation, and is basically a Tor browser for clear web, and that sounds perfect. So far, I didn't run into any issues, so is there a catch, or are they just not well enough known yet? Or, maybe people are turned away by their optional VPN?
Probably because LibreWolf is most of the way there, and the Mullvad branding + proprietary VPN is more than a bit much. I use(d) the VPN alongside it and found the add-on "hints" regarding the correct DNS settings more frustrating than helpful, too.
I was using LibreWolf before, but I really like the idea of bundling VPN + Browser, and also the way they handle payments - not only is Mullvad VPN kind of cheap, I can just pay with crypto and don't need any account (kind of - you just generate username that also serves as an password, without any other contact information required).
But what I like the most about it is the idea of making a browser with the goal of having the same fingerprint between users (as much as possible), and offering it with a VPN - becuase that means that most of other users of the VPN will probably also have the same fingerprint from the browser, so you will blend in with them. I wasn't really sold on the idea of VPN before that and didn't use one, but this was what convinced me.
But tbh I haven't done much research into the company, or into the effectivness of their implementation. I'm kind of betting on their cooperation with Tor Browser, which should have most of this stuff already figured out. But it's possible that other browsers are just better at it, I never checked.
I do however still use LibreWolf for the occasional site that breaks with Mullvad, but it's not something that happens too often.
I use(d) the VPN alongside it and found the add-on “hints” regarding the correct DNS settings more frustrating than helpful, too.
Hmm, I don't think I've ever noticed anything about DNS. I think I've actually never click on the browser vpn extension, though :D Is it the encrypted DNS hint?
I have encountered a handful of sites that it broke as well. I use the strict protection option and manually add exceptions to the few sites it breaks - then I never have any other issues with them
Yeah, Firefox lacks features like built-in pop-up ads, full screen homepage ads (those ones are enabled by default), and a VPN you probably didn't even purchase.
Truly, the features I wanted to clog up my hard drive whether I use them or not
The affiliate link one certainly couldn't. It wasn't until people identified it and started complaining that the company had to backpedal.
And even for the scam stuff that can be disabled, why should it be downloaded, installed, and take up space on the hard drive to begin with? If it's so good, they can make it an add-on for people to optionally choose.
Well, the reason that is because brave wants you to use that, same way mozilla wants to you use their account services and the cloudflare dns that you can opt out of but can't uninstall unless you use a fork of firefox.
And also I don't know why you put emphasis on space usage when firefox uses more resources on websites than brave and chromium, I tested it back when using xfce4 and for 3 tabs and the total system mem usage was 1.24 GIB for firefox and 1 GiB for Chromium and Brave. And when I did that test chromium hadn't implemented a new feature that they added that moves inactive tabs to the disk.
I also don't think I'm gaining anything by replying to your comment after you didn't even bother replying when I told you all the issues and missing features that firefox has and instead focus on hating brave. I hope you're doing this because you hate the brave ceo and not because of some weird fanboyism with firefox lol.
Brave cryptocurrency crap = a Firefox account? Come on, at least compare apples to apples.
You ignored the part about sending all the dns requests to cloudflare (the name of all the websites you visit), which sure, firefox is not as bad as brave on this. But I told you that already before, I said very clearly that when I mentioned that firefox is slightly better on this before in the other comments you didn't bother even replying to...
Because we were talking about how opting out of cryptocurrency crap doesn’t fix the issues with it being installed by default.
You're being disingenuous, another user said that it CAN'T be disabled to which I asked which can't? because you can, and now you're going on this weird goal post rant of it taking disk space while disabled ignoring all the useful features that brave has and all the issues and missing features of firefox lol.
edit: This reminds me of the rants people have against systemd because it is more bloated but ignore the fact that it is faster and easier to use lol.
My dude, the other user said that the crypto scams can't be disabled, meaning right now in the present. Not that they couldn't be disabled. I asked which can't be right now in the present.
And now you're talking about something that happened 4 years ago and was fixed lol. I did not ask when did brave ever prevent you from disabling crypto scams, I asked right now lmao.
Once again, I hope you’re doing this because you hate the brave ceo and not because of some weird fanboyism with firefox lol. Because the more I look at your comments the more it looks like the later. You just pretty much said that you don't care about the issues with firefox by saying that it is irrelevant.
FIrefox lacks vertical tabs, can't change the default new tab page background color without having to use a custom .css file.
Having to use a userContent.css for something so basic is insane. That is orders of magnitude more work than disabling the crypto ads in brave which you don't even have to go in the settings to disable, it is right on the homepage menu.
Also firefox lacks configurable keybinds and when I used librewolf I had to add two extensions for something that basic.
One was to change the default keybinds to changing tabs from alt+123 to control+123 because for some reason they changed it on linux to that which is retarded (opening a new tab is still control+t so you can't just say that it is all the control options that got moved to alt lol).
The other extension was to deattach the tab which firefox has no keybind set for it.
And one of the best features that firefox has, which is the userChrome.css has only gotten worse over time with it breaking with new updates and also now having it disabled by default and hidden inside the about:config menu.
The default vpn on brave is terrible, although that only affected windows. And firefox is only slightly better on this because and pardon me if I'm mistaken (I don't wanna install firefox to check lol) didn't they change the default settings to send all dns over https to cloudflare? On librewolf they got rid of the default one and you have to provide one instead.
Edit: Look no further, you even have to install ublock origin on firefox to get rid of ads and also configure its filter list if you want to get rid of cookie prompts, something that brave does by default already.
That is horrible that you have to install a bunch of extensions for basic features, and one of those extensions to fix something that mozilla went out of their way to break on linux and not that they havent add.
And there is also things like syncing the user sessions and settings without an email which brave can do while firefox and forks can't
edit: And you ignored half of my comment, doing css to get firefox to work IS NOT EASY lmao.
I ignored half your comment because changing the background color with CSS is 100% not important.
And no, it's not horrible that you can extend Firefox to do exactly what you want. What would be horrible is if you couldn't.
How can I make firefox sync my user session and settings between devices without having to use an email then? Last time I tried to do that with librewolf there was only one extension that did it for the bookmarks and nothing else.
edit: Ignored again, what a surprise. No wonder firefox is such a shitty browsers if its users don't care about it working.
Tree Style Tabs has existed for over a decade. It does not break. You are the problem if you cannot install an addon in 2-3 clicks, from what is the richest browser addon ecosystem on the internet.
I have done that, and it a horrible, it takes more work to make a useChrone.css on firefox than to setup a wm on linux lol
You can also use any of the forks of chromium and not support google, what you said is like telling people not use grapheneos because it is a fork of android.
If we had a working alternative to Android as a whole, we would surely use it. But Linux on mobile works only in few devices and not flawlessly at all. But for the Chromium monopoly we have an actual alternative that works.
Linux on phones already work, just that phonecalls might not work sometimes, but if you are into privacy you might as well not use that anyway lol.
So yeah, time to drop graphene and start using linux on phones, if you managed to get firefox to work you can use linux phones, sure some websites might not work on firefox (that is not fault of firefox, same way not all apps might work on linux) and you may need to do some coding to get some things to your liking (using custom.css files is like settings up a bunch of configs and scripts on linux) and you might need to add a bunch extensions to get basic features (like adding extensions to gnome lol).