Brave vs. Firefox ESR? Which one is better

I have both installed on my L5 and I am waffling back and forth to decide which one I want to use moving forward. I initially thought Brave was better but I noticed that it is quite a resource hog compared to FF. I’ve tried both with and without hardware acceleration but wondering how that should be set for the L5, currently I have hardware acceleration off for both browsers. I have also had the phone bog down or even lock up with both but probably more so with Brave and looking at TOP shows how brave opens up a new process for each tab and it quickly gobbles up resources so my thinking is it’s not the ideal browser to use. I do know that the arm64 version is still in development so maybe these things will improve over time.

Regardless just curious what people are using and why?

Can’t speak for Brave/ESR on the L5 yet. I had been a FF ESR user for a long time. However, I had the opposite experience that you did, where ESR was a resource hog on my L13. I switched to Brave and have loved it. I don’t think I’ve heard the fan kick in or my laptop slow down as I did with ESR. That said, maybe the experience is different on the L5 with the different architecture. I’m anxiously awaiting my phone, where I intend to go with Brave by default and see what I get with it there.

I’ve tried both. I prefer Brave to Firefox. Brave is much snappier. However, Chromium works best, sorry to say.

Have you disabled hardware acceleration in either case?

I do not think so. How do I do that?

It’s in settings for both browsers for FF you have to disable the recommended settings. I would just like to know from the dev team what we should be selecting here because I know this setting can cause issues I believe.

Hello raenrfm,

just use both and pick your favorite with plugins you like. I love to know how to edit Firefox to meet my preferences (no Cookies, use umatrix or ublock origin… and adjust some switches in about:config).

However and for your phone. Try to minimize your traffic and use mail, RSS or Bots in a smart way, to collect Data from the old Internet with scrips and Bots, and just push the finished news you want to your phone through RSS, Messengers or Microblogs.

This way you have the control how to edit and transcript data. Like news to simple html with pictures and Text. Youtube-Videos to just one mpeg or webm File. And you could view that data with less blobs and more security. Cause Browsers are nearly full cruise ships with too much stuff you likely do not want.

However (ok it is not accepted) download a Video temporary with programs like the old youtube-dl Script and just push the Video and not the Comments the Stars the Likes and so on to you is kind of worth it.

Afterwards you end up to use a browser here and there… but it is like search engines. If you know where you find stuff, you do not need a search. Just beginners use it that way.

Today we are on the way to a future, where Apps kill the Browser Star singing and “Syntetic Relaitionships (like Chatgpt*) kills the Apps”.

So yes try to create your own Internet-Relay for Offline work. Try to set up your own Neural Network which try to handle, search and accumulate the important information for you, under your own control without too much proprietary 3erd Party Code.

In really few cases on the road its not important what Browser you use then. Just that what can display the information you need.

Have a good Day,

Christal

Does brave tor window work on the L5?

That would be a big positive, if so. I do not think that tor browser itself works on the L5 yet?

There is an arm64 build of Brave that I’m running you have to set up the repository and install it that way, but I think it’s still pretty new and developing. It isn’t really adaptive either yet, but I’m hoping it will be as I do like using it on my PC’s and laptop, but my other concerns with it have been that it doesn’t always release the wwan0 interface when you are connected to a wifi network and hence it will smoke through your data plan without you realizing it when you think you’re on non-metered wifi connection.

Can you use Tor within brave on the L5? For example, by tapping the hamburger menu on the top-right of brave and selecting “New private window with Tor”?

EDIT: You can also invoke brave with Tor by the below command:

brave-browser --tor

A while back, in Brave I opened at private window and pasted in an onion address. Nothing happened after that. So my conclusion was “no”, TOR doesn’t work.

I don’t have L5 yet, but I’m pretty sure that I will stick on Firefox. Why? It’s the tool I know very well and it’s not Chromium (never a good idea to have no alternative). And as long as I know my tool, websites have no chance to do any harm to my device, but I have the know to manipulate websites with stuff like “iron-overlays” against ad blocker. Also using Firefox on other devices and be able to share profiles.

Anyone who tried LibreWolf? I am curious how that fares.

See also earlier discussion:

So I have been using FF ESR with hardware acceleration disabled and I find that it’s actually running much better. I also noticed that the phone is charging better on my Nexdock so perhaps the hardware acceleration was causing some issues.

Give it a try disabling it and see if I’m right about that…for those using Brave and FF ESR that is. I’m curious if that is actually the case.