Epiphany will be the default browser, and it sucks i don’t looking for shiny stuff, but for options. Firefox have alot of options and addon that are a must for security.
What can we do for make firefox available to librem 5? Anyone know someone from Mozilla or do know what is the proper action to make it happen?
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Mozilla already have arm package developed in the Android apk. I would think porting that to pureOS would be relatively trivial. However, the features you are looking for would not be available to the same degree in the mobile version.
I think the desktop version made to work on the Librem 5 would be a huge battery hog.
I also think that with Purism at the helm, Epiphany isn’t going to leave the phone exposed, outside of user actions.
I’m not worried. In time there will be many options for the Librem 5. It’s going to be great.
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i don’t think epiphany will have all the love we have with firefox & addons even with purism effort, just because even firefox itself is private and secure without some addons and a proper setup
i can’t immagine a secure navigation without addons like https everywhere, noscript, ublock origin, decentraleyes, cookie autodelete and all the setting i modified on about:config
mozilla is a kind of foundation who care about privacy and freedom, at least that’s what they say, should be nice to have the first and for now the only privacy friendly smartphone with their support
if someone there have a kind of contact or know how to be in touch with them should be a good things
any other idea to run firefox on librem5 is welcome too
Firefox for Android is built with a Java front end so it’s not reusable for the Librem5. You can for sure compile Firefox Desktop for arm, but of course the UX is not appropriate for mobile.
The solution is to build a new gecko based browser for linux-based mobile devices. That would be quite some work but it’s totally doable as a community project.
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This is accurate. Firefox doesn’t fully support Wayland is one issue, Firefox not really being adjusted to the mobile form factor is another. Fennec (as the Android project seems now to be called) used to support GNU/Linux [0], but it was dropped years ago, so I have no idea how doable porting would be.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fennec_Browser#Platforms_previously_or_unofficially_supported
Any chance to be in touch with mozilla to make it happen?
Personally I would prefer the Brave Browser instead of Firefox. Firefox feels dated much like Thunderbird. Cool if it happens but certainly not something I’d deem even remotely important.
I would love Firefox as well. I am using built-in password manager with master password and encrypted db. I am heavily using Firefox sync on self-hosted content server. And for sure I am browsing with ublock and umatrix.
So missing Firefox is a big disadvantage for me 
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Brave Browser = chromium = google = thanks but no thanks
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Brave Browser = open source = prove your claim instead of just inferring there is a problem.
“based on the Chromium web browser and its Blink engine”
chromium = google
i do not trust on google and i don’t like it because that’s a kind of company who monopolize web and standards, and make money making his services over this, destroying competition, just look at android, its open source, but every release they bind the great user experience to their closed system as the gapps ecosystem do, i do not want to help them to have this power, i want to use and support different strategy and companies, because peoples freedom are more important there is no freedom if there is no choice and with choice you also have more chance to have a good privacy and respect from technology you use
avoid google stuff, facebook, whatsapp is important also from this prospective, helping people who are close to us to know this will help to avoid the corporatocrazy we are going on
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What I meant by open source is that you can review the code base and see for yourself if there is a security, privacy, or freedom concern.
I’m there with you on Google, but chromium has enabled many options. (Vivaldi, the Iron Browser, etc.)
If Mozilla could seperate politics from their business I’d be more supportive. Outside of that their technology appears to be inferior in how it renders pages, web compatibility, etc.
I just have no personal reason to back that.
I also can’t stand how Google continues to force the gsuite on people. Can’t wait for the librem 5. We need it bad.
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can’t wait for the librem5 too
i understand someone coud not like mozilla politics and or buiseness, in my opinion firefox is the best available browser for privacy and freedom, not perfect of course, but the best available, that’s why i really hope someone from purism or comunity could do something about it for the librem5
when you write “but chromium has enabled many options. (Vivaldi, the Iron Browser, etc.)” that’s true, but not true on my point of view, because that’s what google does, make you think it, but at the end, these browsers are just a different front end for their technology so use brave, vivaldi or every chromium based browser just make google more stronger on web standards.
just think about drm on browser, chromiumish browsers a really high share and firefox is low, big corps and organizations, like holliwood netflix amazon ie wanna protect their content, and this is legit, but to do that they used a closed drm services, because internet belong to google, i can’t say if firefox had 70% share we could had a different politics about closed drm technology, but i think could be a good chance, firefox was one of the latest browser to adopt drm content, and thanks to god we can disable it
google and big corps do not care about this stuff, they could make all the open software they want, because they know if is it free as a free beer they can use it as a malware to spread their technology to became a standard and then take the control
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Fair point. Google determining what web and internet standards should be is not a good thing.
A lot of sensible points there… some reality check in the web world:
- Mozilla is almost exclusively interested in pushing the Firefox brand. Building a whole new browser for the Librem5 that would carry this brand is a large effort. Given how understaffed the engineering is at Mozilla (especially on the mobile side since they killed FirefoxOS) I don’t see that happening as an official product. But nothing prevents someone else to build a Gecko based browser - just don’t expect much upstream support.
- Performance of Gecko and Blink are very comparable. Both have strengths and weaknesses, but I would say they are now closer to each other than ever.
- Yes, Google has too big a say in the evolution of the web, and they use their market share not just with Chrome but also with key services (Maps, Youtube, Search) to that end. It’s a real issue with no easy answer, because no one will “break up” Google. Ideally Blink would be managed by an independent entity like Mozilla but that won’t happen anytime soon.
- Mozilla is kept alive by their Google money, and Webkit is always kept just behind being competitive with native toolkits by Apple. Servo is facing the fact that re-implementing a full web stack is a huge effort that will take years. So moving as fast as Blink/Chrome is super hard when you try to compete on the same basis.
Brave is a very interesting project because their chromium fork has all the privacy invasive bits removed, and they added strong protections against tracking, fingerprinting etc. So using their core with a mobile frontend could make sense too!
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Google also contributes a lot to the Linux kernel. Are you switching to BSD? 
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I think something else people need to remeber is the phone is Wayland only. Firefox does have a Wayland backend which you can test with the nightly builds in the unofficial flatpak repo but it’s not a very good experience yet. Until they get Wayland working well on the desktop doing all the other work required to make it work well on a 5" screen just isn’t going to happen.
Contribute is different to own a project.
Linux do not belong to google, chromium as android does.
Wayland firefox issue is not really a good news, but if mozilla want push firefox everywhere i think they could push on librem5.
Soon or later Wayland will be a default option for every distros
They already have a mobile UI they should just adapt it.
Is not easy and need some manpower but i think this community or purism should try to be in touch with them, probably they just say no, but an official trial should be made
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Sure, but Blink (the underlying web runtime used by chromium) has contributors outside Google, eg. Intel, Samsung, LG, Sony, Igalia because many people embed it in other producs.
A Java one, not one implemented in XUL/HTML like the desktop browser. It’s not simple to “just adapt it”.