Waterfox Browser

General Privacy & Security
25

Excellent question.

26

You can always use opera :stuck_out_tongue:

27

@kondor you probably mean Opera 12 from 2010 (without updates), because later Opera started to use chromium under the hood.

28

This is about Waterfox not Opera. So off topic

29

And Waterfox wasn’t sold to some PRC company… a plus!

30

@amarok how do you know? :wink:

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31

True! Just guessing, based on available info. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

32

They were bought by the same company that now owns Mapquest.

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33

GNOME-web on PureOS-10-Byzantium works quite well if you don’t need uBlock-origin and EFFs-badger extensions … it’s got a built in add-blocker and more simplistic GUI but firefox has more comprehensive settings.

if you’re into crypto-currencies and ethereum then the BRAVE browser is what many Chad Linux users are rocking these days …

34

Ice is a quasi-elemental plane where the planes of Air and Water meet.

35

Good old Opera, the only closed source softwer I was an enthusiastic supporter of. It revolutionised the browser UI, but never got the share that explorer had. Than the FF fanbase started b******g about browser ads which were actually the most unintrusive ads (and prolly werent tracking around) I"ve ever seen on the internet. Soon FF took over and Opera languished, then the one of t creators left (and made vivaldi).

36

Is Waterfox worth using? Depends what you want. There are 3 major browser engines: Gecko, the engine behind Firefox; Blink, the engine behind Chrome; and Webkit, the engine behind Safari. If you want decent HTML5 support, you’ll have to pick one of them (there are alternatives if you don’t need HTML5 support, I spend a fair bit of time in EWW).

For each of those browser engines, you can either go with the official upstream source, with a fork, or with some other browser which sits atop them. Generally, all browsers based off a given engine behave and look and perform about the same. So if you like how Firefox behaves, but don’t want to run Firefox itself, one of its forks may be better for you.

My favorite browser ever was Arora, which was Webkit based. Lots of Webkit projects have moved to qtwebengine, which itself is a wrapper around Blink. These days, I’ve been using Falkon, which is also qtwebengine based, and incredibly extensible, and it still supports jumbo builds, so isn’t horrible to compile yourself.

Regarding Waterfox specifically, I’d certainly use it over Firefox. It’s not some one-time fork, which doesn’t benefit from upstream’s advancements or flat out falls behind (but it does lag behind Firefox some). It started about 10 years ago, so it’s got some staying power. That said, Pale Moon is an even older fork of Firefox, which is a proper fork, and also might be of interest to you.

Bottom line is all browsers suck. Just pick the one that sucks marginally less for how you use it.

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37

I am trying icecat and there are some nice features in it.

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38

This! Firefox is the only one usable browser to me right now (and ofc its derivatives). My only 2nd browser I use is TOR which is also a Firefox behind. There are just no real alternatives. And that’s why Mozillas problems are currently the problems of all of us who don’t want to use proprietary waste of software.

@ Waterfox: there is a blog on its website where you can read what’s the difference to Firefox and what the programmer want to reach with it. Just one hint: he cares about privacy, but don’t force it. Just saying it, because people could understand his words wrong if they don’t read the right blog posts.

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39

Agreed new browsers seem to work great until your bank spits it back with “unrecognized browser”.

40

was the reason i swapped the bank, new one is fully html compliant and works with epiphany.

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41

THIS !
banks have monetary power so it’s unjustified for them NOT to support free-software browsers … but they WILL feel the ‘heat’ if more users access their “services” using only-free-software-browsers :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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