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I use FireDragon, because it’s the only browser I could find that has a vertical tab-bar that collapses. Supposedly Zen does it, too, but I couldn’t get it to work.
FireDragon also has a toolbar to the side with a notepad and other neat stuff. I haven’t used that yet, but it could be cool.
Fennec on mobile, haven’t gotten around to replacing FF on Desktop yet.
Firefox. Equally concerned as well.
Looking into Librewolf and Waterfox now!
Long time Firefox user. Installed Librewolf today and so far so good. I used Firefox sync to get all my settings, bookmarks, open tabs, etc. back. At some point I will probably find an alternative yo Firefox sync but it’ll do for the time being.
The only thing that sucks about it is some sites just flat out don’t work well. For example, in Librewolf I cannot login to my banks website. The site loads, but the login just hangs. Firefox it works immediately.
I believe Librawolf defaults to “strict” fingerprinting blocking. Try setting it to moderate and see if that works with your bank
I do believe I tried that but I’ll try again, thanks.
OK! You’ve had 1 hour to check them out. :D What’s the difference between the two? They’re both Firefox forks, right?
I found a decent answer here https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/18g8tez/what_am_i_gaining_if_i_switch_from_librewolf_to/
That mod sums up a lot that I found. I don’t know the answer because they both have odd downsides.
Yes they’re both forks!
Didn’t Waterfox get bought out by an ad company?
yes and then sold and FOSS again!
Nice!
Still Firefox. Every time Mozilla does anything the entire privacy community goes insane. The terms of use they published seem entirely benign, and the only thing anyone can actually point to is the “direction being worrisome”. Well, I’ll get worried when they update the terms to be actually onerous. Everything even possibly annoying can be disabled, and it’s still the only browser engine offering competition against Chrome ruling the web.
I don’t see how you could find the terms not concerning and their removal of stating they don’t sell data
What in the terms is concerning? They still have the bulk of the language in the old data privacy guarantee as well. This seems like they just got a more circumspect legal department who wants to cover their ass.
It’s always been the case that Mozilla could decide to just make Firefox suck ass. Again, I’ll be worried when they actually change the terms to something unacceptable.
It’s easy you just don’t worry too much about it. Is this a completely dumbass, reality avoidant coping strategy? You be the judge
Well, yes.
Firefox. Read the new statements on their website and the Full diff of the pull request. Not concerned at all.
Edit: pumped for ladybird, but its gonna be a few years until that is finished
Same. I’m not worried, just confused by the new language. It seems unnecessary, but I could end up being flat wrong.
I wish Mozilla would refocus on improving Firefox instead of the AI nonsense they’ve pursued lately. They havent been perfect, but if i’m going to give any faceless entity the benefit of the doubt, it’s Mozilla.
That said, i want the forks to thrive. Librewolf is pretty good. I might check out Pale Moon again to see what has(n’t) changed.
Waterfox is also good from what i remember. I used a build of it with KDE global menu support on OpenSuse for years, and i was happy with it the whole time.
RIP TenFourFox. Hopefully a new fork will emerge for powerpc and other retro computers
I read the new language to mean: they are going to record your input streams and feed them to AI/LLM - thereby recording your previously private info that they used to discard and protect. Up to you, I use Chrome because it integrates well with the gmail account I’ve used for 25+ years and I appreciate the “login anywhere and get your same setup” functionality, as well as the ability to nuke remote login sessions.
You can login with firefox and have the same setup anywhere as well. it’s really convenient to share tabs between mobile and workstation
While I’m not sure dropping Firefox is necessary at this juncture, I’ve had a good experience using LibreFox. Hearing a lot about Zen, though.
Check out Mozilla’s clarification: https://www.ghacks.net/2025/02/27/mozillas-new-terms-of-use-causes-confusion-among-firefox-users/
I think this diff makes it pretty clear its time to run, not walk: https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/114078708183574404
I’m a Firefox user and I’m not really that bothered about this tos changes. If they do mess things up I’ll probably just switch to some fork that doesn’t do the fuckery.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Mint packages Firefox with it (whatever “it” is) disabled, since they build Thunderbird without telemetry.
Practical response.
Recent news about Firefox finally got me to go with LibreWolf.
I love Librewolf for PC
and Mull for Android.Edit: Apparently Mull has been abandoned. See below for alternate.
Mull development has been abandoned. You might want to switch to IronFox, the community’s fork to continue its legacy.
Thanks for the info!
Zen, absolutely love the workflow and the fact that it is not chromium based.
Waiting excitedly for ladybird, it is already very impressive but still years left until it is daily drive able
I like zen a lot but I’m struggling to drag a tab from one window to another. The sidebar always collapses on the target window before the tab gets there. Any tips?
Perhaps right click on the sidebar -> disable compact mode? I haven’t had any issues moving tabs between windows, but then again I keep the sidebar persistent
Basically a firefox skin, although they have a VPN as a sponsor, did somebody did a thorough check on that browser?
I still use firefox despite their questionable leadership, for one major reason: it prevents Google from setting whatever web standards they want. Sites that aren’t standards compliant will usually still work in Chromium-based browsers, but they will break in Firefox, and then I can report the bugs.
Firefox. And Thunderbird. And donate to Mozilla.
Don’t really see the point in using a fork that, by the time you boil it down, just takes Firefox’s work and then releases it later.
I want a Google and Apple alternative and I’d rather support it at the top of the chain.
I use Firefox. I don’t like the changes but I don’t want to use any downstream browsers and I don’t think any of the not-downstream alternatives do better.
They are better in most of the case, Firefox only is not that good…
I just don’t care for downstream projects on browsers, with software so critical I want to get the updates in as fast as possible. I know some of those mentioned in OP had issues with that in the past. And not much reason to anyway for me to switch, Firefox works perfectly fine for me, so there’s not much added benefit.
I’ve been using the Firefox mod Zen Browser on Linux Mint. When Firefox released an update in February, my Zen had it the next day. People depending on the “official” Firefox were left waiting over a week, with multiple threads in the forums asking “when is it coming?”
Also when I looked into mods updates for a critical security fix in November, practically all the mods had updated within 24 hours of FF’s update. (Exceptions: Midori and Mercury.) https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2554267&sid=4f140800c5d62939af8e6394514b9aab#p2554267
Did Zen come from flatpak and Firefox from deb?
Zen: On one machine, Flatpak. On the other, AppImage through AM. Firefox: Mint-maintained version from Mint repo (deb).
I can’t remember the exact differences between Firefox upstream and Mint version. But I believe Mint began maintaining their own deb at a time when upstream Ubuntu was only offering Firefox as a snap, which Mint is against, and Mozilla hadn’t yet begun offering their own deb repo.
That’s where the delay comes. Though I guess it does point out that even with just Firefox the differences are small in how quickly you get updates.
I share your general reasoning (about staying with Firefox). Except this:
Firefox works perfectly fine for me, so there’s not much added benefit
The added benefit of going with one of the downstream forks is that you can be sure they’re not gonna pull some new monetization trick next month. That does count for something.
BUT, again, I share your concerns about security, that’s why I’ll likely stay with Firefox till the end.
The added benefit of going with one of the downstream forks is that you can be sure they’re not gonna pull some new monetization trick next month. That does count for something.
It doesn’t count for much, if they do that I can just switch then.
Yes, that’s my thinking. For now it’s acceptable.
Let’s hope it doesn’t get much worse than this. The direction is pretty alarming.
Understand your point of view but in fact the 2 problems you mentioned are mainly not problems :
1 - Updates? The main downstream browsers received updates the same time as Firefox the same day and sometime the same hour
2 - Benefits? The benefits are mainly under the hood, removing Mozilla telemetry and annoying features (account, pocket…) AND the biggest advantages are the gain in term of privacy due the increase of anti fingerprinting methods
But who’s making these “updates”? Who’s doing the actual work of keeping the software secure? Mozilla is.
If everybody moves to a free-riding fork, Mozilla goes to 0% and there will be no browser let alone updates.
This needs to be higher up. We need firefox as an alternative to a chrome engine monopoly. ToS and telemetry are miniscule issues compared to what we are up against
Firefox is literally the last thing standing between google controlling the entire browser landscape and having control over all web standards (as if they dont already have too much influence)
People ditching firefox over tos, telemetry, AI, CEO pay, etc. are cutting off their nose to spite their face. Do i wish mozilla would stop doing stupid shit? Of course. But the alternative is far worse. Dont let perfect be the enemy of good. Mozilla will never be as ideologically pure as we want them to be, but that’s OK (for now)
Depends on which way the Firefox ditchers jump - jumping to Chrome, yeah… not great. Jumping to more privacy respecting options… it’s your data, you should be able to choose (if you care…)
Read the post above mine… “Privacy respecting options” are almost always downstream forks of firefox. Abandon/kill the source, and downstream dries up
You’re right but first don’t worry the biggest part of people use stock Firefox and secondly Firefox stock is just not as private as a fork
The biggest part of people use Chrome-based browsers.
Also… the point is that it’s thanks to those people who use stock Firefox that the codebase stays maintained. So admitting that having those people is a good thing is kind of against the idea of encouraging people to move away from stock Firefox.
To an extent, the enshittification of the most popular platform is inevitable.
Even when using forks of Firefox you are contributing to the Mozilla project and can support it as well Using librewolf is better than using chrome in term of support for the main devs Mozilla
How is a hobbyist fork of Firefox selling your data and slurping up whatever they want from the browser? People use forks because the company’s telemetry and data collection are often removed from the fork.
That’s what I said
Updates? The main downstream browsers received updates the same time as Firefox the same day and sometime the same hour
I’m not sure if something has changed, but due to changes they’ve made, at least before they couldn’t ship out the updates until they made it so that the updates actually affect their changed codebase. Which understandably causes delays. So there’d always be this delay with something being fixed on Firefox and then being fixed on the downstream projects.
Surely there will be some delay but not that much, for most updates the fixes are transplanted directly to the downstream project making the patches coming very fast, almost as fast as the original project
I’ve just soured on them from when there has been issues. Some security patches took a while because of the changed codebase. Good if that doesn’t happen anymore though.
Should retry it and make your own decision
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t really see how they can be better beyond philosophical reasons.
I guess bringing back stuff like the proper dropdown menu we had in the 2000s would be an example, but I don’t expect most of them to do something like that.
I expect most of them to have some kind of gimmick that isn’t relevant to how I use a web browser.
Privacy, simply better, better anti-fingerprinting. Sure you can do it with stock Firefox but it’s just simpler to have a pre-hardened browser
What privacy and fingerprinting concerns are there with Firefox?
simply better
Lol. That’s not a reason, ya goof.
Explore the Arkenfox user.js and you’ll see all things that can be improved in Firefox
I’m good.
Been moving over to LibreWolf and I’m pretty happy with it so far. I added NoScript and CanvasBlocker extensions, along with my password manager, and I’m getting settled in with it now.
The fingerprint protections in Librewolf already protect against canvas fingerprinting. You actually make ourself stand out even mkre by using it. Even with RFP disable, ETP still protects against canvas fingerprinting.
Nice, I was unaware, thanks!
To a slightly lesser extent, Id also suggest avoiding noscript for the same reason. uBlock Origin can do everything that NoScript can and NoScript contributes as a metric to create your overall fingerprint. If need strong protection against fingerprinting, use Mullvad or Tor Browser. Use Librewolf if you need to customize, or want to change the defaults.
A related conversation can be found here: https://lemmy.ml/post/26534979
Thanks
