Why do you use firefox?
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from Vitaly@feddit.uk to linux@lemmy.ml on 19 Sep 2023 19:09
https://feddit.uk/post/2514335
from Vitaly@feddit.uk to linux@lemmy.ml on 19 Sep 2023 19:09
https://feddit.uk/post/2514335
cross-posted from: feddit.uk/post/2514293
threaded - newest
Not chromium and Mozilla Foundation
The lack of Google/Microsoft enshittification is a huge draw.
Amen, fellow Lemming. It feels good to pull away from an enshittified corporate staple and adopt something that isn’t trying to consume your soul.
Not chromium based. I think it’s important to have alternatives to chromium-based browsers and Google’s monopoly.
If Firefox vanishes, I’ll use Epiphany instead.
When I realized the trickster fox is somehow more trustworthy than the rest. Also ad blockers.
Edit. Tab based containers has also been pretty cool.
Because it’s not controlled by the same company that also controls my smartphone OS, my internet search engine, the videos I watch …
And it works pretty alright.
A lot of false equivocating has been made regarding Mozilla and actual surveillance capitalism firms like Google and Microsoft. Mozilla remains, in my mind, the least of all evils with an organization capable of supporting a modern web browser as well as other projects.
Ad blockers actually work with it and youtube links don’t get auto forwarded to the shitty app.
It’s a combination of FireFox being the least shit and the most functional option, really. Still kind of shit by default, so I go for Librewolf. Also I’ve been using it since Firebird.
Overall the browser market is depressing.
What do you like about Librewolf? I’m kind of sceptical of browsers like that, especially in terms of timely security updates.
Librewolf just gives me more sane defaults. Saves me trouble of having to dig in to about:config and trying to figure out what needs to be changed. Generally its releases follow FireFox in reasonable time. A few updates have messed things up, but it’s rare. I guess the big thing is that Librewolf saves me some effort.
Cause fuck Manifest V3
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Honestly, when I got my first Ubuntu install disk and got everything up and running, it was the default browser. I just never looked back.
It doesn’t suck and just works. Really well customizable and adblocking/ security is better than what chrome has turned into. Chrome used to be decent but is garbage now. I’d rather use edge before chrome.
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Make your first post and we’ll upvote it
If you don’t like a post, ignore it. If you feel like the community is missing a conversation, start it. Winging about what other people want to talk about is pointless.
Supporting open-source digital environment and resist to big corporate’s monopoly.
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Because I started using it when it still was called mozilla and never got a reason to switch.
Because it's NOT Google and Firefox not embracing WebBundles or the “Web Integrity API” standard from Google. Google want to INTRODUCE DRM on the web.
And just recently YouTube (==Google) now also have very strict medical policy, so it can only follow the WHO guidelines. Google is evil, look out. Even Dr. Eric Berg is getting censored. Look out people.
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Tree style tabs. Can’t live without it anymore
Is this an extension? I found multiple ones. Which one are you using?
github.com/piroor/treestyletab/ This is the one I use. I don’t know if this works on linux, I didn’t look at the community when I posted originally my apologies.
Addons should not be dependent on your OS, unless there's some third party program that comes with them that is exclusive to it (like KDE Connect).
Great privacy (especially with addons), no chromium, ublock on mobile
I use Firefox because I can use the full version of UBlock Origin, and UBlock Origin also works on the mobile browser.
I also make heavy use of the extension Multi-Account Containers for signing in with different accounts for the same service at once.
Lastly, I prefer the UI for Firefox over anything else.
Been using it since forever, no reasons to switch. It works. Got a bit upset at them when they killed xul/pentadactyl though.
Just to make sure. Are you aware of Tridactyl?
That's what I'm using, but it's not a fully featured replacement.
Do any other browsers exist?
A couple reasons:
How do you put your tabs on the side? That sounds amazing.
It’s a bit more complex on Firefox than the others I mentioned
Awesome. Thank you!!!
Because it just works
Because it’s better.
Because it’s open source.
Because it’s not based on Chromium and competition is good.
And also because TabStash.
Because Netscape Navigator died.
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That’s why I use it too. Netscape was hopelessly outdated and Internet Explorer didn’t run on Linux. Once Mozilla was stable enough to use, I switched. I’ve never had a reason to change.
Seamonkey is still maintained.
I have been using Firefox since I can remember. That it is open source is a huge plus. The features it offers are great.
Because not chromium
Because it isn’t WebKit.
This is exactly the reason I use Firefox too.
I really like the developer tools. I always the install the developer edition (which is basically just the beta) and I find the defaults and menus more intuitive than Chrome’s, though at this point, they’re probably at feature parity. I could probably get Chrome to work how I want by changing settings but why? It’s not faster or better at this point.
I have ideological reasons too but honestly, the main reason is just that I like Firefox better. As a developer, it’s also nice to have Chromium (or Google Chrome) completely clean. If there’s a bug I can’t recreate in Firefox, I can open Chrome with no extensions or cache. Since that’s sort of the “default” for most users, it’s nice to keep my daily driver separate.
Because I can log into the sync feature without the browser logging me into every single google service automatically with the same account.
Also the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension.
Because IE sucked, Netscape was dead, and I was a contrarian little 20 year old who downloaded this new weird shit called "Firebird" to be different from everyone else which then turned into Firefox and then I just kinda kept using it. But I had tabbed browsing like five years before everyone else thought it was cool.
Because I’ve been using it since version 2 so a bit of baby duck syndrome and the fact that it still checks all my boxes for what I want in a browser.
Sweet tango icons how I miss you.
Tango, Nuvola, and Bluecurve were truly peak icon. I wish I knew then how flat and soulless things would become.
When someone built a form that for some reasons doesn’t work with Safari. Or when watching streaming sites with pop ups (FF full screen is really nice in the recent update).
I’d use it more, but I rely on iCloud password management built into safari across my family’s devices and handoff/tab groups to manage tabs across them.
I only use it so that I can watch DRM content (Udemy, HBO, etc)
I use it since I know computers and it’s better for Adblockimg than Chromium based browsers nowdays.
Because I have no other viable option.
I’ve been using Firefox since 2002 when it first became available, at that point it was called Mozilla. It’s definitely the browser that I’ve used the most in about 25 years of browsing the Internet from home. Firefox has a great native Linux version and seems to be widely promoted by most distros. Since switching to Linux seven years ago I also started using Chromium (not to be confused with Chrome) and Opera, both of which also have great native Linux versions.
userChrome.css, vertical tabs, better integration with the host system than Vivaldi or Edge, and support for fling scrolling that’s not insanely fast on touchpads.
+1 for the Tree Style Tabs extension. There’s nothung quite like it on any other browser (thougb I heard vivaldi does something similar? I’ll try that, but it’s still chr*mium, so not for me)
Orion does it now too.
Isn’t that proprietary?
EDIT: I forgot, vivaldi’s UI is also proprietary IIRC
I really tried to switch to FF, but I need my vertical tabs, side-by-side/sidebar view and power user keyboard shortcuts.
I tried to use Tree Style Tabs, but that uses FF’s sidebar view and I need the sidebar for other things too. There’s a use case where I like to have two tabs open side by side, and the best way I found to do it in FF is the extension “Open in sidebar”. But that overwrites the tree style tabs view, so I can either use vertical tabs or display websites in the sidebar, but not both at the same time! Not to mention that when I drag a tab out from a window, the website opened in the sidebar is carried over to the new window with it, which is infuriating! Also, Tree Style Tabs is so damn wide.
Another pet peeve is that searching in open tabs is not trivial. When you want to search in the titles of your open tabs with the goal of switching to it, you need to:
Which is just too many steps for this use case to be efficient, and I do this a lot in other browsers!
Despite all the privacy problems and other issues, Edge:
I like the idea of switching to FF and ditching Chromium very much, but these things are deal breakers for me and they’re why I have to stay with Edge for now…
That’s fair. Some Firefox forks, like Pulse and Floorp, have native vertical tabs, but I don’t know about your other issues, and forks have their own potential problems.
Both Vivaldi and Edge have vertical tabs.
Yeah, but they’re not organised like a tree AFAIK
It came preinstalled.
Because it’s what my father installed and set as default on all PCs. By the point I had my own and could have made the decision myself, I was just so used to it that I didn’t wanna switch.
The ideological conviction came later.
I remember when Netscape was abandoned and open-sourced as Mozilla, and it was huge and bloated as slow as hell. And out of that came a project to just pull out the browser part of Mozilla and make it super fast and as portable. I remember a series of early alphas, and even the name went through a few evolutions. First it was called Phoenix, then Firebird, briefly, until they realised Firebird was taken and changed it to Firefox. It had this shiny new Gecko rendering engine and its only rival was IE…5?
When I started my first dev job in 2006, Firefox was far and away the best browser to use because it had an extension that no other browser could match: Firebug. Firebug was the precursor to the standard F12 devtools that every browser now has and it was life-changing if you were a web developer. (Try imagine doing your job without it now.)
Then Chrome arrived and it was shiny and W3C compliant (yay!) and you could pull a tab off into a separate window (wow!) and every tab ran as a separate process (neat!) and Google wouldn’t be evil for at least another decade. Back then, FF had memory leak problems and that drove a lot of us away.
And then Chrome pulled this ad surveillance shit and I was fucking out. I’m so glad that FF is still here.
I let myself be fully engulfed by the Google/Chrome/Android continuum and it’s only recently that I realised just how much of myself I gave away and, while my personal data has long since been propagated to a million servers, I’d still like to try keep some of myself to myself.
My back hurts.
Because Chrome is unfiltered corpo shit and Brave is owned and operated by right-wing assholes peddling cryptocurrency.
This. Also, I don’t want to use a chromium-based browser, because it will give google enought control to force bullshit like WEI
Brave is so bad. No idea how anyone actually uses that shit.
It’s usually performative anti-wokeness from the kind of edgy computer touchers that are preoccupied with other people’s supposed performative wokeness.
I need to save that sentence 😃👌🏻well written
Brave is great on mobile, but they still don’t have the Firefox reader view.
Brave is my second choice.
Because the fire, and the fox
Not my main but Firefox containers are damn handy.
It’s the only other option
Vivaldi is my main browser of choice but Firefox is my backup. I’m logged into both and have sync enabled and have them installed on Linux and my Android.
If a site doesn’t work on Vivaldi, I’ll try it on FF.
Cause there is no alternative. Google can take my fiery fox from my cold dead hands.
It’s not chrome / chrome-based. We need to have any choice. As Chrome is very, very loved by corporations, and Firefox hated… it means that for personal use it’s the best browser available.
Because the options are firefox, chrome, or chrome in a moustache and glasses
All of which I use because X thing doesn’t work on Y browser
I have a Firefox tattoo on my penis and all my friends will think I’m a liar if i use Chrome.
The logo is cool. Also it is not driven by Google which is a web company and a browser developer at the same, thats dangerous.
Firefox supports a font technology for less common scripts, Graphite, that the for-profit-corporate browsers do not. I use one of those scripts once in a great while. So I’m locked in until OpenType has better support.
It’s the only truly free choice for a browser.
I’ve been using it for 20-ish years and there’s never been a major reason to switch, and all the alternatives seem worse.
Also, it’s all that stands between Google and the free web at this point.
Lack of alternatives…
Because its not chrome and has good extension support (I actually use librewolf)
Me also!
Firefox had the best reader view of any browser and looks great in both mobile and desktop.
Also, uBlock
Because I’ve been using it since the Windows 7 days and Chrome never gave me a good reason to switch.
Recent events have only solidified my choice.
I don’t use Firefox.
“abloo bloo muh securitah muh internet fwee-”
Nowadays, a “freedom-respecting” and/or a “privacy-respecting” browser became a myth. Even so, a buzzword. If you believe theres such browser, you are delusional.
Downvotes are under this post for your self-validation needs.
Firefox Brave Tor Mullvad Librewolf Ungoogled Chromium Waterfox Epiphany IceCat
There’s probably even more that I’m unaware of.
Originally I started to use it because I’d heard there was a new update to its rendering engine that made it feel faster/better than chrome. After testing it out I did think it felt better at the very least. Now I’m using it mostly for the same reasons and to reduce my dependence on Google/Chrome.
For me, it’s not as memory efficient as something like Edge, but it handles having a lot of tabs open much better. It also has a lot of powerful features under the hood, and some really good power user addons, like Tab Groups.
Extensions. AdBlock for Phoenix was a killer feature.
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Fun fact, system76 labtops ship with a boatload of proprietary software. Buying a Linux native laptop is cool but don’t pretend it protects your freedom
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It comes with non-free firmware for WiFi and modern Intel CPUs won’t boot without a bunch of binaries including ME.
Maybe its open source but it isn’t free software
Isn’t Chromium open source?
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FOSS Not-Chromium based Ublock origin Sane Ctrl+tab
I’ve used Chrome since the beginning and moved from Firefox. I’ve been happy. I’d still be happy but now I’m back on Firefox because of Google’s intentions. It’s led me to start to move away from Google as a whole. Moved my emails and search to DuckDuckGo.
It’s going to be hard to move away from other services. Maps and YouTube for example.
It is hard to move away from maps completely but for pure navigation there are many alternatives. From the FOSS world, there are 2 I would recommend.
Organic Maps - fairly clean and focused app mainly around navigation
OsmAnd~ - a more fleshed out map app. Easily see hiking routes, ski routes, etc. This is the one I am trying to use at the moment.
Still doesn’t help solve the google review for restraunts and shops etc, but it is a step in the right direction.
DDG isn’t the paragon of privacy. Try Qwant or StartPage.
Cause it’s the Red Panda browser, cuddly creatures🥰
Because of FoxyGestures, I can’t find a good replacement for this on Chromium based browsers.
Because of uBlock Origin, Firefox has the full version, on mobile too.
Because Google Chrome can scan my files system for “malware” and improving their ad data, in other words their spying goes too far.
Because of the customisability of the UI.
Because I can tweak every variable (visit about:config)
Because if you turn telemetry off, it’s actually off, Google lies about that.
Because Google’s market share is so big, that they have the guts to try and DRM the entire Internet for their browser, no company should have that much power.
A major reason for me is manifest v3 and other shenanigans designed to neuter ad blockers. Secondary to that is promoting web renderer diversity - as a web dev I don’t want to go back to the days where we could only afford to cater to one engine - chromium / blink in this case.
Cause it’s the only non chromium browser left
Apple User quietly steps away
I guess Safari is included with that group too
If I’m not mistaken gnome web (epiphany) uses the same browser engine as safari
Because I never particularly liked the alternatives.
Ctrl+Tabcycles to previous active tab and is actually useful.For add-ons, mostly. I use Tree-Style Tabs and can’t live without it at this point.
I was shown it by a mate, along with soulseek, in like, 2006 or so when in sixth form. It was way better than what I was using at the time (IE)
At least that’s what I remember, pretty sure that was the date. I remember soulseek was before by a bit actually as we used it for trading At the Drive In and Mars Volta tracks
I’ve carried on using it because of plugins, adblocks, privacy, etc.
Many reasons. Many of which is down to how Google as a company is reaching between the proverbial couch cushions to get at the loose change to make a profit. Default opt-in tracking, breaking ad-blockers, and probably more which I forgot about since I abandoned Chrome years ago.
Trust. I think it has been earned - so far. NCSA Mosaic was my second browser, and while I’ve experimented with all the major browsers and many not-so-major contenders over the interim couple of decades, Firefox has been a constant for me ever since it was first spawned off of Mozilla. I still believe the Firefox team when they say things, and so far that has worked out just fine.
I can’t find any reason to use an alternative browser
Chrome on android becomes unbearable with ads, and full screen vid ads when i just want to read the news. Use ff for the addon.
because Mozilla is not trying to mold the entire internet into an advertising platform.
Because Chromium and its derivatives suck. Is it really too much to ask for a traditional menu bar rather than a stupid hamburger menu?
More open and honest and fight for privacy. Also their devtools are top notch.
Privacy, real ad-blocking, and fighting for the open web. Also, actually being free software.
Are they the most privacy respecting? no.
are they privacy respecting ENOUGH? sure