I'm thinking of switching to some Firefox alternative, but there are too many. So far, I'm thinking of Floorp, Waterfox or LibreWolf, but it is hard to decide on one specifically. Is there are suggestion in terms of privacy, security, maintanability, etc?
Indeed, thanks for asking OP for a clarification of why an actual alternative is needed because, to me at least, on criteria like "privacy, security, maintanability" it is IMHO the best compromise there is.
A few years ago, Waterfox was purchased by System1, and advertising company. It also collects more user data. Edit: Looks like the dev bought it back. I'd still recommend LibreWolf though.
In my experience, LibreWolf is a good balance between privacy and functionality. I've never had problems with LibreWolf.
I use icecat and it's pretty nice, main issue is you have to manually approve all JavaScript scripts and cross-site requests manually, so it makes visiting almost any website for the first time a pain in the ass.
Luckily most stuff is concentrated to a few sites and I use private frontends liberally so it's not a huge pain.
I have been using Librewolf for several months now, and I am quite happy with it. In terms of user privacy, Librewolf by default has some strict settings enabled, like Resist Fingerprinting. Resist Fingerprinting does cause some minor problems, like incorrect timezones, but there is a workaround, as stated on the Librewolf website.
I chose Floorp over regular Firefox but I'm still giving it a try, however it's working fine and I like the esthetic (big thing since I use it a lot), the only problem till now I got is I can't send tabs or share something with my phone since there's no Floorp for android
I've used most major firefox forks, floorp is easily my favorite. the extra customization options they've added are very nice to have, and the sidebars are very useful.
PS: otherwise I'm using Firefox with Vimperator so I can't help much there. I do think Firefox, and Mozilla behind it, is not perfect but provides a better alternative than Chromium based browsers. I also do worry that if nobody does use Firefox, or at least support Mozilla, somehow then it will simply not exist anymore and thus all alternatives relying on it, e.g Waterfox or LibreWolf, will not be viable anymore.
LibreWolf is good but requires setup to start using it (for me anyway). I like to keep history and open previous tabs. Also need to enable something for itch.io to load Godot games.