Firefox looks so much better than Chrome

Personally I find it far more important that it's not run by a company that will try its hardest to track your every movement on the web, but to each their own, I suppose.

You never tried to listen for stock Firefox's traffic with Wireshark for sure.
People speak very good thing about Firefox but they like to hide and avoid the shady stuff. Let me give you the un-cesored version of what Firefox really is. Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances and they also do stuff like adding unique IDs to each installation.
Firefox does is a LOT of calling home. Just fire Wireshark alongside it and see how much calling home and even calling 3rd parties it does. From basic ocsp requests to calling Firefox servers and a 3rd party company that does analytics they do it all, even after disabling most stuff in Settings and config like the OP did.
I know other browsers do it as well, except for Ungoogled and because of that I’m sticking with it. I would like to avoid programs that need no snitch whenever I open them. ungoogled-chromium + ublock origin + decentraleyes + clearurls and a few others.
Now you’re free to go ahead and downvote this post as much as you would like. I’m sorry for the trouble and mental break down I may have caused by the sudden realization that Firefox isn’t as good and private after all.
- I think librewolf scrubs most of that stuff out. I'm basing that off of using burpsuite's proxy server though. On vanilla firefox it captures so much crap going out. I havent tried with wireshark though.
- That's all true, but why take a modified chromium instead of a modified Firefox?
  Also clearurls and decentraleyes would be pretty much useless with Firefox and uBlock Origin.
- Chromium-based browsers have inherently weaker extensions due to Manifest v3 and many other targeted attacks on adblockers. If you want a browser that works far better and provides a much higher level of privacy, use Mullvad Browser (worked on in collaboration with the Tor Browser, just without Tor integration) or LibreWolf. Both are Firefox forks with Firefox telemetry removed and anti-fingerprinting measures. You don't need and absolutely should not install any extensions beyond the default installed in those 2 browsers (except perhaps a password manager), as that will dramatically damage the fingerprinting protection they provide. Both will have a much higher level of protection than you could ever realistically expect from any Chromium-based Browser.
- Yes but no. Firefox does some creepy stuff, and I will need to verify this. But it also matters how much data websites get about you, and Ungoogled Chromium has no fingerprint protection
- Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances
  So I went ahead and read that article and goodness gracious, does anybody actually read these links??? Because that link is a complete nothingburger. It's a blog post from someone who never read a 990 before (standard nonprofit disclosure form) who thinks every other line of is proof of a scandal. But it's not, it's just a big word salad that is too long to read, so nobody will bother.
  The most significant charge is (1) that the CEO makes too much and (2) the author doesn't like that they contract out work to consultants who think diversity is good. And everything after that is LESS significant.
  Every point made, so far as I can tell:
  Have assets worth $1.1 billion as of 2021
  Mozilla spent less on "expenses" from 2021 relative to 2020
  Revenue went up over the same time
  A lot of revenue was from royalties (e.g. agreements for default search)
  They disagree with the wording on a donate form about whether Mozilla "relies" on individual donations
  The CEO made $5.6MM
  They pulled out one expense, which appears to have been training/education relating to social justice topics
  They pull out a few more individual expenses and weren't sure what they were.
  This isn't secret documents being handed to Deep Throat in a dark parking lot. There's no smoking gun, no smoke, just a PDF with ordinary tables of expenses and revenue, and consultants who did diversity training. If that's shady then, get ready to be mad about every non-profit ever.
- I will never understand how people expect software to gather no telemetry or metrics whatsoever.
- Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances.
  I'm not going to refute this because it seems to me that article are right in several points. Also, we have to be honest, Mozilla is kind of stupid sometimes.
  But if you care about the default search engine or privacy settings, you really just need to do some hardening and tweaks to make it very private in general. Chromium doesn't have any of these settings, it even doesn't have RFP btw.
  and they also do stuff like adding unique IDs to each installation.
  Looks like you can download Firefox through the Mozilla's official HTTP/FTP repository that doesn't trigger this ID token generation. Also this article motivates people to download Firefox installer from Softonic's page:
  Firefox users who prefer to download the browser without the unique identifier may do so in the following two ways:
  Download the Firefox installer from Mozilla's HTTPS repository (formerly the FTP repository).
  Download Firefox from third-party download sites that host the installer, e.g., from Softonic.
  Softonic have a really nice and privacy respectful privacy policy (obviously that's not the case) in contrast with randomized pretty anonymous unique ID triggered by Firefox installer download. Mozilla's generated ID feels more like a download counter than a tracker indeed.
  I'm not trying to justify the Mozilla's problems. They makes silly things sometimes, but being realistic, they do a better job taking care of their users privacy more than Google or even Brave.
- I've never wiresharked my workstation to verify but I absolutely review my DNS logs on my pihole and I have never seen what you're describing.
¿Por qué no los dos?
- Hooray! 🌮
- También tenemos que entender que hay algunos que solo entran para tener con quien discutir, porque con su esposa no se atreven, así que entran aquí a eso 🤣
I am also pretty sure Firefox is equally if not more secure than Chromium. They just got some really bad reputation for not sandboxing everything.
- The only issue they have with sandboxing is on Android, as they have yet to implement per-site process isolation despite it being present on desktop Firefox and Chromium Android for many years now. I've been tracking the development of Project Fission on Android (Firefox's per-site process isolation) for years now and it still isn't even ready for testing. Additionally, Firefox Android does not use Android's isolatedProcess flag for sandboxing, which is another area in which it is behind Chrome. For that reason, I cannot recommend Firefox on Android, and instead recommend Cromite (fork of Bromite after its development was abandoned) which is based on Chromium.
Ah yes the trust worthy browser without tracking that comes with Google search by befault. lol
- Browser and search engine are completely different, plus you can change it.
- the great thing about foss projects, is that people fork them! try librewolf!

LibreWolf FTW! 👍

When I was running it every other website would break, switched over to Mullvad Browser instead.
- Mullvad Browser is the same but worse.
  If you have websites break without noscript, you visit some really shady websites.
  Be happy they break and dont claim the browser.
  For my websites nearly never cause problems, and if they do Firefox tells me that they want to read my canvas data, send push ads and more, so its obvious.
When I was using Librewolf maybe 4 years ago, it was never up to date with Firefox. I thought it could be a potential security risk, sometimes it took months to incorporate Firefox security updates. Has that improved recently?
- I had the same impression at least 4 years ago as well. More privacy maybe but less security definitely.
- LibreWolf updates follow Firefox updates pretty soon nowadays is my impression.

Except Firefox’s bookmark system on android is absolute crap and looks hideous.

Mobile browsers all suck.
What is your alternative? I want E2EE sync. Is vivaldi better? But honestly I wouldnt use their browser.

I started using it in my early 20s when it was still called "Firebird" because I was still salty that Netscape was dead and using IE sucked donkey balls (There was stuff like Konqueror and Lynx on Linux, but Konqueror and Lynx were...well they were Konqueror and Lynx). Mozilla 4 lyfe. "Technically" (with huge quotation marks) I've been more or less using the same browser since 1997.
Wolves got to stick together
Similar reason for me except I was like 10-11. Also another reason was browsing the web with firefox just felt much better to me back then.
I would probably still be on Librewolf if Floorp's Tree Style Tab integration wasn't as good as it is.

Source: One person's opinion on their personal Fediverse account

... Not that I disagree, mind. I've been on FF since like. 2007? Which was the moment I figured out that other web browsers besides IE7 existed?

Never saw reason to hop to Chrome(ium) even before I knew/cared about datamining or enshittification or any of that stuff. Back then it just looked like "another browser, that does things a bit different but has no features that entice me that Firefox lacks". Then as I learned about the political side of things I was like "Huh, guess I'm glad for myself then!"

I used Netscape "back in the day". With some interim transition attempts including the likes of Opera, I eventually switched to Chrome because it was genuinely more featureful and faster.
I was a happy Chrome user until they decided to deprecate manifest V2 and fuck up my ad blocker, at which point I switched to Firefox and haven't looked back.
Everything in this industry is circular I guess.
- I used Opera when it used Presto instead of becoming a yet another chromium. I miss that one.
What would you consider an authoritative source on if something looks nice?
- ~~Me, I'm the certified niceness decider~~

You know that famous The Dude meme? Applies here.

Not a chrome fan and I use Librewolf and I like how I've customised it. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.

i love firefox but honestly right now i find edge to be much more aesthetically pleasing, especially with vertical tabs and grouping. if firefox can add these two items, i'd switch to firefox in a heartbeat (and they're already adding tab groups)

Somewhere in this thread is a userchrome.css file on how to remove the "tree style tabs" header bar.
Install that addon.
Place that file in ~/.mozilla/firefox/XXXX-default-release/chrome as UserChrome.css (create that folder).
Enable legacy customization in about:config
aren't there extensions for this?
- there is sidebery but i just like the edge version more. the extension wasn't as fluid, plus i like how i can have native profiles for work, uni, and personal built in without extensions like profile switcher, which relies on a third party program. nothing against it; and i still donate to mozilla and firefox. i'm looking forward to seeing mozilla's approach to tab groups though.

not using Gnome Web smh /s

Falkon Ultras!

Never heard of LibreWolf but they say on their website that features like DRM are disabled, what does that mean if I want to view DRM content in my browser? I may be confused but currently with Firefox I already have problems with DRM sometimes. For example on Dell's website I had difficulties viewing product videos on there, will they simply not play on LibreWolf or how does that work?

There is a toggle for DRM in both Firefox and LibreWolf that is off by default. It will prompt you when site would like to use it, so you can happily say no and launch your favourite file sharing software.
It means that any website which using drm for playing content will not work by default,but u can enable it a again by modyfing config file.
- from my experience there will be a popup asking to enable drm for this site when it requests it. no need to modify a file.
Create a second profile that you only use for DRM crap and enable DRM in the settings. Firefox also doesnt have DRM pre-enabled so that claim of them makes no sense.
See my post on konsole on how to make a desktop entry in Linux, where you can put profiles on the right click actions with icons and all.
Yes, Librewolf is basically a fork of Firefox that makes different trade-offs, where it accepts more breakage than Firefox does, to gain a bit more privacy.
Yeah it would be nice if there was a way to completely remove the DRM.

Mullvad Browser is another good option that is privacy focused. FF based.

Use a few to isolate different activities.

No.
Mullvad Browser is torbrowser without tor. Its basically the same as Librewolf, afaik Librewolf uses arkenfox user.js which is based on torbrowser.
But the Torbrowser has a "disk avoidance" principle, which means they always use "private browsing" mode as that never saves data on your hard drive.
This means it always deletes everything, session, cookies, tabs, searches, ...
MullvadBrowser is not more private than Librewolf and ALSO has these things making it basically unusable for daily usage.
This may lead to people using it "for the private stuff" and a shitty browser for the rest. Which makes no sense, as Librewolf is the same.
And also, private browsing doesnt allow containers, meaning "multi account containers" and "temporary container" are nonfunctional. You dont need to run multiple damn browser sessions, just use containers.
And dont use Mullvad Browser its BS.
- Different people have different use cases. I am not sure what point you are making beyond that it does not fit your set up.
- Tor Browser is based on Firefox-ESR, while Librewolf is based on Firefox-Release. Because of this, they do not have identical features and preferences. Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser are designed for stability and minimal customization for the purpose of blending in with other users. Librewolf is designed to receive new features, better privacy defaults than standard Firefox, and allow users to more easily configure preferences. All of these browsers are valid options for privacy-minded people, depending on personal preferences, including separating activities/identities between different browsers. Container tabs are certainly good for privacy, and hopefully the feature can one day be used in private browsing mode.

Can Firefox install websites as web apps?

Desktop? No
Android? Yes
Well, there's PWAsForFirefox
Yes, but in an unsupported manner.
https://github.com/filips123/PWAsForFirefox
Or as an extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/
No and thats not nice. Webapps work really well, I use hardened Chromium for Element until Firefox gets their shit together.
- Just use Floorp. Gives you even easier UI customisation by allowing you to switch to the old UI via the settings, and also includes Webapp support and support for Workspaces.
I use GNOME Web for webapps.

I like my Firefox more: https://i.imgur.com/AWO9ss1.png .... got rid of the title bar

- thanks
- Double thanks.
#sidebar-box[sidebarcommand="treestyletab_piro_sakura_ne_jp-sidebar-action"] #sidebar-header { display: none; }
Add this to your userChrome.css file to hide the "Tree Style Tab" header at the top of the sidebar.
Source: https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#for-only-tree-style-tab-sidebar-1397
- thanks! works great... here is my new userChrome.css:
  /* hides the native tabs */ #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse; }
  #sidebar-box[sidebarcommand="treestyletab_piro_sakura_ne_jp-sidebar-action"] #sidebar-header { display: none; }
Did the same thing, though I'm handling the tabs with Sway
- I'm doing that in arch.

Librewolf doesn't respect your choice in system fonts if you uncheck "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above". I don't use it for that reason.

Cant you set a custom font within Librewolf?
- You can but it won't be respected. It will continue to default to their included Noto fonts despite whatever font you select. You can test this yourself. I'm sure they do it for some "privacy reason" but if I wanted that trade off I'd simply use the Tor Browser or one of those hardened firefox profiles.

That tweet is so weak, how are hundreds of people here upvoting and commenting on this?

Or just use multiple browsers? If one size fits all for you then good for you but there is no Firefox based browser that can replace Vivaldi for me. So I use both, one for my power user needs and other for private browsing (hardened Firefox, normal FF isn't great for privacy either)

Havent used Vivaldi in some time. Have a look at floorp but of course they dont have all the addons vivaldi has like notes and stuff.
And yes, regular FF is simply a "just works" browser but with lots of stupid bloat. Librewolf is actually great as they have a modern CI/CD build pipeline and do all the hardening for you, its more sustainable and secure to share effords.

And Waterfox looks even better also by virtue of preferences to change userChrome.css

Mind sharing screenshots?
- I'll have to get home. https://github.com/WaterfoxCo/Waterfox/blob/0068b0438b9bd6fb9761882154e7a339d96186af/waterfox/browser/locales/en-US/waterfox.ftl#L160 shows all the options, and Waterfox by default uses the older (initial quantum release) look for Firefox tabs. As a TreeStyleTab user, I love hide sidebar headers and auto-hide tabs

They both use hundreds megabytes of RAM just to render my static page. But for hydrogen web chromium use ~35M. This is shitty.

(w3m use 10M and in most case for searching we only need text-based browser)

These are not the only two available browsers, you know?

Do you mean Safari?
Name one other browser that is not based on Chromium. If it is based on Chromium, it has to deal with what Google throws at them.
I say this as an enthusiastic Brave user. Brave is great at what it does currently, but the more terrible stuff Google builds into Chromium, the more patches they'll have to maintain. This can make it harder to maintain their fork.
Worse than that, most Chromium-derivative users aren't Brave users. Many web apps already don't work as well with Firefox' JavaScript Engine (Gecko) as they do with Chromium. This gives Google immense power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Browsers_based_on_Chromium
- Brave is extremely shady. Really, I used it and even created a script to install it on rpm-ostree distros, but damn that is shady.
  https://www.kevinmuldoon.com/do-not-use-brave-browser/
- Of course there's other browsers! There's Opera...uhh that now based on Chromium. Oh, how about Edge...that's Chromium based too now. I know, there's the KHTML engine!...no, that's been officially discontinued.
- GNOME Web technically, based on WebKit. Idk if anyone uses that though.
- GNOME Web, qutebrowser, Konquerer and Falkon. While they are pretty obscure, I personally use Falkon regularly on low end systems/RPi
- Both OP and the author of the linked post explicitly say "Chrome", not "Chromium", and seem to imply those are the only two choices available to users.
  If it is based on Chromium, it has to deal with what Google throws at them.
  https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-different-from-chrome/

I have no idea why people use #Chrome. #Firefox looks so much better,

Reason n1: Firefox's font rending sucks; Reasons n2: Chrome dev tools are better and way more supported by whatever ecosystem you develop in.

Try these settings on Firefox in about:config
gfx.fontrendering.cleartypeparams.enhancedcontrast = 100
gfx.fontrendering.cleartypeparams.pixelstructure = 5
gfx.fontrendering.cleartypeparams.renderingmode = 5
gfx.fontrendering.fallback.alwaysusecmaps = true
I cannot use Firefox without them. They adjust the text rendering to be more... normal, I don't understand why they aren't default, but maybe things change at higher resolutions (but I don't own a 2160p monitor to test).
- That's interesting... it makes a difference indeed.
- Cleartype is not there on my Fedora Firefox on KDE?
For frameworks treating Chromium as app development platform like Android. Firefox dev tools are much better for typical web development.
- Firefox dev tools are much better for typical web development.
  Not true, not even close. That was true like 15-20 years ago, but nowadays, especially when I'm debugging Angular (yes the extension for chrome is better) and developing stuff that will be used by people who go for Chrome.
Chrome dev tools are better for JS debugging, but Firefox wins with everything else, IMO. Especially their flexbox, grid and font visualizations and debug tools are amazing.
Chrome dev tools are better and way more supported by whatever ecosystem you develop in.
But what if you're not a web dev?
- That's fair, but I still wouldn't trade the amazing font rendering that chromium offers.

Why don't I use Firefox he says? Because Edge is better than both!

It's objectively worse than Firefox. For example, Firefox recently passed all minimum security requirements by the German Federal Office for Information Security. No other browser meets them.
- Where those tab groups at tho? Sounds like your hot dog is objectively small.
Edge is better if you are wanting to always have your data mined by Microsoft, for sure.
- If you use Edge than you probably use Windows, which means that Microsoft can already mine your data. I guess it's better to have your data mined by only Microsoft than to have it mined by both Microsoft and Google?
- As opposed to your data being mined by Google or sold by Mozilla? Dude you're cracking me up.
lol did you forget to see which sub you walked into here before shouting?
- I knew what I was in for lol
This is a joke right? There is not a single feature it could have that weights against the fact that its still Chromium-spyware.
Edge works better with specific vm coursework but not sure why. On Firefox I would press a key and it would input 0-2 times. On edge, it worked just... Normal. That's the one up that edge has had for me.
Some people Firefox and some people just love to edge. They get close but don't really get it all the way.