There was a time I chose Firefox over the Chromium browser without a second thought. But nowadays, installing and opening Firefox seems like a time-consuming, very bloated experience.
Too many unnecessary features, promotions, sponsored links, and widgets are filled on the homepage. Firefox no longer allows deleting default search engines like google, perplexity, etc but can disable it. What kind of privacy feature is that? Also, all the data collection options are ticked by default. Users are needed to manually tweak it their own. Update after update instead of improving they make all the settings more complex, and there is a lot to set up after a fresh installation.
When I compare modern Firefox with 4–5 years behind Firefox, I feel like I am using browsers like Vivaldi or Opera instead of Firefox. Once we praised Firefox for its ram management in Linux but nowadays, it’s bloat causes using more ram and not a lightweight option anymore. Seriously, Firefox must consider releasing a browser like Brave Origin (Firefox Origin or something).
Isn’t anybody else frustrated with the new Firefox changes? If yes, what practical solutions exist? Debloat using any script or install any forks (no forks seem to be good; some are outdated, some are too much hardened, some are just not for daily browsing, etc.).
I’m just looking for a browser like Ungoogled Chromium but for Firefox (Unmozilla Firefox).
Waterfox is pretty much what you’re looking for. If you want a hardened browser, Librewolf is a very nice option. Though it does not have Widevine licenses so it might not play all DRM content.
Zen browser is what I personally use, but has a different workflow which was refreshing for once! If you want to try something new, I’d definitely recommend it! It also does not have Widevine licenses yet, but it did sign up for one.
Zen is so good.
i use firefox.
i just make the settings changes i prefer. it doesn’t take that long… less than a minute to do that and the ui customizations and add the basic addons i also want for every installation.
I use Vivaldi and Zen as second.
Vivaldi is not even an option for me. What else is in it other than the unique design? Even the built-in ad blocker is a joke that they never tried to improve. Just a painted chromium.
Well, the adblocker was been improved in any update and certainly not a joke, apart you are free to add any other filterlist you want. Vivaldi is way more than only an painted Chromium, it’s full degoogled, if you in the settings desactivate the already existing Chrome Store API, Vivaldi isn’t even recognized as Chromium. Vivaldi has less relation with Google than Mozilla (if you create an account for Sync, your account data goes to Alphabet), no third party involved or extern investors, promotor of the current GDPR since a lot of years before it’s existence, made by an employee owned cooperative in Norway, server with green energy in Iceland, services like sync (no-knowledge EE2E), mail, calendar, feed reader, and userblog, Mastodon account in Vivaldi social, tons of inbuilkd tools which make most extensions redundant. Strong and friendly community and support, including with active members of the Vivaldi team and even with Jon von Tetzchner. At least for me ethics and transparece of this company is very important. The only other EU alternative is Mullvad, which is certainly an browser with interesting privacy features, but little more, which you can use if you like an faschistic CEO it has.
I don’t think we can ever trust Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome to release a version that strips back lucrative “features”, but we don’t have to because many faithful community modifications are always available, from extensions and scripts that strip some bloat (Brave debloat tool) to browser programs and apps that castrate the upstream’s bloat from the beginning. Librewolf and Zen (both linked in another comment) are great options for Linux. They still allow you to use Mozilla Sync by default, but with configuration, even that can be decentralised.
After choosing one, you may already be aware of this option, but I recommend turning off browser autofill and replacing it with something like the Bitwarden app or extension and pairing it with your own Vaultwarden server, changing the default homepage if you don’t like it, and changing the default search engine if you don’t like it to another. You can also configure an engine that isn’t on the list, like a self-hosted (or public) SearXNG instance.
All mainstream webbrowsers are bloatware. W3C has feature/mission creeep.
How often do you set up a new browser?
Doesn’t those follow you if you set up sync?
I am indifferent. They could do better but everything else is chrome.
Firefox forks and whatnot just don’t do much for me. I have zen, blorb, and IronFox (probably my favorite of the three) but none are compelling enough to switch.
It’s not just about setting up my primary browser, but on a virtual machine, which I don’t even tweak most times or in the case of multiple users.
The sync feature only synced browser history, bookmarks, extensions, etc., but not any Firefox settings for me.
