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. All the settings are now more complex, and there is a lot to set up after a fresh install.
When I compare modern Firefox with Firefox ESR, I feel like I am using browsers like Vivaldi or Opera instead of Firefox. 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 Debloat using any script or install any forks (no forks seem to be good; some are outdated, some are too much hardened, some are just not for daily browsing, etc.).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 (Unmozillaed Firefox).
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.