Firefox. Equally concerned as well.
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Looking into Librewolf and Waterfox now!
Long time Firefox user. Installed Librewolf today and so far so good. I used Firefox sync to get all my settings, bookmarks, open tabs, etc. back. At some point I will probably find an alternative yo Firefox sync but it'll do for the time being.
Recent news about Firefox finally got me to go with LibreWolf.
I love Librewolf for PC and Mull for Android.
Mull development has been abandoned. You might want to switch to IronFox, the community's fork to continue its legacy.
Zen for regular activities (I pin all important services), Firefox for browsing for something else.
GNU IceCat is also amazing as concept, but generally unusable since it ends up blocking too much and manually allowing everything is a hassle. But still, the pages that work are clean, and I love that by default the browser doesn't do anything without your permission - it doesn't even connect to update and telemetry services, it has 0 connections on startup, unlike almost anything (qutebrowser does the same, but, unless you are a strong Vim fanboy, you won't like the experience).
Been moving over to LibreWolf and I'm pretty happy with it so far. I added NoScript and CanvasBlocker extensions, along with my password manager, and I'm getting settled in with it now.
The fingerprint protections in Librewolf already protect against canvas fingerprinting. You actually make ourself stand out even mkre by using it. Even with RFP disable, ETP still protects against canvas fingerprinting.
I still use firefox despite their questionable leadership, for one major reason: it prevents Google from setting whatever web standards they want. Sites that aren't standards compliant will usually still work in Chromium-based browsers, but they will break in Firefox, and then I can report the bugs.
I'm a Firefox user and I'm not really that bothered about this tos changes. If they do mess things up I'll probably just switch to some fork that doesn't do the fuckery.
Wouldn't be surprised if Mint packages Firefox with it (whatever "it" is) disabled, since they build Thunderbird without telemetry.
There was some sort of bullshit going on in like 2003 with Internet Explorer so my dad switched us to Firefox, I’ve been on it since. Never felt the need to go to Chrome when it cane around.
Firefox. Read the new statements on their website and the Full diff of the pull request. Not concerned at all.
Edit: pumped for ladybird, but its gonna be a few years until that is finished
I have found Mozilla's sync across devices handy, but now I'm in the process of moving over to using Vanadium on my GrapheneOS phone and FireDragon on desktop.
FireDragon started out as a Librewolf fork, but is more recently based on Floorp. They are still keeping in sync with Librewolf's privacy enhancements, with some of their own thrown in. I like that the default search engine is Garuda's instance of Searx, with Whoogle as another option if you don't want to self host. FireDragon will also sync your Firefox account off Garuda's server instance if you like (which would be more useful if I weren't going with a Chromium fork on mobile). The Garuda project is certainly looking more trustworthy than Mozilla these days.
FireDragon because it's the version of Firefox that Garuda ships with and I never saw a reason to change from it.
Right now I use mainly Firefox, not because I like it but because it comes with my distro (whereas LibreWolf requires Flatpak) making it work well with the PWA project and it supports weird hacks necessary to install Widevine on my system so I can listen to Tidal. I also have LibreWolf installed with data set to delete on close and set up to proxy over Tor and I2P using privoxy and has LibRedirect installed which is set up to redirect to the corresponding onion/i2p domains. I was trying to install Zen Browser using the Guix package manager earlier but had problems, but I might try again later.
On Android, I use Vanadium for sites I stay logged into, Cromite with auto clearning history for other stuff, and Ironfox for Kagi and to use plugins like LibRedirect.
Firefox. I can't imagine they would do something stupid like this with the little marketshare they have, but nothing surprises me anymore.
Does ublock work with any of these alternatives?
Zen, absolutely love the workflow and the fact that it is not chromium based.
Waiting excitedly for ladybird, it is already very impressive but still years left until it is daily drive able
Despite my issues with it, I use Chrome. It's simply too integrated into my life. But I just saw (like 2 minutes ago) from another thread here about Zen Browser and maaaan is it nice.
Uninstalled firefox yesterday. Trying out vivaldi, the company lead has a history of advocacy. Might give librewolf a go soon, need a browser that ping pongs mobile and desktop seamlessly, has ad blocks available and a flatpack.
Brave, FOSS. Because it's the best one I have found for my use case. Been using it since 2021, after some 20 years with FF. No regrets.
I am surprised by the lack of people mentioning brave, i swear it used to be mentioned everywhere.
Did something happen or did a newer better browser come out?
It's chromium, thus evil, according to the narrow minded community.
I moved to LibreWolf back when Mozilla announced AI features
I appreciate its privacy-focused approach
I use Firefox. I don't like the changes but I don't want to use any downstream browsers and I don't think any of the not-downstream alternatives do better.
They are better in most of the case, Firefox only is not that good...
I just don't care for downstream projects on browsers, with software so critical I want to get the updates in as fast as possible. I know some of those mentioned in OP had issues with that in the past. And not much reason to anyway for me to switch, Firefox works perfectly fine for me, so there's not much added benefit.
Understand your point of view but in fact the 2 problems you mentioned are mainly not problems :
1 - Updates? The main downstream browsers received updates the same time as Firefox the same day and sometime the same hour
2 - Benefits? The benefits are mainly under the hood, removing Mozilla telemetry and annoying features (account, pocket...) AND the biggest advantages are the gain in term of privacy due the increase of anti fingerprinting methods
But who's making these "updates"? Who's doing the actual work of keeping the software secure? Mozilla is.
If everybody moves to a free-riding fork, Mozilla goes to 0% and there will be no browser let alone updates.
This needs to be higher up. We need firefox as an alternative to a chrome engine monopoly. ToS and telemetry are miniscule issues compared to what we are up against
Firefox is literally the last thing standing between google controlling the entire browser landscape and having control over all web standards (as if they dont already have too much influence)
People ditching firefox over tos, telemetry, AI, CEO pay, etc. are cutting off their nose to spite their face. Do i wish mozilla would stop doing stupid shit? Of course. But the alternative is far worse. Dont let perfect be the enemy of good. Mozilla will never be as ideologically pure as we want them to be, but that's OK (for now)
Myself i run "Firedragon" which is a fork of floorp. As for why its mostly because it came with the distro i run (garuda linux) and it works nicely so i didnt really feel i had to swap it.
Thanks for this. I'm using mainly Firefox to support alternatives to webkit/blink based browsers but the new ToU makes me a bit apprehensive about the direction they're going.
I also had been test driving Falkon from KDE but will look into these as well.
What’s wrong with Chromium? License or Google backing?
Nothing. Just echo chamber hysteria.
All these downvotes really prove your point.
I think I might switch to that.
I used Firefox for cross-platform password management. That’s the biggest impact on me.
Who cares about downvotes from people which become irrational about a browser engine, lol.