I’m looking into Firefox alternatives as I wanna see what’s available. Being Norwegian, Vivaldi seems like a good choice to replace Firefox on desktop and Safari on iOS. Tried it for a night and it works pretty good. I do however have reservations about it being based on Chromium.
How much power does Google actually have over Vivaldi? And would it actually matter for my quest for degoogling myself?
In case anyone’s wondering. I’m also looking into LibreWolf.
Edit: Rewrote the start as people got too hung up on Firefox.
I’ve been using LibreWolf and have been very happy with it.
I installed the essential Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin and see both doing their jobs on top of the protection LibreWolf offers.
Strongly second this.
There’s been suspicions for a while that you can’t actually unGoogle Chromium no matter how hard you try.
I really enjoy Vivaldi but I came to the conclusion that the only thing that really matters to me is vertical tabs.
LibreWolf is my daily driver now.
I’m coming to the conclusion that I should just try LibreWolf and see how I like that compared to Firefox.
It’s just firefox. If you encounter websites that break or look bad on firefox, theyll be just as broken on librewolf. There are many web standards firefox is behind on.
That said, vivaldi is the best chromium choice and Librewolf is the best FF choice. I use librewolf when adblocking is paramount, like on YT
Only thing I’ve been missing while trying Librewolf for a bit is ironically enough, saved cookies on pages I sign into to keep me signed in.
Other than this it feels like a faster Firefox.
I’ve seen there’s ways to keep you singed in on Librewolf too, but I keep wonder If there’s actually a point in using it instead of Firefox if I’m saving (some) cookies anyways.
Thoughts?
Saving cookies is not the only thing Librewolf does differently from default Firefox.
Having some cookie exceptions is definitely better than having all cookies saved.
What specifically do you not like about the Firefox terms of use?
Because I just don’t see anything better about chromium. People are just throwing a fit because FF had to comply with legal requirements.
Here’s the exact phrase they used before changing it after people got pissed about it:
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.
The new choice of words is a a lot better. But it makes me want to at least explore alternatives.
Everything you do on your phone probably has those same rights.
Not saying we don’t all deserve alternatives…
Probably, but I’m just exploring alternatives.
If you’re upset about that, you know nothing about IP law.
If you do not grant Firefox a license to use your information, the only thing they can legally do is destroy it. So no storing of bookmarks, usernames/passwords, search history, browsing history, no saving your open tabs so your next session picks up where the last ended, none of the things that we all expect of a modern browser. Without that, you’re basically left with just a URL bar with no search ability.
They’d gotten by without that clause for a while despite being technically illegal in the EU and California. And again: what’s the alternative? Chromium has the same thing, and no Firefox fork can exist without mainline Firefox.
You’re right, I know nothing about IP law.
However, I came here to ask for information about using a chromium browser, not a discussion about Mozilla’s choice of words in a TOS.
I’ll see if I can find back to the exact words I didn’t like. It’s been a few weeks at this point. It’s about data sharing. Not to mention the fact that American privacy laws aren’t as strict as what Vivaldi have to deal with here in Norway.
How much it _actually _ matters however. I don’t know.
Also, I’ve used Firefox for about 20 years, It would be nice to try something else, I guess.
I can definitely recommend Librewolf over Vivaldi if you don’t need crazy levels of customization. To me it was just much more than what I needed so I went with Librewolf which is also obviously a lot lighter. Vivaldi being based on Chromium is pretty much the only criticizable thing about the project. Henry from Techlore interviewed their CEO not long ago, look it up, it was quite interesting.
Also, I am planning on moving to Norway in the next two to three years, would you mind if I messaged you privately with a couple questions?
No problem, fire away!
Google does not benefit from your user data in Vivaldi.
The Chromium project is also mostly community driven and yes, Google has had a big hand in it, but it is in no way fully Google’s thing.
On paper.
I’ll look into that link later, thanks for sharing!
Ikke skift til en chromium-basert nettleser!
Har du noe dypere grunnlag eller noe mer informasjon å komme med å jeg selv kan ta den avgjørelsen?
Whats bad about them? Does it affect Firefox forks like Eaterfox or Midori as well? I’m having good first experience with Midori.
I dunno how it affects forks, but considering Google’s TOS doesn’t seem to affect other Chromium projects that much. I doubt it’s a big of a deal for FF forks.
Hell, I’m 99% sure I’m overreacting about Mozilla’s working to begin with. It just made me want to explore alternatives.
Here’s the quote I’m talking about(it has since been changed)
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.
Whaaaat? That sounds extremely broad. I need to learn more about it.
Isn’t the narrowing part the not bold bit, that specifically says it’s about your use of Firefox? As in you save bookmarks which are synced via Firefox servers. It needs to be a worldwide license in order to allow them to store that data on their CDN. It needs to be royalty-free because that it saying you can’t ask Firefox for money because they have your data. Non-exclusive is them saying they aren’t claiming you can’t also give the right to others.
I would be less concerned about the part in bold and much more concerned about what they are allowed to do with that data.
That’s exactly what I thought and granted so did a lot of people too.
Not the end of the world, but made me want to look at alternatives at least.
I’ve been using Orion on iOS and been happy with it so far
Looked i to that one too. Ended up just using Safari.
Not perfect, but at least it’s not a third party on top of Apple.
I also recommend Vivaldi.
Orion.
I originally switched to Ecosia, loved it. Very identical to Chrome because, well, it’s chromium based. Still a food option, but I wanted to make a full swap.
So I reluctantly tried Vivaldi last week (with Ecosia as a search engine), because that’s 2 major changes to a browser this year, meaning migrating all data and setting stuff up, which is more bothersome than I have patience for under normal circumstances.
Yet, I must say I’m positively surprised by it. Loving Vivaldi so far, and I’m not even using all it has to offer.
