With the latest update of Firefox, and the latest opportunity to dive into about:config to switch things off, I ask myself again if I am really part of Mozilla's target audience or not.
https://neilzone.co.uk/2024/09/am-i-still-in-mozillas-target-audience/
@neil even asking the "am I the target audience" question is demeaning in itself
I was reminded of open office and the document foundation for libre office.
I think Mozilla's mindset is very Silicon Valley, plus everytime folks mention forks, some smug person pops up with the fact the forks rely on Firefox for the base. Also the foundation is based in the US.
You need something to ensure Devs can eat and there's an organisation around them to support them.
I shall have to add that to my list of things to investigate!
Annoyingly though, Firefox does still seem to be the best choice for me, in terms of a Free software browser.
But perhaps I should go back to getting it from the Debian repo, accepting that it will be an older version, rather than from Mozilla's own apt repo.
https://neilzone.co.uk/2025/03/what-if-anything-should-i-do-about-using-mozillas-firefox/
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/choosing-firefox-update-channel
I used to use this, with Debian, but switched to the Mozilla's repos for a newer release for some performance reason that I can't remember. But it might be the way to go...
I don't think I can get better by changing, but the trends are worrying.
My point of no return, and the litmus test I use, is uBlock Origin: In a way I'm not a Firefox user but a uBlock Origin user, if and when UO warns against FF or signals a better browser for it, I'd seriously consider changing.
Mozilla should wake!
Have you looked at any of the Firefox derivatives such as LibreWolf?
I'm sticking with Firefox for now, untill they mess up again anyway 🙄🤦♂️
We do need an variety of web engines otherwise it will turn into the Google Chrome or Chromium network.
I am interested to know why LibreWolf would not be a better choice for you ?
> The biggest reason stopping me from jumping to that is that it is a tweaked version of Firefox. That’s not to denigrate the work that the LibreWolf team does to improve it, but, as far as I can tell, it is completely, utterly dependent on Firefox.
Is not that the base of free software ?
Forking a code to improve implies a strong dependance to the original code.
I understood that LibreWolf is Firefox minus the telemetry and privacy issues. Am I wrong ?
Ideally, I'd be looking for something which was nothing to do with Firefox, rather than a browser which relies on Firefox. But I don't think that that exists.
@ Neil Brown
Agree with the sentiment. By coincidence was looking at the extensions and have been increasingly annoyed at the number that become disabled after version upgrades. So many web browsers have died because of the way 'amgaf' want to commercialise web usage.
The stable distribution has firefox-esr, but current firefox can be pulled out of unstable if you're running unstable/testing. (or putting them in a chroot)
Debian also has chromium with some privacy patches applied as well.
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