Neil Brown

@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk · 2 months ago

#firefox

Marcin Cieślak

@saper@mastodon.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil even asking the "am I the target audience" question is demeaning in itself

Botolo

@botolo86@mstdn.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil uff, Mozilla in my mind was one of the last survivors of good software (good for the people), but from your blog post I understand this might not be the case anymore. Is there any alternative?

Marko

@decorum@kanoa.de replied · 2 months ago

@neil Good question. I can't decide between Zen Browser and Vivaldi. Hope for Kagi and their Linux based Orion browser.

Jeff Martin

@cuchaz@gladtech.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil sadly, I think Mozilla is cooked. Unless they can course correct soon. But failing that, I'm looking forward to new browsers like Servo (Verso?) and Orion.

Emily_S

@emily_s@mastodon.me.uk replied · 2 months ago

@neil very much feels like they have the attitude of "what are you going to do? Use chrome? 😂" With regards to a big chunk of their user base.

Morten Juhl-Johansen

@mjj@mstdn.dk replied · 2 months ago

@neil Truth be told, I am not sure how many ARE the target audience anymore.
I would imagine their current approach is losing as many as they gain.
Interestingly, K9-turned-Thunderbird seems to suffer less from these priorities - so far, at least.

Esther Payne :bisexual_flag:

@onepict@chaos.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil I was discussing this with Brett yesterday, we have forks, but what we need is a fork of the foundation.

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.

Sindarina, Edge Case Detective

@sindarina@ngmx.com replied · 2 months ago

@onepict @neil I wish the EU would throw a chunk of money at it and create a 'Eurofox' fork. Sovereignty, yada yada.

And then mandate that anything sold to the EU be fully cross-platform, web standards only, no browser-specific nonsense.

Stewart X Addison

@sxa@fosstodon.org replied · 2 months ago

@neil Ref "just in case something else has been enabled by default." Other than what might be in the release notes do you know of a sensible way to know what settings did actually change between versions in terms of about:config?

Eskibrew

@eskibrew@floss.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil you mention Librewolf and that's a good alternative. I've been using it for some months now. I've found a weird bug where it seems not to want to show my video when I have to use Microsoft teams but otherwise a good experience.

Botolo

@botolo86@mstdn.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil oh I see you basically answered my question here.

House Panther :verified:

@housepanther@goblackcat.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil Oh I didn't read specifically about your concern. My apologies. Yes, I think your concern would be valid about WaterFox as well.

Jess👾

@JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange replied · 2 months ago

@neil There's also the Firefox ESR channel (Extended Support Release) that's supposed to get regular security patches but only annual feature releases.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/choosing-firefox-update-channel

House Panther :verified:

@housepanther@goblackcat.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil Check out WaterFox. While I won't be changing from Vivaldi to WaterFox, WaterFox is an improvement over FireFox.

Kat

@KatS@chaosfem.tw replied · 2 months ago

@neil Maybe I need to look at helping integrate Servo into Nyxt.

Cèd'C

@CedC@diaspodon.fr replied · 2 months ago

@neil have a look at #zenbrowser its Firefox minus the garbage, with a nice team behind it.
Fully compatible with Firefox account

jandi

@jandi@mastodon.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil I feel similar. Firefox still allows me to tweak almost anything and the years of experience make it easily manageable for me.

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!

Esther Payne :bisexual_flag:

@onepict@chaos.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil I'd consider pushing more for it, but I have no experience in running one, and I have enough on my plate with Librecast 🤣

But perhaps this is an EU @EC_OSPO question or a sovereign tech fund question.

This does after all have implications for the European Desktop specs etc.

Simon Zerafa

@simonzerafa@infosec.exchange replied · 2 months ago

@neil

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.

Stewart X Addison

@sxa@fosstodon.org replied · 2 months ago

@neil Yeah that was the most obviously reliable method thing to try that i came up with too if it's easy to extract, but you've made me think about it now 😀

tanavit

@tanavit@toot.aquilenet.fr replied · 2 months ago

@neil

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 ?

Niels Roetert

@tuxlife@mastodon.social replied · 2 months ago

@neil I’m sticking to the -esr version that came with Trixie for now, should be good for a year I guess.

tanavit

@tanavit@toot.aquilenet.fr replied · 2 months ago

@neil

I am interested to know why LibreWolf would not be a better choice for you ?

Federation Bot

@Federation_Bot replied · 2 months ago

@ 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.

Diane

@alienghic@timeloop.cafe replied · 2 months ago

@neil

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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