Almost 10 months ago, I posted in here that I was switching to Waterfox since Mozilla switched from the MPL to their own proprietary license.
After the initial transition, I pretty much used Waterfox like Firefox and there were only a few edge/corner cases where the browser did not function as expected. They were often fixed within a few days via a browser update.
An interesting bug has surfaced where the history database got corrupted and there was no way to repair it and I’m having to recreate my profile. While it’s not the end of the world, it very annoying. I haven’t been able to isolate why. I wish there was a way to script installing extensions and migrating settings.
Overall, it’s doing what a browser should be doing. Showing me the web.
How are you all doing with it?
I’ve been using IronFox and like it, how does it compare to WaterFox?
I haven’t used IronFox so I’m not sure. Have you used WaterFox?
I like it, it’s exactly what I wanted. Like you said, just “showing me the web.” I might try one of the other forks with a more experimental UI at some point, but for now, I’m happy with a pretty vanilla browser. For me, Waterfox is basically the same as Firefox, except I don’t have to disable some new AI feature every time Mozilla adds one.
I don’t use many browser plugins. Just these:
- uBlock Origin
- Wallabagger (page bookmarking)
- Vimium (keyboard navigation)
and they work with no problems. I did have to stop using Video Download Helper and KeepassXC, but that’s not because of Waterfox, it’s because I’m using Waterfox as a flatpak. I’m going back and forth on whether I like having my browser be a flatpak. Not being able to use Video Download Helper or the KeepassXC plugin is definitely a downside. I still open Firefox (non flatpak) occasionally because of that.
Oh, and I love that syncs your open tabs between desktop and mobile. The other Firefox forks don’t seem to have that.
I like the options to customize it, but there’s an issue with the current build’s version of Firefox, as some deep-links (that open apps) don’t work properly. This causes Obsidian Web Clipper to not work at all. I had actually reported it on the main Firefox bug tracker, and it was later fixed in another build, but Waterfox still haven’t upgraded that yet. I switched to IronFox, although there’s no option to change the browser theme. I also would like if the address bar button could be customized, since it’s different in Waterfox. I’m even considering making a fork of IronFox just to add those, I know there’s an existing for that adds OLED theme to it, I could base on it.
Working fine for me. I don’t notice much of a difference from Firefox, though I’m not exactly a power user (uBlock and Bitwarden are my only addons). And it still allows me to customize the toolbars to get rid of a bunch of things.
Mainly just hoping Mozilla can continue supporting Gecko so I don’t have to find something else.
I like it still. Sometime last year, firefox was feeling clunky and less intuitive, and while that was the most important thing, I was also reading about Mozilla policy changes I wasn’t into.
Switched to Waterfox, installed my addons, and felt like I was using old firefox again. No problems so far.
