I’m what’s known as a chronic hopper. I’m always on the lookout for new software, especially when it comes to browsers and Linux distros, but I’m here to ask you about browsers specifically. I’m fairly sure I know most of them, but I want to really know why you run what you do. In return, I will give you my experiences with the browsers that I have tried and why I hopped from them if I did.
Don’t feel the need to read the list. I’ll be more than happy to just hear your answers!
- Firefox: One of the grand-daddy browsers. I honestly didn’t hop from it due to anything specific, but more that I’ve used it so much that I needed a change.
- Chrome: I used this very little. Just being on it made my skin crawl. However, I still keep it around in a container because some sites straight up tell you that you have to use it to access their dashboards or application forms. While that is now much less these days (as most things will now ask for Chrome or Firefox now), it still does happen, especially on dated government sites that get updated like… once a decade…
- Opera GX: Yup, I fell into the hype. I think I used this for all of a month before recognizing it as over-engineered and needlessly bloated. It pulls you in with gimmicks and pretty lights and that’s pretty much all it has. A browser that’s literally built on smoke and mirrors and pushy advertising.
- Brave: There’s been a lot of huff about Brave lately, but back when it launched and wasn’t very mainstream it was the smoothest and a relatively more secure browser than the competition. There was a time when nearly everyone ran Brave. The problem started when they began to opt you into gimmicks and extra things you didn’t need without your permission. That was a turnoff for me. I outed before things really went downhill. -Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I’ve never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it’s core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It’s fairly vetted and trusted from what I’ve researched.
- Vivaldi: Still one of my favorite browsers when I went back to Windows, but probably has the most bugs I’ve seen in any browser. It got better once they swapped to React portals, but Vivaldi (Windows version) would occasionally freeze my whole PC or else I’d BSOD. This was a combination of the browser’s stability and making my own custom CSS for it, but overall it frustrated me more than other browsers.
- Qutebrowser: Still one of my favorites, and a must-have for me even if its not my main browser. I was diving into the Vimium extension for Firefox, which in turn led me to Neovim, which led me to Qutebrowser. There’s a few main points as to why I don’t use it as my go-to. First, its not very good at squashing first-party ads. Even though you can combo custom ad block lists, Brave adblock, and python-adblock, it just can’t seem to get them all. Second, I rely on my history when browsing YouTube and if you want to get around ads, your best bet is to write a custom shortcut that opens links in MPV/VLC. There are Greasemonkey scripts that should increase ad speed to a fraction of a second and auto-skip, but none of them ever worked for me and most are ancient.
- Nyxt: My next logical step after Qutebrowser was Nyxt. However, I’ve never managed to figure out how to work it. I haven’t really done any extensive bug testing, but when it opens its just a blank window and there’s not much I could find for documentation on it. Part of me wonders if there’s something that only trusted people know that gets it working, the other part wonders if I’m just missing some sort of library or dependency. From here I went back to Floorp for a while. -Zen: I was very excited when I found this browser. Another Firefox fork, it aims to be much like Arc browser, but adds a lot more on top of that. However, in recent months I find they’ve become a little too ambitious. If you asked me two months ago, I would tell you that Zen felt just as smooth as Floorp, but these days its much, much laggier. The scrolling is choppy, the pages load slow. I use the same exact extensions on Zen as I do Floorp and the difference now is night and day. I’ve also tested this on fresh, no-extras no-extension installations and the results are the same. Zen tends to change things and instead of letting the user opt into the additions or changes, they force the changes in their updates. That type of development model just isn’t really for me. I don’t want to have to re-figure out how to use my browser every few days.
So there it is. I hop a LOT. Honorable mention is Ladybird and I’ve tested it a little. It is extremely alpha, being just a portal with the basics you need for browsing, but I’m amazed at what they’ve done so far and very excited for it’s release. For now I’ve returned to Floorp and am very happy with it. I’m very curious to know why you like what you do, whether its just because its what you’ve used for a long time or if there’s something that you can’t do without.
Also, please excuse me if this question has been asked before. I didn’t want to necro an old post and I want to be able to reply and ask more questions! I’ve seen many posts discussing a single browser, but I want a more general view. I’m very interested, because the Lemmy community often values their privacy and their rights, which is a major factor in choosing software for me.
Edit: I feel like I’m answering very quickly, but want you to know that I’m not a bot nor using AI. I type at 110wpm in Dvorak. Typing is a huge hobby of mine and would never use AI to do something I love to do for me. I’m set on getting to 200wpm (100 was my first goal). That being said, I can’t answer everyone, so I’m sorry if I missed your reply!
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Librewolf. Firefox as a backup. Chrome as a backup-backup.
IronFox. Vanadium as a backup.
I’m up to my neck in privacy settings, systems, extensions, etc. LW does everything I need, with the exception of a couple different sites (glares at cpanel). I have been rocking it for a couple years now. IronFox is a fork of Mull, which is now defunct. Vanadium comes with GrapheneOS and cannot be removed, so it gets the backseat treatment (it’s fine - but I need my extensions and deep settings, yeah yeah it’s supposed to be more secure but safer isn’t necessarily also more private).
Plus, LW is a fucking wolf browser. Hello. Wolves are #1, and this statement is absolutely not biased because I have a hybrid wolf fursona. Absolutely not. 0%.
(maybe like 5% okay wolves are awesome)
E: 🐺
lol! I just grabbed librewolf-bin after talking about it here (actually, I’ve almost got it. I lost track and forgot to accept the yay prompts, lol).
Have you looked into creating your own local hosted homepage dashboard for tracking your servers and such? Its something I’m very interested in doing, but I need to learn from the ground up. There’s so many AI answers now, much of it incorrect, that its getting more difficult to learn things on my own these days.
I use uh, oh what’s it called, Homearr? Yeah, that’s the one. It makes it easy for me to access services when I can’t remember the names (see above lol). It’s only for server… services (at least for my setup), I haven’t really personalized it. I use a tab group extension (name escapes me) and that way I have general stuff, local server, vps, etc etc and that helps keep thing from going nuclear, but I still have a lot of tabs - last time I checked I was nearing 1k. That’s with FreshRSS and Linkding, in an attempt to curb the tab madness…
Holy. Its a good thing tabs can go inactive now, lol. I saw an extension that allowed you to convert tabs to lists so you didn’t need them open and you could even port your tab lists to other devices without the need for syncing… I think it was called OneTab? Yeah, just checked.
I recommended it to a friend who is a similar tab user and he uses it quite a bit now.
Heimdall to host the links. SpeedDial is an in-browser alternative if self hosting is not an option.
Firefox. Because using even a slightly sketchy browser for shit like banking logins is insane.
Firefox because ad block even though I run pi hole
I use multiple browsers for different things:
Vivaldi - for work or personal projects because the workspaces and tab stacking allows me to keep an “L1 cache” of all the sites relevant to parts of projects I’m working on. Then when I’m done with that work the useful ones get bookmarked for future use.
Firefox - personal browsing i.e. watching stuff, shopping, etc. because I wanted off chrome so I could continue to use adblockers.
Brave - research purposes.
Opera - for the occasional use of a VPN for getting around geoblocking.
I use IronFox, because it’s supposed to be a privacy-focused browser. I also liked the Kiwi browser before they got bought out by Microsoft or whatever happened to them. If a site I trust isn’t working in IronFox, I’ll use either Firefox or Firefox Nightly as an alternative. I really enjoy Hermit as well, although often I’ll forget I even have that app. It’s very useful though.
I’ve been using Zen for a few months. It’s based on Firefox, with some UI changes. I really like the workspace management, having separate “environments” for work and private use.
Zen Browser is very good. Been daily driving it for quite a while now. Combined with multi account containers, it is perfect for my workflow.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/
The default browser for any operating system that isn’t created by Microsoft or Google is probably suitable for most people.
This looks like a good read. I’m sure many of the Firefox recommended settings can be applied to it’s various forks, too. Thank you for this! I’ve got it bookmarked and will be checking it out soon.
I’m a filthy causal… I use Safari on Mac and iOS. It’s fine. It works. I don’t really care that much about my browser. On Linux I like Firefox, but on my RaspberryPi’s I just use Chromium. It’s fine.
Vivaldi, hands down my favorite. I haven’t had any bug issues of pc freezes or anything. And I have maaaany tabs open. Built-in stuff like ad blocker etc means less 3rd party extensions, I cannot live without mouse gestures, the multiple workspaces is perfect for me with all my tabs open (neatly sorted). Only downside imo is that it’s chromium.
I really love Vivaldi, but Zen took over for me. It has Workspaces and even tab tiling. It also has something called Essential Tabs, which tile as buttons at the top of your tab bar.
https://docs.zen-browser.app/user-manual/workspaces
There’s also Glance Mode, which will open a whole page in a hovering preview over your current page. It really can do some crazy stuff with tabs.
When you lock a tab in Vivaldi it also becomes a button in the tab bar.
I’m going to check out Zen, thanks! Does it have mouse gestures? I cannot live without. I had Firefox as a second browser which would access the internet without a VPN just for streaming services, but it was aids as I keep on doing mouse gestures and nothing happens because it’s not Vivaldi lol
I can’t either. Use the Gesturefy Firefox extension. Even has custom user gestures if you need and can you can change existing gestures.
I’ve tried the others, but Gesturefy seems to work best and I’ve been using it for years.
You tell me now haha! I don’t have Firefox anymore. Because I don’t have streaming services anymore. It’s all usenet now. One streaming service to see it all? I happily pay. Even 2, no problem. But now it’s so much, with ads and poor quality for insane prices… So, I’m a pirate again :)
If you want to have one streaming service to rule them all, that’d be Stremio. I don’t know how specific I want to get in this community, but there’s ways of turning it into a torrent streamer. I pay $3.75 a month for it using debrid and have access to everything, even obscure movies. However, I always seed what I watch to at least 5x.
Stremio has an app for Android, Samsung TV, Windows, and Linux. I think mac and iOS, too, but I don’t run those at all so I’m not sure. You can use catalog plugins to mimic Netflix, Hulu, etc. But you can also use it with your Netflix, Prime and other such streaming accounts.
Edit: Also, with debrid, you don’t need a VPN. It does all the anonymity for you. That’s the only thing that you have to pay for.
I have usenet and a fully automated system for movies (radarr) and for series (sonarr) running 24/7 on my NAS. I pay 7 per month and twice 25 euros per year for indexers. Every movie and series I add is automatically downloaded, repaired, extracted, renamed, moved to the right folder. All series are stored in the folder “Series” under its own subfolder, with in it subfolders for the seasons. Each episode is named as “[series name] S01E01 [episode name]”. Whenever a new episode airs, it is immedialty downloaded. As soon as I open Kodi I see what’s new and in sonarr and radarr are calenders as well. I decide the quality I want. I can download subtitles in kodi through opensubtitles.
I have a 32TB NAS and I’m going to host my own free streaming service for close friends as soon as they finally install a fiberglass connection in my street (planned for 2 years now). My current upload speed sucks, so now people can only download single episodes every time. But 1gb/s upload with fiberglass connection would do the trick.
Because I pay for usenet I pay for privacy rights and I dont upload. So I everything I do which is illegal is downloading but that info isn’t shared due to privacy. Next to that downloading isn’t punished in my country. Uploaders are being hunted, and downloading with torrents also uploads to others. Next to that, many torrent streamers are cloned and contain malware, crypto miners, ads, other junk. I don’t trust torrents anymore, there’s so much harmful junk spread through torrents these days. The usenet indexers I use are all closed communities so all trusted data. I’m also a member of some closed torrent communities but I rarely use them. Only for video games, as triple A game devs create expensive but boring bug simulators so they don’t deserve my money. But I still want to check it out sometimes, then to be disappointed after 2-3h as expected. I’d rather give my money to decent indie devs.
So legally I’m safe, I can watch anything I like and all I have to do for it is add it to my list, choose quality profile and what to download: everything, latest season, only future episodes, etc. I’m never switching to anything else anymore. I did when Netflix came, but now since everything is so fragmented, this is heaven so I dusted off my old pirate hat.
Whats also funny, because I don’t have a streaming service, I never agreed to their user agreements, so as a pirate I have more rights (and freedom, better quality, no ads, more choice, no junk clutter) than a paying customer.
That’s why I don’t have any subscription services as well (aside from VPN and Debrid). I’m now less legally bound than those who use “legal” services (if you count extortion as legal).
Ngl, I’m going to bookmark this reply and see if I can get something similar set up. However, I will still have to look around for when communities open registration. The closest thing I was in back in the day was Demonoid when it first launched. I got in early through a friend who was a trusted member. Yes, it was torrents, but it was a completely private torrent economy.
That being said, torrents are still a security risk. I’ve just been using them for so long that I know the right channels and uploaders to go through in the public scene. I haven’t had a single malicious file fot my last 8 years on Windows. Now that I’m on Linux, the risk is a bit less. There’s still risk, but not as bad.
Chrome for pages in Japanese I need to translate.
Chrome/Edge for certain Japanese govt websites that won’t work in firefox (taxes and other such via the My Number program). I mostly use edge for this just so I can have the other pages of documentation open to translate in Chrome :/
Firefox for everything else.
I’m curious as to see how Floorp would work on Japanese sites. Its developed in Japan, so it should work good. I understand that there are still too many sites that won’t work without Chrome though, it’s a major pain.
The government sites rely on being able to use Chrome extensions, sadly, so it seems we’re out of luck there.
Is the built-in Firefox translator bad for Japanese? I ditched chromium a long time ago. Luckily any gov sites I need to use nowadays have FF variants support
Doesn’t work at all on mobile yet and it’s pretty bad for desktop. The first time I tried it, it couldn’t even get the grammar of who was doing what to whom correct (it was about a court case and totally mixed up all the parties). Since I can read some and just rely on it for more legal/medical things, I need to have quite good accuracy. Legalese is at least as awful in Japanese as in English.
I switched to Firefox from Chrome back when they were branding it as Firefox Quantum and honestly I have been happy with it. It has been just as fast as Chrome if not faster, it might use more memory but unused memory means your computer could be caching more.
I don’t love the stuff Mozilla has been doing recently but it’s not enough to make me switch. I think the brand redesign in 2024 was pretty horrible, moz://a was genius design compared to the P thing they have now. I think they have also been chasing AI stuff recently. Mozilla has done some pretty cool things in the past though like Rust, Servo and Fluent.
The Servo project has been revived BTW. It’s still not usable as a main browser, but the devs are active.
Firefox, been using it forever. Nothing has got me to permanently switch.
I use lynx in the terminal sometimes for fun.
Firefox, Floor and Brave (Brave to play DRM content)
Floorp and Firefox can play DRM, I think. There’s a checkbox in the settings, at least. I’ve never tried it because I use third party apps to play DRM media.
Ironfox here, through Tor and ProtonVPN.
I use Brave since some extensions I use don’t work on Firefox and I prefer it as well. Once you turn off all of the crypto and other bloat - it’s the best browser ever, at least for me.
