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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

Why is leaving the only recourse? Chromium is free software. Forking always remains an option.

Here's a good explanation... https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom....

Forking Chromium without Widevine is still entirely feasible. Not everyone cares about Netflix.

Also, a Chromium fork could use the Widevine binary blob the same way Chrome does today; I am not sure I understand this argument.

The problem with all these browser forks is that, while they are certainly well intentioned, they're a dime a dozen and eventually die hard.

Over the years, I've seen countless forks of browsers that make these big promises but don't have the developer resources and funding behind them that make the main browsers possible. I can't imagine it's easy to just backport every feature and bugfix from upstream while also making your own changes.

Unless one plans on building a business or a foundation around a browser, the best that an OSS browser fork can hope for is to be a valiant effort that will quickly be superseded by another fork that promises to be even more private and ub3r l33t than the others.

Firefox is in great shape right now, and if it's not working well for some people(I'm honestly not having issues with it at this point), then we need to find ways to make Firefox more viable, whether it's getting people to donate to the Mozilla Foundation or better promotion or what.

That's true, but I personally don't have the time to create, or even work on, a Chromium fork. Is there one with any momentum?

My preference would be to use https://github.com/atlas-engineer/next, because I'm a huge Common Lisp fan, but without uMatrix and uBlock Origin (or something equivalent) it's not a viable alternative yet.

I've been trying to switch to Firefox lately. I still prefer Chromium's UI, but I won't tolerate Google's new anti-adblock stance.

The most popular Chrome forks are Edge (new), Opera and Brave... My hope is that they will keep the interfaces Google is phasing out.

There are forks such as ungoogled-chromium but why would you use them when you could just use Firefox?

Chrome’s security model is light-years beyond any other shipping browser.

It’s almost not even a competition anymore.

When a browser removes your ability to block ads and trackers, it is creating a giant security hole. Even Google's own ads trick users into clicking on them while believing that they are going to legitimate sites.

https://www2.computerworld.com/article/2978984/who-can-stop-...

Without denying or confirming that Chrome's security is better than any other browser, how often have you heard of someone with an up-to-date Firefox, Edge, Safari, Chrome, or some other major browser, being hacked this way? If you do an honest risk analysis, how big is the extra risk of using a less secure browser (assuming your statement is true)? And is a single 0day (which Chrome has just as well) enough to compromise your entire life, like, you would probably have defense in depth (running the browser in a VM, for example) if you're that worried in the first place?

For those who think I'm just jabbing and that a VM would be too unpactical: at work (we're a security firm) we have a fresh VM for each new project for compartmentalization. Our browser, tools, everything runs in there and nothing should ever reach the host --- unless, of course, you have a VM escape, but then you need two zero-days instead of one. For more sensitive projects, even more measures are taken, but that's rare: you have to draw the line somewhere.

Just saying "Chrome is the only secure option" is a little too short-sighted I think.

Some other thread yesterday linked to ungoogled chromium [1] which sounded like a good idea to me but in practise I'd have to build it myself which Im not really comfortable with.

I'd probably get it to run but it would need more time than I'm willing to invest in this. Plus would I have to build it new everytime there's an update‽

It's just to much hassle for me.

[1] - https://github.com/ungoogled-software

Browsers have become so complicated that it's essentially a miniature OS inside our OS, and even building it from source as an experienced developer is hard. On top of that, there is a sort of inherent monopoly with browsers, and all browser vendors have some agenda or another. This is a weird age for software developers and users.

If you're using Archlinux, there's an AUR package. That means you can build it like any other package with makepkg or a helper program like pacaur. If hardware resources are an issue, it's probably not too hard to rent a powerful linode server for an hour or 2 to build the package and then transfer it to your local machine. I imagine it would only cost a couple of bucks max.

Can the average end-user fork an OS?

Go is free software too

Chromium is not Chrome. Switching from Chrome to Chromium is still leaving Chrome.

Whether or not Chromium or Firefox are more to your liking is another matter, and whether or not switching to Chromium accomplishes what you want to accomplish by leaving Chrome is another matter.

Not really, think of Chromium as a developer version of chrome. It may be open source but it still maintained by Google. Only alternative shift to Firefox.

You can change Chromium but you cannot change Chrome. The majority of Chrome is Chromium, but there are parts of Chrome that are not Chromium. Particularly the branding. Furthermore if you're actually forking Chromium like suggested and taking it in another direction to assuage any grievances you might have with Chrome, then you have certainly "left Chrome".

I was not recommending that anybody switch from Chrome to Chromium. Personally I do not find that Chromium fixes what I consider broken about Chrome, which is what I was alluding to when I said "whether or not switching to Chromium accomplishes what you want to accomplish by leaving Chrome is another matter." The negative reaction I received for that post makes me think people believe I was recommending Chromium. I do not; I recommend Firefox.

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