I use Firefox and will continue to do so to resist one browser rules all situation.
I tried chrome on linux some years back, and experienced an issue where the browser would crash the os on the extensions search page. Years went by without this being fixed. Firefox would never do that.
I have now switched to it as my default ( am using it now).
Features like auto-closing tabs after X time (days, weeks, months) are things I always wanted but never knew I needed.
See: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/auto-close-open-tabs-fi...
I've integrated that into my personal workflows so tightly that I'd be very unhappy if I had to use a browser without that capability.
Last I checked Chrome(ium) doesn't have it. What about Oper... I mean Vivaldi?
IMO, the 'fabric' of your computational experience, from the kernel to core utilities like your web browser, email client and IM, should all be open source and possible to trust.
Trust, privacy, and security trump gimmicks for a not insignificant number of individuals, and businesses. Vivaldi's USP, in its current state of not being 100% open source, is based upon UX gimmicks.
Is Vivaldi a 'good' browser? That is wholly dependent on your threat model and requirements. Vivaldi is not 'the best tool available' if you are concerned about privacy.
Chromium is entirely open source.
Chromium is a whole 5 million lines of code and meanwhile the Linux kernel is 30 million. If Chromium ever stops serving the community, we'll just take it over. Chrome itself is absolutely fine with me. I wouldn't use anything else right now and I love only having to test with Chrome and Safari.
Anyway, it doesn't matter what the tiny loud minority of Firefox users think. They've already lost.
Also, your tone about Chromium is precisely going to create another IE. Screw this monoculture of browsers. Chrome did the FLoC fiasco, this is proof they can't be trusted.
Still, I will always take FOSS and properly licensed over Vivaldi.
FLoC fiasco? You mean a feature you can turn off, that only exists in Chrome and not every browser that uses Chromium?
"Every major browser that uses the open source Chromium project has declined to use it..." [0] Gee, it really sounds like Google is in complete control of all other browsers that use Chromium right?
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-t...
My point is that it should not be something that has to be removed. In fact, I'm vehemently against the idea of it in general. Are we going to start using Chromium with a list of patches to remove all the privacy violations? That's still giving up to the monoculture, though I suppose the privacy violations are assuaged. Why not just use Firefox? Open source?
Please explain why it's better to use Vivaldi. I'm arguing against it, but Manjaro must justify why the FOSS spirit of Manjaro was broken, and what possible benefit (metaphorical, or $$$ literal) would be gained by switching to Vivaldi.
>Gee, it really sounds like Google is in complete control of all other browsers that use Chromium right?
In complete control of Chromium.
And it isn't a feature at all if you use any other Chromium based browser (not Chrome) like Brave, Edge or Vivaldi.
> Please explain why it's better to use Vivaldi.
I didn't say that you should use Vivaldi. Nope. I said that there are plenty of non-Chrome Chromium browsers to use in response to someone saying that there is a "one browser rules all" situation. There's not. There's not even a "one browser-engine to rule them all" situation given that Safari (WebKit) has a very sizable market share.
> In complete control of Chromium.
Yep and Linus Torvalds is in complete control of the Linux kernel, yet we have hundreds of distros that all do things differently.
And it doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Here's Microsoft discussing their decision to not fork Chromium, because they don't have to - "We have chosen not to fork since we don’t want to fragment the community, but our infrastructure does allow us to maintain patches for cases where we have a different point of view on individual changes (we talked about the webRequest/Manifest V3 changes in a couple other places. In general we plan to upstream our web platform improvements to the Chromium project. " [0]
I am referring to the Chromium open source project. Not the derivatives. You can argue that everyone removes it, but that further shows how unwanted it is.
>I said that there are plenty of non-Chrome Chromium browsers to use in response to someone saying that there is a "one browser rules all" situation
I was actually referring to the engine, yeah.
>There's not even a "one browser-engine to rule them all" situation given that Safari (WebKit) has a very sizable market share.
Still very small. Less than 20%? Besides, a majority of that is iOS devices, where this engine is FORCED upon you...
>Yep and Linus Torvalds is in complete control of the Linux kernel, yet we have hundreds of distros that all do things differently.
The difference is the lack of corporate malice, which I classify FLoC under (which was added to Chromium, regardless of whether or not you say others have removed it).
>And it doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Here's Microsoft discussing their decision to not fork Chromium, because they don't have to -
Not particularly sure what you mean here - this is just showing that edge is also contributing to the browser monoculture by still using Chromium and not even forking it. Though I suppose that's a little weak argument because patches are still applied.
Nobody is disagreeing that FLoC is unwanted though. It's a completely irrelevant point. There is no browser monoculture and there is no browser-engine monoculture. We've mentioned 3 engines and at least 5 browsers here. You're arguing that Google is in complete control of Chromium as if that means anything, when every Chromium based browser is not simply dancing to Google's tune.
> Still very small. Less than 20%?
More than Firefox and it absolutely defies your point that there is a monoculture. There is not.
> The difference is the lack of corporate malice...
Yeah it's so malicious that you can turn it right off if you wish to or just use a different browser seeing as how there is no monoculture.
> Not particularly sure what you mean here - this is just showing that edge is also contributing to the browser monoculture...
You keep using that word but I don't think you know what it actually means. There simply is no monoculture, not in browsers and not in browser engines. Sorry to break it to ya, but you're completely wrong on that point and no amount of illogical rationalization will make it true.
And you'd still be wrong. First, because of the definition of the word "monoculture" [0] and secondly because Chrome is only at about 65% [1].
> when I regularly encounter devs who don't bother checking ANYTHING with Firefox?
Sounds about right. I'm one of them and I look forward to Firefox and Mozilla just up and disappearing one day because honestly, it's a dumpster fire of a browser and the culture at Mozilla is simply detestable.
[0] "the cultivation of a SINGLE crop in a given area"
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2021...