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Comment by koakuma-chan | Hacker News Reader

I switched to LibreWolf a few days ago and the UX has been great so far!

Adding a random voluntary maintainer in your browser supply chain sounds like bad idea though.

I have no idea how random the librewolf maintainers are but the next iteration raising the bar for high-impact open source projects should definitely have a checkbox for "has a key maintainer with a active public profile/streetcred in industry" on the checklist.

Its not that scary because their patch sets form part of several other browser forks (ie cachybrowser but also several others) so they get a decent amount of scrutiny

Is there a particular reason LibreWolf doesn't have automatic updates? It does seem a little inconvenient. I'm currently using Safari + AdGuard, which updates with the OS and from the App Store.

In Windows there's an optional updater service you can install at least. But I think the reason for this is that some people want to make 100% sure the browser doesn't make any connections on its own, even if it's simply for checking if there are new updates.

What remains unclear is why anyone who cares enough about their privacy to use LibreWolf would still be on Windows in the first place. Microsoft is easily ten thousand times worse than Mozilla.

To play games obviously.

Linux can play most games now, it's quite viable as a gaming OS.

Many games only work on Windows because their anti-cheat is kernel-level, and even if you ignore these games, you will still run into all sorts of issues with proton or rendering APIs. I would even go as far as asking how many games from the top 100 played games on Steam actually run on Linux natively, without compatibility layers. So no, Linux is not quite viable.

Only AAA games with that anti-cheat crap don't work on Linux, most stuff does. Whether or not it needs compatibly layers is irrelevant, many Windows games also use compatibly layers to some extent, you just don't notice it.

There's no shortage of games you can install through Steam on Linux. You need windows for GTA6 or the latest CoD or whatever, but saying Linux isn't viable at all is silly.

Linux won’t be viable for me until I can play all my games seamlessly.

Some people prioritize freedom and privacy over being able to play the latest mindless clone game of what came before with slightly better graphics, but for those that don't, Windows and needlessly invasive AAA games are indeed a good option.

Take this: if you wanna play on Linux with decent fps, you still need proprietary Nvidia drivers.

That's not true at all. AMD cards and drivers exist and are often competitive with Nvidia cards. Not to mention, the difference in FPS is often not as noticeable as you probably think.

Poor argument.

AMD might be "competitive" but it's objectively worse. Also some games don't even support AMD's equivalent of DLSS. Also AMD sucks at inference, not even close.

> AMD might be "competitive" but it's objectively worse.

Nonsense. Their drivers are better and there cards have beaten Nvidia cards depending on the generation.

> Also some games don't even support AMD's equivalent of DLSS. Also AMD sucks at inference, not even close.

I don't think you really know what you're talking about here, and I don't think you would notice the things you think you would in practice. In short, you're making very poor excuses.

It's OK to say you're scared to make the leap and/or don't care about privacy so much as you do being able to play the latest crappy CoD installment.

I couldn't get Baldur's Gate 3 to run on Linux.

A quick search shows plenty of people running it fine since 2022. When was the last time you tried? Did you try it via Steam?

If you're installing untrustworthy, closed source, proprietary third party kernel modules into your untrutworthy, closed source, proprietary operating system, why even bother with LibreWolf? You have a unambiguous revealed preference of not caring about your privacy or your security at all, regardless of what your stated preference is.

Firefox gets your data sold, LibreWolf doesn’t. My operating system is irrelevant.

> Firefox gets your data sold, LibreWolf doesn’t.

You assume.

> My operating system is irrelevant.

No, it shows your priorities are screwed.

You seem to care about privacy to the point you risking Firefox selling your data based on a misinterpretation of a badly worded TOS, but have no problem letting random closed source binaries hook into the lowest level of your closed source OS which itself is known to be a privacy nightmare and not at all trustworthy.

You game on the same computer you use for everything else?

Yes, I only have one computer.

When you need Adobe for work, you don't have option to abandon Windows completely. At least we have IoT LTSC version of Win.

For what it's worth, the included uBO extension's blocklists do get updated automatically, even though LibreWolf doesn't. What LibreWolf does offer is a slick Docker-based build tool/suite that's nearly easy enough for the typical Windows user to figure out: https://codeberg.org/librewolf/bsys6

AFAIK, it does have automatic updates if you install it from Microsoft Store.

Why would an app have automatic updates? The OS package manager handles this just fine.

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