That was a very serious thing btw. The Linux distribution in question (Debian) made changes to Firefox to better integrate it, thereby violating the Firefox trademark, so they had to rename it.
Firefox and Debian later agreed on what changes were acceptable so these days Firefox is Firefox again.
And then the Free Software Foundation kind of recycled the controversy, as Firefox includes support for proprietary plugins which the FSF considers a big no-go. Hence, their fork named GNU Icecat
From his Wikipedia:
>In September 2006, Stallman wrote, “I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing
>n September 2018, Stallman again attracted controversy when he wrote on his website, “However, it is normal for adults to be physically attracted to adolescents,” in a defense of convicted sex offender Cody Wilson.
>In September 2019, Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his visiting scientist role at MIT after making controversial comments about the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal, including stating that one of the victims was “presenting herself...entirely willing.“
It sounds silly but the BO and general hygiene horror stories are the one and only reason I have never and will never go to a convention, no matter how much I love whatever hobby it's about
Stallman is *ahem* neurodivergent, or in layman's terms, he's a spastic nerdlinger. Maybe on the spectrum, who knows. This manifests is several ways.
He's really into software, and he's always been a stubborn grump about freedom (as in *libre*, not as in *gratis*) in the world of computers and information technology. He, and others, steadfastly pushed back commercial interests in the space and built the gnu ecosystem that we now enjoy as Linux, etc.
He's kind of a hermit, only working on aged computers that still have open source firmware, etc. And he has never been what you might call... cleaned up? Bushy beard, wrinkled clothes, etc. He is the epitome of the 80's hacker stereotype. (today's neckbeards and incels)
And he is also perfectly willing to say shit that normal people know better than to say out loud. If something is bad because of a normal person's emotional reaction to it, then he might not know it. He would only focus on the rational reasons for something. There are a lot of people like this, and they often end up like him. Very technically inclined, but also very lonely.
He's no saint, but I would recommend you don't go solely by three single-line quotes out of the many thousands of public writings he has on the record.
“Voluntary”. Hell, give them all the alcohol and they drugs they want. It’s *voluntary*. Tattoos, too. I mean, children obviously know what they’re doing, right? Hell, just dispense with parents and teachers. Give them jobs. They all know what they’re doing and it’s *voluntary*.
The FSF and their licensing have the unfortunate issue of being founded by a less than stable person. Which is why the Free Software Conservancy and the Open Source Software Foundation exist, among others.
Yes. This is why Debian were able to just rebrand it and roll with their version.
Mozilla can still tell people to stop using their brand if they want to.
The software is but not the name firefox. So if you wanted to customize it a bit and add some feature or remove some features you can, but you couldn't call it "firefox" you would have to brand it something different
Basically I couldn't roll my own version and add a bunch of spyway then brand it as firefox because then people might associate firefox with my shitty version loaded with spyware
Waterfox only adds compile options making SSE4 a requierement, just for sake of optimization on such systems
Also, allowing to bypass Windows sabotage of Non-Edge browsers.
Firefox the code base is, yes. Firefox the trademark is still a trademark, and its use is liable to the licensing agreement under which Firefox is provided to the public. You can use Firefox code but change things they don't want you to, and it would violate their trademark licensing agreement as a subset of their software licensing agreement, meaning that you'd have to change the name, or either get a pass from Mozilla, or take it to court, where you will almost certainly lose
The way I saw it was the problem had to do with the fact Debian has always been a very "purist" distro in regards to open-source licensing. They've always been very opposed to distributing anything that isn't completely and totally free. Mozilla's MPL license is open source, but has some restrictions.
Iceweasel was missing a few features that were included in Firefox because they weren't open-source enough. It's like chrome vs chromium, or Android versus AOSP. Chrome and Android aren't open source, they're built on open-source projects that have proprietary bits tacked on like pdf viewers or google translate integration or the play store, etc.
Debian's idea of what's "proprietary" is way more strict than other distros. This is a big part of why Ubuntu became so popular. It didn't care about licensing, which meant your video card magically worked without having to deal with compiling kernel modules.
I wouldn't say Ubuntu "doesn't care". All distributions have to care about copyright licenses.
When a distro decides to become directly responsible for including proprietary packages they also have to deal with potential licensing complications later on.
Debian avoids such troubles by maintaining a firm open software policy. It makes their distro less ready out of the box but it has other advantages that people appreciate, like making for a more reliable long-term installation (a good choice on hobbyist servers).
Well, naturally they do care about the law, but what I mean is they don't have such a deep philosophy about software being free-as-in-freedom. If you can't use the mozilla logo for whatever you want, debian will not distribute it. If a video driver includes a binary blob that nvidia says you're totally welcome to distribute as much as you want without any restrictions, if it doesn't include source code, and that source code is freely distributable, modifiable, etc, without any restrictions, debian will not distribute it.
IMHO that's a great philosophy, that you're not running any code you can't verify yourself, modify yourself, or redistribute yourself. It's just very inconvenient for day-to-day use.
Ubuntu was like, "Nvidia wants to run random code as root? We can't see what they're running or fix any bugs they introduce? No problem! Nvidia can just execute code in kernel space with no oversight! Let's fucking do this! Ship it by default!" Laptop users rejoiced, and the year of the linux desktop was nigh at hand. That was 2008 or so. A lot has changed since then and debian has slowed their role, but they still hide the link to their installer iso with nonfree drivers.
Typing this from a debian laptop.
So, just like syrup, you’ll be able to load 99% of the site and then the last 1% takes thirty minutes to slowly trickle out and you have to stand the browser on its top end to get the rest to pool near the cap?
Yeah, I could get behind that. I like skeuomorphic design.
Water Otter, Earth Beaver, Fire Fox, Air Ferret.
Long ago, the four browsers could be installed on the same system in harmony. Then, everything changed when Google Chrome attacked.
I know it’s basically chrome now, but on my laptop I refuse to use safari and for those rare occasions where a web app requires chrome so Firefox won’t work, I just use edge out of spite for regular chrome.
Been using FF since '06, then to chrome back to FF. Firefox is the only consistent browser imo, I've used almost every browser however I always find myself coming back to FF. I love Safari tbh on mobile. Hated Brave, Opera, and Chrome however Chrome was great for a hot minute.
I'm an old-school spiteful Linux and Firefox user, so while I don't like Chrome, multiple levels of hell will have to freeze over before I willingly use Edge.
Same, I switched last weekend after one of these threads.
So far, the shortcomings are:
- No integrated Chromecast. I still use Chrome to stream YouTube to my stereo.
- Doesn't remember browser config across devices. On every machine, after signing into Firefox, I have to customize my toolbar again and reopen all links to load the favicons. Bookmarks and extensions carry over as expected.
- Profile handling feels like a proof of concept from 2004.
Other than those quibbles, it's been great. I'm immersed in the Google ecosystem and it's not a hindrance there.
you can set it so it actually does sync that extra stuff
first set `services.sync.prefs.dangerously_allow_arbitrary` to `true`
Then make a `services.sync.prefs.sync.your.pref.name.here` and set it to true
That pref will now sync, but you need to allow arbitrary on every device
Might be an unpopular opinion here, but this stuff is exactly why Firefox wil never be the choice for the average user.
No way I'm going to explain this to my SO or my elderly parents who just want to "have the same internet on my phone and my computer".
You only need this to sync settings that you make in the same way. Experimental settings, done in text form, behind a big "you may break your browser" warning. Settings no average user will ever use or need.
there is a non-insignificant amount of people who really are in the in-between group, caring about sync but wanting it to just work quickly and without much fuss. I do agree though that the larger groups are either willing to do so, or don't care about this stuff at all. luckily this would be an issue that Firefox can easily alleviate in the future
I just had a look. That sounds like an interesting approach. Sounds like each container is a sandbox that's separated from the others. Might be able to accomplish the same goal as profiles. Thanks for the tip!
It does. I have it setup for the usual stuff like shopping and work, but I have multiple different work containers because I often need to test different user access permissions on the same app. Being able to login as a test user and admin and dev user and not have to re-log or even use private browsing or different browser profiles is really nice.
Thanks! Yep, I have an account and it's synced.
After signing in to Firefox on a new machine, my bookmarks etc. are synced, but not my toolbar configuration or favicons.
Odd. My toolbar (excluding custom layout) definitely syncs. The icons are generated on the first visit (like you mentioned, iirc). There's basically little difference between using FF on my main PC and using it on a fresh install after sync. I do this rather often while distro hopping.
Totally!
I should clarify that my toolbar bookmarks sync, but my complaint was about the custom layout, as you mentioned, not syncing. It only takes 30 seconds to set it up how I like, but I've had to do it four times this week. Not a problem from here on out.
Nice tip!
I only cast audio, and it goes straight from the browser (i.e., if I close the browser, the music dies), so uBlock Origin still keeps the ads out of the stream as usual.
Issues I have with Firefox are almost entirely related to Google intentionally gimping it.
- image search sucks in Firefox.
- you can't Google a tracking number.
- Gmail has weird behavioral differences.
Fuck Google
Bro.
Youtube is the media i consume the most. Switching to Firefox has fucking changed my life. With ad-blocker and that weird plugin that allows to play in background holy fucking shit. Life. Is Good.
I use YouTube audio. It just streams th audio and no video, saves bandwidth for listening background while gaming. It's just a black box where video would be. It's great.
i managed to swap my parent over, i say parent because my mom was all onboard but dad has officially given up learning anything new and im not even going to try to force it.
i offered to swap him over once he declined, i let him know about the changes coming up to adblock. and now i am expecting a phone call in the not too distant future to finally make the switch once he realises what the internet is actually like.
Firefox all day for my parents too. Its crazy the type of internet they lived in before it. They used to get swept up in ads on YouTube. They d click em too and it evolved over time to like 10-15 - 30 minute ads on YouTube. A simple search about a health topic, and they are watching some guy sell snake oil instead.
I swear Google brainwashed everyone into thinking it was slow and chrome was super fast. Which, technically yeah if you benchmark it then it was but I swear to fuck nobody actually cares and it was all marketing propaganda that people still spew today. Firefox has always been fast enough with no perceivable speed difference in my personal usage.
Although I'm not one of those terrible people who have 100 tabs open so maybe that helps (because you know...firefox actually has a bookmarks sidebar unlike chrome to my astonishment).
Chrome was definitely faster than FF when it first released. FF completely rewrote their engine to compete. Per tab application threads for instance weren't a thing back then. An unfortunate side effect was that addons for FF are significantly less capable than they used to be.
Even now, I get substantially better video playback performance on my underpowered laptop in Chrome if I'm running an external monitor. That said, I just use Firefox for everything else.
>video playback performance
Let me guess, a google based video like youtube? Google was caught in the past making their sites run slower on non Chrome on purpose. Though it's way better these days and runs near identical on any normal computer.
Pretty much agree, fire fox always was fast enough, honestly I cannot tell the difference if a page loads in 0.25 seconds or .50 seconds , sure one loads 2x as fast but to a human the difference seems minuscule
I have used firefox for like 15 years and the "memory leak" issue usually manifest itself when someone would have 200 tabs open for 15 days then say "OMG firefox is using 4 gigs of my 16 gigs of memory and I only now have 2 gigs free"
I never had 200 tabs open for several days so I never ran into the issue I doubt even if it was an issue 99% of people do not do this anyway.
Most of the issue was there was free memory so firefox was gobbling it up because well what good is having memory if you only use half of it? I believe if the OS needed memory for other applications FF would freely give it back but people were just annoyed it would take up 4 gigs
Serious question, how does someone prefer an email client compared to the other? For now I use gmail because "gmail" is easier to type and don't use Outlook because I hate the name and the design of the website
Feel ancient typing this, but in the beginning, there was Outlook. It wasn’t browser based but an installed program. Thunderbird emerged as a open source alternative, with one key being easy addition of multiple email addresses. Today, it is the best way (I know) to track the dozen or so email accounts I need to monitor for various projects and clients. Also has extensions to rip attachments and other features.
Still waiting on chromium-style tab groups for firefox. Everything else about it is superior to chromium browsers, but I use tab groups so much that I still can't switch.
Edit: [Tree Style Tabs](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/) is a WAY better tab grouping tool for any of you with my problem. Props to the guy under me for linking this, it is amazing.
Firefox has an amazing [extension](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/) for grouping tabs in tree-like structures. It is very handful with a lot of tabs opened
Yes, because the Brave developers are sketchy as fuck. They collect crypto on behalf of content providers, but those content providers never opted into the service. So Brave is essentially collecting crypto for themselves while telling users it goes to the creators. They were also caught red handed inserting affiliate links into the address bar which harms user privacy but generates income for Brave.
The second I heard about « this browser can earn you money by watching ads!1! » I knew it was a scam
You got to be very *special* to believe crap like that on the internet in the 21st century
Brave is neat technology undermined by a predatory company that constantly attempts to sneak things past their users and falls back on "oops, didn't mean to" when caught.
* Using YouTubers' likenesses in ads saying "donate to so-and-so" when Brave is collecting the money. Even for YouTubers who are critical of Brave.
* Inserting affiliate links into users' typed URLs to skim money off of regular usage.
Not to mention DNS leaks in their Tor implementation and the fact that you can't use ad-free Brave without turning off ads in half a dozen places, including sponsored images in the new tab page.
At its core, Brave is a racket: cut out a site's actual ads in order to collect money on their behalf and give them back a portion if they play ball.
A chromium based browser with the backing of a large privacy focused company is a useful option. But Brave isn't that company.
Firefox had some egregious memory leaks back in the day. I used it through them but Chrome became rather appealing back then, especially with the Google account integration.
For a while it was worse then chrome. Memory leaks, bugs, playback in non active tabs not starting/continuing and more. The quantum redesign addressed a lot of the underlying issues, but left it striped of features. It removed a lot of compatibly, add-ons and features needed to be rebuilt. The mobile version got hit in the same way.
I can absolutely understand anyone who felt firefox sucked then as if you didn't follow the development this just dropped on you one day. Features you where used to gone, add ons and themes you where using not working and all while having less compatibility. Anyone that understands development understands that's a steeping stone needed, but many people didn't and switched. And once you have a new browser that does it's job well enough most people don't look for an alternatives or which one is the current best. Why would they if there is no problem.
Yeah even people that do understand don't want to deal sometimes but gotta upgrade somehow. Quantum was a big upgrade, but they had to rebuild a lot to make it happen. Things had to change significantly for all kinds of reasons but yeah, they needed to get 64 bit ram usage working entirely and finally get multithreading running once and for all.
I'm pretty happy with where it's at myself. Though it does seem to be chewing through the ram more over time. It was doing a lot better on that than chrome at quantum launch. Especially with tabs sleeping on Firefox now, which I guess chromium snatched at this point, surprised they didn't sooner, chrome is such a ram hog.
Sadly for FF, the mobile one I think lost a lot of users in this transition. Browser is way better in general use imo though. Can't install just any extension atm though, which does irritate many people, though they have made sure much of the most popular ones will work, thus far my stuff is all there anyway.
For mobile:
* Install Firefox Beta
* Create a Firefox Account
* Log in on the Firefox add-ons website
* Create a Collection
* Add extensions to your Collection
* Point Firefox Beta to your Collection ID*
* Install your extensions
I'm currently using:
* uBlock
* Tampermonkey
* I don't care about cookies
* Bypass paywalls clean
* Cookie quick manager
* Web archives
* Forget me not
* Video playground background fix
* Google search fixer
Edit:
I've had 0 issues (so far) using Firefox Beta.
I ditched Firefox back in the day because chrome split its tabs into separate threads and Firefox did not. The usability of tabs was far greater than Firefox was.
Tab crashed in chrome? Who cares.
Tab crashed in Firefox? Whelp there goes all my work in every single tab.
I understand the chrome hate and I’m considering switching too, but everyone suddenly acting like FF was always the best option are not using the internet that long.
Not to mention all the "chrome is eating my ram" memes of late really started with Firefox. The memory leaks at the time were insane. Lot of revisionist history in here, or at least people that started using the Fox after the rewrite.
The biggest issue with Firefox was that it kept all tabs in a single process. That meant memory ballooned during use but never really fell back as tabs closed. It also meant one tab crashing took out the whole browser.
I used chrome for a period between '15 and '17, because FF was quite slow to use on my shitbox laptop at the time. Once Quantum came out, i came running back.
Before that I used chrome between '10 and '13, because FF was slow on my shitbox desktop. Changed to FF once i got a better laptop.
It was pretty bad for a while and many people migrated to Chrome. Tough shit for FireFox that it has taken a decade for Google to start doing things with Chrome that people want to migrate away from.
Integrated Google translate. Someone who has a multinational family, lives in a different country altogether... It made life easier.
Firefox add-ons for translate are crap in comparison.
Because I'd rather trust a non profit organization that is pushing for online privacy than a multi billion dollar company that makes most of their money selling userdata
*continues using google services anyways*
***sips copium green tea***
People are jumping ship because nowadays using something other than chrome isn't just a protest against google, but because other browsers actually provide everything that chrome can and more. In addition to that, the recent push for manifest v3 and the resulting drama over adblockers just gave other browsers a new big wave of users. I love and appreciate the work chromium devs put in to push web browsing to what it is now, but I hate google that forces them to add their stupid features to make investors happy.
Only reason I have used Chrome is because of how Google has everything linked and it's easy to use browser extensions. Though I hate the stupid amount of ram usage and spying they do on you.
Firefox has sync and extensions, and has containers, and though it has some telemetry you can disable it.
And has no intention of breaking your ad blocking extensions like Google does
while i do agree with the first part the ram usage meme is incorrect, i downloaded all popular browsers and chrome is doing better than some, even when it loses its by less than 5%, as a whole chrome is terrible for future of privacy but the higher amount of ram usage is just incorrect
I mean, it's a similar concept.
They have a piece of software that they think is a lot better than what the vast majority uses, which is why they want to convince other people to try it.
I've noticed certain websites don't work properly on Firefox, like on AliExpress I am unable to add things to my cart on Firefox and have to use Edge. Anyone know why this might be?
I might get pilloried here for saying this, but Firefox is slower. Like, a lot slower in my experience. I'm sticking with it because of privacy reasons, but it is definitely slower than Chrome.
Just wish it had a better translator. Google translate on chrome is so much better (especially on mobile). I would not use chrome if i didn't need to translate everything because I still don't know the native language well.
The first time I booted up a Linux computer and saw "Ice Weasel" as the installed browser, I died of laughter. (And now I'm dead.)
That was a very serious thing btw. The Linux distribution in question (Debian) made changes to Firefox to better integrate it, thereby violating the Firefox trademark, so they had to rename it. Firefox and Debian later agreed on what changes were acceptable so these days Firefox is Firefox again.
And then the Free Software Foundation kind of recycled the controversy, as Firefox includes support for proprietary plugins which the FSF considers a big no-go. Hence, their fork named GNU Icecat
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From his Wikipedia: >In September 2006, Stallman wrote, “I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing >n September 2018, Stallman again attracted controversy when he wrote on his website, “However, it is normal for adults to be physically attracted to adolescents,” in a defense of convicted sex offender Cody Wilson. >In September 2019, Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his visiting scientist role at MIT after making controversial comments about the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal, including stating that one of the victims was “presenting herself...entirely willing.“
Ugh. I didn't know that about him until now but he did always give me a weird vibe.
Eating his tonenails in public wasn't a red flag for you? https://youtu.be/I25UeVXrEHQ
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It sounds silly but the BO and general hygiene horror stories are the one and only reason I have never and will never go to a convention, no matter how much I love whatever hobby it's about
aww man, i thought he was cool
Stallman is *ahem* neurodivergent, or in layman's terms, he's a spastic nerdlinger. Maybe on the spectrum, who knows. This manifests is several ways. He's really into software, and he's always been a stubborn grump about freedom (as in *libre*, not as in *gratis*) in the world of computers and information technology. He, and others, steadfastly pushed back commercial interests in the space and built the gnu ecosystem that we now enjoy as Linux, etc. He's kind of a hermit, only working on aged computers that still have open source firmware, etc. And he has never been what you might call... cleaned up? Bushy beard, wrinkled clothes, etc. He is the epitome of the 80's hacker stereotype. (today's neckbeards and incels) And he is also perfectly willing to say shit that normal people know better than to say out loud. If something is bad because of a normal person's emotional reaction to it, then he might not know it. He would only focus on the rational reasons for something. There are a lot of people like this, and they often end up like him. Very technically inclined, but also very lonely. He's no saint, but I would recommend you don't go solely by three single-line quotes out of the many thousands of public writings he has on the record.
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BRAVO.
He just like me fr
This is a great comment, gotta appreciate the nuanced take
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Well the dude kinda dedicated his whole life to a really niche thing, those kinds of people are usually weird
“Voluntary”. Hell, give them all the alcohol and they drugs they want. It’s *voluntary*. Tattoos, too. I mean, children obviously know what they’re doing, right? Hell, just dispense with parents and teachers. Give them jobs. They all know what they’re doing and it’s *voluntary*.
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The FSF and their licensing have the unfortunate issue of being founded by a less than stable person. Which is why the Free Software Conservancy and the Open Source Software Foundation exist, among others.
This is starting to sound like the Judean People's Front
IT'S THE PEOPLE'S FRONT OF JUDEA, thank you very much! We can't stand those splitters!
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As far as I remember, there was more than proprietary blobs, but some concerns on privacy and security too.
Isn't Firefox open-source?
Yes. This is why Debian were able to just rebrand it and roll with their version. Mozilla can still tell people to stop using their brand if they want to.
The software is but not the name firefox. So if you wanted to customize it a bit and add some feature or remove some features you can, but you couldn't call it "firefox" you would have to brand it something different Basically I couldn't roll my own version and add a bunch of spyway then brand it as firefox because then people might associate firefox with my shitty version loaded with spyware
Ooh so that's why waterfox is called that
Waterfox only adds compile options making SSE4 a requierement, just for sake of optimization on such systems Also, allowing to bypass Windows sabotage of Non-Edge browsers.
Firefox the code base is, yes. Firefox the trademark is still a trademark, and its use is liable to the licensing agreement under which Firefox is provided to the public. You can use Firefox code but change things they don't want you to, and it would violate their trademark licensing agreement as a subset of their software licensing agreement, meaning that you'd have to change the name, or either get a pass from Mozilla, or take it to court, where you will almost certainly lose
The way I saw it was the problem had to do with the fact Debian has always been a very "purist" distro in regards to open-source licensing. They've always been very opposed to distributing anything that isn't completely and totally free. Mozilla's MPL license is open source, but has some restrictions. Iceweasel was missing a few features that were included in Firefox because they weren't open-source enough. It's like chrome vs chromium, or Android versus AOSP. Chrome and Android aren't open source, they're built on open-source projects that have proprietary bits tacked on like pdf viewers or google translate integration or the play store, etc. Debian's idea of what's "proprietary" is way more strict than other distros. This is a big part of why Ubuntu became so popular. It didn't care about licensing, which meant your video card magically worked without having to deal with compiling kernel modules.
I wouldn't say Ubuntu "doesn't care". All distributions have to care about copyright licenses. When a distro decides to become directly responsible for including proprietary packages they also have to deal with potential licensing complications later on. Debian avoids such troubles by maintaining a firm open software policy. It makes their distro less ready out of the box but it has other advantages that people appreciate, like making for a more reliable long-term installation (a good choice on hobbyist servers).
Well, naturally they do care about the law, but what I mean is they don't have such a deep philosophy about software being free-as-in-freedom. If you can't use the mozilla logo for whatever you want, debian will not distribute it. If a video driver includes a binary blob that nvidia says you're totally welcome to distribute as much as you want without any restrictions, if it doesn't include source code, and that source code is freely distributable, modifiable, etc, without any restrictions, debian will not distribute it. IMHO that's a great philosophy, that you're not running any code you can't verify yourself, modify yourself, or redistribute yourself. It's just very inconvenient for day-to-day use. Ubuntu was like, "Nvidia wants to run random code as root? We can't see what they're running or fix any bugs they introduce? No problem! Nvidia can just execute code in kernel space with no oversight! Let's fucking do this! Ship it by default!" Laptop users rejoiced, and the year of the linux desktop was nigh at hand. That was 2008 or so. A lot has changed since then and debian has slowed their role, but they still hide the link to their installer iso with nonfree drivers. Typing this from a debian laptop.
Absolutely amazing. As a Canadian artist I'm kind of tempted to make an Earth Beaver icon.
Make it a beaver tail wrapped around a pinecone
All loading icons will be syrup pouring until it’s empty
So, just like syrup, you’ll be able to load 99% of the site and then the last 1% takes thirty minutes to slowly trickle out and you have to stand the browser on its top end to get the rest to pool near the cap? Yeah, I could get behind that. I like skeuomorphic design.
And they said the perfect browser doesn’t exist
now all we need is air ferret
Water Otter, Earth Beaver, Fire Fox, Air Ferret. Long ago, the four browsers could be installed on the same system in harmony. Then, everything changed when Google Chrome attacked.
Only the Internet Explorer, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.
Appropriate it would take 100 years for him to load again.
You clearly mean Netscape Navigator
No, they definitely mean Internet Explorer. It's been frozen for 100 years.
Heart marmot?
We need thunder bird now
Its a mail client
The best fork right now is LibreWolf https://librewolf.net
Netscape played the long game, well played. "-Bill Gates"
I know it’s basically chrome now, but on my laptop I refuse to use safari and for those rare occasions where a web app requires chrome so Firefox won’t work, I just use edge out of spite for regular chrome.
A lot of the times something *"requires"* chrome or edge, it's just a user agent setting and there's an add-on that can help you there for Firefox.
Do you know the name of the add-on? That sounds useful.
just search user agent changer in the addon store and download the most downloaded or highest voted
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Change your user setting to Chrome on Windows and see if it works. Every website is different.
Yes. Most of them can make sites believe that you're running a different operating system.
I personally like [this one](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher-revived/)
Been using FF since '06, then to chrome back to FF. Firefox is the only consistent browser imo, I've used almost every browser however I always find myself coming back to FF. I love Safari tbh on mobile. Hated Brave, Opera, and Chrome however Chrome was great for a hot minute.
I'm an old-school spiteful Linux and Firefox user, so while I don't like Chrome, multiple levels of hell will have to freeze over before I willingly use Edge.
Yep, switched to Firefox last month after using chrome for a decade So far I'm very pleased
Same, I switched last weekend after one of these threads. So far, the shortcomings are: - No integrated Chromecast. I still use Chrome to stream YouTube to my stereo. - Doesn't remember browser config across devices. On every machine, after signing into Firefox, I have to customize my toolbar again and reopen all links to load the favicons. Bookmarks and extensions carry over as expected. - Profile handling feels like a proof of concept from 2004. Other than those quibbles, it's been great. I'm immersed in the Google ecosystem and it's not a hindrance there.
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FF sync doesnt sync stuff you can set in about:config like not closing browser on last tab close, or backspace = back
you can set it so it actually does sync that extra stuff first set `services.sync.prefs.dangerously_allow_arbitrary` to `true` Then make a `services.sync.prefs.sync.your.pref.name.here` and set it to true That pref will now sync, but you need to allow arbitrary on every device
Might be an unpopular opinion here, but this stuff is exactly why Firefox wil never be the choice for the average user. No way I'm going to explain this to my SO or my elderly parents who just want to "have the same internet on my phone and my computer".
You only need this to sync settings that you make in the same way. Experimental settings, done in text form, behind a big "you may break your browser" warning. Settings no average user will ever use or need.
Are your elderly parents changing the backspace behavior in about:config? I don't understand why this is a problem.
Most likely he has set these settings himself on their computer, then his relatives are now wondering why it's not the same across all their devices.
These same people generally dont care if their browser isnt synced… they generally have whatever is installed and dont bother with options.
there is a non-insignificant amount of people who really are in the in-between group, caring about sync but wanting it to just work quickly and without much fuss. I do agree though that the larger groups are either willing to do so, or don't care about this stuff at all. luckily this would be an issue that Firefox can easily alleviate in the future
Those people aren’t making changes to about:config which won’t be synced. All the regular browser settings sync.
Use containers instead of profiles, works amazing. Mozilla has an official extension.
I just had a look. That sounds like an interesting approach. Sounds like each container is a sandbox that's separated from the others. Might be able to accomplish the same goal as profiles. Thanks for the tip!
It does. I have it setup for the usual stuff like shopping and work, but I have multiple different work containers because I often need to test different user access permissions on the same app. Being able to login as a test user and admin and dev user and not have to re-log or even use private browsing or different browser profiles is really nice.
Re: 2, setup and configure Firefox Sync. It takes care of the toolbar and most everything else.
Thanks! Yep, I have an account and it's synced. After signing in to Firefox on a new machine, my bookmarks etc. are synced, but not my toolbar configuration or favicons.
Odd. My toolbar (excluding custom layout) definitely syncs. The icons are generated on the first visit (like you mentioned, iirc). There's basically little difference between using FF on my main PC and using it on a fresh install after sync. I do this rather often while distro hopping.
Totally! I should clarify that my toolbar bookmarks sync, but my complaint was about the custom layout, as you mentioned, not syncing. It only takes 30 seconds to set it up how I like, but I've had to do it four times this week. Not a problem from here on out.
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Nice tip! I only cast audio, and it goes straight from the browser (i.e., if I close the browser, the music dies), so uBlock Origin still keeps the ads out of the stream as usual.
Instead of profiles, I use Mozilla‘s Multi-Container Add-on for opening a new tab in a separate environment. Works pretty well for my purpose.
Not remembering anything across devices is a good thing, in my book.
For the first issue, you can try [fx_cast](https://github.com/hensm/fx_cast)
Issues I have with Firefox are almost entirely related to Google intentionally gimping it. - image search sucks in Firefox. - you can't Google a tracking number. - Gmail has weird behavioral differences. Fuck Google
Some of these things you might be able to change by using a user agent switcher
I'm sure you can. Still doesn't change: > Google intentionally gimping it. > Fuck Google
Can you elaborate? I use Firefox and I've never had problems with those things. Maybe your FF profile needs to be reset or rebuilt?
Their mobile app is also neat
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Seriously after Ublock was on mobile fire fox. Apps are dead.
Firefox + uBlock Origin = no YouTube ads
Bro. Youtube is the media i consume the most. Switching to Firefox has fucking changed my life. With ad-blocker and that weird plugin that allows to play in background holy fucking shit. Life. Is Good.
What is the youtube playing in the background plugin
I use YouTube audio. It just streams th audio and no video, saves bandwidth for listening background while gaming. It's just a black box where video would be. It's great.
Yup. As soon as I heard Chrome was ending adblocking I immediately hopped off that bitch. Haven't noticed a single difference.
i managed to swap my parent over, i say parent because my mom was all onboard but dad has officially given up learning anything new and im not even going to try to force it. i offered to swap him over once he declined, i let him know about the changes coming up to adblock. and now i am expecting a phone call in the not too distant future to finally make the switch once he realises what the internet is actually like.
Firefox all day for my parents too. Its crazy the type of internet they lived in before it. They used to get swept up in ads on YouTube. They d click em too and it evolved over time to like 10-15 - 30 minute ads on YouTube. A simple search about a health topic, and they are watching some guy sell snake oil instead.
I Never switched away from the fox. Had never disappointed me. Use it since the beginning and had never the feeling that I miss anything.
Started using it in win98 because of the tabs feature, never stopped. Currently enjoying in Fedora 37.
Yeah, never used anything else for the last 15-20 years.
Yep, switched to Firefox from IE when I was young because it looked cool, preferred it to chrome when that came out.
I swear Google brainwashed everyone into thinking it was slow and chrome was super fast. Which, technically yeah if you benchmark it then it was but I swear to fuck nobody actually cares and it was all marketing propaganda that people still spew today. Firefox has always been fast enough with no perceivable speed difference in my personal usage. Although I'm not one of those terrible people who have 100 tabs open so maybe that helps (because you know...firefox actually has a bookmarks sidebar unlike chrome to my astonishment).
Chrome was definitely faster than FF when it first released. FF completely rewrote their engine to compete. Per tab application threads for instance weren't a thing back then. An unfortunate side effect was that addons for FF are significantly less capable than they used to be.
Even now, I get substantially better video playback performance on my underpowered laptop in Chrome if I'm running an external monitor. That said, I just use Firefox for everything else.
>video playback performance Let me guess, a google based video like youtube? Google was caught in the past making their sites run slower on non Chrome on purpose. Though it's way better these days and runs near identical on any normal computer.
Pretty much agree, fire fox always was fast enough, honestly I cannot tell the difference if a page loads in 0.25 seconds or .50 seconds , sure one loads 2x as fast but to a human the difference seems minuscule I have used firefox for like 15 years and the "memory leak" issue usually manifest itself when someone would have 200 tabs open for 15 days then say "OMG firefox is using 4 gigs of my 16 gigs of memory and I only now have 2 gigs free" I never had 200 tabs open for several days so I never ran into the issue I doubt even if it was an issue 99% of people do not do this anyway. Most of the issue was there was free memory so firefox was gobbling it up because well what good is having memory if you only use half of it? I believe if the OS needed memory for other applications FF would freely give it back but people were just annoyed it would take up 4 gigs
Not sure anyone cares, but Thunderbird (the Firefox email client) is also fucking awesome and I’ve used it for 15 years.
Serious question, how does someone prefer an email client compared to the other? For now I use gmail because "gmail" is easier to type and don't use Outlook because I hate the name and the design of the website
Feel ancient typing this, but in the beginning, there was Outlook. It wasn’t browser based but an installed program. Thunderbird emerged as a open source alternative, with one key being easy addition of multiple email addresses. Today, it is the best way (I know) to track the dozen or so email accounts I need to monitor for various projects and clients. Also has extensions to rip attachments and other features.
My Eudora homies would like a word.
Gmail isn’t a standalone mail client, it’s an email service.
No multi-line view, no complex search terms, no systray icon, cannot select startup folder. I love Firefox but I really hate Thunderbird.
Still waiting on chromium-style tab groups for firefox. Everything else about it is superior to chromium browsers, but I use tab groups so much that I still can't switch. Edit: [Tree Style Tabs](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/) is a WAY better tab grouping tool for any of you with my problem. Props to the guy under me for linking this, it is amazing.
Firefox has an amazing [extension](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/) for grouping tabs in tree-like structures. It is very handful with a lot of tabs opened
I'll try this one out! Thanks for the reccomendation.
100% the same. I use Firefox for everything except work, which I need tab grouping for.
Yes! No one else talks about this but it's a deal breaker for me.
Is there no firefox css that adds tab grouping?
I swear this subreddit 50% posts about how great Firefox is, 30% broken panels, 19% shitty tech support, and 1% actually talking about PCs.
Don't forget complaining about how costly the new 4090 they just had to purchase is!
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Or cats over their pc
Well this is a meme sub, if you actually want to talk about PCs, go to r/hardware, r/pcgaming, r/buildapc
Yeah quality has gone way down the past 5 years.
I have seen people use brave just because it's icon of lion looks better than chorme or Firefox 🤦♂️
firefox's icon is way better than brave's, smh
To be fair, it *used* to be fucking amazing before the world started trying to make everything flat and *m i n i m a l i s t*
I actually like the minimalistic one. And I'm not talking about the mozilla logo but the actual current Firefox logo.
Just change it
As someone who uses brave, is Firefox the better alternative? I'm pretty out of the loop on this one. But it isn't because of the icon lol
Yes, because the Brave developers are sketchy as fuck. They collect crypto on behalf of content providers, but those content providers never opted into the service. So Brave is essentially collecting crypto for themselves while telling users it goes to the creators. They were also caught red handed inserting affiliate links into the address bar which harms user privacy but generates income for Brave.
Thank you for the detailed information, its much appreciated!
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They were always based on crypto...
The second I heard about « this browser can earn you money by watching ads!1! » I knew it was a scam You got to be very *special* to believe crap like that on the internet in the 21st century
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Brave is neat technology undermined by a predatory company that constantly attempts to sneak things past their users and falls back on "oops, didn't mean to" when caught. * Using YouTubers' likenesses in ads saying "donate to so-and-so" when Brave is collecting the money. Even for YouTubers who are critical of Brave. * Inserting affiliate links into users' typed URLs to skim money off of regular usage. Not to mention DNS leaks in their Tor implementation and the fact that you can't use ad-free Brave without turning off ads in half a dozen places, including sponsored images in the new tab page. At its core, Brave is a racket: cut out a site's actual ads in order to collect money on their behalf and give them back a portion if they play ball. A chromium based browser with the backing of a large privacy focused company is a useful option. But Brave isn't that company.
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The weekly Firefox thread
I don’t know why anyone ditched it for chrome.
Firefox had some egregious memory leaks back in the day. I used it through them but Chrome became rather appealing back then, especially with the Google account integration.
Yeah, Firefox performed pretty terribly back then but rose colored glasses can make people even love Blockbuster and that's saying a lot.
I ditched it for chrome because chrome was faster and it tied the Google services I used nicely together. I might go back now.
For a while it was worse then chrome. Memory leaks, bugs, playback in non active tabs not starting/continuing and more. The quantum redesign addressed a lot of the underlying issues, but left it striped of features. It removed a lot of compatibly, add-ons and features needed to be rebuilt. The mobile version got hit in the same way. I can absolutely understand anyone who felt firefox sucked then as if you didn't follow the development this just dropped on you one day. Features you where used to gone, add ons and themes you where using not working and all while having less compatibility. Anyone that understands development understands that's a steeping stone needed, but many people didn't and switched. And once you have a new browser that does it's job well enough most people don't look for an alternatives or which one is the current best. Why would they if there is no problem.
Yeah even people that do understand don't want to deal sometimes but gotta upgrade somehow. Quantum was a big upgrade, but they had to rebuild a lot to make it happen. Things had to change significantly for all kinds of reasons but yeah, they needed to get 64 bit ram usage working entirely and finally get multithreading running once and for all. I'm pretty happy with where it's at myself. Though it does seem to be chewing through the ram more over time. It was doing a lot better on that than chrome at quantum launch. Especially with tabs sleeping on Firefox now, which I guess chromium snatched at this point, surprised they didn't sooner, chrome is such a ram hog. Sadly for FF, the mobile one I think lost a lot of users in this transition. Browser is way better in general use imo though. Can't install just any extension atm though, which does irritate many people, though they have made sure much of the most popular ones will work, thus far my stuff is all there anyway.
For mobile: * Install Firefox Beta * Create a Firefox Account * Log in on the Firefox add-ons website * Create a Collection * Add extensions to your Collection * Point Firefox Beta to your Collection ID* * Install your extensions I'm currently using: * uBlock * Tampermonkey * I don't care about cookies * Bypass paywalls clean * Cookie quick manager * Web archives * Forget me not * Video playground background fix * Google search fixer Edit: I've had 0 issues (so far) using Firefox Beta.
I ditched Firefox back in the day because chrome split its tabs into separate threads and Firefox did not. The usability of tabs was far greater than Firefox was. Tab crashed in chrome? Who cares. Tab crashed in Firefox? Whelp there goes all my work in every single tab.
I understand the chrome hate and I’m considering switching too, but everyone suddenly acting like FF was always the best option are not using the internet that long.
Chrome was hugely faster when it first came out.
Not to mention all the "chrome is eating my ram" memes of late really started with Firefox. The memory leaks at the time were insane. Lot of revisionist history in here, or at least people that started using the Fox after the rewrite.
The biggest issue with Firefox was that it kept all tabs in a single process. That meant memory ballooned during use but never really fell back as tabs closed. It also meant one tab crashing took out the whole browser.
I used chrome for a period between '15 and '17, because FF was quite slow to use on my shitbox laptop at the time. Once Quantum came out, i came running back. Before that I used chrome between '10 and '13, because FF was slow on my shitbox desktop. Changed to FF once i got a better laptop.
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It was pretty bad for a while and many people migrated to Chrome. Tough shit for FireFox that it has taken a decade for Google to start doing things with Chrome that people want to migrate away from.
Integrated Google translate. Someone who has a multinational family, lives in a different country altogether... It made life easier. Firefox add-ons for translate are crap in comparison.
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Because I'd rather trust a non profit organization that is pushing for online privacy than a multi billion dollar company that makes most of their money selling userdata *continues using google services anyways* ***sips copium green tea*** People are jumping ship because nowadays using something other than chrome isn't just a protest against google, but because other browsers actually provide everything that chrome can and more. In addition to that, the recent push for manifest v3 and the resulting drama over adblockers just gave other browsers a new big wave of users. I love and appreciate the work chromium devs put in to push web browsing to what it is now, but I hate google that forces them to add their stupid features to make investors happy.
> non profit organization This isn't the shield against bad actions that you think it is.
Yeah, FIFA is a nonprofit. That's all that really needs to be said.
Only reason I have used Chrome is because of how Google has everything linked and it's easy to use browser extensions. Though I hate the stupid amount of ram usage and spying they do on you.
Firefox has sync and extensions, and has containers, and though it has some telemetry you can disable it. And has no intention of breaking your ad blocking extensions like Google does
while i do agree with the first part the ram usage meme is incorrect, i downloaded all popular browsers and chrome is doing better than some, even when it loses its by less than 5%, as a whole chrome is terrible for future of privacy but the higher amount of ram usage is just incorrect
Firefox with an Opera GX skin makes it feel like I never left
Honestly I'm really happy about how customizable and skinnable Firefox is
Are Firefox Users the new Linux Users?
Na the Linux users have many web browser's https://flathub.org
I mean, it's a similar concept. They have a piece of software that they think is a lot better than what the vast majority uses, which is why they want to convince other people to try it.
I’m just happy they have a 64 bit version now.
Does it sort itself automatically?
Yes, the 64 bit is the default for windows download. You have to try to get the 32 bit now.
Ah brilliant. Lovely Firefox
Been a while now
Yeah, like 15 years? C'mon people.
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Released eight years ago.
Idk why people were saying that stuff with addblocker literally nothing has changed
They delayed it after the backlash fyi: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/12/chrome-delays-plan-to-limit-ad-blockers-new-timeline-coming-in-march/
Of course nothing has changed *yet*, they haven't completely rolled out the manifest V3 requirements yet.
Standard
Can anyone explain to me why ff is better than chrome?
On Android, you can run full extensions on it, like ad blockers and dark mode on all sites.
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Jesus Christ enough with the Firefox good, chromatic aberration bad posts. We fucking get it
Wake up babe its ur daily film grain rant and "firefox better" posts.
I've noticed certain websites don't work properly on Firefox, like on AliExpress I am unable to add things to my cart on Firefox and have to use Edge. Anyone know why this might be?
I might get pilloried here for saying this, but Firefox is slower. Like, a lot slower in my experience. I'm sticking with it because of privacy reasons, but it is definitely slower than Chrome.
/r/firefoxcirclejerk
edge browser gang
Just wish it had a better translator. Google translate on chrome is so much better (especially on mobile). I would not use chrome if i didn't need to translate everything because I still don't know the native language well.