Hey Lemmy, what browser do you use and why?
Hey Lemmy, what browser do you use and why?
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!
Vivaldi
- I love the UI and its customizability
- They are active participants in the Fediverse (@vivaldi@vivaldi.net) and they even have their own Mastodon instance for users (Vivaldi.social)
- Based in Europe
- Most importantly, they reject the crypto and AI hype trains
My backup is Firefox but I have also been trying out Librewolf.
Librewolf, although i tested zen browser for a while and since then i am running a vertical tab bar - it made me realize that this way the screen space is used much better! Had the same lag issues with zen, but i'll keep it installed and will check it out again later, because stuff like the sneak peek is great!
Zen browser at the moment, it includes a lot of UI and UX tweaks that I was already trying to do via CSS and extensions in Firefox, but it does them a lot cleaner. Definitely an opinionated appearance though, won't be for everyone but so far I am enjoying it. My only gripe has been that I can't disable workspaces and keeping them active seems to keep a hidden tab open all the time, so closing a window always asks me to confirm "closing 2 tabs" even though I have 1 or none open.
I previously was using Librewolf to disable Mozilla's tracking, but after it wiped my browsing history and made some weird user agent change which broke almost every website I have given up on it. The extra bit of privacy wasn't worth the headache, and the TOR-like defaults exemplify that it's a more hardcore browser than I need. As far as I can Zen browser is about the same as vanilla Firefox for privacy issues, so not perfect but not as bad as Chrome.
I refuse to use anything Chromium anymore, but I tried out a bunch of those as well some years ago. Vivaldi was my favourite for it's features, but man whatever they did to tweak the UI resulted in a lot of bugs... I had weekly crashes on that browser over two different hardware setups.
I skimmed all the comments and it looks like I'll be the first: Chrome. Not Chromium, or any fork. Just Google Chrome. Even on my Ubuntu HTPC.
I've used it since it was new and blew everything else out of the water for smoothness. Over time I've gotten used to features like sync and profiles, and tab groups. Now my life is too busy to put ideology over convenience, and since uBlock Lite seems to work fine for me on Manifest v3, I really don't have a particularly strong reason to change.
My second browser is Firefox, but it's literally only for NSFW things. To try migrating over, they would have to implement profiles better so that this can coexist with my main usage.
Sometimes I also use Edge to keep different logins, although I could also achieve the same with profiles on Chrome now.
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 Firefox but I'm keeping my eye on Ladybird
Firefox. Because using even a slightly sketchy browser for shit like banking logins is insane.
Firefox because Ladybird isn't ready yet.
Firefox, been using it forever. Nothing has got me to permanently switch.
I use lynx in the terminal sometimes for fun.
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.
Fiiirefoooxx
Zen Browser. Based on Firefox but I prefer the UI
No one mentioned Floorp yet, so I guess it's on me.
It's Firefox, but with more customization options right out of the box. I also have an ungoogled Chromium on standby for those sites unwilling to work well with Firefox (and forks).
EDIT:
Oh, it's mentioned in the OP:
- 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.
Firefox, I even go out of my way to install it on any company laptop I get. It's not Google owned, I can easily change the default search engine to Kagi or Ecosia.
Browser is the one of the few softwares I'm picky about and won't change. I've used Firefox for so many years now, my entire workflow revolves around it.
Containers has been a game changer for me. The screenshot tool is also excellent.
Always been Firefox for its reliability and it has just the features I need and want from a Browser. Switched to Floorp for a few months because of its "tab spaces" but with Firefox's new tab grouping feature it has been my main again.
Firefox. I've stuck with it for what, a decade now? I used Chrome before.
I use it simply because it's not Chromium and works. There's Firefox forks but they don't offer enough to pull me from Firefox. Yet.
On iOS/iPad I generally stick with Safari because of how non-native browsers were forced to be just skins. But I bounce between phones and ecosystems and I've been off Apple for more than a year.
If something needs Chromium to work (very rare), I open Vivaldi.
Waterfox. Just the right spot between stock ff and modifications. I’ve tried zen and floorp but it’s waterfox for me.
LibreWolf, because Mozilla makes bad decisions.
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.
Librewolf/firefox and Ironfox on Android because
- Customizable and very easy to config (you can change the firefox ui via Chrome css and the browser stuff in about:config)
- Privacy (Mainly Librewolf and ironfox)
- Modern and still has ublock origin and noscript (aka manifest v2)
But i may rarely use a chromium based browser (Cromite,Vivaldi for example) i might even use Orion if it comes to Linux and Android
I use Firefox because I have worked at both Google and MSFT and want as little to do as possible with their products.
Ironfox on phone, Librewolf on computer.
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.
Firefox, LibreWolf and Mullvad.
On laptop:
- Primary LibreWolf, as it does everything I need, and I don't 100% trust Mozilla anymore after recent incidents so I wanted a non-Mozilla fork of Firefox
- Secondary Chromium, when something refuses to run on Firefox and derivatives
On phone:
- Primary FOSS Browser, I think it might be some guy's passion project... It works so yeah
- Secondary Vanadium, basically GrapheneOS' in-house Chromium fork. For when the primary browser doesn't do the job, which happens more often because I have FOSS Browser set on blocking all JavaScript...
Mostly vivaldi, but I've been experimenting with Zen too, a Firefox fork. I really liked what I've seen so far. The layout is unique, workspaces and tab management is pretty nice.
I use fennec on mobile because it isn't chromium and isn't directly firefox. I use librewolf on desktop for the same reasons
From my top browsers, Librewolf and Brave Browser are probably in first place. Librewolf is, of course, better in terms of privacy, but I like Brave Browser because it performs better. I compared their performance on an old laptop, and Brave really works better. These are two open-source browsers, and there probably aren't any better ones, in principle.
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.
Firefox, used to switch to edge to get hevc HDR to work from my jellyfin server. But now Firefox will pass it through AV1. So it my only browser now
Firefox on pc, I've been using it for years and it has served me well. On the phone I use fennec.
It took a long time to switch to Firefox, but it is now my main browser. I mean I really liked the Mozilla suite and Firefox just didn't seem ready for awhile, but eventually I made the move.
Firefox ever since.
I've been using Zen for about a month now and I'm very happy with it. I like the design and feel of it, and it's actively being developed all the time. Don't think I've had any significant bugs (except a few very minor ones) or issues whilst using it yet.
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: 🐺
Including browser names in bold.
My strong preference is toward Pale Moon, but I have been using it less and less lately. Instead when I want to use a more standards-compliant (i.e non-Blink) rendering engine, I use SeaMonkey, which includes a browser, an email/newsgroup/RSS client, and an IRC client.
Lately though, I flip between Firefox, Waterfox, Librewolf, and Tor Browser - they're all just "Firefox, and this thing that could be an addon if addons still worked right". I truly despise the fact that they moved to Google WebExtensions, and have so many other Google shackles - so I'm glad that they're losing the money.
Oh, I also use Links in my terminal. It's a good alternative to curl.
Waterfox, privacy focused Firefox fork. Its awesome.
Vivaldi as my main browser and Librewolf as my second. I love the tab management and workspaces on Vivaldi, there’s nothing else like it that I’ve found. I use librewolf for all my docker local host needs. I actually really quite like it and would probably switch over but the workspace/tab thing keeps me on Vivaldi.
Over the last two and half years (since I quit Windows and Vivaldi and went FLOSS only), bouncing around between Firefox, Floorp, Zen, Firedragon and Falkon as my principal browser, while also checking out Pale Moon, Servo, Dillo, Netsurf, Agregore, Kristall. Also "special purpose browsers" like Station, Ferdium and FreeTube. (Is FreeTube a browser? I think it's an Electron app, which is basically a Blink/Chromium browser, used to browse just one website in this case.)
Currently on my laptop:
- Fully-loaded Zen (multiple extensions and a couple of Zen mods) as my main browser
- Fairly minimal Firefox (just uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger) for streaming music (e.g Spotify without ads)
- Ferdium for email and IM
- FreeTube for YouTube (LibRedirect extension in Zen sends YT links to FreeTube automatically)
- Ungoogled Chromium as a backup in case some site just won't work with a non-Blink browser. Haven't used it in months.
Laptop is Fedora Workstation. Here I use Brave for logins and LibreWolf+UBO is my main "forgetful" browser.
Phone is GrapheneOS - I also use Brave for logins. Ironfox is my main browser which comes with UBO preinstalled plus a few extra blocklists which I did add to LibreWolf..
Librewolf and Ironfox are synced through a Mozilla account.
Firefox. Little fuckery, and it's what I'm used to.
Forefox, also Chromium occasioanly of I am in a hurry and some asshat makes it difficult to use Firefox.
Playing with Zen.
My OS is Linux Mint
Cromite. A de-googled, hardened fork of Chromium. Not perfect by any means. But it gets the job done admirably.
Qutebrowser and Firefox depending on what I'm browsing as qutebrowser is nicer but firefox has better adblock and addon support. Firefox with tridactyl is really good these days and very close to qutebrowser ux quality. Chromium for web development as chrome devtools are still unmatched unfortunately.
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.
Firefox but it's so slow on Android. I've just accepted there is no good browser. Just least annoying. And somehow that's Firefox even with all the useless crap and pop ups they keep adding
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 use Vanadium/Trivalent (GrapheneOS fork of mobile Chromium and its desktop equivalent) for general internet use on a general-use system, and Firefox inside of specific qubes for specific purposes otherwise.
On a general-use system, the additional security of Vanadium and Trivalent give me a bit of peace of mind when using the same browser for admin work, sensitive stuff like banking, and general browsing.
With the Qubes model, everything is segmented and isolated anyway, so I can use Firefox, which despite its flaws has been my favorite since the Netscape days.
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.
Qutebrowser on desktop and Brave on mobile, mainly for adblocking. I see the adblocking on desktop as its own hobby (I'm a homelabber) so there's some enjoyment to be had from it.
I started using Zen recently. I really like being able to get rid of all menus when I don't need them. I don't like it that much stock though and wish all of the customisation I did was easily transferable between devices, at the moment only some basic config is stored via Mozilla sync for some reason.
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.
Firefox: Windows 10 desktop PC, Ubuntu old laptop, Ubuntu old Mini PC. Opera is my second option if some pages with Firefox addons doesnt work.
DuckDuckGo browser: iOS, I tried Brave also but heard that the owner is douchebag so deleted it. Duckduck’s delete all by single click button in top right corner is awesome. All browsers should have it by default. If they ever add adblock, I might start using on my desktop pc.
Heavily modified vivaldi. Vertical tabs on the left side. Side panels with often used tools. Autohiding UI, pop-out links. I cannot live without native mouse gestures and the Vivaldi speed dial. Opera also offers it, but that browser is unfortunately a shell of what it was.
Zen browser as a semi backup.
I tried using zen as my main browser for a month, but I ended up going back to Vivaldi. It's just so much better.
Ironfox on mobile and qutebrowser on my computer.