Let’s try LibreWolf, Floorp and Zen until Mozilla decides they want to make a browser again
Been using LibreWolf for a few months and before that just regular Firefox with the ArkenFox user.js.
Basically the exact same experience just with the peace of mind I won’t end up with some weird Ai crap after an update.
Last I know they were still debating whether they’ll remove the AI or not
Here’s the issue of the discussion:
Ethics is just politics with a less unpleasant name. Personally, I don’t feel a browser should be political. Anything that’s political forces a choice, or perhaps the lack of choice, on the user. IMO the user should always have a choice.
So for me, AI should be opt-in and disabled by default, BUT I’d like the option to enable it when I choose, whether that’s through the AI or through ‘librewolf.overrides.cfg’ doesn’t matter.
The one sane voice in that thread
Forks are pretty valuable to Firefox development, and it’s helpful for Firefox marketshare too because they use the same UA as Firefox, so website must support Firefox.
Even Firefox devs said they observe Firefox forks to see their idea and bring back to Firefox, just compare recent new features of Firefox to Zen/Floorp, you would see that the idea of:
- Profile Manager is from Zen/Floorp
- Vertical Tab is from Zen/Floorp
- Sidebar is from Zen/Floorp
And many small things.
Everyone always whines about anything Mozilla does with Firefox. These additions are at least much less intrusive than their addition of Pocket.
And Pocket isn’t very intrusive either, is the point you were trying to make, right?
To my knowledge, it’s the recommendations on about:home, which can easily be disabled, and then just a glorified bookmark to access Pocket. If you want it gone from the UI, set extensions.pocket.enabled to false in about:config.
yeah sure. so why no default enabled ai, sync, translate, stt? because its shit. always has been.do one thing and do it good. a doctrine ruined by lennart peottering, seems to be the same source of fail. if i want an addon like pocket or ai…lemme install that myself. moz can eff off with their shit mindset.
Zen is really good but I’ve found it likes to crash my Gnome session when it’s open at the same time as regular Firefox. It also likes to crash my Gnome session at random. Other than that I really like it, I’ll try it again soon
I had a girlfriend like that. She liked to beat me up and give me a few kicks in the ribs, but other than that, she was lovely.
(just kidding)
I’m glad that forks are becoming a thing, again. The community (including myself) have slacked off for far too long, just taking it for granted that a browser was provided to them.
And people got seriously offended by any choice Mozilla made, even though the source code is right there. I get that not everyone has the skill to modify the source code, but enough people do that we should be able to cover various different preferences.
Would be even cooler, if the grassroots community started pushing the browser forward more, rather than just doing things different from Mozilla, but it’s a good first step.
