Whatever they say about "loving the Web", the Chrome team will choose Google's ad business over everything else, web standards, user agency, security, privacy, safety, interoperability, literally anything and everything else every single time.
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Real talk here: I was Mozilla's engineering community manager for a decade, I've seen exactly how that sausage gets made, and I'm never going to install Librewolf.
@mhoye do you know of any write ups around the why of that? @ralfmaximus
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Respectfully: I was Mozilla's engineering community manager for ten years. I know exactly what Librewolf is and how it's made and I will never install it.
@mhoye@cosocial.ca ok now I'm interested. Any link recommendations where I could read up on the problematic aspects?
And the recommendation wasn't meant for you specifically, but for anyone stumbling upon your post. -
The weird paranoid uncle is the Tor Browser. Respectfully, I was Mozilla's engineering community manager for ten years. I know exactly what Librewolf and Waterfox are, I know exactly how they're made and I will never install either of them.
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I mean, that's not entirely fair. There's also:
- Weird Paranoid Uncle Of Firefox, and
- Abandoned-On-A-Doorstep-At-Birth-But-Somehow-Surviving-And-Growing-Up-Fast-Cousin-Of Firefoxand a bunch of more seriously niche esoterica, but I think that covers it.
@mhoye Seamonkey still works...
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Whatever they say about "loving the Web", the Chrome team will choose Google's ad business over everything else, web standards, user agency, security, privacy, safety, interoperability, literally anything and everything else every single time.
What anyone on that team says they love or care about or want does not change anything they're going to do.
Get Firefox.
Yes, they're thrashing. Yes, the AI stuff is bullshit nobody wants.
Get Firefox, add uBlock Origin.
@mhoye Get Waterfox*
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The current state of the browser ecosystem is fundamentally:
- Google Chrome
- Microsoft Chrome
- Apple Chrome
- Crypto-Neofash Chrome
- Microsoft Proxy Chrome
- Norwegian Chrome
- Other Norwegian Chrome
- Overtly-Corporate-Sock-Puppet Chrome (many)
- Embedded-Corporate-Sock-Puppet Chrome (many,many)
- Serial-Numbers-Filed-Off Chrome, and- Firefox
So.
@mhoye I like norwegian chrome. That seems largely unobjectionable. I'd also consider a spinoff norwegian black metal chrome.
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The current state of the browser ecosystem is fundamentally:
- Google Chrome
- Microsoft Chrome
- Apple Chrome
- Crypto-Neofash Chrome
- Microsoft Proxy Chrome
- Norwegian Chrome
- Other Norwegian Chrome
- Overtly-Corporate-Sock-Puppet Chrome (many)
- Embedded-Corporate-Sock-Puppet Chrome (many,many)
- Serial-Numbers-Filed-Off Chrome, and- Firefox
So.
@mhoye
Well that clarifies it. -
J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
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@mhoye Get Waterfox*
@iscarlosmolero Lol, I was at Mozilla when we had to send the waterfox guy a cease and desist after he copied the entire Mozilla website and only changed the word "fire" to "water". It still listed all the Mozilla leadership, unchanged except for now they were "CEO of waterfox" and so on. I got to congratulate our CTO on his new gig, turns out he didn't think it was funny.
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Respectfully: I was Mozilla's engineering community manager for ten years. I know exactly what Librewolf is and how it's made and I will never install it.
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Weirdly GNOME Web, which also uses WebKit, has gotten a lot better over the last year or so. I find it strange there are not more WebKit browsers around considering how it has been around forever, has deep roots in open source, and is obviously capable.
That said, at this point I'm pretty much holding my breath for @servo to be daily driver ready.
@joho @mhoye -
The current state of the browser ecosystem is fundamentally:
- Google Chrome
- Microsoft Chrome
- Apple Chrome
- Crypto-Neofash Chrome
- Microsoft Proxy Chrome
- Norwegian Chrome
- Other Norwegian Chrome
- Overtly-Corporate-Sock-Puppet Chrome (many)
- Embedded-Corporate-Sock-Puppet Chrome (many,many)
- Serial-Numbers-Filed-Off Chrome, and- Firefox
So.
@mhoye Safari isn’t chromium-based, it’s WebKit
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@skyfaller Yeah, Servo is the "Abandoned-On-A-Doorstep-At-Birth" cousin I mentioned. I'm not daily driving it yet but I still play with it a few times a month and it's really coming along.
@mhoye @skyfaller
There's an account for @servo on Mastodon. -
@mhoye I don't think we should ignore the tiny browser engines no one uses, because that kinda describes KHTML / Konqueror, before Apple threw a lot of dev resources at it to make WebKit / Safari. Something like Servo or even more obscure could be the basis for a real contender if they got enough resources.
Honestly my greatest fear is the LLM bubble takes too long to pop and does permanent damage to the FOSS ecosystem, including niche browsers, so such a dark horse browser becomes impossible.
@skyfaller @mhoye one thing that's different about the Chrome monoculture we have right now vs. the IE4 monoculture of the early 2000s is that Google owns both the dominant browser *and* a number of huge websites and has no qualms about making those websites unusable in non-Chrome browsers.
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Respectfully: I was Mozilla's engineering community manager for ten years. I know exactly what Librewolf is and how it's made and I will never install it.
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Respectfully: I was Mozilla's engineering community manager for ten years. I know exactly what Librewolf is and how it's made and I will never install it.
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@mhoye I'm just saying don't write off Dillo or Netsurf
@skyfaller @mhoye netsurf these days is genuinely a worse experience than just using a text based terminal browser.
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The weird paranoid uncle is the Tor Browser. Respectfully, I was Mozilla's engineering community manager for ten years. I know exactly what Librewolf and Waterfox are, I know exactly how they're made and I will never install either of them.
@mhoye @dzwiedziu I feel reservations too.
What are the other options?
I don't have a good feeling about my own ability (or resources) to yeet the bad features into the sun. -
@mhoye @dzwiedziu I feel reservations too.
What are the other options?
I don't have a good feeling about my own ability (or resources) to yeet the bad features into the sun.
