I use FireDragon, because it’s the only browser I could find that has a vertical tab-bar that collapses. Supposedly Zen does it, too, but I couldn’t get it to work.
FireDragon also has a toolbar to the side with a notepad and other neat stuff. I haven’t used that yet, but it could be cool.
Fennec on mobile, haven’t gotten around to replacing FF on Desktop yet.
Still Firefox. Every time Mozilla does anything the entire privacy community goes insane. The terms of use they published seem entirely benign, and the only thing anyone can actually point to is the “direction being worrisome”. Well, I’ll get worried when they update the terms to be actually onerous. Everything even possibly annoying can be disabled, and it’s still the only browser engine offering competition against Chrome ruling the web.
I don’t see how you could find the terms not concerning and their removal of stating they don’t sell data
What in the terms is concerning? They still have the bulk of the language in the old data privacy guarantee as well. This seems like they just got a more circumspect legal department who wants to cover their ass.
It’s always been the case that Mozilla could decide to just make Firefox suck ass. Again, I’ll be worried when they actually change the terms to something unacceptable.
Still using Firefox. They mean well. Wish I could say the same of chrome.
Zen, absolutely love the workflow and the fact that it is not chromium based.
Waiting excitedly for ladybird, it is already very impressive but still years left until it is daily drive able
Basically a firefox skin, although they have a VPN as a sponsor, did somebody did a thorough check on that browser?
I like zen a lot but I’m struggling to drag a tab from one window to another. The sidebar always collapses on the target window before the tab gets there. Any tips?
Perhaps right click on the sidebar -> disable compact mode? I haven’t had any issues moving tabs between windows, but then again I keep the sidebar persistent
Firefox. Equally concerned as well.
Looking into Librewolf and Waterfox now!
Long time Firefox user. Installed Librewolf today and so far so good. I used Firefox sync to get all my settings, bookmarks, open tabs, etc. back. At some point I will probably find an alternative yo Firefox sync but it’ll do for the time being.
The only thing that sucks about it is some sites just flat out don’t work well. For example, in Librewolf I cannot login to my banks website. The site loads, but the login just hangs. Firefox it works immediately.
OK! You’ve had 1 hour to check them out. :D What’s the difference between the two? They’re both Firefox forks, right?
I found a decent answer here https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/18g8tez/what_am_i_gaining_if_i_switch_from_librewolf_to/
That mod sums up a lot that I found. I don’t know the answer because they both have odd downsides.
Yes they’re both forks!
Didn’t Waterfox get bought out by an ad company?
yes and then sold and FOSS again!
Nice!
I have found Mozilla’s sync across devices handy, but now I’m in the process of moving over to using Vanadium on my GrapheneOS phone and FireDragon on desktop.
FireDragon started out as a Librewolf fork, but is more recently based on Floorp. They are still keeping in sync with Librewolf’s privacy enhancements, with some of their own thrown in. I like that the default search engine is Garuda’s instance of Searx, with Whoogle as another option if you don’t want to self host. FireDragon will also sync your Firefox account off Garuda’s server instance if you like (which would be more useful if I weren’t going with a Chromium fork on mobile). The Garuda project is certainly looking more trustworthy than Mozilla these days.
I’ve been using Zen for the past couple days and it’s absolutely spectacular. I really really been enjoying it.
It claims to be a fork of Firefox but there’s still Firefox under the hood and you can tell. But I find that it runs significantly faster than Firefox standard. So who knows. The author seems to be making it as ambiguous as possible so I would think that it’s a soft fork that’s basically stock Firefox with a few minor changes and a new look.
librewolf
Firefox. And Thunderbird. And donate to Mozilla.
Don’t really see the point in using a fork that, by the time you boil it down, just takes Firefox’s work and then releases it later.
I want a Google and Apple alternative and I’d rather support it at the top of the chain.
Librewolf, it’s Firefox but without the evil.
FF is evil now?
I fail to understand the question mark at the end of your sentence.
It’s a casual English language construction of the 90s. It’s equivalent to “FF is evil?” And implies that the writer believes that it didn’t used to be.
While I’m not sure dropping Firefox is necessary at this juncture, I’ve had a good experience using LibreFox. Hearing a lot about Zen, though.
Check out Mozilla’s clarification: https://www.ghacks.net/2025/02/27/mozillas-new-terms-of-use-causes-confusion-among-firefox-users/
I think this diff makes it pretty clear its time to run, not walk: https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/114078708183574404
Should we also be comparing rendering engines?
I’m a Firefox user and I’m not really that bothered about this tos changes. If they do mess things up I’ll probably just switch to some fork that doesn’t do the fuckery.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Mint packages Firefox with it (whatever “it” is) disabled, since they build Thunderbird without telemetry.
Practical response.
My issue is that while i am concerned about privacy, i’m more concerned with security patching. And none of these smaller browsers have the resources to turn around security fixes as quickly as firefox or chrome.
Firefox is the least of the concerns as long as we have the config options to disable anything deemed not privacy-respecting.
This is the only good critique in this entire thread (thank you) BUT librewolf is on the exact same version as Firefox. It appears their updates are pretty fast.
Would you have config recommendations beyond the obvious?
I’m probably not the best person to talk to about Firefox hardening. Because… I don’t. I only go as far as using firefox containers.
My threat model is to counter:-
- ISP data logging
- government filters
- region blocking
- hyper-personalised marketing
I use a VPN for the first three, and I use Ublock, and don’t use google/meta/twitter/amazon/ebay for last.
I personally believe it is impossible to escape fingerprinting unless you’re on Tor Browser, but using Tor paints you as a target in my country per the first item above.
I also work in financial services, and am a user of my company’s product. We do significant ‘device intelligence’ and ‘behavioral intelligence’ on client devices, auth attempts, and actions taken in sessions. Log in too many times from too many different (seemingly) devices, user agents, IP addresses, regions, etc and it increases our customer risk assessment of you. Tick over a threshold and your account falls under enhanced customer due diligence. Tick over another threshold, and we’ll set auto-blocks until we can investigate. I assume that any other financial services provider worth their salt would do the same to counter fraud, money laundering, and meeting sanctions.
I basically use a split tunnel VPN. VPN traffic for general browsing, email, etc. And looking as much as a regular user as possible when accessing financial services, government websites, etc.
And yeah, agree LibreWolf is great. Only downside for the average user is the lack of an auto-updater. So the only tweak i’d do with LibreWolf would be to set up a cron/systemd timer to update it nightly.