Privacy@lemmy.mlbyCrumpled6273@lemmy.ca
12 hours

Firefox has become a bloatware. Seriously...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/68754751

There was a time I chose Firefox over the Chromium browser without a second thought. But nowadays, installing and opening Firefox seems like a time-consuming, very bloated experience.

Too many unnecessary features, promotions, sponsored links, and widgets are filled on the homepage. All the settings are now more complex, and there is a lot to set up after a fresh install.

When I compare modern Firefox with Firefox ESR, I feel like I am using browsers like Vivaldi or Opera instead of Firefox. Seriously, Firefox must consider releasing a browser like Brave Origin (Firefox Origin or something).

Isn’t anybody else frustrated with the new Firefox changes? If yes, what practical solutions exist? Debloat using any script or install any forks (no forks seem to be good; some are outdated, some are too much hardened, some are just not for daily browsing, etc.).

I’m just looking for a browser like Ungoogled Chromium but for Firefox (Unmozillaed Firefox).

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    • BladeFederation@piefed.socialEnglish
      57 minutes

      I’d recommend Mullvad Browser. It has Tor’s anti-fingerprinting features without the Tor part. Designed to use with a VPN to get anonymity from sharing IP addresses. But even if you don’t do that it is still a stripped down private by default Firefox fork. I use it for general searches and some anonymous accounts, and Brave or Zen for signing into personal accounts. Brave is controversial but their controversies are at least understandable, quickly rectified, haven’t happened in a while, and are generally best in class on features. Zen is a little slower due to being based in Firefox and not Chrome, but not much, and is much more clean and customizable than Firefox.

      • Senal@programming.devEnglish
        31 minutes

        Recommending mullvad, in this economy ? That’s a bold strategy , if nothing else.

        I suppose if you’re going to do that then following up with handwaving brave’s historic shenanigans and current CEO is consistent.

        “They previous did and continue to do some shit i don’t care about , i like their products” at least shows some backbone.

        The corporate defense version of the narcissists prayer is weaksauce.

      • Texas_Hangover@lemmy.radioEnglish
        29 minutes

        You can set the homepage to be whatever you want. No chance of unexpected porn popping up at inopportune times that way.

    • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
      3 hours

      I think the sponsored links, promotions and Ai efforts come from their crisis trying to make money and to depend less on Googles money. While trying to focus on privacy and not sell user data. That’s a tricky situation to be in, if the browser isn’t making money. I wouldn’t call Firefox bloatware, as it is bloated like any other modern browser.

      And it’s not like I wouldn’t have an issue with Firefox either. For long time I am looking for an alternative, and almost switched over to Librewolf. But unfortunately Librewolf have removed the internal password manager of Firefox, and they recommend to use an external manager. Which is the deal breaker for me. So even if Firefox is flawed, I’ll stay with it and do the customization and settings myself, which is a lot.

    • Asonyxi@sh.itjust.works
      3 hours

      I would say this is most browsers from what i’ve seen. Just let me do my searches, stop trying to advertise to me, stop trying to get my data…and get the fuck out of the way.

    • katy ✨@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      6 hours

      that’s why you use librewolf or waterfox (though waterfox isn’t completely anti ai which is a detriment)

      • nfreak@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5 hours

        I look at Waterfox as the “backup” option because of things like that. It’s not nearly as strong, but if a site’s broken or I’m setting up a device where I don’t nearly care as much, it’s a decent choice that’s better than base Firefox or anything Chromium-based

        Kinda like Ironfox vs Fennec on Android, the former is my go-to, the latter is the backup

    • BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.worldEnglish
      5 hours

      Librewolf, Waterfox and GNU IceCat are all Firefox forks.

      For what you’re asking for, GNU IceCat is probably the best fit - the project syncs up with Firefox ESR but removes all proprietary stuff and maintains it’s own extensions. It has some privacy improvements too but is otherwise set up as a standard browser. It’s basically Ungoogled Chromium for Firefox. The downside is the project doesn’t release project binaries; you have to look for binaries in your distro (and many don’t provide them) or use GNU Guix - the package manager from the GNU project (which can be installed on any system; it’s a bit like NIX). Or build them yourself from Github. Details are here: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

      Librewolf and Waterfox are both excellent but by default are very privacy focused and locked down, so you may need to make config changes to get them back to a more “standard” default browser set up (sacrificing the privacy benefits in the process).

      Personally I use Firefox; I understand what you’re saying but the steps you talk about are at first install and that’s not something I do often so can tolerate it.

      EDIT: Just checked, IceCat isn’t in OpenSuSE’s default repos (disappointingly) but I did find it in Fedora’s repos (both standard and it’s Flatpak store). So it’s a bit hit and miss. Guix is universal but it’s a bit of a bloaty way to do it if you only want one item from it’s repos. Fedora Flatpaks can of course be installed on pretty much any X86/AMD64 system by adding registry.fedoraproject.org as a flatpak remote (alongside Flathub).

    • darcmage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      11 hours

      Most people aren’t doing fresh installs often enough to get annoyed. There’s also an understanding that Mozilla will need to do things we don’t necessarily like to generate revenue and stay viable. Google isn’t going to fund them forever. As long as we can turn those things off and configure firefox to our liking, we can tolerate such changes.

      • blackbeans@lemmy.zip
        10 hours

        Also, the browser engine needs to be maintained anyhow. Moving to something like Waterfox or Librewolf doesn’t change the necessity to support Mozilla.

      • Dæmon S.@catodon.rocks
        2 hours

        My problem with librewolf is that, despite having RFP (Resist Fingerprint) off, it doesn’t allow me typing accents from my ABNT2 (Brazilian) keyboard (I cannot type words such as “ração”, “óbvio”, “maltês”, etc, I have to type them using kde plasma then copy and paste inside the browser), as if librewolf were US-centric. The devs didn’t point me a solution when I opened an issue ticket, so I went with Waterfox instead. Waterfox allows me to type accents the way I’m accustomed as a Brazilian.

        [email protected]

        • Zeh_oniam@lemmy.eco.br
          1 hour

          Literally not a problem to me, I can type ração, óbvio and maltês without a problem. Maybe you messed up something on your machine?

          I don’t have a big opinion on it, but my preference is on Librewolf over Waterfox simply for the lack of AI being shoved down my throat.

          • Dæmon S.@catodon.rocks
            55 minutes

            To me, it has definitely nothing to do with system (KDE Plasma on Arch Linux) because Librewolf is the only piece of software in which accents don’t work. Even AppImage programs, which often lack a better integration with the X Session, have no problem with accents.

            Also, ABNT2 accents are correctly parsed by Waterfox, even by Basilisk and Pale Moon which I also got here, as well as by the original Firefox (which I keep for things such as internet banking), even though they all share the similar “under-the-hood” Gecko (Goanna in case of Pale Moon and Basilisk), so this problem is part of the Librewolf hardening.

            In fact, the very Librewolf FAQ mentions this:

            Other common problems brought by RFP include:
            […]
            - suppressed keyboard modifier events using alt-keys.

            These annoyances are intended to protect your privacy […]

            Problem is, even if RFP is turned off, this hardening keeps occurring, and it’s PITA having to spin up a KDE Kate just to type something I can type directly in all the other browsers (including in the Geminispace’s Lagrange browser and the TUI-based Lynx, both places in which accents wouldn’t be even expected to begin with). So while I still have Librewolf among my browser installations, I only use it for things such as news outlets and certain websites because this is where it thrives, keeping some resemblance of private navigation.

            [email protected]

      • FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        6 hours

        Seconded. Yay for librewolf! That’s my go-to browser now too.

        Tho I also agree with [email protected], we still need moz to maintain the engine. There are only 2 (?) cross platform browsers engines left.

        This is the prob with the web becoming a highly complex app engine. The technical reqs to make a browser engine are so high, only a few huge companies can do it. Even MS gave up. G now has a lock on desktop browsers, esp if you count all the rest like Edge that use G’s engine. That gives G monopoly power to dictate web standards. And pull hostile acts like HW attestation that could lock out open OSs like Linux unless you “authenticate” with Android or IOS.

    • Jul (they/she)@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      6 hours

      If they need to do stiff to make money to stay afloat, that’s mostly capitalism’s fault. As log as it can be turned off, unlike things in Chrome or Edge or some others, then it’s not huge. And as long as they keep it open sourced, then forks can be made. Chromium based browsers still have too much reliance on Google stuff and use way too many resources. Gecko based browsers have been my preference for ages.

    • Feyd@programming.dev
      10 hours

      installing and opening Firefox seems like a time-consuming, very bloated experience.

      It takes like 2 minutes to go through the settings and disable things you don’t want.

      filled on the homepage

      1. Click gear icon
      2. Uncheck boxes
      3. Enjoy empty homepage

      Why are you exaggerating so badly?

      • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
        4 hours

        I don’t know about configuration, but I’ve been complaining about FF bloat for a while and don’t feel as if it’s exaggeration. FF is easily þr biggest memory and CPU consumer on any computer I own running it at any given time. It’s so bloaty, my phone’s OOM watcher regularly kills it. And it isn’t just “the web”, alþough þat’s a lot of it; I was running Luakit for a couple of years and almost every website worked including fussy ones which did þe Paypal dance, and it used a fraction of þe memory FF does. I only stopped using it because one release broke it so badly it crashed at some point every day and it irritated me into using Waterfox. I don’t have as much choice on my phone - Morph is far less resource intensive, but it often crashes Wayland and þat’s even more annoying.

        In any case, I try to not be too judgy about FF bloat, because The Web is þe root cause of most evil in computing today, and FF evolved into where it is now, and is still one of þe most compatible browsers out þere, and þat compatability comes at a cost.

        Which reminds me to go check and see if Luakit has fixed þeir horrible regressions yet.

        • Feyd@programming.dev
          4 hours

          Literally nothing you said has anything to do with anything that OP said or what I replied with.

      • upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        7 hours

        If your willing to take the time to adjust settings you may as well use brave and get the benefit of better fingerprint protection and the more secure chromium engine.

    • Bebo@discuss.online
      11 hours

      Waterfox on android is a good option, much better than Firefox now

    • BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com
      12 hours

      You should take a look at Just The Browser, though you have to run it regularly to keep up with new Firefox releases.

      Otherwise, Zen is a Firefox fork that disables all the bloat, in addition to a fresher UX.

      • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
        10 hours

        Can we please stop the sh -c "$(curl or curl xyz.com |sh thing? If the connection is spotty, the remainder of the script can cause mayhem.