In light of Mozilla’s recent policy changes, we no longer feel assured that Firefox aligns with our commitment to protect your privacy. This prompted us to revisit the choice of default web browser in Zorin OS 17.3.
Brave marketing has gone crazy to convince people it’s less dodgy than Firefox. Come on!
talk about bad taste
Recent firefox policy change is controversial, but how brave is better?
Y not gnome web
They should’ve picked LibreWolf which ships with uBlock Origin. Brave is a disappointing choice because it supports multi-level marketing pyramid schemes which says enough about their moral compass.
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✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.Seems like a strange choice. If anything i would’ve expected them to just use a firefox fork or something.
“Mozilla has a bit been shady lately, so we are making the difficult decision to change our default browser to something significantly more shady. We are confident our users will feel safer knowing their data is in even worse hands than before"
That’s gonna be a no from me, dawg
I’m actually not familiar with this distro. But if I installed a Linux distro, and it had brave installed. I would immediately switch.
Brave is a fairly recent outlier, and while it isn’t quite proprietary, it stinks a fair bit of something capitalist/crypto.
Boo
Firefox is bad, Brave is evil. Why did they decide switching is a good idea?
Blech. I’d downvote this because I disagree with their decision, but I’m glad you brought this to our attention.
While FF’s evil quotient has been on the rise, Brave definitely isn’t a better option. If anything, librewolf is the way to go.
As a Librewolf user I wouldn’t make it default for casual users this kind of distro is aiming for. Sure enabling logins to use it as a main browser is piss easy, but that’s still more work than the average person wants to put into setting up their system.
Waterfox would be the better choice since it’s just default Firefox in every way besides Mozilla’s spyware.
there’s Zen also. that also has normie defaults, however the drastically changed UI/Uxmight not be for everyone.
Agreed, I wouldn’t recommend Librewolf for casual users. I understand why Librewolf makes those decisions, and I’m glad that it exists, but you definitely run into some quirks when using it. I’m thinking about switching from Librewolf to Waterfox myself.
Doesn’t Librewolf log you out of every site when you close it, by default? I don’t think that’s a good default
That is the default behaviour, but it’s pretty trivial to change. Also, I’d imagine the distro maintainer could choose to change the default settings as part of a post-install script, if they wanted to.
Edit: Not sure why you’re being downvoted, as I do think it’s a valid concern.
It has to be the default tho, bc the whole point of Librewolf is that it’s trying to by default be untraceable and private.
It’s very easy to disable that and re-enable cookies and the like, but your default experience will fundamentally be private, which is its goal
That’s not the only point though. IIRC, they also remove telemetry, and pocket as well as some other things. I personally turn back on persistent sessions and history, but leave all the other privacy features there.
I personally turn back on persistent sessions and history
I did as well.
My point is just that it makes sense to be the default in that browser given its inclination towards privacy.
Ok but like, that makes a terrible default for Zorin OS users. They’re gonna be confused and think it’s some hot garbage
Right. So perhaps Librewolf isn’t a good choice for Zorin OS
What’s wrong with Brave?
- Based on Chromium so good web support
- Decent privacy
- Built-in adblock
- Easy to customize
- Open Source
It’s the browser I’ve chosen to use after getting fed up w/ Gecko’s terrible web compatibility these days (coming from Librewolf).
What’s wrong with it? How is it evil?
The thing I dislike about Brave is that Brave intends to be an advertising company. Brave’s original idea for revenue was that the browser itself should be the ad platform. Brave doesn’t block ads because it has a pro-user manifesto; it blocks ads because it dislikes competition.
That’s why it makes no sense for people to abandon Firefox for Brave. I understand the backlash against Mozilla’s recent ad-focused shift, but Brave invented that idea. So leaving Firefox for Brave is not an improvement.
It’s the browser I’ve chosen to use after getting fed up w/ Gecko’s terrible web compatibility these days (coming from Librewolf).
I’m curious about what those compatibility issues are. It’s been years since I’ve noticed any problems – and back when I was seeing problems, it was mainly because Google could afford to implement new standards faster than Mozilla could, not because Mozilla was doing anything wrong. Could it have been because of Librewolf? Librewolf has a ton of privacy-focused settings that can sometimes make pages behave in strange ways. (It doesn’t use your real time zone, it ignores dark mode, it lies about which OS you’re on, and it constantly clears your cookies to name a few.)
And on a meta-note: I dislike Brave, but I don’t think the parent here is a comment that needs to be downvoted. We can just explain why Brave is a bad idea.
Could it have been because of Librewolf?
Some issues definitiely were, but I also noticed issues when going back to regular Firefox and on Firefox mobile and Mull (which is sorta like Librewolf principles but for FF Mobile).
it was mainly because Google could afford to implement new standards faster than Mozilla could
I think that’s exactly what happens.
It definitely wasn’t Firefox’s fault for the compat issues.
Websites would work for months, and then one day only work in Chromium browsers. Sometimes they’d come back. Sometimes only parts would fail. Sometimes they’d never come back. These sites were changing things and breaking Gecko compatibility, but never Blink compatibility. I’d try turning off all the privacy settings, disabling ad blockers and extensions too, but nothing could fix it except using a Blink browser.
So I don’t blame Firefox/Librewolf for this, but it also means I suddenly couldn’t, say, access my loan payment as an example in Firefox. That’s one that broke. I need that to work. It works in Chrome, but not in FF (actually I think it came back to working in FF eventually)
I was always having to have 2 browsers installed, Firefox-based for most things and a Chromium-based backup.
One day I realize that it doesn’t make sense to use a FF-based browser, since if I have to have a Chromium-based backup anyway, I might as well just use a Chromium browser. I didn’t want to use a it, I’m generally against it Blink, but I feel that Gecko has already lost the war. I have no choice. FF is not long for this world
Asides from the kinda-shady crypto stuff and the other things that’ve already been mentioned, just philosophically it should be kinda evident that over-concentration on one corporate controlled rendering engine isn’t a good thing. Google wants the internet to be a walled garden with themselves as the sole decision makers so they can stuff ads down your throat.
Gecko’s web compat is bad largely because of this over-concentration.
just philosophically it should be kinda evident that over-concentration on one corporate controlled rendering engine isn’t a good thing
Totally with you on that point.
However, I feel now that Gecko has already lost. I was a long-time FF and later Librewolf user, but Websites don’t care to support FF as much, so I’d have important sites break. I’d have to have a Chromium-based backup anyway.
So I’ve now given up on that from. I have no real choice but to use Blink in some capacity.
What’s wrong is that we’re on the Fediverse and many here write off Brave because the founder is “homophobic” because he’s a conservative Christian. Sure, they make up all sorts of shallow justifications like “it’s a crypto scam” but it definitely boils down to the “homophobic” whining.
Found Brendan Eich’s sockpuppet :)
A conservative can’t be a Christian, and vice versa. Jesus was absolutely clear: He cares as much about the sex of who you sleep with as He does about the fabric of your underwear. Hatred is never justified.
Homophobia is a plenty good reason not to use a browser. Eich is an unscrupulous person at best, and his name leaves a stink on any project he is involved with. Unsurprising that Brave has decided to embrace the crypto fad and is moving towards becoming an ad platform.
Brave is a scammy project founded by a scummy person. I’m not sure FOSS development can fix that as long as he is in charge.
Read the Bible. Even the apostle Paul reiterates that it’s sinful.
As I said before, it all comes down to the “homophobia” argument. No good reasons, just a hatred of its founder. Pretty sad, if you ask me.
God, I hate Paul. He seems to be the source of most of the shitty things in Christianity.
To take that passage (Romans 1) and to interpret it to mean that Homosexuality should be persecuted is to ignore Jesus’ lessons in favor of one’s own hatred. That’s not Christian at all. It also ignores the rest of Romans.
How is brave the lesser of those two evils?
It isn’t.
Brave sucks Google balls.
Crypto scam browser is never a better evil…
Based on absolutely nothing, I feel like it isn’t…
Chromium is more secure, so if you add privacy tweaks, it is arguably better: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html#jit-hardening
(Btw I use Firefox)
While the company has a questionable record and a controversial business model, Brave Browser is an open-source browser with good privacy features.
You could replace “Brave Browser” with Firefox and the statement would still be true.
At least Firefox wasn’t caught hijacking affiliate links.
Something ive actually wondered is if firefox is hurting for money so bad why doesnt it allow a toggle where a user can willingly just turn every purchase via the browser into a firefox affiliate link? If the user is approving it and its not a shady forced thing i see no issue with it, and it would generate plenty of revenue without needing to be beholden to ad companies or google. It’d be like allowing users to donate, without actually costing them any extra money, everytime they make an online purchase.
Will it be legal? Recently honey extension was caught doing this, though without user consent.
Even with user consent, would businesses work with firefox affiliate if it is not actually attracting sales, but taking a portion of sales, and thus reducing profit, just because the sale is made through the browser?
Firefox tried “privacy friendly ad” but that has also received community backslash because it turns users into products and doing anything like that would make their profit engine go boom and exploit private data. Wouldn’t the similar backslash also apply in affiliated sales?
The way i see it if its opt in theres no issue. This would be something that wouldn’t happen unless you manually turned it on.
Instead of thinking up new ways for them to make money, maybe think why they’ve got money issues.
Maybe it’s got something to do with the different CEOs doubling their multi-milion salaries every few years.
Or maybe their numerous idiotic acquisitions like the pocket.
Or maybe they’re super strapped for cash because they moved their fuckhead of a CEO to AI development.
I love FF, but fuck Mozilla and everything it represents.
Also, fun stats from the moz corp wiki:
- Revenue in 2023: $653 million
- Software development expenses in 2023: $260 million
- Total expenses in 2023: $496 million
Yeah i mean true if its just an issue with their org then thats a different case. I do think that sort of money making model would work well though so maybe it could be used to fund a new browser.
Is privacyguides wrong?
🤡
