this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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[–] Ep1cFac3pa1m@lemmy.world 168 points 3 months ago (35 children)
[–] EherNicht@feddit.org 44 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] Ep1cFac3pa1m@lemmy.world 30 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Is there anything better about LibreWolf that can’t be achieved by altering Firefox settings?

[–] EherNicht@feddit.org 16 points 3 months ago (11 children)

It ships preconfigured without invading your privacy (like Firefox does). Just look up a comparison online.

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 months ago

I guess, this is most of the changes they do: https://librewolf.net/docs/features/

There's maybe a handful where I'm not sure, if you can do them via settings.
One where it's technically the case, is that they remove Pocket at compile time. But to my knowledge, Pocket integration is pretty much a glorified bookmark. There's not much code to remove. And it can be disabled via about:config by setting extensions.pocket.enabled to false.

I guess, to be fair to LibreWolf, Mozilla has been helping out the Tor Browser devs since forever, so most things needed for Tor Browser are just a toggle in the Firefox settings.
As a result, though, there's also lots of settings, which partially need expert knowledge. So, there is definitely room for different presets. But yeah, still leaves the question, whether one really needs a different executable to adjust these settings.

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[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 54 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Download Firefox/ Look inside/ Still Firefox.

Download thunderbird/ Look inside/ Older Firefox.

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 months ago

I mean modern corporate emails are basically just webpages

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 43 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

@Download vscodium

@look inside

@chromium

[–] sparkle@lemm.ee 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

There's Discord clients that uses Firefox instead of Chromium, fun fact. The one I know is Datcord

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 7 points 3 months ago

Codium is closer to degoogled chromium. "Code - OSS" is the unmodified version of Code and Codium.

[–] Faresh@lemmy.ml 36 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

It's a shame the web got so complex that it has become unfeasible to make a browser engine anywhere near full compliance for anyone that isn't a large company.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And I've literally heard people say they view Chromium as a reference implementation of the living standard. 😭

[–] MrMcGasion@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago

Chromium is to the modern internet what Internet Explorer was in the mid 2000s. It's not as stagnant (thankfully), but as far as market share and giving one oversized tech giant arguably too much power over the internet, we've basically come full circle.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 months ago

There's no "full compliance". There's a set of a hundred or so features and everey major browser supports the most important +/- a few dotzend.

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[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 32 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

look inside Librewolf

See Firefox

[–] humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 23 points 3 months ago (3 children)

look inside Firefox

See Netscape

[–] Entropywins@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago

Look inside Netscape

See mosaic

[–] Retrograde@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, time for a Netscape reboot

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[–] xavier666@lemm.ee 21 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Can anyone explain how much control Google has over the Chromium project?

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 34 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

It's unfortunately a relatively complex thing to answer.

First off, there's the license. The source code is published under a BSD-3 license, which is very permissive, meaning in theory, anyone could fork the repository and be completely free from any control of Google.

However, this is not really a thing in reality.

First of all, for your fork to have any meaning at all, you need people to use it. They're not going to use your fork, if it's unclear whether you're trustworthy and in particular, you need to offer something better than Google and do so for a while, so that people feel like they can rely on you.

Google is also not bound by its license to make future updates available under the same license. If your fork would become too successful, they could re-license and then it would genuinely just become a competition for who has more dev power.
But with the additional caveat that if you don't also re-license, then Google can continue taking your work and provide theirs on top.

Google also has a load of tracking infrastructure and an ad business, which makes Chrome a valuable investment for them.
There's very few other organizations for which it would make sense to invest similarly much into Chromium development (and those organizations will then have similarly awful motivations).
Which means a hard fork, i.e. without dependence on future updates from Google, is pretty much not going to happen.

Additionally, you'd need a solid number of users in your fork, if you want to have any say in terms of web standards. So long as Google Chrome has a majority of users, Google can easily introduce proprietary standards, which webdevs will gladly lap up.

So, all in all, Google does have a pretty tight grip.
Presumably, they don't put any incriminating stuff into Chromium, so that they steer clear of even faint attempts to fork (and because they can just put those into Google Chrome instead).
But there's plenty room for interpretation in most web standards, so they can implement them in their interest, and then the forks have to stick to that implement, if they want to remain compatible with the web.

[–] rdri@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

Basically, a corporation owning such an open source project removes almost all positive things associated with "open source". They're using it for "look we are good" much more than for "we actually care about open source community".

[–] brillotti@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Look into "Ungoogled Chromium" if you want the browser without all the Google crap.

[–] EddoWagt@feddit.nl 10 points 3 months ago

That's still not free from Google's control of the chromium web engine

[–] Vespair@lemm.ee 12 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Yeah I wish Vivaldi wasn't Chromium-based, because I love all the bells and whistles of Vivaldi so much. But like, at the end of the day it's still partly contributing to the Chromium dominance of the web, so I still have to default to Firefox as my primary.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Same sentiment here. Coming from Opera (in the days it had its own engine) and having been using Vivaldi as my daily since its first public preview, native mouse gestures is the thing I miss the most from Firefox.

I know that the folks at Vivaldi are pretty strongly against the manifest v3 thing, but seems like at one point they'll have to fold.

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[–] Obnomus@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I have high hopes for ladybird

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

~~Why will people use literally anything but Firefox?~~

Edit: good points.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 months ago

Because Firefox isn't perfect either, to say the least. It has problems, which it had for many years and it's just counting.

[–] Jyek@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 months ago

Because Google has made significant contributions to Mozilla

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