(On Windows anyway, don't know if different on Linux)
Just wanted to share that as a user of both Firefox and Chrome, it's one thing that makes me hate switching to Firefox. I often need to use two different profiles and the way Firefox does it sucks.
With Chrome I've got two shortcuts (that Chrome creates by activating an option) pinned to my taskbar that look distinct from one another and the instances that I open are combined under their respective profile shortcuts.
With Firefox I need to manually create two shortcuts, assign two distinct icons to differentiate them, change some properties so they open the right profile, pin them and because they're "regular shortcuts" instead of the default Firefox launcher shortcut, when I open the program I end up with a third Firefox icon in my taskbar (it does not open under the shortcut I used, it acts as if I clicked a shortcut on my desktop) where all instances get merged together no matter which profile they're associated with.
Eh, it's just a couple shortcuts:
firefox -P.But I honestly don't get the point. If you want multiple users on a system, just make different OS logins. If you want different logins for different sites, just use Account Containers.
Why would I want to use multiple logins on a home computer when the only thing we need to separate is the web browser?
The same reason you’d use separate profiles in a web browser: to keep your data separated.
Ok, it doesn't answer why I would want to do that when the only thing we want to be separated is our web browser
It's not about data on the disk, it's about opening the browser and being connected to our own stuff, so we don't have to switch account for every website we both use every time we go on the internet.
The simple, logical solution to that? Two internet profiles that open separate instances of the same browser. One click, boom, there's your version of the internet, another click, boom, there's the other person's version of the internet. Profiles already exists with Firefox, they just need to make the experience better like Chrome does.
i quit using profiles ages ago. i use different 'installs'. each is for different purposes and they each have a different mix of addons and user scripts|styles.
i have firefox installed normally, plus i have firefox developer edition, waterfox, librewolf, and even a seamonkey (some 'portable', some 'installed'). any or all can be run at the same time as the others. profiles are separate and there's no conflicts.
when i need it, i extract a portable chromium (opera or vivaldi, usually) and then delete it when i'm done with it.
That sounds like a lot of effort, switching browsers all the time. What does that provide you that Firefox Account Containers doesn't?
I only really use profiles to run automated tests (I'm a dev), and even that's rare.
it's not 'all the time'. far from it. usually only one, sometimes two, windows. i don't go into the lesser-used ones very often at all. like i said, different purposes--some of which are infrequent but require different configurations.
the portable 'installs' can also be zipped-up, put on (and run from) flash, moved to or replicated on different systems, all easier than backing-up and restoring individual profiles.
Oh yeah? Well I set up a different partition for each browser, each with its own OS install, and each has its own local account.