this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
68 points (97.2% liked)

Privacy

34425 readers
693 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

The Firefox ToC discussion pushed me down the browser engine rabbit hole (again). Have you had a chance to daily drive some really good but obscure web engine that is not Gecko (Firefox), WebKit (Apple) and Blink (Chromium)? How viable is it for a complete switch - this includes banking, chatting, logging into websites, etc.

Edit: Added link to the Firefox discussion to give better context to my question.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Cannot wait to try Ladybird in a somewhat stable form.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Iceraven, it let's me install desktop firefox extensions on android.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Lynx.

If I don't need image or video content, it's great.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Falkon for clearweb Librewolf for Tor Netsurf for i2p

[–] LambdaRX 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Isn't accessing TOR network from any other browser than Tor Browser a serious anonymity risk?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Mayhaps. I shall investigate.

[–] LambdaRX 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you want obscure, I can recommend Lagrange. It can browse only gemini pages though, so you can't visit your favourite html websites.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Gemini is so weird and cool! My first day with it really made me want to start a little microblog on it or something

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I'm going to stick with some form of Firefox fork, personally. Chromium forks are questionable, as if I recall right they include a binary blob provided by google, which could be hiding god knows what.

Firefox is fully open source, so any code supporting this potential data harvesting can't hide, and will be removed by most forks.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

I used librewolf until there was some concern about them updating in a timely manner.

Now I used Firefox with Phoenix to maybe get the best of both worlds and IronFox on mobile.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

with the recent news of a ToS from FF which forks would you recommend as a daily driver to replace FF?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

Librewolf has been solid for me. I've seen others plug waterfox as well

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Mullvad Browser is a good one; it's a partnership between Mullvad and the Tor Project.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

I don't know if Librewolf counts as obscure enough but Mozilla's decisions on things as of late have been very questionable. It's probably not enough to just use Librewolf but it's a start...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago
[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don't think there are any viable engines other than the three you mention. Other browsers than the three you mention are viable, I am typing this in LibreWolf, but they are all based on one of these three engines.

I recently tried Ladybird and it crashes e.g. when I try to access my Lemmy instance. Definitely not viable yet in 2025, but this doesn't mean it must remain so.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I mean it isn't even in beta yet.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

I'm really hoping the new ladybird browser is delivered sooner than expected

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

I've been using IronFox on mobile since Mull went away, but I'm ready to hear why that's a bad option from anyone who knows better.

So far its worked very similarly to Mull, in that I've had no issues with it so far. I don't do banking or financial shit on my phone though, so I can't comment on how well it works for that functionality.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Librewolf on desktop and ironfox on mobile. The prior for over a year and the latter a few months. Occasionally need to use something else on desktop that needs webgl or similar. I don't want to change librewolf setting so I use something else. Usually a work related thing anyway

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

Reminds me to check out lynx again.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

Please don't bank with a bleeding edge web engine that isn't forked from one that's been around for decades. It's really not secure to use things that people haven't had time to attack yet.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

Fennec (Firefox based)

[–] Tiger 9 points 4 days ago

I’ve used librewolf and it seems good but I’m not a browser expert.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

GNOME Web (Epiphany)

I kind of daily drive it as I made webapps with it for some services I host (which Firefox still doesn't offer natively)

The UI is quite nice but it isn't always the smoothest in terms of performances. Still, a very respectable effort

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Epiphany is making headway. It’s gotten much better in the last year or so.

I can still crash it with too many tabs, JS sometimes makes it crash, and the extension experience is bad, but it’s gotten better.

It is covered by WebKit call out though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Is Arc considered obscure?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I use floorp (firefox fork) because I like having the tabs at the bottom. Makes them closer to the taskbar and a bit easier to navigate.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

seamonkey but it's pretty hard to use without much love nowadays with so many incompatible websites. It's a perfect mail client tho.

Just get Firefox ESR with arkenfox, that should be enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I decided on LibreWolf for work, Mullvad for sensitive search such as places near me, Firefox for random stuff and Tor for piracy sites. I'm currently looking to replace Firefox as well

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Articfox librewolf

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

What's the Firefox ToC discussion you mention?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I'm trying out waterfox for mobile and librewolf for desktop. No complaints so far

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

where did you get Waterfox on Android? The Playstore or F droid?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Used F-Droid to download aurora store (open source client for the play store) and used Aurora for waterfox....

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

thanks, i asked because the Google PlayStore has WaterFox from waterfox.net. Not sure if this is real or fake, because other Fox forks can only be installed from Fdroid like Mull/Fennec

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Just don't try to schedule a video for publication in LibreWolf; its time zone obfuscation will totally have it publish at an unexpected time unless you figure that out first! I've been on Waterfox for both mobile and desktop and have enjoyed them equally.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I’ve been using Orion on iOS for a while. It’s not bad.

[–] rando 2 points 2 days ago

They are porting to Linux was just announced not long ago... however dont know how long that will take. I am just gonna keep using FF until I can try Orion.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I use 4 different browsers, on desktop and mobile. No standard browser.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Just using them for different tasks. I think its helping me not to be "addicted" to one system. Just like not putting all eggs in one basket 😃

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Only IceCat and Librewolf

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Deskstop Mullvad and librewolf

Android fennec

load more comments
view more: next ›