Internet Browsers: What are YOU using? (And why?) (1 Viewer)

[jcroy]

The problem with forking the code base is you may lose community support and all the bug fixes and enhancements that go along with it. Or maybe the community starts a new fork and everyone begins using that to underpin their browsers, leaving Google on the outside looking in. That, to me, would be the ideal outcome.

At best all one can do in the absence of having any veto power, is to hope that the project crashes and burns and/or a fork is done.


For example if Google Chrome ends up fully implementing its anti-ad-blocking stuff, one can hope that a fork is done which the prominent developers end up defecting to. (Similar to what @theJman outlined in a previous post in this thread).

From an historical perspective, there have been precedents of an open source project being forked with many of the developers defecting to the fork. The biggest and fastest one I can think of offhand which has been documented, is the downfall of XFree86.

Make Your Open Source Software GPL-Compatible. Or Else.

This essay argues that developers of open source software / Free Software should use an existing widely-used license compatible with the General Public License (GPL). It also argues against FLOSS license proliferation.

dwheeler.com

The XFree / X.Org fork and open source governance

A short history of the XFree86 / X.org fork and some interpretations

asterisk.dynevor.org

Back in the day circa 1990s, XFree86 was essentially the de facto standard for X Windows on Linux and the *BSDs.

Due to infighting and a change of license, just about everybody largely abandoned XFree86 like a sinking ship and moved on the X Org fork. (The last time XFree86 was updated was in 2008)

 

[jcroy]

Hmmmm .....

uMatrix development going inactive.

uMatrix development has ended - gHacks Tech News

Raymond Hill, known online as gorhill, has set the status of the uMatrix GitHub repository to archived; this means that it is read-only at the time and that no updates will become […]

www.ghacks.net

 

[Dave Upton]

Hmmmm .....

uMatrix development going inactive.

uMatrix development has ended - gHacks Tech News

Raymond Hill, known online as gorhill, has set the status of the uMatrix GitHub repository to archived; this means that it is read-only at the time and that no updates will become […]

www.ghacks.net

This used to be quite important to me, but nowadays I mostly use edge chromium and brave. Brave seems to do fine for most of what I need

 

[theJman]

uMatrix development going inactive.

uMatrix development has ended - gHacks Tech News

Raymond Hill, known online as gorhill, has set the status of the uMatrix GitHub repository to archived; this means that it is read-only at the time and that no updates will become […]

www.ghacks.net

I don't now that uMatrix was used by a lot of people, but uBlock certain is. If they lock that code base it suggests Google is about to pull the API's allowing an extension like it to exist. Unless someone forks the code base that still has the API's it looks like Brave, Vivaldi and whatever other browser has built in ad blocking will be the only way to go. Firefox is still an option as well.

 

[Dave Upton]

I don't now that uMatrix was used by a lot of people, but uBlock certain is. If they lock that code base it suggests Google is about to pull the API's allowing an extension like it to exist. Unless someone forks the code base that still has the API's it looks like Brave, Vivaldi and whatever other browser has built in ad blocking will be the only way to go. Firefox is still an option as well.

The writing has been on the wall for a while as far as chrome was concerned. Google makes most of its money from advertising, and they are just trying to kill ad blocking off gradually enough that people will keep using their browser.

The bigger concern is if they start to modify rights to the use of chromium and this prevents Brave and other browsers like edge from using adblock APIs without forking the base code.

 

[theJman]

The bigger concern is if they start to modify rights to the use of chromium and this prevents Brave and other browsers like edge from using adblock APIs without forking the base code.

I'm not sure they could do that. Chromium is open source, with non-Google contributors outnumbering Google employees by maybe 10-to-1 at this point. With the lions share of the development being outside of Google it seems to me as though they wouldn't be able to claim ownership. But who knows, maybe with their deep pockets they have a way of doing it. Wouldn't surprise me to be honest.

 

[jcroy]

If there is any attempt to "close source" chromium, most likely the final open source version will be forked.

So unless google is about to "buy out" or hiring ALL those chromium programmers as official google employees, there isn't much they can do about non-google programmers defecting to a fork'd version that remains open source.

 

[jcroy]

Hmmm .......

The United States Department of Justice antitrust division possibly targeting Chrome to be divested in a (hypothetical) Google breakup.

Feds may target Google’s Chrome browser for breakup

Prosecutors for the Justice Department and state attorney general offices are discussing ways of curbing the search giant's market power as they prepare to sue the company.

www.politico.com

https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf

 

[theJman]

Well that's surely interesting - and long overdo - but I wonder if it's just smoke and mirrors. I remember the antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and how little they did. If history is anything to go by this is likely to be similar, a huge waste of taxpayer money with no discernible benefit.

 

[jcroy]

Finally dumped the https-everywhere addon.

The current stable version of Firefox (83.0) now has built-in the same function as how I used https-everywhere.

 

[jcroy]

Giving Palemoon a shot again, with the eMatrix extension.

When uMatrix stopped being actively updated by the original author, somebody else forked it off as eMatrix specficially for Palemoon.

 

[Dave Upton]

I'm using Edge Chromium and Brave these days. Pretty happy with both, and no desire to try any of the flavor of the week browsers at the moment.

 

[jcroy]

I try out various different browsers, to get a feel for what they do or don't do.

Though my primary browser is still Firefox (FF), largely because they're relatively current and fast about fixing security holes. For example, I use FF for online shopping type stuff and a lot of general stuff which requires loggin in.

For stuff which is less vulnerable to security problems such as youtube, news, etc ... I'll use other browsers.

 

[jcroy]

I don't really subscribe to a "one size fits all" mindset, when it comes to web browsers.

 

[theJman]

For those who want a browser taken to the max check out Vivaldi. It's based on the Chromium source code - same as Chrome - but all the google spying features were removed. You can use every Chrome plugin and extension from the Chrome store too, but that's nothing special really as there are probably 2 dozen browsers doing the same thing. Where Vivaldi separates itself from the pack is with configuration and tab support; there are pages and pages of options, and the tab support leaves all other browsers behind. If you aren't prone to customizing and/or don't open a lot of tabs those features may not be very appealing, but for heavy browser users they are quite an advantage.

 

[Mike Frezon]

For those who want a browser taken to the max check out Vivaldi. It's based on the Chromium source code - same as Chrome - but all the google spying features were removed. You can use every Chrome plugin and extension from the Chrome store too, but that's nothing special really as there are probably 2 dozen browsers doing the same thing. Where Vivaldi separates itself from the pack is with configuration and tab support; there are pages and pages of options, and the tab support leaves all other browsers behind. If you aren't prone to customizing and/or don't open a lot of tabs those features may not be very appealing, but for heavy browser users they are quite an advantage.

From an old guy who doesn't always submit to change easily...based on Jim's description, I went to download Vivaldi right away and am giving it a try right now as I type this post.

Key for me is tab manipulation and I was excited to see that tabs are paramount for Vivaldi. What's important for me is that the tabs be just at the top of the browsing windows (NOT above the URL bar)! While, unfortunately, that is NOT an option in Vivaldi, Vivaldi DOES let me move the URL bar to the bottom of the page. Not sure if I'll like that, but I'm determined to try things out!

It was also easy-as-pie to import all my FF bookmarks, etc.

 

[theJman]

If you're a heavy browser user then I think you'll like Vivaldi Mike, especially if you have a lot of tabs open. While researching something it's not uncommon for me to have 8, 10, 12 or more of them for a given topic. Then a squirrel moment will happen and I head off in another direction. No problem, I simply drag the first set of tabs into a single stack and then I can go chase that new shiny thing. Saaaaay, now something different draws my gaze so I drag the second set of tabs into a different stack and go pursue the third thing. Oops, there's a mandatory Windows update that will reboot my PC. Not now, I have 3 dozen tabs open! No problem, just choose File/Save Opened Tabs as a Session and my current config has been mirrored. Update the OS, reboot the PC and then start Vivaldi. Now choose File/Open Saved Session and everything is back exactly as I left it.

And configuration options? Don't even get me started, there is well over a hundred of them. I have been using Vivaldi for several years now so I've fine tuned my setup to essentially be an extension of my arm. If there's something about the browser you don't like its quite possible it can be tweaked to accommodate. They even have a built-in blocker for ads and trackers. Of course you should also install an extension for ad blocking - like uMatrix, Ghostery, Nano or whatever is your favorite - but the one Vivaldi supplies is a good start, and since it's baked into the browser it's very efficient and quick.

Since the tab bar is of particular interest might I suggest moving it to the side? I prefer having it at the top of the browser window myself but if you move it to the side there are definite advantages. For us old school guys it does take some getting used to that way, but there are benefits as well.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I'm really liking what I'm seeing so far.

I wish tabs could just be stuck at the top of the window (like a real manila folder). But since my last post I enabled by bookmark toolbar and that also got in the way of the tabs. Grrr. I could move the bookmarks down to the bottom...but I don't want to!

Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[Dave Upton]

For those who want a browser taken to the max check out Vivaldi. It's based on the Chromium source code - same as Chrome - but all the google spying features were removed. You can use every Chrome plugin and extension from the Chrome store too, but that's nothing special really as there are probably 2 dozen browsers doing the same thing. Where Vivaldi separates itself from the pack is with configuration and tab support; there are pages and pages of options, and the tab support leaves all other browsers behind. If you aren't prone to customizing and/or don't open a lot of tabs those features may not be very appealing, but for heavy browser users they are quite an advantage.

Jim,

How’s the memory usage? I tend to use brave or edge chromium, but it seems anything built on the chromium engine is a bit of a memory hog. I actually had to upgrade my desktop to 64 GB of memory to handle my 150 tabs I have open on average

 

[theJman]

150 tabs? You're definitely the target audience for Vivaldi - as far as their tab management goes - but since it's based on the same Chromium engine memory usage won't really differ. Do you use an extension like The Great Suspender to reclaim memory from idle tabs? If not it might be worth considering, 64gb is a lot of RAM. That's server territory.