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Ask HN: Any Decent Firefox Alternatives?
72 points by taigi100 on Oct 11, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 95 comments
I've been using Firefox for a while now, but I have some issues with it:

1. I need to switch to chrome for various products such as Google Meet (works on Firefox, but I ran into performance (call quality) issues).

2. I often find sites with bad support for Firefox, and I need to again open a second browser (usually Chrome) to check them out.

3. It seems that in the past... long time, they have a talent of making Firefox worst. I still like it if it wasn't for the other 2 issues, but who can tell in 1 year.

Due to the above I was looking for a browser (one, I don't like having multiple on my machine but not sure if the Google Meet performance upgrade is just in Chrome or Chromium) which is as fast as Firefox, has a nice UI and preferably a bit more privacy oriented (not much, just a bit more).

Any ideas? (Currently checking out Vivaldi, but read a lot about performance issues + I don't really like the default UI yet).




There's none, to be quite honest.

Chrome is spyware, Edge is spyware, Brave has too many crypto sponsor for my liking, Firefox is going off a cliff, Vivaldi is the definition of bloat.

The web browser ecosystem is frankly appalling, and it's so complicated it's impossible for new competitors to appear and improve the status quo. We just have to put up with it, and I am furious Mozilla, one of the shining beacons on that landscape, now is sitting idle redesigning the UI just to justify their existence.

I use Edge, with custom scripts to turn off as much phoning home as possible, and it's still bad.


To my knowledge the crypto rewards feature on Brave is opt-in. How is that an argument against Brave?


Notice how Brave had the weakest reasoning. A little talking point about crypto pushes it away, even though it's the only browser actually taking privacy seriously, not just as a marketing technique. Safari comes in second, but Apple actively cripples it due to the threat of PWA breaking the walled garden.

You have to opt-in to Brave marketing like you mentioned. It allows people to earn BAT if they want to, so they can tip site owners. Better than ads right? The only other complaint is the home screen where you can buy crypto and they get an affiliate payout, which is how they make money. That can be disabled and have you seen the default home screen of Edge? Its news is just ads and paid campaigns.

Brave also supports more protocols like IPFS, Web torrent, and Tor, its telling other browsers don't.

The power of propaganda is strong. The GP uses Edge that he knows is spyware and doesn't even consider Brave because one little talking point that simply gets summed up as "crypto".


Was the affiliation links inserted in the browser opt-in? Was the unethical business model to show custom ads in place of existing ones an accident? Or the crappy marketing campaign to lure content creators into their ecosystem by playing on ambiguous terms?

I own cryptos, I like cryptos, but the team behind Brave has proven to be scammy and unethical.


> Was the affiliation links inserted in the browser opt-in

I believe it was a mistake that it wasn't, and it was quickly made opt-in.

I think it's more scummy that Mozilla makes money from having Google as the default search engine, a still active campaign.

> Was the unethical business model to show custom ads in place of existing ones an accident?

As far as I know that's a lie, did they ever replace ads with blocked ads? Brave ads are text notifications, not banner ads.

> Or the crappy marketing campaign to lure content creators into their ecosystem by playing on ambiguous terms?

Nice word salad, doesn't mean much. Which marketing campaign, how are they luring, how are terms ambiguous, please expand.

> but the team behind Brave has proven to be scammy and unethical.

Yeah that's the punchline of the propaganda, but you should provide better reasoning if you want to convince anyone.

Your scale of ethics comparing browser companies is extremely inconsistent.


>I believe it was a mistake that it wasn't, and it was quickly made opt-in.

Sure it wasn't. And if you think having Mozilla getting paid for their default search worse than trying to profit off affiliate marketing, we really have different views on the world.

>As far as I know that's a lie, did they ever replace ads with blocked ads? Brave ads are text notifications, not banner ads.

That's still hypocrite. You block off every ads on the internet, but still display your own. Your business model is still based on the "watchtime" but you forbid actual content creators to benefit from it. It was the same thing with adblock plus. Having a stance against ads is one thing, relying on them while blocking the whole internet of their revenue is a dick move.

>Which marketing campaign, how are they luring, how are terms ambiguous, please expand.

They accept donations for creators without their consent. It is now clear on the module when a creator has no account yet to receive the tips but at launch it wasn't the case. They lured users into donating and used this money to contact creators and try to leverage the generosity of their community to bring them on board. That's quite a low growth hacking tactic.

Don't worry about my consistency, I think I'm alright.


> Sure it wasn't. And if you think having Mozilla getting paid for their default search worse than trying to profit off affiliate marketing, we really have different views on the world.

Google paying Mozilla for search engine referrals is the definition of affiliate marketing. And you can choose to believe it was some plot to sneak through after they reversed it, it's unfounded. Mozilla still doesn't inform the user of their affiliate deal.

(edit: also listen to yourself, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28783639)

> That's still hypocrite. You block off every ads on the internet, but still display your own. Your business model is still based on the "watchtime" but you forbid actual content creators to benefit from it. It was the same thing with adblock plus. Having a stance against ads is one thing, relying on them while blocking the whole internet of their revenue is a dick move.

That's a different accusation after you tried to state your lie. Brave has an opt-in text notification rewards program.

It's common to run ad blockers in other browsers because ads have become so intrusive. Yes you should subscribe, donate, etc. if you frequent a website, but you shouldn't have to view ads against your will.

Brave has that adblocking built in for the user foremost. The rewards network is to allow those who need to block ads to donate to the website owner instead. When you use FireFox and uBlock, you don't have the option if that site owner doesn't have a PayPal etc.

> They accept donations for creators without their consent. It is now clear on the module when a creator has no account yet to receive the tips but at launch it wasn't the case. They lured users into donating and used this money to contact creators and try to leverage the generosity of their community to bring them on board. That's quite a low growth hacking tactic.

> They accept donations for creators without their consent.

If they don't create a wallet and accept the funds are returned to the donor, Brave doesn't keep it.


That's not referrals and not affiliate marketing, get your definition straight.

When you hear hoofs, think horse, not Zebra. Where have you been the last decades on the internet to rather think it was a "mistake" that could have given them millions of $ instead of a shady move?

I didn't lie once, but I guess you're too worked up on the subject for some reason to see it clearly. By the way, who's using a word salad now? No matter in which order you put it, the system is there. They profit off ads by preventing everyone else do to it, even if they also are unintrusive. You can't seriously pretend to care about an ad-free internet when it's your business model...

The controversy with donations came when they shipped the feature. There was no mention at all that the creator or the website was not affiliated with Brave. Again, shady AF. The system is now way more transparent, but the facts are there. And I personally don't appreciate an op-out system where creators have to willingly deactivate the feature to not be associated with a third-party private entity collecting money in their name.


Mozilla is being paid to refer viewers to Google's ad network, what do you call it?

You aren't being genuine. Brave's rewards program is opt-in. The ad blocking is a common thing for a user to do. Brave is not replacing ads.

> The controversy with donations came when they shipped the feature. The system is now way more transparent, but the facts are there.

Yes that seems to be a pattern, momentary overblown outrage about "lack of information" so they have to clarify the facts against the propaganda.

How is a donation system controversial when the funds are returned to the donor if the recipient doesn't collect them?

The "controversy" is clearly artificial. It's this big emotional outrage that doesn't match the facts, followed by short talking points referencing the outrage.

edit: funny enough you defended Mozilla for this exact same affiliates program.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28783639


You may be interested in this analysis: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf


You forgot Opera. /s these days Opera feels like trying to rebrand its ecosystem into dozens of skins for the same Chromium. "Opera Gaming Browser"... srsly?

Sadly most of my favorite "tiny" browsers all have switched away from webkit and are either dead or an electron based UI now.

I'm concerned that libchromium is eating the world :-/


Would be wiser to use Brave and turn the crypto stuff off. Better privacy, though less UI fanciness.


The crypto stuff in Brave is opt-in to begin with.


I feel like the 2000s internet would've just split off and made their own thing(e.g. new protocol) in this situation. But it seems we've passed the inertia barrier for things like that.


You can turn off crypto sponsors on brave. God cant ppl read anynore?


If your on the Mac maybe just use Safari. I got a new Mac and decided that I didn’t really wanted to bother installing to much stuff, so I skipped Firefox, among other things.

Safari has been great the last few months. Performance hasn’t been an issue, the only site which still drains the batteri is Imgur and besides obvious tracking, I haven’t encountered broken sites.

On the topic of tracking, I found that many of the sites that break in Firefox do so due to privacy features. The sites work in Chrome because Google doesn’t care to implement the same features.


https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

>I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it (using konqueror, which won't fetch from other sites in such a situation).


So much trouble to use the internet what type of nerd got time for that?


Microsoft Edge.

Chromium based, has vertical tabs (window border can be switched off too) via flags. Works great.

Vivaldi promised many things but its performance sucks indeed and I hate the fact that the browser has bullshit features like Phillips ligths controls or something.


> bullshit features like Phillips ligths controls or something

Hah, it really does. Apparently Vivaldi can connect to your Philips Hue lights and change their colors based on the active tab’s webpage color.

https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/miscellaneous/philips-hue/


Edge and privacy oriented don't really go together, sadly.


Nobody does.

User should control the traffic if user cares. Relying on browser is naive to begin with.


I feel like a lot of companies stopped testing for Firefox and those issues get attributed to Mozilla (not that some performance issues aren't their fault, but I've definitely encountered issues that get attributed to Mozilla but are failures to test for a different rendering engine).

I use Safari or Edge as a fallback if I run into issues. Google seems to spend a lot of time specifically optimizing their apps (gmail, meet) for Chrome... so I tend to keep Chrome around specifically for those cases. I still find that Edge and Safari have more issues than Firefox.


Yep, it's not Mozilla's fault many websites don't offer support for it sadly. But it's still frustrating to never be sure and always having to double check with a Chrome if it's because of Firefox or because of the website.

Do you think those optimizations are only in Chrome or also in Chromium? I'd expect only Chrome but...


That said I have a synology NAS that's about 8 years old and still going strong. The dashboard no longer works in firefox's latest builds which is very unfortunate. Obviously it used to work fine


So use Firefox where it works, and Chrome where Firefox doesn't work for you. There's a little Firefox extension called "Open with..." which makes it really quick and easy to open a tab or link with another browser.

If the problem is that you don't have enough memory to comfortably use two browsers at once, then... well, then that's your real problem. Get more more RAM.

As for Firefox, although I haven't always been happy with the changes Mozilla has forced on their users, overall it's still the best browser out there, and when it comes to giving you the tools to preserve your privacy specifically it's worlds ahead of the alternatives... although it does take some awareness and effort on part of the user but that's unavoidable nowadays.


multiple browsers are the way to go. I had all my eggs in the chrome basket until their login fiasco, but hit limitations with Firefox. I now configure Firefox and brave with the same extensions and use the both equally. using onetab makes it easy to migrate sessions from one browser to the next.


Firefox is my primary browser too and use Brave as the secondary, and thus far it's pretty much exactly like Chrome/Chromium.

Many bring up the cryptocurrency relation and I do get that (And other than the world-view differences, they've also had some mishaps like injecting referral codes to URLs, but hopefully they have learned from these). But given that both Google and Microsoft are interested in your personal data then Brave does seem to be a better choice than them.


I used Pale Moon https://www.palemoon.org/ for several years and it was OK. I went back to Firefox because of some compatibility issues. Firefox needs some configuration in Settings and about:config , for example I turn off media.autoplay, Pdfjs, webassembly, etc, but YMMV. about:config is not available in standard FF mobile, only in FF Nightly. uBlock Origin plugin is essential, and I use Noscript for safety and speed, also Privacy Badger, etc. FF became really annoying, yes, but at least it's still possible to configure it, unlike most other browsers.


I use Vivaldi, the performance issues are news to me and it seems pretty good. Though the latest update it keeps crashing when I open file selections, need to figure out what’s going on there. Before that it was very stable for me. I wouldn’t want to give up its tab management now though, especially its ability to do side by side/tiled groups.


Yep I’m also in love with Vivaldi especially the customization options.


I use Brave on both the Mac and on Android. The issues I see below relate mainly to their crypto sponsorships, and I don't care for that either, but it's pretty voluntary, isn't it?

The only issue I've seen that some sites can detect that they're an ad blocker and complain or refuse to work.


I don't know if you are on a Mac, but you could check out Orion, based on webkit but built in support for Chrome and Firefox-extensions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049


1. Use Firefox

2. Use Edge for Meet or any other situation where Firefox fails.


This is what I do. It seems to work ok.

Google Meet perf really is terrible though. Makes me wonder if the entire idea of in-browser video is misbegotten.

Slowly but surely, I've noticed my general exasperation with browser apps growing in the last few years. Between getting into mobile development, better sandboxing, easy app store-based distribution, much better isolation between apps, and learning C++ (from working in robotics) it feels it's time to get back to writing high-performance native code that doesn't involve the ridiculous tradeoffs the modern browser requires (latency, memory use, etc). I think this might be a trend we see more of in the next decade.


I've been using Brave, but I shut off the Rewards junk.

Every option has serious trade-offs, so you're going to have to decide which are acceptable to you.


I use Brave, with the Rewards junk, and it has maintained its speed that every other browser I've used loses as it fills up with caches, history, extensions, etc.


Do you actually make anything of value?

I ran Rewards for a long time and basically made almost zilch and wasn't sure if it was something on my end or?

Is there some trick that makes it worthwhile?


The point of the Rewards system isn't to make users bank. It's to give users stuff they can give creators, so they don't get fucked as badly by the adblockalypse. Individual users aren't terribly valuable, ads make money due to sheer mass.


Thanks for that explanation, I'll look at turning it back on.


Around 10usd a month using in two computers from 8am to 10pm


I switched from Firefox to Vivaldi. Yes, Vivaldi. There are some folks here complaining it has a lot of bloat and while that's true, I don't care. I like it. Why?

* Based on Chrome. Unfortunately there's a lot of truth to the statement that "Chrome is the new IE", from the standpoint that modern sites are optimized (and tested) to run on Chrome.

* The sidebar. Downloads, bookmarks, etc. are quickly available in a simple pull-out.

* Speed Dial. Sounded corny when I first installed Vivaldi, now I love it. YMMV.

* Tab Stacking. If you're like me and have lots of tabs open, this is a great feature.

* Notes. Tracking notes on a page is an awesome feature!

People say Vivaldi is slow, but I haven't noticed it being slow to render sites - it's slow to launch. How often do you launch your browser though? At least for me the browser is one of the few always-running programs I run. There is a performance issue I've noticed in making YT videos run full-screen - there's a very noticeable lag especially if you have several tabs open. So far that hasn't been enough to outweigh the positives.


And it has ad blocking and disables tracking by default.

Regarding the slowness, I don't experience it. I just checked, and I have 506 tabs opened.


On desktop, it's still Firefox as #1 for me, Edge as #2, and everything else is extremely distant 3rd, except things I might test out to see if they have a use for me.

I know the idea of "gaming browser" is instantly cringeworthy, but I actually like some things in Opera GX. Having a built-in bandwidth limiter is awesome when I'm downloading large files and don't want them to completely take over my bandwidth. There are some good ideas in lots of lesser-used browsers, like this, but I never see these features bubble up to the big ones like FF/Edge.

Ad-blocking (and browser capability which supports content blocking) is a high priority for me (no I will not debate this on moral/ethical grounds- I refuse to see ads, end of story).

So, Chrome's manifest v3 among other poor choices by Google mean I will 100% stay away from Chrome- and I only use Chrome-based browsers when I absolutely must.

That said, I don't think these days I use anything that requires Chrome/Edge (thankfully). So I pretty much can avoid them completely.


I just downloaded Edge based on some replies in here (though Safari is my daily driver, Firefox is my dev browser, Brave is my usual video conferencing browser but is pretty terrible at it) and boy does it take a long time to turn off all the crapware that comes with it. And even when you do, it comes back ten minutes later. I'm super impressed that Microsoft have managed to faithfully recreate the Windows experience for Mac users who might be tempted to switch!


I just did the same, seems nice for now. Yes, it takes a while to set it up but the same applies to any browser nowadays.


Not entirely disagreeing, but Safari comes out of the box as pretty much perfect.


True. But I'm pretty much stuck on windows so yeah.


It looks like you'll have to find a browser that is based on WebKit or Blink and has a JavaScript engine comparable to V8 or Nitro.

Plugging this into something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#WebKit-ba... yields a number of options depending on your OS like SRWare Iron or Otter Browser.


A while ago, I used to recommend Waterfox. Its mostly a dead project now & differing by a wide margin with Firefox upstream. Updates are few and rare.

I use Vivaldi at present. It is mostly fine. Plugins work fine & the web/mobile sync is decent. No crashes or memory overflow on either platform - using since 6 months approximately.

My SO uses Edge and she has been reasonably happy with it


Have you tried LibreWolf? I'm not a big fan of a bundled ad blocker, but they seem less ambitious and therefore more sustainable. (Only tweaking defaults of FF itself.)


http://www.netsurf-browser.org/


Another one for Vivaldi. Been using it for years without complaint.


FWIW I use google meet with Firefox all the time with no issues. The only annoying thing is that it won’t let you blur the background. (They allowed this feature on FF for one glorious week but then took it away)

Even my coworkers who use chrome prefer zoom though, so we’ve been switching more and more meetings to zoom.


I have a specific use case where I'm communicating with a person from across the world weekly.

Tried Zoom but eventually moved to Google Meet because it worked better. It could be WAY better but meh. And the difference between Meet on Firefox & Google Chrome is significant.

All this considering I'm running on a gigabit network. Not 100% sure about the partner.


I have daily calls with people in multiple continents. Always on FF.


Not sure - I'm having a weekly 1 on 1 call with someone (heard that on Zoom 1 on 1s go to P2P, not sure how it's on Google Meet) and the quality is meh. Significantly worst on FF.


I'm in the odd position of recommending Microsoft Edge...


Tried it for a while back and it became sluggish.

Just checked it out, it seems fast. It seems decently private (as private as a corp can get lol).

Not sure about updates & performance about Google products. Do you have any clue if chromium includes the not-in-spec performance optimizations for Google Meet and such?


It's not. They do the usual of defaulting to a not privacy friendly search engine and having search suggestions on, but Edge's session id is hardware-based and persists across browser reboots. Their new tab page also connects to two million different things.

Microsoft does run its own sync infrastructure, but Edge doesn't provide end to end encryption for all classes of data.

If you want a privacy friendly Chromium fork, I'd go with Vivaldi or Brave. Both run their own sync infrastructure, and like Mozilla's theirs are end to end encrypted by default. They have their own built-in adblockers and prefer privacy-friendly search engines. Brave Shields even does the CNAME uncloaking that makes uBlock Origin better on Firefox. And it won't get fucked by Manifest v3.

I probably don't need to advertise the joys of adblock on mobile, or Brave having a funny little toggle called "Background video playback" (read: "Fuck YouTube").


I haven’t kept up with Edge, is Microsoft adding all sorts of weird feature or are they just delivering a good browser without the bizar stuff Firefox, Chrome and Vivaldi seems to be collecting?


They're doing both. They do some amazing UI design that's normie friendly but powerful, but also have weird things like couponing and Pinterest integrations. Not nearly enough basic privacy features, though. Lack of end to end encrypted sync is yikes.


I often see comments on HN complaining about Firefox being poorly supported by some sites. I honestly cannot remember the last time I experienced any support issues with it. Are these generally more niche sites and are we talking misaligned text or a completely broken page?


Broken or hard to use. Usually state run pages for various agencies, school websites things like that (at least in my country).


LibreWolf is a privacy focused fork of Firefox and I use Fennec on Android. My only add-on is uBlock.


I can name four off the top of my head:

https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/

https://www.palemoon.org/

https://www.comodo.com/home/browsers-toolbars/icedragon-brow...


Yeah this is why monopolies are bad. Your only real options are chromium based stuff, or safari. if you are going the chromium route, id go with ungoogled chromium: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium . Its really the only version of chromium I think is good, and its got the google tracking stuff removed for the most part.


Disclaimer: I have not yet tried this browser, so I am not sure if it will meet your performance needs. I think it is worth looking at though, since it is fully open source and community driven.

Falcon

GPLv3

URL: https://www.falkon.org/

source: https://invent.kde.org/network/falkon


Looks awesome but the fact that updates are 1 year apart is a bit of a turn off lol.


Perhaps all that is needed to pick up the momentum is a spark of interest.


As an outsider I see how you can think that way, but alas Falkon is not a 'new' browser.

It's the ol' faithful Qupzilla, but rebranded to fall into the KDE umbrella. But as other KDE browsers (konqueror, rekonq...) it's dying a slow death only to fall in darkness.


Oh, that is too bad. After hearing this, I decided to do a little searching around to see if I could find an open-source browser that is more active. I found Nyxt.

URL: https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/

source: https://github.com/atlas-engineer/nyxt

license: BSD-3 & Creative Commons

Also, if you are an emacs fan:

https://ag91.github.io/blog/2021/06/08/emacs-nyxt-and-engine...

From their FAQ:

https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/faq

Nyxt is web engine agnostic. We utilize a minimal API to interface to any web engine. This makes us flexible and resilient to changes in the web landscape. Currently, we support WebKit and WebEngine (Blink).

So in theory, you could switch between web engines. I don't know if you can do that on demand or not. It does seem like a cool project, so I will likely try it out.


Have you tried out Brave? It uses the Chromium engine.


Used it for some time a while ago - but I don't know, didn't enjoy it too much. Can't really remember why tho.Might give it another try.


As much trouble firefox has because of the Mozilla board of directors, it is still the most reliable and secure. As an alternative in some cases you can use ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/

Automatically translated.


Given that a browser is currently harder to implement than an operating system (or so goes the saying), there are a few options:

- forego the web, embrace other protocols. From what I understand this seems to be the reasoning behind Gemini. - forego parts of the web, for example by using browsers whit limited functionalities (Dillo, Lynx, etc.)


I'm often cynical about why Google services don't work as well in Firefox as they do Google's own browser.

I'm of the opinion that blaming Firefox for this is the same as blaming Linux for hardware manufacturers not writing drivers for Linux.

If Google wanted its services working in Firefox then they would.


ungoogled-chromium


It works for me (esp. with ublock origin), but I also use Safari, Brave, and Firefox depending on the situation.

https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium


Is this chromium, or a branch of chromium with patches?


It's a fork, with all the anti privacy stuff that's in chromium ripped out.


Regarding point 2, I always let them know (if I care enough). If I don't care, I don't visit their site - if they haven't bothered to make sure it works with FF, there are likely to have other problems.


I had problems like this with websites I must use. Like various state services websites, school, etc.

It's not the only problem, but I have to use the sites :)


I use FF for my personal browsing - sometimes using Safari as well.

In work, I use Chrome or Edge.


Unfortunately almost every browser is using Blink (Chrome). If you don't want to contribute to Google's monopoly on browsers your only choices are Firefox, Safari or a browser that has like 5 users.


Has anyone tried GNU IceCat?


I've got my eye on the upcoming Orion Browser (macOS only). Built on Webkit, privacy focused.

https://browser.kagi.com/


Safari zealot since day one but Opera as an occasional backup.


Ungoogled Chromium


I see no one recommends opera. Can anyone tell me what's wrong with it?


For desktop- Microsoft Edge. For Android- Bromite, Brave.


Chromium (and Vanadium on mobile).


Just use Chromium lol, Firefox sucks to be honest.


pale moon


I used brave for a few months. Recently went back to firefox after a new pc install. Definitely thinking about going back to brave.




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