Reading through some threads (Python2 etc) I came across the opinion that Firefox is a 'disaster' in some respects.
It made me curious as to which browser people are using and why? I want as lite as possible but I also have traditionally used Chrome and now Firefox for additional features like password sync across devices. Ublock origin support is also welcomed

What are you all using which has those features? Seamonkey? Opera? Something other one off?

Honestly I'd prefer to use Lynx for everything but it's not as practical as I'd like...

If you only look after "additional features" & "those features" then pretty much all modern browsers running on Slackware can suit you.
However, uBlock Origin runs only on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock...rted_platforms

I've been using Firefox ever since it was launched, previously running Netscape Navigator, and never considered it a disaster. On the contrary, it's the browser of choice, open-source, easy to configure/tune, fast, stable, secure and does respect&protect the user's privacy.

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Same. It's come a very long way in the past year or so.

I think Quantum was a big change for the better. I'll likely keep using it.

Hi.

I use almost all the browsers that I can find, just for hobby, I used Otter, Midori, Qupzilla, Falkon, Aurora, lynx, NetRunner, Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Vivaldi, Konqueror, w3m, links2, seamonkey, etc, but my favorites are Firefox, Opera, Chromium, Vivaldi, Falkon and lynx, I think these browsers are, at least for me, the most popular ones with almost all users, and I don't consider Firefox a disaster, perhaps I also haven't used all the features (aside from site blockers and the stacking tabs from vivaldi) that the browsers have.


Greetings.

I'm quite happy with Firefox Quantam, but I occasionally use Vivaldi.

I agree that Quantam was a big improvement, but I didn't really have any issues with pre-Quantam. Mozilla had allowed FF to stagnate a bit, but I would have hardly called it a "disaster."

Give this a try:

https://www.brow.sh/

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If you want a text browser, I don't think you can do better than w3m.

It can display images and allows tabbed browsing.

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For over a year now, i am using Vivaldi. I can customize it any way i want -and that is a reason i am using it.

I have recently switched to SeaMonkey as my default browser. I also use Firefox and Vivaldi.

Thanks for the link. I didn't know this project.

Pale Moon for most browsing.
Firefox to stream video.
Vivaldi? Once in a great while. I still don't trust it.

2 members found this post helpful.

Palemoon for most browsing. Seamonkey, Vivaldi, Chromium also installed.
Only snag with Palemoon is that it doesn't accept the widewine plugin needed for spotify via browser. And the only snag with chrome-based browsers (Vivaldi, Chromium) is that they don't have an equivalent to the FireFTP plugin which is a wonderfully convenient tool for ftp file transfer.

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I used to like Firefox a lot. It was my go to browser from it's early days. It had certain memory leak issues, rough edges here and there. But it was free (as in freedom), allowed full customization of every browser related thing (UI, Engine, Network, etc).

And then it went downwards in amazing speed...

Versioning system change. I am not fan of random versioning system, which is not informative. It's hard to track major changes to the browser. It used to be easier in a sense, that version 1.* was different from version 2.* and from version 3.*. Release time is more rapid now and combined with meaningless versioning (62.* may not be different from 58.* etc.), just looks like mess in my mind. I cannot tell what is compatible with what so my administration tasks and website development experience is considerably worse. I like things stable.

UI Design trends. It looks like Mozilla is now adopting a development mindset similar to GNOME. Whole Firefox user interface is getting more and more opinionated. Developers try to decide for the users on these matters and limit customization options in order to have a better default workflow. Well, I am a fan of sane defaults, but at the same time I really could care less how default UI of Firefox looked like on the early versions. I would customize everything anyway. Now I can only get some silly themes, choose element size from 3 options (all inadequate for my needs BTW). There seem to be less settings in the GUI as well. At least there are a lot of options in about:config. But then again, documentation about those options seems to be lacking and plus I have to promise to be careful! WTH Mozzilla! It's my right to break it!

Privacy. FF has been pretty good in this regard. But ever since they started getting money and support from google, actual privacy got worse. Arguably it's no better than Google Chrome in some ways. Perceived privacy is high, but actual privacy is mediocre. In early years I could host my Firefox sync server myself. And use that server to sync FF data between variuos devices. It was a pain to setup, but it was an option. Google is default search and that says a lot. Still, it's not that bad, because it is possible to improve privacy greatly by configuring about:config settings, using certain extensions, not using Firefox sync service, etc.

General speed. Firefox was never exceptionally fast browser and aging GECKO engine makes this problem even worse now days (FF is really slow compared to Brave and Vivaldi, and maybe some other browsers, which are based on much more modern Blink engine). But it is not catastrophically slow and it is certainly improved and usable. It's just not as good as advertised.

Other Alternatives

IceCat can be good alternative as it is libre, plus they have improved Firefox fingerprinting countermeasures. But it's libre advantage is also a disadvantage. It will not be fully compatible with all the sites since it only supports LibreJS.

Palemoon is pretty nice. I've used it for a while and was generally happy with it. But it tends to get worse overtime. As it is mostly one man project and that man seems to be more focused about optimizing an old code rather than implementing modern features/compatibility. Also, there was a time when they hosted downloads at compromised server and some palemoon installation files were actually infected by viruses.

Midori seems to be lovely, small, simple browser. Too bad it has never been stable for me. It crashed a lot when it used a Gecko engine. And it still crashes a lot with the new WebKit stuff. Great idea, very poor performance and implementation.

Vivaldi is developed by ex Opera guys and have great interface, plus some loved classic Opera features. It's very nice browser and works pretty well. It is proprietary however and based on Blink engine (which has evolved from WebKit). This implies freedom, trust and privacy issues.

Brave is developed by ex Mozilla guys, it has fresh view on privacy and whole new advertisement business model. It is also very very fast. I would call it the fastest browser I have ever tried, but the interface is certainly not the greatest. It's main licence is MPL 2.0 which is not bad, but it uses the same Blink engine as Vivaldi.

Conclusion
All in all, I would really like a good alternative browser. Arguably Brave and Vivaldi seem to be the best alternative browsers I've tried. However, by switching to one of these browsers I would contribute to the google dominant monopoly. There for I still try to use Firefox because it is still the only real alternative browser to all those chrome knockoff's. If only FF developers would do their own thing more and would not copy/follow trends from chrome...

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I like the graphical version of links very much, but you can't use it on complex websites like gmail because it doesn't have javascript. It's very good for plain technical sites because it's very fast.

FF has become a lot faster with quantum, but I agree that the versioning system is ridiculous. I mainly use either that or vivaldi.

Unlike some people, I'm not interested in personalising the interface. Standard is good enough for me.