It's not hard to understand. People elect representatives to take decisions on their behalf; they don't elect private foundations or corporate tech giants to do so, at least not outside the US. So if Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and the rest want to dictate how people are governed in other countries, then yes, I hope for their speedy demise. The internet can go back to html and css ; no need for JavaScript. So it should be easy to come up with successors to Firefox and Chrome and all their clones. We never voted for Mozilla or Google or Microsoft to represent us, to speak on our behalf, to override political decisions far beyond their jurisdiction, to claim they are defending our security and privacy. If the price of their demise is a return to a more primitive web, then great! I'd be only too delighted.

4 members found this post helpful.

Agreed, the trend of corporations injecting themselves into social issues that are at best tangentially relevant to their mission is one of many recent trends that I strongly dislike. Mozilla has been particularly egregious here. Their CEO's salary has increased while Firefox's market share has dropped precipitously, they have made public statements that I interpret as directly hostile to freedom of speech and expression, and their foundation behaves more like an activist NGO than a vehicle for advancement of Internet technologies. Google is hardly much better but at least Chromium is a quality product. Unfortunately modern web APIs are so complex now that implementations more or less require a level of investment and resources that only large corporations can provide. There are alternative engines out there, but the tradeoffs in functionality are quite large.

2 members found this post helpful.

Meh...I see nothing dire nor nefarious in anything they have in the Manifest nor what they did with/during the Kazakhsatan thing. My only concern is that Mozilla stop its dealings with Google, since Google is the one who is nefarious in its operations as far as I'm concerned.

1 members found this post helpful.

Mozilla, together with the other US tech giants, moved to block the implementation of a Kazakh government decree. If it doesn't concern you that private, unelected foundations and corporations in the US, with no mandate whatsoever to represent anyone, can interfere in the affairs of a sovereign government elsewhere, just because that government is an ally of Russia, then don't complain when they do the same to you, or when the Russians interfere in your politics.

Once again, a private foundation taking clear sides in the anti-Russia hysteria gripping the US is not a foundation representing me or in any way protecting my online security and privacy.

3 members found this post helpful.

No, what I don't understand is not that. What I don't understand is the following:

By your own account, Google does the same things that Mozilla does. Given their market share, Google's decision impact in the Kazakhstan case you cited is obviously much larger than Mozilla's decision.

In your first post, regarding Manjaro replacing Firefox with Vivaldi, you said:

So, no, I don't understand how "losing" firefox and replacing it with a Goggle-based browser is a good thing for you.

I think that an absolute Google monopoly on browsers is a real risk for all of us (and yes, I am worried when I see that Google is by far the main cash resource for Mozilla).

1 members found this post helpful.

I never replaced Firefox, since I never used it. But I agree : I'm not happy we're essentially reduced to three browser engines, and Vivaldi uses one of them. This is offset by the Vivaldi team's respect for the user, not on any political stance beyond their remit.

I also use -- increasingly so -- Safari on the iPad, and Qutebrowser. When you're 54, diabetic, and not sure whether you have five, ten or twenty years left, you opt for pragmatism over principle. That doesn't mean you're happy with the direction these foundations and companies are taking the web.

Google, Apple, Mozilla did not block the implementation of a Kazakh government decree. I don't see any sovereignty issue here.

On one hand, any company in the free world, is free to make any modification to their products. But they have to live with the consequences: They will be able to sell or distribute it as long as the product respects the local, country-enforced regulations for each of their target markets.

On the other hand, the sovereign Kazakh government can pass any internet legislation they see fit, mandating the use of their own CA. Then, they should ban any product not complying with their laws and regulations.

They could force their own browser on to their people. And they could even just take Firefox or Chromium source (that's the beauty of Open Source!), make it compliant to their regulations and so, with a very small investment, produce their own mandatory-for-all Kazakh-browser.


On this, I couldn't agree more..!

1 members found this post helpful.

Vivaldi Desktop 4.2 RC
https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/viv...-rc-1-desktop/
https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/viv...-rc-2-desktop/

Vivaldi Desktop 4.2 (2406.44)
https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/vivald...ore-privately/

3 members found this post helpful.

Google implemented their own password encrypted data base built into the browser. it is based on sqlite. Not very good.
But this is the main reason why it forces you to GPG or Kwallet. Unless the told on start up not to.
Opera does it better. The real issue was many people embed chromium into Steam-Games Games. Skype etc etc. . This caused a ton of
issues every time you started a game.

First Create the cookie that is kept to say I looked at your kwallet or GPG no need to look it up.
Skype does this if you set to auto login. Most builds do then when the cookie expires and it does you are asked to do it again put in your kwallet password set for that program.
Not impressed with google chromium or chrome password manager. It raised a ton of alarms when they implemented it.
Very easy hack if your at someones desktop.

The new audio server built in has been a serious issues. I have no clue why people want to use this huge blob of bugs. or any derivative of it.
Vivaldi just like Opera build there wrapper around it. They call them extensions.

Firefox has really lead the way last 18 months on stability and security.

Most serious programs that encrypt your password associate it with your UUID and IP if either change your encrypted passwords are wiped.
That isn't true for Vivaldi Opera Chromium skype etc etc etc all Chrome stuff.

2 members found this post helpful.

How is that even measurable? I've been using Vivaldi since the beginning and it's never once been unstable. It's extremely fast, and renders all pages properly. As for security, I keep passwords on my phone, in an offline manager. I have a script blocker in Vivaldi. The web is more insecure than the browser, and if you have script blocking on all domains but the parent domain, you cut out -- I would imagine -- 99 percent of attacks, no matter what browser you use. Sure, the Vivaldi UI might be insecure (is it programmed in Electron or something like that?), but then, so might the Firefox UI. It's not that long since Firefox went through a major overhaul -- has anyone audited all the new browser code since?

@lovemeslk,
Thanks for the information.
BTW, isn't Opera (really in name only) owned by a Chinese government controlled investment group?

1 members found this post helpful.

You can fetch my personal repack here if you like:

vivaldi-stable-4.2.2406.44-x86_64-1ruario.txz (hosted on downloads.vivaldi.com since I am a Vivaldi employee)

(This file has a SHA256 sum of 'ce835880d5d5a2e4b78796967376fdb391bc854a9b8c6feff69c2451fe852f21')

This was repacked with this script:

https://gist.github.com/ruario/4ef8c...c0e9b10c86d672

(a copy is also installed in the doc directory after install)

Note: Unlike SBo, I am using a packaging naming convention that is like the official (rpm/deb) packages ('vivaldi-stable' instead of just 'vivaldi'). As such, if you had an SBo version before you should upgrade like so:

6 members found this post helpful.

I usually avoid posting about updates here because others tend to do it anyway and if I did it, it might look like spam. However, since nobody has mentioned it yet and because the update today includes a fix for CVE-2021-37973 (which is exploited in the wild), I will break my rule this time and mention that we have a minor update:

https://vivaldi.com/blog/desktop/update-two-4-2/

As before, here is a package:

vivaldi-stable-4.2.2406.52-x86_64-1ruario.txz

Note: See my previous comment about the script I used to create this and how to upgrade from the SBo version which is differently named.

3 members found this post helpful.

If you are Vivaldi employee, why cant you list your Slackware package on the downloads page with the debs, rpms and exes?

Not complaining, just wondering.

1 members found this post helpful.