The dead-end in the Browser Market

Discussion
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Oh yes.
I just wish that Mozilla would follow the principles.
Trying to do it yourself when they are pulling in the opposite direction is frustrating.

All that @yazm894 wanted to do was to move the mozilla config file from a backup to the home directory. Mozilla have made it impossible to do that successfully. To me that is a massive failure from Mozilla. They have made firefox so complicated that it hangs up on a very simple task.

It all comes from wanting to build file management facilities into a browser. A browser should be a browser. Leave the file handling to other apps.

Neville

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Actually, every huge browser has become monstruous. Google Chrome is even worse. It’s not really Mozilla’s fault. The whole Javascript/Browser system is just flawed to begin with.

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Agree,
So can we find a browser that we can recommend that has simple text based config files that can be moved around to backups and restored without hangups?
Ditto for a mailer?

All the simpler browsers that I have looked at … nyxt, midora, dillo, netsurf, … are just terrible old-fashioned half completed efforts.
There must be something good around?
Neville

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4

Unfortunately, the browser market is bipolised by Google and Mozilla. Since Mozilla is indirectly affiliated with Google, the browser market is pretty much only consisting of Google and its browser.

Any browsers that are worth mentioning at all, are either based on Chrome (Brave, Vivaldi, Microsoft Edge, etc.) or Firefox (LibreWolf, etc.).

There are no independent browsers, that can be used as a serious alternative to Firefox or Chrome.

This is the sad reality.

I personally have given up on finding the “right” browser, years ago. It’s just a huge black hole, run by Google.

That said, I personally found LibreWolf to be the best of the worst. It’s a libre version of Firefox. So, not independent, but we get the benefits of Firefox, but without the commercial Firefox crap coming with it.

This project is an independent fork of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom.

LibreWolf is designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements. This is achieved through our privacy and security oriented settings and patches. LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM.

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5

Download sizes
firefox 67Mb
opera 93 Mb
nyxt 53 Mb
midori 43Kb
netsurf 2031Kb
dillo 1255Kb
konqheror 102Mb
falkon 110 Mb
epiphany 7093 Kb
eolie 2493 Kb

Not perfect figures. It depends on what your system has before you ask for the download

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I meant monstruous, as in huge, barely maintainable software projects, that clearly got out of hand. (I wasn’t addressing disk size issues. Disk size issues are no problem in 2022.) If people complain about systemd being bloated and keep using Firefox and/or Chrome, then we have got the irony of the decade, right in front our noses.

Firefox/Chrome is like a bajillion more times bloated than any systemd ever.

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Right.
I was just using download size as a measure
Complexity is the issue, not size per se.

Big problem is there is nothing in between monsters and crappy little half efforts. Bring back netscape.

It comes from ignoring the principle of one task one program.

Neville

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8

The problem is, the big browsers are so elaborate and are here for decades, they have maximum compatability with the internet.
A new or independent browser has still lots of issues and incompatibilities.

So, if a user has the choice to use a free and fully working/compatible browser, like Firefox or Chrome or use a half-broken independent browser, then of course the user will choose the easier and more comfortable solution.

Then, the independent browser barely has any users. Barely anything can be improved. Maintainers, testers and the few users lose interest and the project eventually dies. This is how these projects usually go.

Things like Brave only can exist, because they are based on an established browser, like Chrome in this case, and have a true value that the normal browsers usually don’t offer, like Brave or LibreWolf. Otherwise, nobody has a reason to change the browser, except for advanced techy concerns, like security, privacy and tech nerd friendliness.

Well, the internet is broken. That is the whole issue to begin with. For example, HTML, one of the most important parts of the internet is broken. HTML is so unprecise, undefined and unstandardised, it’s the wild west of languages. Yes, in the meantime we have standardised HTML, but all browsers need to support some random weird HTML dialect, that might be run on some website. Otherwise, the browser is not fully compatible with the internet.

The second problem is JavaScript. I think, I don’t need to explain why JavaScript is a problem.

9

OK you have sold it to me.
Librewolf is not in Void repository yet.
I will compile,it from source
Neville

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I keep an ESR version of firefox in ~/sbin/fuckedfox, with a fuckedfox.desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications …

That works for me… When I stand up a new Linux x86_64 desktop - I just rsync my ~/sbin/. folder to it (also hosts a few things I like to have handy - like tor-browser-us) - and - whenI fire it up - it remembers my settings from the source ocmputer - and - then I setup up sync and eveyrthing is SYNC’d…

I call it a portable app… works perfectly between Fedora and Ubuntu for me… and considering any day now I will be cutting my main desktop machine (single boot AMD Ryzen 7 with NVidia GPU) over to Fedora 36 - it should keep working that way…

I setup Firefox like this because one too many times Firefox POINT BLANK refused to let me open a new tab (without restarting), and I needed a NEW TAB for work stuff (new Service Now ticket in my queue) and Firefox was PREVENTING me getting my job done!

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So how does keeping a private copy of firefox on your home directory help?
You still have to rsync the stupid dot files and for some reason when @yazm894 did an rsync copy of her dot files, firefox would not accept the copy?

Am I missing something?
Neville

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I have no idea - I know how it helps me… that’s all I care about frankly…