this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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I understand why people are so mad at Firefox/mozilla but honestly? I just don’t know of any viable alternative right now. Chrome, Safari, edge, etc are all categorically worse offerings because of their parent companies/policies.
Can someone please give me a non-chromium, Mobile and browser desktop suggestion? Firefox has so many QoL things I depend on. I need something that can use major extensions and such.
Edit: iOS is the real issue here for me
Mozilla's new TOU only covers pre built Firefox executables, not the source code.
Librewolf and Waterfox are good forks that would not be bound to the TOU.
Yes, but the problem isn't really the browser itself, it's Mozilla which has turned in an advertising company, supported by Google and another ad company. If you need to sync your data and want to stay private, you have to do it with an third party or selfhosted cloud service, independend which FF fork you use.
Thanks for an actual answer
You're welcome. I've been covering this issue since it's been announced. There are a number of accounts who are either deliberately spreading misinformation or who have a very poor understanding of how software licenses work.
Anyone who tells you that these terms are normal for a locally run browser is making the posts in bad faith.
Thanks for further explaining.
I’ve been super frustrated by lemmy posting vague info then going to watch some Linux and selfhosting YouTubers for them to only explain or gossip the issue for 20 minutes without alternatives.
So far trying librefox.
Librewolf btw.
I've personally moved to Waterfox and very much enjoying the experience, with a few hiccups.
My lord, you’re the one who misunderstands licenses. And all internet browsers are “locally run” that’s literally what makes them browsers. They browse non-local resources.
Just for one major example, literally chrome has a ToS.
You’re the one arguing in bad faith. Holy shit you’re spreading so much misinformation it’s astounding.
Those don’t work on iOS sadly and it’s a bit of a workaround to get on MacOS.
Do you see installing a .dmg file (or installing through homebrew) on macOS as a workaround, or what do you mean? I'm not sure I have ever installed a single app from their store, so maybe it's just that such a "workaround" feels normal to me, but scary to others?
https://librewolf.net/installation/macos/
I am very comfortable with dmg lol the issue is iOS
The Walled Garden is actually the problem, then.
Ok… I have a Linux machine too. But I need apple devices for my work as well. I’m asking for solutions not “ditch your phone and computer for different ones.”
Sorry, wasn't trying to agitate, just spewing on the Net.
Not a lot of options for iOS. There’s Tor browser and Brave that I know of. Brave is surprisingly good, but I don’t do a lot of serious navigation in the phone, and tend to favor private mode so the tracking gets deleted once I close the tab.
There may be Mac specific browsers that might be a better fit. I don't use a Mac personally but could be worth going through the App store to see what is out there.
Why use the App Store for that? https://librewolf.net/installation/macos/
Librewolf is a fork of Firefox.
From their site:
In the future, Ladybird or a browser built on top of Servo might be alternatives, but both projects are pretty far from being usable right now.
Appreciate the suggestion but iOS. Silly of me to forget that in the initial comment
On iOS your option is Safari and that's what you've been using, even if the icon says Firefox or Chrome or Brave. It's against Apple store TOS to have a web browser with an engine in it - they all have to be skins for Safari (Webkit). Different "iOS Browsers" will offer features on top of the Safari that actually does the browsing though, like account sync or built-in ad filtering.
The only platforms out there that are more hostile to open source software than iOS are like, game consoles.
Yes I am aware
I know pretty much nothing about iOS, but isn't Safari actually considered a pretty decent browser? Can you not use ublock (or equivalent), and other privacy extensions, on Safari?
Any downstream fork of Firefox. All the good of Firefox and Gecko (including addons), none of the Mozilla corporation. The most popular ones seem to be Waterfox and Floorp (for "most users") and LibreWolf for privacy diehards.
You can copy your Firefox profile folder directly into a fork's profile folder and have everything exactly as you left it (though doing this to Librewolf will likely overwrite some of Librewolf's privacy-first default settings like purging history every time the browser closes)
On iOS you are already stuck with every browser being a Safari+Webkit skin. Even Chrome "Isn't chromium" on iphones. But mobile iOS "Firefox" can still use Mozilla (or self-hosted) sync to desktop Waterfox (etc).
The only alternative is the Konqueror browser (KDE) for the Linux user, it has it's own KHTML engine by KDE (Grandfather of WebKit and Blink)
I am trying Floorp as of yesterday. I like Zen Browser, but their github contributers list makes it look like it's mostly the effort of one person and that always gives me pause until somethings been around a while. Floorp seemed more spread out so I decided to try it despite its silly name.
I'm interested in how ladybird shapes up.
Worth noting that you may have DRM issues on some forks with video content. I don't think you will on Linux, and someone clear this if you can, but I think the alternate used can't do 4k video? I'm not a big web media consumer so idk. Has something to do with Widevine I think.
I am also rooting for ladybird but yeah sadly not ready yet