Web Browsers

[Brian_B]

So, I know Google is evil and Chrome is an enabler... I just had got so used to Chrome that I never could be bothered to really look at anything else. Even after all the privacy concerns I know are out there, and even after the recent "we are gonna kill ad blockers because we make money from ads" thing. I know this logically, but most of the time I just want to load my news sites and web pages and can't be bothered with logic when convenience gets in the way.

Until today, anyway.

Google finally broke my ad blocking extension. Well, they didn't outright break it - it still loaded and functioned. They just slowed everything down a crawl. Like... seconds between key presses when typing slow, and the mouse pointer not changing on hover for seconds.

Sure enough, disabling the ad blocker fixed it. But...

And I know sites like this rely on ads as well, but it's abused by so many sites I just disable by default, and whitelist for places I assume are going to be safe (like these forums).

So... I'm shopping around for a new browser. Currently trying out Brave, since it supports all my Chrome extensions and that makes it relatively painless to switch over. I haven't used it long enough to have an impression yet though - so looking for suggestions or ideas.

I've tried Firefox on and off through the years - I always liked the concept of Firefox, but could never really stand to use the browser for some reason.

 

[Space_Ranger]

Currently I'm using Firefox and WaterFox for my browsers of choice.. I haven't really had any issues with it that would make me want to abandon ship at this moment..

 

[Shotglass01]

I'm going to second this. Been using FF for at least 2 years now as a daily driver. I'll open Edge InPrivate tabs for pages FF won't work well in. For example, by bank, while very good, has the worst web support. I have Ublock, Adblock+, Bypass Paywalls, New Tab Override, and privacy badger. I could probably drop Adblock since Ublock works really well, but it's not hurting anything. I do have to use Chrome with Netflix though.

 

[DrezKill]

Firefox is still my daily driver (as it has been since the very first release), but my secondary browser these days is Ungoogled Chromium. I've also tried Edge, Brave, Epic Privacy Browser, Falkon, and probably one or two others I am forgetting. I had also used Pale Moon as a secondary browser for years.

 

[Grimlakin]

I use brave for YouTube and chrome for everything else. I know it's probably horrible but meh...it works. Companies don't test 4th tier browsers they barely tier 2nd tier.

 

[DrezKill]

What's handy is that a lot of browsers like Chrome, Edge, Epic Privacy Browser, Brave, Ungoogled Chromium and more are all based on Chromium. So they all benefit from updates to Chromium, and often you can have a similar experience between them, and use some (or all) of the same add-ons/extensions. For me personally, out of all the Chromium-based browsers, I've found the most satisfaction with Ungoogled Chromium.

 

[Brian_B]

What's handy is that a lot of browsers like Chrome, Edge, Epic Privacy Browser, Brave, Ungoogled Chromium and more are all based on Chromium. So they all benefit from updates to Chromium, and often you can have a similar experience between them, and use some (or all) of the same add-ons/extensions. For me personally, out of all the Chromium-based browsers, I've found the most satisfaction with Ungoogled Chromium.

You happen to have a good source for download that doesn't require me to get source and install a compiler?

 

[DrezKill]

You happen to have a good source for download that doesn't require me to get source and install a compiler?

If you are on Windows, you can install right from the Windows Repository using the Windows Package Manager WinGet:


Which is also the easiest way to keep the program updated:


However, I have also tried the Windows 64-bit binaries multiple times, and they seem legit to me: https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-binaries/
The problem with going this route is that every time you want to update Ungoogled Chromium, you have to manually download the latest binary, run the exe, and then it silently updates the program in the background.

EDIT: It's been a while since I last had to set up Ungoogled Chromium, but if you want to use add-ons/extensions from the Chrome web store, I believe this is the method I used to get that functionality: https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store

 

[Niner51]

I've been using Firefox here for several years without issue. I did try Brave here recently, but just couldn't get used to it as a daily driver. The lack of a good bookmark organization killed it for me.

 

[Ditchinit]

I've been using Firefox here for several years without issue. I did try Brave here recently, but just couldn't get used to it as a daily driver. The lack of a good bookmark organization killed it for me.

This is my criticism about Brave on my smartphone, too.

 

[Grimlakin]

Yea brave is pretty much a youtube only browser for me.