ACAB
All Chromes Are Bastards
It’s chromium, it does that ambient color changing shit I hate, it “anticipates my needs” instead of just waiting my my instruction. This is a browser designed to make me angry.
I tried it for a bit, even daily drove it on my laptop for a while. It has a pretty slick interface, and uses containers so you could, for example, have one container that you are logged into your google account for (say, Youtube), and the rest of your containers you can not log into Google.
The downside is that 1) It’s still not mature as of a month ago. They are making massive changes and adding new features constantly, and 2) It’s still Chromium, so all of the downsides of that are still present.
If they switch to using Firefox or another open-source foundation, I’d be all over it.
Firefox already has containers. I still have yet to see a browser that beats stock Firefox in functionality, customization and privacy
On mobile I’d suggest Fennec instead of stock Firefox since you can use add-ons without limitation, and don’t need workarounds such as the Firefox nightly.
It’s basically stock with enabled add-ons, and following the official release cycle with 2-3 days delay. Maintained by the original developers of the F-Droid store, so also a highly trustworthy source IMHO.
Thanks for the heads up. I run FF on all my mobile devices so it will be nice to have access to all the addons.
I’d venture out there and say Vivaldi in functionality and customisation.
Privacy probably not, though Vivaldi does quite well.
Sadly it’s a Chromium browser.
Edit: a simple comparison.
According to this Vivaldi protects you from tracking about the same as Chrome and Opera, and both of those provide less tracking protection than even Edge.
PrivacyTests makes it look like Brave is the only browser you should be using simply based on how good it is at blocking trackers by default. Brave is good, but it has it’s fair share of flaws from UI and terrible syncing to built in crypto and NFT stuff.
Chrome is run by a massive corporation with a reputation for for invasions of privacy. Opera is run by a nation state with a reputation for invasions of privacy.
Vivaldi is far better than either of those.
I’m talking about first and third party websites tracking you. I don’t use Chrome or Opera, but I’d rather only have to trust a browser of my choice, than having to place my trust in thousands of different websites.
The point is, if you care about tracking and privacy, you shouldn’t be using Vivaldi in the first place.
This is the key. There are a few projects that can beat it in one way or another, but not all 3. Every project that beats FF in a functional way ends up sacrificing privacy. And those that somehow beat it in privacy are underdeveloped and run into weird compatibility issues or are missing support for key plugins.
It’s not like Firefox doesn’t collect user data at all. Vivaldi is hard to seriously fault in that area.
Unfortunately, Firefox lacks some features that make it a little clumsy at times. But for general use it is great. I keep it installed and use it almost every day because I believe in the browser engine and the need for diversity in that area. It’s just not for every need. At least not for me. That’s where Vivaldi and Edge have to help.
That’s what I’m using now. I think Arc does a better job of organizing containers and tabs, but it’s not worth the privacy/advertisement issues that come along with Chromium.
Sandboxing/containerizing stored session data like that is really nice. Firefox Multi-Account Containers is an extension maintained by Mozzila and was really the reason I stuck with Firefox even when it really kinda sucked there for a while.
what about privacy?
From what I gather, while they track feature usage, they claim they won’t track your sites. They still won’t help protect your privacy from other apps, companies, and pages.
Eh, just another Chromium browser.
Isn’t arc a chromium fork thus subject to Google’s shenanigans?
Yup, anti freedom, and also closed source so extremely privacy invasive as well.
No, it’s not a fork. A fork is when you take the Chromium browser and change it.
This uses the same rendering engine as Chromium - but the browser itself was built from scratch, uses a completely different architecture, and on other operating systems it doesn’t use Chromium at all.
As for “forced to create an account” Arc is temporarily free. Longer term you’ll have to pay a subscription to use it. So it makes sense that you need to sign up.
Yes
And you’re forced to create an account to use it. At least it did a few months back
anyone
Lol, it’s just on mac. No windows version or even plans for a Linux one. Not that I’d use another chromium fork.
Tbf, it says download, not use.
As a non-Mac user, I’m not even sure if “Mac-only” or “yet-another Chromium fork” makes it less interesting.
From the article:
“The company is also thinking about how to integrate AI into the browser.”
LOL - how absurd. I can’t even tell if this is a real product or just a meme?
AI AI AI Generative AI
Have you heard about AI yet??
I hate it already! ~Strawberry
It seems like every app is trying to force integration of a version of ChatGPT. It would make way more sense if the OS just had their “assistant” use AI, and just let it recognize the app your using and help out if needed. No need for an AI integration with every app.
While you’re not wrong, the implementation there is very complicated. My solution, which works quite excellently, is if I want to use GPT, I go use GPT
I agree with you. I personally don’t want ChatGPT on my OS either. I just also don’t want it on all of my apps too.
I’m not surprised. Edge has it integrated already and it’s annoying.
It’s just chrome with different pitched bells and whistles.
Give me some WebKit based alternatives or something interesting…
Here’s a new WebKit based project that may interest you: https://browser.kagi.com/
Yeeaaah I have been using Orion for a little bit and it seems pretty good on desktop at least.
Who would want to use closed source browser in 2023?
Even if not caring about freedom, just from security and privacy standpoint.
That’s why they target Apple users. They don’t understand what closed source means, nor care. They just want flashy new thing.
Safari is open source. Also: opensource.apple.com
I have zero interest in a chrom* fork.
WebKit, rendering engine for Safari, is open source. As it has to be because it was copylefted KHTML.
But the rest of the browser is not, Safari is closed source. Worth noting is that even if it was, you wouldn’t be able to run version adapted for yourself because you every code executed on Apple devices needs their approval.
Safari is a very thin set of changes to WebKit, you can just run & build WebKit nightlies, which I do for web dev, so I don’t screw up my main browser. You have zero idea what you’re talking about, you just read a wiki page.
Macs let you run anything you want, obviously. iOS does, too, as long as you’re a developer sideloading. People who can’t hit compile shouldn’t be allowed to run random shit on their phones which are 2FA etc. keys.
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No, you can just download Xcode free from the Mac App Store, or off developer.apple.com. Only the App Store needs the fee.
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you need pay a subscription every year to publish your app on the app store. You can sign your app and install it but it’s temporary and you need to repeat it every time it expires afaik.
But you need a mac for it. Don’tyou just love Apple’s fancy walled gardens?
Safari is a very thin set of changes to WebKit, you can just run & build WebKit nightlies,
you don’t seem to understand software licenses, so please stop overselling yourself. Just because a software uses open source code, it doesn’t automatically become open-source. You’re first claim was Safari is open-source. It’s not
and compiling a browser for webdev. lol
You clearly didn’t spend any effort trying it, learning how it works, or reading the license. It is literally a browser, just not named Safari and using your saved preferences, which is a good thing when you’re developing. Not that you can.
I award you zero points.
That’s not safari
Chromium and excellent do not belong in the same sentence.
I’ve attempted to understand what makes this browser good, time after time, and I still just don’t get it. They claim that they’ve ripped out the UI and created it from scratch, to improve workflow and how we approach browsers, but it’s done nothing but infuriate me, because they just built a gesture based interface with layers upon layers of hidden stuff, none of which is intuitive, and it’s for the desktop. Not to mention the other blunders with their extensions
Closed source, which automatically makes a web browser dogshit and completely useless.
The organization features that I’ve seen look really nice. I’ve also wanted something as easy as Safari tab groups… None of these ideas seem to trickle down to other browsers though, it’s a shame
Lol tf is this absolute trash. It has every red flag in the book. First off, a wait-list, wtf? It’s closed source obviously, which immediately means it’s privacy invasive and anti freedom. It’s Apple only, which how did they absolutely fuck that up when it’s just a reskinned chromium which already did all the cross platform work for them? Who is this browser for? What can it do that Firefox + extensions cannot do? And lastly, why would you support internet monopolies and support the 1 millionth generic chromium reskin? What complete garbage of software.
And… there is a waiting list.
