@Catweazle @jon for me the choice is easy: I rather have more browser engines in play than reinforcing the near monopoly.

I applaud what Vivaldi does, and it's the better choice when it comes to chromium based browsers, but it's not for me.

@jan @jon, currently all engines are monopolies, depending of big companies. It's by far the most complex part of an browser with a complicate maintance which need a big team of devs.

This is the reason because there are not more engines since almost 20 years, except some marginal forks.
I remember an advice of an browser who anouced awork on a new, independent engine, but this never ocurred and if it is still in work, ther won't be an alpha at least unil 2029.

Don't confuse it, in the wiki you'll find a list with over 100 browsers and another one with almost 70 discontinued.
There isn`t a real alternative to Blink by Google, Gecko by Mozilla (and Google) and WebKit by Apple, apart some irrelevant forks of Blink, Gecko and some indie engines for text only browsers.
The only different one is Konqueror from KDE which use KHTML, the Ancestor from Blink and WebKit. Linux only and pretty limited.

That is the current panorama. Even so, the small Vivaldi team offers the most advanced browser which currently exist.

@Catweazle yet, I see no reason whatsoever to further confirm the defacto blink monopoly. If you look at the numbers, they have it. Webkit for now on apple mobile devices, but that might shift too.

We need MORE people on alternative browser engines to keep a level playing field, not less.

@jan, which alternatives? They don't really exist. Chromium is 100% FOSS and can be forked and de-googled as anyone like and Vivaldi, De-Googled Chromium and even EDGE and Opera are doing (latter inbuilding their own tracking crap and AIs). Everybody use Chromium (Blink) because it's the most advanced engine, outscoring Gecko and even
more WebKit. That is fact.

Yes, it's desirable to have more elections, but this was needed to do 15 years ago, currently nobody is capable to do it, not even using a lot of different Gecko forks like Floorp, Zen, Waterfox and whatever more, because it wouldn't change anything in a significant procent in the current domain. Simply because Mozilla without Google support, even in the Gecko development, and recently contract other advertising Company wouldn't survive.

Well, which alternative, apart to making the best of the existing ones? In Vivaldi is guaranted in Mozilla not so sure.

@Catweazle I'm going to end this here. You clearly are very invested and interested in Vivaldi, which is your right. I choose not to be because I don't think just having Blink as the monopoly is a good thing.

Gecko and Mozilla have their faults. Yet just saying "everybody uses blink" and "it's the most technicaly advanced" (no sources given)...
It's basically saying: "I give up. I accept that there's a monopoly, Google has the right to do whatever it wants" (which it already does). Whatever google decides for Blink, Vivaldi and the other downstream browsers will have to swallow. They can fight a bit... but not on the browser engine. (the same is true for Gecko, but I believe they are fundamentally different from Google)

I currently use Firefox, and I'll be checking out Orion whenever it arrives on Linux. Because choice matters, and diversity matters (everywhere).