nixCraft 🐧Waterfox: No AI* Here - A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
https://www.waterfox.com/blog/no-ai-here-response-to-mozilla/
matty_rLibreWolf is another option. It is a custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom with all bad bits (like LLM/AI, No trackers/telemetry, enhanced privacy etc) removed.
* Repo https://codeberg.org/librewolf
* Home page https://librewolf.net
David de Groot@nixCraft this is what I’ve moved to. Less restrictive than Waterfox.
SarAhh, ok fair then. Odd it would have issues with plugins. I'm still in the testing with FF forks atm, as I think I'm moving away from Vivaldi which is unfortunately crashing tabs on Bazzite Linux for me.
Otherwise I'd continue using it as I have done for a few years now.
The best I've found so far are Floorp, Zen, Waterfox and Librewolf.
mark zero@markzero The vertical tabs in Zen were the main reason I've not chosen it as my main browser.
Librewolf has an aim to be more locked-down, secure and private than Firefox, whereas Zen seems to be more about aesthetics.
Each of the forks tend to have their own aims and ethos, so it's mainly a case of which one suits your own particular use-case or needs 😀
Reinout van Schouwen@reinouts @Sar besides the muscle memory, it seems very inconsistent in whether it switches to new tabs after they're created or if it stays showing a blank new tab. I just tried it and picked 2 tabs from the suggested tabs, and it popped them open on my screen, but then when I picked a third it didn't pop that one open.
Also, when I have only a few horizontal tabs I can see more of the page name and most importantly an x to close them, without having to mouse over them. With verticals, I have to mouse over them to see the x to remove them.
I don't have super-wide screens on most of my gear, just 1920x mostly, so dragging the sidebar out further to see everything does take up more space I would be using otherwise. Or at least it feels like it :) It also means a full screen browser page is no longer centered, but offset...
Michel Patrice@MichelPatrice IIRC it was around dealing with YouTube and the plugin I use to kill the ads on that site.
Anthony David
Grumpy Old Techie 🕊️@nixCraft I tried LibreWolf (on FreeBSD) about 2 years ago. The defaults were way too restrictive for a good out the box experience for me.
François 🇺🇦@nixCraft Librewolf is nice, but it doesn't render most websites that use openGL.
That's basically any website with a map these days.
That's basically any website with a map these days.
artiman@FrankauLux @nixCraft yeah because webGL is disabled
Antoine Pintout@nixCraft There is also @zenbrowser which is Firefox based, I'm progressively switching to it.
Sebastian Z@autoiue I'm also using it for a long time now!! So nice to follow a project under active development which gets progressively better every few days!
FynnND@autoiue @nixCraft @zenbrowser I just wished it was more stable. My best friend uses it on windows and it is constantly unstable. I use it on Linux and it tends to just delete one of my windows, even if I try reopening them. The latest stable version for me was .8 so basically 6 versions behind
I agree, I make sure to restart when I can
akiran_n
Quasijarus@nixCraft I prefer Waterfox, it allows me to customize it better and has a more polished interface.
@nixCraft Is "No trackers/telemetry, enhanced privcy" part of the bad bits of firefox? if yes, how are they doing it wrong?
Victoria🏳️⚧️@tragivictoria I think we are all misunderstanding each other.
Anyway, which telemetry can be good? I think each data transmission from the consumer to the supplier should be voluntary and actively done. For instance, when sending a crash report.
@sebzuen anything that's not sensitive/private info is fine. There's no reason collecting hardware information is bad.
And opt-in telemetry is worse than not having it at all.
@tragivictoria Realistically speaking, I agree that everything non-sensitive/private is fine for devs to collect.
Generally, it's a matter of policy in my eyes. When it is only for the supplier to decide which kind of telemetry they collect, consumers have to trust their goodwill or live with the consequences of them gathering bad telemetry. There is no way for consumers to actively take part in the decision process what is gathered.
@sebzuen Thats why transparent telemetry is important (in the topic of Mozilla, not sure they qualify here? Not sure). But realistically any and all telemetry discourse is poisoned by "NOOOO DON'T SPY ON ME PLEASE DONT COLLECT MY PRIVATE INFORMATION I WILL SWITCH TO SOMETHING ELSE PLESSE DONT", so any public discussions on the topic dont do any good :(
That being said, i would love privacy laws to restrict the bad telemetry. Not sure how this one would be feasible tho.
@tragivictoria ah I understand! one of the discussions where a general public is lacking the required specific knowledge to make a based decision...
@tragivictoria
And even if it's just hardware info, that brings us back to the classic problem of iPhone users being shown higher prices than Android users....
And even if it's just hardware info, that brings us back to the classic problem of iPhone users being shown higher prices than Android users....
@sebzuen mind sharing more?
Recent investigative work:
https://groundworkcollaborative.org/work/instacart/
Explanations of dynamic pricing:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435923000544
blog article about the very iPhone topic (reeks of AI writing, no sources):
https://spyboy.blog/2024/11/24/unfair-pricing-tactics-targeting-iphone-users/
@tragivictoria But to be fair, I am not knowledgeable enough about the intricacies of telemetry development.
I appreciate your opinions; I just argue from a perspective of privacy and democracy.
I appreciate your opinions; I just argue from a perspective of privacy and democracy.
@sebzuen haha i am also very much pro-privacy :) its just that it's very hard to develop popular software without telemetry, otherwise its really just game of guessing (i am speaking here from context of browsers, like Firefox or desktops, like GNOME)
@tragivictoria
Do you think an active community around a dev project that provides constant testing and feedback might be enough to substitute telemetry?
Do you think an active community around a dev project that provides constant testing and feedback might be enough to substitute telemetry?
@sebzuen its of course very important too! But there are things where this isn't enough. Like for example telemetry would be super useful for GNOME to know how many users use wayland or xorg sessions. Instead basically no one had any solid data on the matter. Hard to give more examples, because it really depends what data would be gathered.
Justin Macleod@nixCraft do you know whether or not it is accessible to the visually impaired?
@nixCraft
Can we stop framing local LLMs as “bad”? A small local model that summarizes and translates is abundantly more private than sending that same data to an external tool.
Can we stop framing local LLMs as “bad”? A small local model that summarizes and translates is abundantly more private than sending that same data to an external tool.
Alex Wilson@steg @nixCraft How about that case recently where an LLM "summarized" a novel but omitted all references to sexual violence despite that being the core theme of the book?
That was an extreme case of openai content filtering but it's a great example of how the implicit biases of these black box machines can subtly manifest in their output. If you don't read the input how can you know what parts have been omitted or changed?
That was an extreme case of openai content filtering but it's a great example of how the implicit biases of these black box machines can subtly manifest in their output. If you don't read the input how can you know what parts have been omitted or changed?
Peter B.@nixCraft Does anyone know anyone from LibreWolf team personally?
Who are they, and where will their money/resources come from for being able to continue working on it?
(We all know FF got it from using Google as searchbar, etc)
I think #foss in general needs proper, stable funding and hired developers.
How does LibreWolf do it?
RadicalEcologist@p3ter
"Why don't you accept donations?
We don't want to deal with the administration required to properly handle donations. If we don't need funding, we won't risk becoming dependent on it. And also: no donations means no expectations. This means that people working on LibreWolf are free to move on to other projects whenever they want."
https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#why-dont-you-accept-donations
@nixCraft
"Why don't you accept donations?
We don't want to deal with the administration required to properly handle donations. If we don't need funding, we won't risk becoming dependent on it. And also: no donations means no expectations. This means that people working on LibreWolf are free to move on to other projects whenever they want."
https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#why-dont-you-accept-donations
@nixCraft
@RadicalEcologist @nixCraft I understand that one doesn't want to get into the "oh, we got paid, now we *HAVE TO*..." situation - but I want to see more foss-devs happy and well-resourced to keep up their good work, than burning out again... 😔
If they don't want to take donations, we should pay eg Debian to have enough resources and knowhow to provide the good-devs with whatever they need?
@p3ter
I was just sharing their FAQ response to this topic. I agree that it is important to not have volunteers burning out and having happy lives, but there are problems beyond the paid=obligation issue. Setting up funding infrastructure is not free and is not easy. It self enforces a funding dependency that is directly responsible for how mozilla and some FOSS projects have turned out. Many projects manage to thread that needle, but it is always a risk. Money is a tool of a system that stands oppositional to FOSS and that is why funding is always going to be an issue here. My ideal scenarios would be funding developers individually to freely maintain projects or, even better, craft a society where people can spend time volunteering without worrying if they have the resources to make ends meet. But until then, I hope those that can volunteer, do and those that can thread the funding needle are well funded.
@nixCraft
I was just sharing their FAQ response to this topic. I agree that it is important to not have volunteers burning out and having happy lives, but there are problems beyond the paid=obligation issue. Setting up funding infrastructure is not free and is not easy. It self enforces a funding dependency that is directly responsible for how mozilla and some FOSS projects have turned out. Many projects manage to thread that needle, but it is always a risk. Money is a tool of a system that stands oppositional to FOSS and that is why funding is always going to be an issue here. My ideal scenarios would be funding developers individually to freely maintain projects or, even better, craft a society where people can spend time volunteering without worrying if they have the resources to make ends meet. But until then, I hope those that can volunteer, do and those that can thread the funding needle are well funded.
@nixCraft
AndiS 🌞🍷🇪🇺
Two-Track-Mind@nixCraft Mullvad browser is another good one.
AurelDel
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