Firefox forks. Use them.
Also fuck Chromium based browsers. All of them.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
618 points (94.8% liked)
Fuck AI
3735 readers
737 users here now
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
About half a year ago I decided to use only "official" Firefox client on my machines just to support it. Before that I mainly used different Firefox forks for couple of years.
Because of AI bullshit, yesterday I uninstalled Firefox from my PC and my phone and replaced it with Floorp (PC) and Ironfox (phone). I might change Floorp to Librewolf or Waterfox though.
My favorite so far has been Zen Browser.
+1 from me there, before I was using sideberry to achieve something close to what zen has build-in. Then I found zen and never looked back. And now I really can't live without glance anymore.
Librewolf up in this piece
Ever since hearing about Mullvad having their own ( Mull ), I haven't switched back and I'm glad. Looks real polished and runs a lot quicker on both my Linux running laptop and win10 desktop. Even with my laptop being much better specs, speeds are consistently bad for page loading times on Firefox.
Haven't checked on how fast Librewolf is, but I'm sure it'd also be faster.
Waterfox for heavy-duty online-exam stuff etc. links2 -g for wikipedia and browsing.
The hardest part about making a browser seems to be restraining yourself just to make a fucking browser.
Customer: I want a browser please
Chrome: Here's a browser with embedded spyware and blatant disdain for your RAM
Firefox: here's your browser with embedded AI for some reason
Brave: Here's a browser with embedded cryptoslop and a dodgy CEO
Opera: What's up gamers here's your browser with tacticool RGB bloat
Microsoft: Here's your spyware AI that sort of also works as a browser that might actually cause Ted Kaczynski to rise from the grave and kill again, to the thunderous applause of all.
To be fair, Chrome is actually pretty good at some things. I noticed when building an infinite feed of Lemmy posts, Chrome required zero optimization to render hundreds of posts at once. Safari was a different story. I had to rebuild my feed of posts with some pretty complex list virtualization to get Safari to be performant.
I wish I remembered what Firefox was like at the time, but I don’t. Possible it’s also very performant. But as a developer, Chrome is way more enjoyable to build for.
This is NOT an endorsement for Chrome. I absolutely hate Google. Just wanted to provide my perspective as a developer. And maybe that also explains the high ram usage of Chrome since there’s some ✨magic✨ optimization happening that Safari lacks.
True, but part of that is Google developed some "web standards" for Chrome only, and forced the others to adapt or be left behind. Also in some cases, websites work better if you just spoof your user agent to Chrome and get those "improved" pages
Yeah I've got to say, as a developer that Chrome and chromium forks are way more consistent and performant - and easier to develop for.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Oh Firefox, I still haven't moved on from that "study" which was just a ad for a TV show. I disable studies on every machine I touch now.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Mozilla is falling back to the old stratergy of focusing on features.
That is the wrong stratergy, they should focus on:
- The browser engine, Gecko.
- Privacy
- Extensions
Without the browser engine, Firefox is dead.
Secondary priority should be privacy
Tertiary priority should be extensions, build a robust extension system, use that to add features for separate install...
Without the browser engine, Firefox is dead.
Personal unpopular opinion: Firefox will die the day the first alpha of LadyBird is released. Every real geek will switch to the most unstable version of that new thing because Mozilla has been pissing us for a long time with their CEO bonuses.
So long and thanks for all the fish as they will all say.
ladybird is so far off being usable its not even realistic to suggest.
How I long for LadyBird's first release
“We are targeting Summer 2026 for a first Alpha version on Linux and macOS. This will be aimed at developers and early adopters.”
load more comments
(1 replies)
8 months
Sure it is.
I've been rocking Waterfox since the whole MPL/ToS enshittification. Waterfox has kept most of the AI shit out. If I had to guess, those parts require ToS acceptance and since Waterfox can't legally grant usage to Mozilla's servers, they can't be included.
I'd love to see a true FOSS alternative browser hit mainstream and would gladly give LadyBird a try once it's usable.
Plus the features they do focus on are stupid.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I was wondering why my normal everyday usage started slowing my PC to a crawl the past few days. Very fucking stupid of you, Firefucks.
When I'm at my desk and working, the last fucking thing I guve a shit about is whatever AI bullshit you're now pushing. I got my PC hooked up to a big CNC machine I'm sending commands to while also designing new items while on a second monitor. My third monitor is for one thing: Keep fire fox open for email and a YouTube video.
Is it too goddamn much to ask for a browser to just play one video and display my emails?!?!? That's all I need from you. Because, you sneaking this shit in jeopardizes my entire system and hardware when shit starts slowing to a crawl.
The only reason I use Firefox is because of ublock origin.
Mozilla: message received, people don't want support for manifest V2
Try LibreWolf and IronFox sometime. It's Firefox with less BS.
Base Firefox is actually dogshit, it's wild how much they've ruined it. LibreWolf and similar forks are the way to go.
Not sure if similar desktop forks for Chromium exist, but at least there's the "ungoogled" package.
Either way, just wish I could find a selfhosted browser sync tool that doesn't rely on a google account or w/e. LibreWolf is great for my PCs but IronFox feels far too restrictive for mobile while Fennec doesn't feel like enough. Vanadium is fine but that's a Chromium fork.
I do like the way base FF does vertical tabs, though. The only reason I still main that browser for longer web surfing sessions.
If I know exactly where I'm going I use LW, though.
BTW do people really keep the default functionality of LW to clear all login cookies? I know it's more secure, but kind of a pain to have to sign in to rainwave.cc or whatever every new session.
Librewolf also has native vertical tabs :) Not sure if it's the same implementation as FF, but I believe it is.
Regarding cookies, I've manually added exclusions for frequent, trusted websites, and left the default clearing on.
Wow it totally is the same implementation. This rules. OK well there goes my last reason to stick with FF.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I like librawolf on Linux, but a lot of pages break
load more comments
(1 replies)
They have had a fraction of Chrome's userbase long before any of this AI nonsense.
if they didn't turn to shit constantly perhaps more people would consider switching over
Yeah, doubt that.
The only way that happens is if Chrome turns to shit.
it did and still firefox is viewed as slipping, and mozilla is doing little to nothing to fix it
always has been yet it stopped nobody
Google keep trying.
And they seem really committed to ensure that remains the case.
This feels like confirmation of the conspiracy theory that they don't want to be popular because of the Google money they get
Performance on Android is what's killing me.
Sometimes I have to open sites in Cromite
You can disable it.
Unfortunately, the FF devs disabled the about:config on mobile even though it's available on Nightly. If you open it, you'll get a blank page.
You need to access it via this URL instead:
chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml
Then, search for browser.ml.enable and double tap it to toggle it off. On the desktop version, the setting is browser.ml.chat.enabled
Thanks a lot for that URL!
I was referring to the general performance of Firefox android regardless of ML integration.
That said, I use Firefox beta on android so I can use all extensions and about:config is available on the beta builds.
load more comments
(1 replies)
This was a reason why I fully moved to waterfox an Zen
view more: next ›