Life after Firefox

golinux · 2017-06-04 15:49:47

We all know the time is coming. There is a thread over at Mozillazine - Which Browser for You After Firefox 57? - that I occasionally look at. Last night a mention of Vivaldi caught my eye and I did something I rarely do . . . I installed it! I was prepared for a quick uninstall but was surprised that I actually am liking it. First thing was to get Adblock Plus on there. The syntax is a little different than I'm used to but workable. There is a nice neutral gray theme. Video works ootb and even jitsi! Not too happy with the licensing though. Has anybody else given it a spin?

MiyoLinux · 2017-06-04 16:29:20

Probably been over a year since I tried Vivaldi. I liked it, but there were hardly any plugins available for it at the time. Perhaps I should revisit it?

One of my favorite alternative browsers is Slimjet. Built off Chromium, but it uses less RAM than Chromium and Firefox. One downside is that it has to be reinstalled when new versions are released. It's easily done with .deb packages though.

golinux · 2017-06-04 16:40:55

MiyoLinux wrote:

Probably been over a year since I tried Vivaldi. I liked it, but there were hardly any plugins available for it at the time. Perhaps I should revisit it?

It's using plugins from the Chrome app store. Isn't that the road that FF has taken also?

MiyoLinux wrote:

One of my favorite alternative browsers is Slimjet. Built off Chromium, but it uses less RAM than Chromium and Firefox. One downside is that it has to be reinstalled when new versions are released. It's easily done with .deb packages though.

Hmmm. . . Never heard of that one . . .

MiyoLinux · 2017-06-04 18:02:56

golinugolinux wrote:

MiyoLinux wrote:
One of my favorite alternative browsers is Slimjet. Built off Chromium, but it uses less RAM than Chromium and Firefox. One downside is that it has to be reinstalled when new versions are released. It's easily done with .deb packages though.
Hmmm. . . Never heard of that one . . .

http://www.slimjet.com/en/dlpage.php

yeti · 2017-06-05 09:33:25

MiyoLinux wrote:

http://www.slimjet.com/en/dlpage.php

Where is the source?

FOSSuser · 2017-06-05 10:34:58

It doesn't appear to be free as in beer.....

Freeware License
Slimjet Web Browser is released under the freeware license. It is free both for personal use and commerical use. It is free to be distributed over the internet and/or through offline distribution channels as long as it is kept in its original form without any change. Bundling Slimjet with other software in another installer is strictly prohibited.

Edit: Just installed it to test it out, some sites are definately faster, however, Youtube videos won't/don't play!

Last edited by FOSSuser (2017-06-05 11:41:41)

sgage · 2017-06-05 12:05:39

Actually, it IS free as in beer (gratis) - it's not free as in speech (libre). I.e., it is not open source nor free software. I checked out the website and got a bit of a bad vibe...

FOSSuser wrote:

It doesn't appear to be free as in beer.....
Freeware License
Slimjet Web Browser is released under the freeware license. It is free both for personal use and commerical use. It is free to be distributed over the internet and/or through offline distribution channels as long as it is kept in its original form without any change. Bundling Slimjet with other software in another installer is strictly prohibited.
Edit: Just installed it to test it out, some sites are definately faster, however, Youtube videos won't/don't play!

FOSSuser · 2017-06-05 13:44:48

Ok, maybe wrong definition of free, but you got my meaning.

It isn't FOSS, as such, as it is being controlled by a specific group of people or a business concern.

GNUser · 2017-06-05 14:13:21

Being free software is a must-have for me--I just cannot trust an internet-facing "blackbox" running on my system. Vivaldi is proprietary software, unfortunately.

Here's a short list of free software alternatives available today:

- GNU Icecat
- Waterfox
- Chromium*

* Being made by Google, I'd only use Chromium as an absolute last resort. Remember, your browsing data is Google's main "product".

P.S. In general, when looking for "alternatives to X software", I always go back to this resource: https://prism-break.org/en/
(Unfortunately, in the GNU/Linux section, Web Browsers subsection, Firefox currently is their main recommendation.)

Last edited by GNUser (2017-06-05 14:45:53)

GNUser · 2017-06-05 15:00:06

FOSSuser wrote:

It isn't FOSS, as such, as it is being controlled by a specific group of people or a business concern.

A simpler way to know if it is free software or not is to discover* the software's license, then check this list: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

The intent of the software developer comes to a point in the chosen license. Software under a free license = free software.

* Hopefully the license is prominently listed on the project's website. Not finding the license on the project's website is usually a bad sign, but not always. If you can't find the license on the project's website, check Wikipedia. If Wikipedia has an article about the project, the license will be right in the infobox.

Last edited by GNUser (2017-06-05 16:32:13)

golinux · 2017-06-05 15:17:57

GNUser wrote:

Being free software is a must-have for me--I just cannot trust an internet-facing "blackbox" running on my system. Vivaldi is proprietary software, unfortunately.

Yeah. I just left them a note on their forum . . .

GNUser wrote:

Here's a short list of free software alternatives available today:
- GNU Icecat
- Waterfox
- Chromium

Waterfox is only 64 bit. Will take a look at Icecat. At a minimum the icons might be less fussy . . .

pekman · 2017-06-05 15:59:48

Faced with this, I imagine that the most viable path will be Palemoon, the extensions will continue to work.

Palemoon will once again be the big beneficiary after exotic changes in Firefox.

Palemoon is becoming every day the most viable option for many users.

As for min, dillo remains the default browser.

GNUser · 2017-06-05 18:14:34

@golinux: A disadvantage of GNU Icecat, given your reason for looking at alternatives, is that it tracks Firefox versions.

@pekman: I tried Pale Moon and am quite impressed. Thank you for the recommendation. My mini-review:

- it is free software (MPL 2.0)
- there is a portable, distro-agnostic version for linux (the bzipped tarball available here: http://linux.palemoon.org/download/mainline)
- the bzipped tarball worked out of the box for me, including sound and video
- Pale Moon was forked from Firefox years ago, so no recent or future Firefox shenanigans to worry about
- it is compatible with any Firefox plugin that works in Firefox 24 (see http://www.palemoon.org/faq.shtml)
- note that user profile is saved to "~/.moonchild productions" and not ~/.palemoon as one might expect

I predict Pale Moon will be my default browser when Firefox runs off the cliff.

Last edited by GNUser (2017-06-05 18:46:19)

smoki · 2017-06-05 19:20:44

Probably SeaMonkey or Pale Moon... actually using Pale Moon here for about 3 month or so (mainly because of my own gtk3-free reason, i don't even have that s*it lib installed ), it is nice for me.

Maybe to mention this page, since there are also user contributed deb packages there, sse build, etc...

http://linux.palemoon.org/

Last edited by smoki (2017-06-05 19:26:56)

ruenoak · 2017-06-06 06:59:19

Seamonkey user here yip old school Mozilla. though I wonder, Seamonkey and other Firefox based browsers, how long do they have?
Seamonkey 2.46 is based on Firefox 49 but eventually they are going to get to 57 and then what? I don't think they are big enough to go it alone.

I have Vivaldi installed and it's a good browser, I will try GNU Icecat looks interesting, hmmm maybe I'll just go back to using Lynx!

https://www.seamonkey-project.org/

Somewhat Reticent · 2017-06-06 07:40:39

For those who insist on more than suckless surf there's Midori or QupZilla or maybe just dillo or netsurf?
In the long run, though, maybe best to use a fire-jail'ed browser cloud VM/appimage instance?

Last edited by Somewhat Reticent (2017-06-06 07:46:22)

zephyr · 2017-06-06 09:44:00

Changed my CROWZ distro's from Netsurf to Midori. Great improvement over what I have witnessed in the past few months.

FF has become basically unusable, many issues and just not desirable as a browser. Being crash prone is problem number 1.

Just uploaded CROWZ with Midori changes.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/crowz/

Cheers

zephyr

akropat · 2017-06-06 09:58:45

I have been using Otter Browser, it is trying to recreate good old Opera 12 experience with qt5.
Still beta but works pretty well. There used to be deb packages for linux, but now only AppImage.

yeti · 2017-06-06 10:03:19

zephyr wrote:

Changed my CROWZ distro's from Netsurf to Midori. Great improvement over what I have witnessed in the past few months.

Come on... Midory still wants to start an external App for ftp://.
That's crazy!
I don't even dare to try gopher://.

(This version of) Midori definitely will not be my furure browser.

Last edited by yeti (2017-06-06 10:03:38)

pekman · 2017-06-06 10:24:19

Midori used a very buged Webkitgtk. Midori is a Bomb .

catprints · 2017-06-06 20:34:05

Liking Palemoon. Will use it for now since firefox has been crashing a lot lately and each "improvement" makes it worse imho.
http://linux.palemoon.org/

sgage · 2017-06-06 22:38:40

I, too, am liking Palemoon. Firefox is not crashy for me at all, just s l o w. A release or two ago something seemed to really change. I've tried all the browsers, and Palemoon is probably going to be my daily driver. Actually, it is already.

linijkarz · 2017-06-07 12:18:04

Switched to Palemoon few months ago. They maintain few useful addons I love like Tree Style Tabs.

I wished I didn't have to but Firefox became unusable. I cannot fathom what it will become in 57.
I'm still going to keep Firefox-ESR for banking applications since I'm fairly reluctant to trust a bunch of furries on security, but If anyone wishes to prove me that I'm wrong I will be eager to listen, that would make one less browser to worry about.

And Chromium for all assortments of botnet features like Google Accounts, YouTube and social media.

Oldmoss · 2017-06-08 15:26:09

Just updated Tor Browser [7.0 (based on Mozilla Firefox 52.1.2)].
Which has now gone totally silent and is telling me to install pulseaudio,
Any way around this?

golinux · 2017-06-08 15:48:41

Oldmoss wrote:

Just updated Tor Browser [7.0 (based on Mozilla Firefox 52.1.2)].
Which has now gone totally silent and is telling me to install pulseaudio,
Any way around this?

Search here, on dng and on FDN for 'apulse'.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2017-06-04 15:49:47

Life after Firefox

#2 2017-06-04 16:29:20

Re: Life after Firefox

#3 2017-06-04 16:40:55

Re: Life after Firefox

#4 2017-06-04 18:02:56

Re: Life after Firefox

#5 2017-06-05 09:33:25

Re: Life after Firefox

#6 2017-06-05 10:34:58

Re: Life after Firefox

#7 2017-06-05 12:05:39

Re: Life after Firefox

#8 2017-06-05 13:44:48

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#9 2017-06-05 14:13:21

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#12 2017-06-05 15:59:48

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