The officially official Devuan Forum!

Andre4freedom

Member

Registered: 2017-11-15

Posts: 245  

AI in Firefox or Waterfox

I just fell on a interesting topic:
Is Mozilla doing enough to avoid AI if not desired?
See the following article:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/18/ … _waterfox/

I decided to test it for a while. What's your take?

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,623  

Re: AI in Firefox or Waterfox

The latest FireFox/ddg update includes options to search with AI. I made that option "disappear" with uBlockOrigin so I wouldn't accidentally click it. Doesn't mean that they won't try to run it without permission. Maybe there is an about:config option to disable it?

---

Get answers - Help Devuan - Report a bug - Search packages

steve_v

Member

Registered: 2018-01-11

Posts: 558  

Re: AI in Firefox or Waterfox

about:config option to disable it?

For ML in firefox itself, about:config -> browser.ml.enable
What your search engine of choice does is another matter, having nothing at all to do with the browser, because:

FireFox/ddg

Are two separate entities, obviously.

Also, direct comment from firefox dev WRT disabling ML features in future here. Apparently they actually listened for once when we all said "please give us a simple toggle not buried in about:config."

---

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. Four times is Official GNOME Policy.

RedGreen925

Member

Registered: 2024-12-07

Posts: 239  

Re: AI in Firefox or Waterfox

I decided to test it for a while. What's your take?

I went with the Waterfox after going on twenty-eight years of use, since the fork from Netscape that later become Firefox, them idiots at Mozilla finally got me to give it up with this latest bunch of BS they pulled. It has been building for years now with all the trash changes they have made but that announcement was the straw that broke the camels back. The Waterfox works great everything just runs like it did except my fonts look much better for some reason, using the same ones too.

Apparently they actually listened for once when we all said "please give us a simple toggle not buried in about:config."

If they had listened they would have heard all the complaints when the first put that garbage into the browser and did bury it in about:config. All that is now is damage control now they have been seriously called out on their scummy behaviour towards us.

HardSun

Member

Registered: 2025-07-29

Posts: 62  

Re: AI in Firefox or Waterfox

As long as there is an AI kill switch being implemented in firefox for the AI, ill keep using firefox.
I already have AI disabled, atleast i think i have with below user.js settings.

user_pref("browser.ml.enable", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.chat.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled", false);
user_pref("browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled", false);

Camtaf

Member

Registered: 2019-11-19

Posts: 512  

Re: AI in Firefox or Waterfox

Just run into problems with an updated FF146, (RaspiOS, not Devuan), taking forever to do anything at all on that machine...... old FF used to work well.

Maybe it is time to transfer allegiance to another web browser.... one that doesn't mess around, & just lets me surf the net, like it should do.

Andre4freedom

Member

Registered: 2017-11-15

Posts: 245  

Re: AI in Firefox or Waterfox

@all
Thank you for your ideas!
Your answers are helpful and I test FF again with your recommendations, in parallel with testing waterfox.
Have a nice weekend!

LU344928

Member

Registered: 2020-02-13

Posts: 76  

Re: AI in Firefox or Waterfox

Would Waterfox be preferable in this regard to Librewolf?

LibreWolf is one of the best browsers for people who don’t like generative AI.

    Here is the statement posted on Mastodon:

        As there seems to have been recent confusion about this, just a quick “official” toot to then pin: we haven’t and won’t support “generative AI” related stuff in LibreWolf. If you see some features like that (like Perplexity search recently, or the link preview feature now) it is solely because it “slipped through”. As soon as we become aware of something like this / it gets reported to us, we will remove/disable it ASAP.

https://beehaw.org/post/23776899

---

You can't be a real country unless you have your own beer. It helps to have an airline too but at the very least you need a beer.

Frank Zappa

stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn

Member

Registered: 2023-11-27

Posts: 463  

Re: AI in Firefox or Waterfox

currently using librewolf with noscript, privacybadger, and ublockorigin extensions along with a custom hosts file that currently blocks around 25K of the most obnoxious( https://filterlists.com/ is a deep dive but nobody said it would be easy)

also enjoy attempting to visit websites using lynx, links2, dillo, netsurf, etc.
(and using curl _dash_capital_eye_ and wget _dash_dash_spider_ for individual elements)

***edited to add note regarding dillo, please visit https://dillo-browser.github.io/dillo.org.html

still fondly advocate:

https://vsre.info/

https://useplaintext.email/

https://anybrowser.org/campaign/

Last edited by stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn (2025-12-24 09:58:41)

---

Be Excellent to each other and Party On!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rph_1DODXDU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Ted%27s_Excellent_Adventure
Do unto others as you would have them do instantaneously back to you!

tux_99

Member

Registered: 2025-06-17

Posts: 93  

Re: AI in Firefox or Waterfox

Ladybird looks very promising so far  and I hope I will be able to use it instead of Firefox in the future.