Zen as main driver because of its features that are on par with Chromium-based Vivaldi browser, and LibreWolf on “older” machines or systems that require stability/consistency. Both are awesome to me. On Android plain Firefox remains pleasant to use, but open to suggestions.
Firefox with Arkenfox. I’m not going to help the Chromium monopoly. The changes suck, but oh the hell well.
Firefox. Google removed a valuable addon from their store without justifiable reason and kept it removed because there’s not sufficient backlash.
The addon is AdNauseam. It’s an improvement on uBlock Origin that clicks adds in addition to hiding them.
Myself i run “Firedragon” which is a fork of floorp. As for why its mostly because it came with the distro i run (garuda linux) and it works nicely so i didnt really feel i had to swap it.
Firefox. Read the new statements on their website and the Full diff of the pull request. Not concerned at all.
Edit: pumped for ladybird, but its gonna be a few years until that is finished
Mostly fennec (firefox) on android but there are concerning news every half year about firefox. No idea how long I can withstand.
Vanadium is my alternative but it has no (good) browser tab overview (list instead of huge squares). And bottom navigation is sub par as well. Brave would be better in that regard but vanadium is rock solid.
As soon as firefox drops ublock, I’m out. For me, that day is still far away, but I guess it’s inevitable. You can’t trust firefox not chaning their path anymore. :'( .
I’m a Firefox user and I’m not really that bothered about this tos changes. If they do mess things up I’ll probably just switch to some fork that doesn’t do the fuckery.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Mint packages Firefox with it (whatever “it” is) disabled, since they build Thunderbird without telemetry.
Practical response.
I use Firefox. I don’t like the changes but I don’t want to use any downstream browsers and I don’t think any of the not-downstream alternatives do better.
They are better in most of the case, Firefox only is not that good…
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t really see how they can be better beyond philosophical reasons.
I guess bringing back stuff like the proper dropdown menu we had in the 2000s would be an example, but I don’t expect most of them to do something like that.
I expect most of them to have some kind of gimmick that isn’t relevant to how I use a web browser.
Privacy, simply better, better anti-fingerprinting. Sure you can do it with stock Firefox but it’s just simpler to have a pre-hardened browser
I just don’t care for downstream projects on browsers, with software so critical I want to get the updates in as fast as possible. I know some of those mentioned in OP had issues with that in the past. And not much reason to anyway for me to switch, Firefox works perfectly fine for me, so there’s not much added benefit.
I share your general reasoning (about staying with Firefox). Except this:
Firefox works perfectly fine for me, so there’s not much added benefit
The added benefit of going with one of the downstream forks is that you can be sure they’re not gonna pull some new monetization trick next month. That does count for something.
BUT, again, I share your concerns about security, that’s why I’ll likely stay with Firefox till the end.
The added benefit of going with one of the downstream forks is that you can be sure they’re not gonna pull some new monetization trick next month. That does count for something.
It doesn’t count for much, if they do that I can just switch then.
Yes, that’s my thinking. For now it’s acceptable.
Let’s hope it doesn’t get much worse than this. The direction is pretty alarming.
Understand your point of view but in fact the 2 problems you mentioned are mainly not problems :
1 - Updates? The main downstream browsers received updates the same time as Firefox the same day and sometime the same hour
2 - Benefits? The benefits are mainly under the hood, removing Mozilla telemetry and annoying features (account, pocket…) AND the biggest advantages are the gain in term of privacy due the increase of anti fingerprinting methods
But who’s making these “updates”? Who’s doing the actual work of keeping the software secure? Mozilla is.
If everybody moves to a free-riding fork, Mozilla goes to 0% and there will be no browser let alone updates.
You’re right but first don’t worry the biggest part of people use stock Firefox and secondly Firefox stock is just not as private as a fork
The biggest part of people use Chrome-based browsers.
Also… the point is that it’s thanks to those people who use stock Firefox that the codebase stays maintained. So admitting that having those people is a good thing is kind of against the idea of encouraging people to move away from stock Firefox.
Even when using forks of Firefox you are contributing to the Mozilla project and can support it as well Using librewolf is better than using chrome in term of support for the main devs Mozilla
How is a hobbyist fork of Firefox selling your data and slurping up whatever they want from the browser? People use forks because the company’s telemetry and data collection are often removed from the fork.
That’s what I said
Updates? The main downstream browsers received updates the same time as Firefox the same day and sometime the same hour
I’m not sure if something has changed, but due to changes they’ve made, at least before they couldn’t ship out the updates until they made it so that the updates actually affect their changed codebase. Which understandably causes delays. So there’d always be this delay with something being fixed on Firefox and then being fixed on the downstream projects.
Surely there will be some delay but not that much, for most updates the fixes are transplanted directly to the downstream project making the patches coming very fast, almost as fast as the original project
I’ve just soured on them from when there has been issues. Some security patches took a while because of the changed codebase. Good if that doesn’t happen anymore though.
Should retry it and make your own decision
librewolf for a while now. can reccomend 👍🏿
Mullvad browser, simply I used to used hardened Firefox but a pre-hardened one is so much more efficient
While I’m not sure dropping Firefox is necessary at this juncture, I’ve had a good experience using LibreFox. Hearing a lot about Zen, though.
Check out Mozilla’s clarification: https://www.ghacks.net/2025/02/27/mozillas-new-terms-of-use-causes-confusion-among-firefox-users/
I think this diff makes it pretty clear its time to run, not walk: https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/114078708183574404
Zen for regular activities (I pin all important services), Firefox for browsing for something else.
GNU IceCat is also amazing as concept, but generally unusable since it ends up blocking too much and manually allowing everything is a hassle. But still, the pages that work are clean, and I love that by default the browser doesn’t do anything without your permission - it doesn’t even connect to update and telemetry services, it has 0 connections on startup, unlike almost anything (qutebrowser does the same, but, unless you are a strong Vim fanboy, you won’t like the experience).
Firefox. Equally concerned as well.
Looking into Librewolf and Waterfox now!
Long time Firefox user. Installed Librewolf today and so far so good. I used Firefox sync to get all my settings, bookmarks, open tabs, etc. back. At some point I will probably find an alternative yo Firefox sync but it’ll do for the time being.
OK! You’ve had 1 hour to check them out. :D What’s the difference between the two? They’re both Firefox forks, right?
I found a decent answer here https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/18g8tez/what_am_i_gaining_if_i_switch_from_librewolf_to/
That mod sums up a lot that I found. I don’t know the answer because they both have odd downsides.
Yes they’re both forks!
Didn’t Waterfox get bought out by an ad company?
Recent news about Firefox finally got me to go with LibreWolf.
I love Librewolf for PC and Mull for Android.
Mull development has been abandoned. You might want to switch to IronFox, the community’s fork to continue its legacy.
I use Mullvad Browser. It’s maintained in coordination with the Tor Project, and is essentially the Tor Browser with Tor itself stripped out. Same browser fingerprinting protections, however, among other things.
This is my lead contender now that Firefox is shitting the bed. Any downsides?
Mull browser is deprecated, Ironfox is the community fork