8 ms·

Chromium Ungoogled repo [1] made it to the `top30` some days ago. I too have switched back to Firefox with the release of Quantum and have been very pleased. F

Chromium Ungoogled repo [1] made it to the `top30` some days ago. I too have switched back to Firefox with the release of Quantum and have been very pleased. Frankly, I am amazed every day that Ungoogled Chromium, Firefox, & DDG.co are as good as they are. (aka: slightly inferior to Google regarding product polish, but truly "good enough" 98% of the time - without selling my future data down the drain) (edited: to fix typos) - [1]: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

nindalf 8y ago
I rate Firefox pretty highly since Quantum released. It's fast, polished and in my unscientific testing, consumes less resources.
- eightysixfour 8y ago
  Except battery, it is a battery destroyer unfortunately.
  - superkuh 8y ago
    Or fortunately for those of us who use desktop computers. Usually battery performance enhancements decrease actual performance. It's a real shame so much good software is gimped just so people can run it on mobile.
    - JoshTriplett 8y ago
      This hasn't been true for a long time. The same enhancements that conserve battery also tend to ensure that plenty of processing and thermal capacity is available for whatever does want the CPU. (For instance, your top CPU "turbo" speed depends on how many of the other CPU cores are sleeping.)
  - jen729w 8y ago
    One would think that would be as a direct result of consuming more resources, not less. What is it doing to drain your power, do you know? I really want to switch from Chrome -> Firefox for dev work but my MBP’s battery already lasts nowhere near “10 hours”...
    - kiaulen 8y ago
      Well, if you're looking for battery life, both safari and edge have excellent battery life by virtue of not doing anything useful. And if you're looking to do dev work, that usually means at minimum an editor, a server, and a browser, which seems like too much to run unplugged.
      - Retr0spectrum 8y ago
        Unless your editor is actually a webapp itself, I don't see how that's going to tip anything over the edge in terms of practicality... The resources consumed by any web server I can think of are entirely inconsequential.
    - Rebelgecko 8y ago
      Last time I played around with comparing, Chrome and Firefox were comparable in terms of battery drain on my MBP. However they were both significantly worse than Safari, which barely ever turns on the discrete GPU while I'm browsing.
  - kevingadd 8y ago
    There's some potential for the new WebRender stack to improve battery life a lot - part of the reason why Edge is so good at saving battery is that it makes good use of modern GPUs to save power, and Firefox's new graphics stack is another modern one that attempts to avoid wasting CPU/GPU to do old-style rendering of web pages
    - pcwalton 8y ago
      It's really that we should be using the OS compositor more than we are, particularly on macOS. I think I'm probably going to be working on this, or at least finding someone to work on it, soon. WebRender should make this easier, because we should be able to get away with using a smaller subset of the OS composition functionality than other browsers do. Anyway, for now, if you're on macOS, set gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque to true in about:config for a large increase in energy efficiency at the cost of some visual effects.
- Yokohiii 8y ago
  I switched to FF mobile few weeks ago and I am very pleased. FF desktop however turned me away because it felt quite laggy.
  - koolba 8y ago
    Have you tried it after the quantum engine change? It’s insanely faster than before.
  - iforgotpassword 8y ago
    is there some option i'm missing? i'm trying to switch over on tablet, but ff touch detection or 'guessing where they meant to touch' is just horrible. i have to zoom in like crazy to hit the upvote button on hn while on chrome it just works, or i might be trying to click on an article on the front page but end up hitting the comments section. i usually prefer the desktop version of websites since mobile often times looks more awkward on tablet. but with ff i almost have no choice.
  - KevinCarbonara 8y ago
    I'm the same way - I love FF mobile, and I love the Send Tab feature, but I can't stand Quantum so I switched to Waterfox.
- fouc 8y ago
  I tried using Firefox Quantum since Safari 12 closed off most extensions. Firefox Quantum is laggy in comparison, particularly the UI (web page rendering is fine). For example, dragging tabs to other windows is jittery. Launching preferences page is a bit delayed.
  - theNextEpisode 8y ago
    @four try Firefox Developer Edition. There's a current known UI tabs issue in Firefox that's fixed in the next version (which Dev Edition runs on).
  - tachion 8y ago
    I don't understand why people keep saying Safari closed some extensions. It simply disabled them and they're ready to be enabled again in the preferences panel, simple as that.
    - toyg 8y ago
      From what I understand, now you cannot install unsigned extensions. You might have some “grandfathered” if they were already installed, but anything new (on new machines etc) won’t get in. So, effectively, if the developer was unable or unwilling to pay the Apple tax, the extension was killed.
mehrdadn 8y ago
Do you not encounter problems with video codecs when using Chromium?
- Teknoman117 8y ago
  Do you have any sites specifically that were causing you problems? I've not run into any issues myself with flash sites, netflix, amazon, hulu, etc. That being said, I use the gentoo chromium package that builds chromium from source and rips the codecs out of the binary chrome release.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    No, I was asking to figure out if I should switch! When I look up their differences this is what I see, which makes me hesitant, so I'm wondering if it's an actual problem or not.
    - checkyoursudo 8y ago
      I also use Gentoo and the packaged Chromium and have zero issues with YouTube and Amazon videos.
      - mehrdadn 8y ago
        Thanks! But have you had issues with any other videos (or anything else besides lack of Google integration/auto-updates for that matter)?
        _asummers 8y ago
        NFL streaming has been a pain point, but MLB works. Haven't tried NHL or NBA yet.
        mehrdadn 8y ago
        Thank you!
LeoPanthera 8y ago
Available in Homebrew Cask as "eloston-chromium" (Though frankly, if you're using a Mac, Safari should be your browser of choice, if only for privacy reasons.)
- fouc 8y ago
  Safari is my browser of choice. Until they killed off extensions with Safari 12, just a few days ago.
  - strmpnk 8y ago
    I’m not sure what you mean here. I just used safari 12 with extensions installed. Are there new restrictions for extensions?
  - dorian-graph 8y ago
    > Until they killed off extensions with Safari 12, just a few days ago. At best this is a strong exaggeration, and at worse completely wrong.
- clubm8 8y ago
  >(Though frankly, if you're using a Mac, Safari should be your browser of choice, if only for privacy reasons.) What privacy protections does Safari have that Firefox doesn't? (Keeping in mind the vast extension store - I include extensions like NoScript within the umbrella of "Firefox")
  - lou1306 8y ago
    Moreover, does Safari provide something similar to Firefox's tab containers? Blocking Facebook, Amazon et al. from tracking me across the web is a big deal in my book.
    - clubm8 8y ago
      Good point. Safari is not a bad browser, but it's all or nothing - I prefer Firefox since I can find add ons if there's a feature I want that isn't included.
eudora 8y ago
I really want to use Firefox on Android, but I need a couple things: Desperately need the scrolling in Firefox to feel like scrolling in the rest of the apps. And I would very much like easy tab switching by swiping across the title bar thing, and the new tab/new incognito/back button behaviour. Pls Moz pls
- edoceo 8y ago
  And pull down on page to reload
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    God no!
- jsmith99 8y ago
  Chrome style scrolling is default now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17032056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17032056
  - eudora 8y ago
    Holy shit finally. Why didn't they do this straight away? It's extremely bothersome having one app scroll differently to the others
- bad_user 8y ago
  Given that Chrome on Android doesn’t support extensions and thus no ad/privacy blockers, it might as well not exist and Firefox is for me the only game in town due to supporting uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. Scrolling is irrelevant for me.
  - vanderZwan 8y ago
    Surprisingly enough, I've been using Stylus on quite a few sites as well
  - largespoon 8y ago
jakecopp 8y ago
> Bringing back the "Don't" in "Don't be evil" What an introduction to the repo of that readme.
pndy 8y ago
Just read the FAQ and it seems that extension installation in this "spin-off" is pain in the ass; which makes protecting one's browsing experience in terms of privacy and ads even more annoying... I wonder, how much it differs from SRWare Iron or Iridium

nindalf 8y ago

I rate Firefox pretty highly since Quantum released. It's fast, polished and in my unscientific testing, consumes less resources.

eightysixfour 8y ago
Except battery, it is a battery destroyer unfortunately.
- superkuh 8y ago
  Or fortunately for those of us who use desktop computers. Usually battery performance enhancements decrease actual performance. It's a real shame so much good software is gimped just so people can run it on mobile.
  - JoshTriplett 8y ago
    This hasn't been true for a long time. The same enhancements that conserve battery also tend to ensure that plenty of processing and thermal capacity is available for whatever does want the CPU. (For instance, your top CPU "turbo" speed depends on how many of the other CPU cores are sleeping.)
- jen729w 8y ago
  One would think that would be as a direct result of consuming more resources, not less. What is it doing to drain your power, do you know? I really want to switch from Chrome -> Firefox for dev work but my MBP’s battery already lasts nowhere near “10 hours”...
  - kiaulen 8y ago
    Well, if you're looking for battery life, both safari and edge have excellent battery life by virtue of not doing anything useful. And if you're looking to do dev work, that usually means at minimum an editor, a server, and a browser, which seems like too much to run unplugged.
    - Retr0spectrum 8y ago
      Unless your editor is actually a webapp itself, I don't see how that's going to tip anything over the edge in terms of practicality... The resources consumed by any web server I can think of are entirely inconsequential.
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    Last time I played around with comparing, Chrome and Firefox were comparable in terms of battery drain on my MBP. However they were both significantly worse than Safari, which barely ever turns on the discrete GPU while I'm browsing.
- kevingadd 8y ago
  There's some potential for the new WebRender stack to improve battery life a lot - part of the reason why Edge is so good at saving battery is that it makes good use of modern GPUs to save power, and Firefox's new graphics stack is another modern one that attempts to avoid wasting CPU/GPU to do old-style rendering of web pages
  - pcwalton 8y ago
    It's really that we should be using the OS compositor more than we are, particularly on macOS. I think I'm probably going to be working on this, or at least finding someone to work on it, soon. WebRender should make this easier, because we should be able to get away with using a smaller subset of the OS composition functionality than other browsers do. Anyway, for now, if you're on macOS, set gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque to true in about:config for a large increase in energy efficiency at the cost of some visual effects.
Yokohiii 8y ago
I switched to FF mobile few weeks ago and I am very pleased. FF desktop however turned me away because it felt quite laggy.
- koolba 8y ago
  Have you tried it after the quantum engine change? It’s insanely faster than before.
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  is there some option i'm missing? i'm trying to switch over on tablet, but ff touch detection or 'guessing where they meant to touch' is just horrible. i have to zoom in like crazy to hit the upvote button on hn while on chrome it just works, or i might be trying to click on an article on the front page but end up hitting the comments section. i usually prefer the desktop version of websites since mobile often times looks more awkward on tablet. but with ff i almost have no choice.
- KevinCarbonara 8y ago
  I'm the same way - I love FF mobile, and I love the Send Tab feature, but I can't stand Quantum so I switched to Waterfox.
fouc 8y ago
I tried using Firefox Quantum since Safari 12 closed off most extensions. Firefox Quantum is laggy in comparison, particularly the UI (web page rendering is fine). For example, dragging tabs to other windows is jittery. Launching preferences page is a bit delayed.
- theNextEpisode 8y ago
  @four try Firefox Developer Edition. There's a current known UI tabs issue in Firefox that's fixed in the next version (which Dev Edition runs on).
- tachion 8y ago
  I don't understand why people keep saying Safari closed some extensions. It simply disabled them and they're ready to be enabled again in the preferences panel, simple as that.
  - toyg 8y ago
    From what I understand, now you cannot install unsigned extensions. You might have some “grandfathered” if they were already installed, but anything new (on new machines etc) won’t get in. So, effectively, if the developer was unable or unwilling to pay the Apple tax, the extension was killed.

mehrdadn 8y ago

Do you not encounter problems with video codecs when using Chromium?

Teknoman117 8y ago
Do you have any sites specifically that were causing you problems? I've not run into any issues myself with flash sites, netflix, amazon, hulu, etc. That being said, I use the gentoo chromium package that builds chromium from source and rips the codecs out of the binary chrome release.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  No, I was asking to figure out if I should switch! When I look up their differences this is what I see, which makes me hesitant, so I'm wondering if it's an actual problem or not.
  - checkyoursudo 8y ago
    I also use Gentoo and the packaged Chromium and have zero issues with YouTube and Amazon videos.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Thanks! But have you had issues with any other videos (or anything else besides lack of Google integration/auto-updates for that matter)?
      - _asummers 8y ago
        NFL streaming has been a pain point, but MLB works. Haven't tried NHL or NBA yet.
        mehrdadn 8y ago
        Thank you!

LeoPanthera 8y ago

Available in Homebrew Cask as "eloston-chromium" (Though frankly, if you're using a Mac, Safari should be your browser of choice, if only for privacy reasons.)

fouc 8y ago
Safari is my browser of choice. Until they killed off extensions with Safari 12, just a few days ago.
- strmpnk 8y ago
  I’m not sure what you mean here. I just used safari 12 with extensions installed. Are there new restrictions for extensions?
- dorian-graph 8y ago
  > Until they killed off extensions with Safari 12, just a few days ago. At best this is a strong exaggeration, and at worse completely wrong.
clubm8 8y ago
>(Though frankly, if you're using a Mac, Safari should be your browser of choice, if only for privacy reasons.) What privacy protections does Safari have that Firefox doesn't? (Keeping in mind the vast extension store - I include extensions like NoScript within the umbrella of "Firefox")
- lou1306 8y ago
  Moreover, does Safari provide something similar to Firefox's tab containers? Blocking Facebook, Amazon et al. from tracking me across the web is a big deal in my book.
  - clubm8 8y ago
    Good point. Safari is not a bad browser, but it's all or nothing - I prefer Firefox since I can find add ons if there's a feature I want that isn't included.

eudora 8y ago

I really want to use Firefox on Android, but I need a couple things: Desperately need the scrolling in Firefox to feel like scrolling in the rest of the apps. And I would very much like easy tab switching by swiping across the title bar thing, and the new tab/new incognito/back button behaviour. Pls Moz pls

edoceo 8y ago
And pull down on page to reload
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  God no!
jsmith99 8y ago
Chrome style scrolling is default now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17032056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17032056
- eudora 8y ago
  Holy shit finally. Why didn't they do this straight away? It's extremely bothersome having one app scroll differently to the others
bad_user 8y ago
Given that Chrome on Android doesn’t support extensions and thus no ad/privacy blockers, it might as well not exist and Firefox is for me the only game in town due to supporting uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. Scrolling is irrelevant for me.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  Surprisingly enough, I've been using Stylus on quite a few sites as well
- largespoon 8y ago

jakecopp 8y ago

> Bringing back the "Don't" in "Don't be evil" What an introduction to the repo of that readme.

pndy 8y ago

Just read the FAQ and it seems that extension installation in this "spin-off" is pain in the ass; which makes protecting one's browsing experience in terms of privacy and ads even more annoying... I wonder, how much it differs from SRWare Iron or Iridium