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A key part of why Mozilla succeeded in somewhat resurrecting the web was that it was good, when compared with Internet Explorer. Firefox is slow (especially on

A key part of why Mozilla succeeded in somewhat resurrecting the web was that it was good, when compared with Internet Explorer. Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. The Firefox UI is more complex and not any more powerful; the excuse used to be that they supported more deeply-integrated extensions, but that's mostly dead now. With regard to "dominance over the web", Firefox is riddled with compliance bugs and misbehaviours, many of which go unaddressed for years, these bugs and incompatibilities have forced me to disable features for Firefox users, or find workarounds, over the years. > Also, where is Brave’s innovation? I see none. Instead, I support Mozilla. Where is Mozilla's innovation today? They maintain a broken, slightly-differentiated Netscape clone, and have an unmistakable chip on their shoulder; but there is no substantial benefit to using Mozilla, and there are some serious drawbacks that Mozilla could avoid if they cared. Brave is at least doing something interesting, with an innovative compensation model which has some hope to reduce reliance on surveillance-driven advertising, and they put a Tor client in the default distribution (even if the browser does not implement some of the anti-fingerprinting measures that Tor Browser does). On top of this all, Brave is differentiating on what matters, rather than taking up the pointless task of maintaining similarly-licensed, lower quality implementations of various web standards. If Google gains power over the web with Chromium, in some vague way, then Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork Chromium). Rust is a spectacular thing they've done, but at the end of the day, any argument for using Mozilla should begin with a long list of positive characteristics of the product, and not with vague platitudes about implementation diversity.

thenewnewguy 7y ago
> Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on linux. Both feel equally fast to me. My only real complaint about FF on linux is a lack of hardware video decoding. > Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork Chromium) You can't be serious.
- ReverseCold 7y ago
  > People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on linux. It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. The other major win for Chrome is battery life on laptops. I know it's getting better for FF, but it's still not that close. Safari actually does the best on (nearly) any hardware you can convince MacOS to run on, but they broke extensions recently so it's not viable for me anymore. (I still run FF Nightly as my main browser.)
  - kick 7y ago
    It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. The other major win for Chrome is battery life on laptops. I know it's getting better for FF, but it's still not that close. Is this because you're on Mac OS? Firefox has always had Mac as a third-class OS, especially since they started pushing Metal. I can't remember the last time I had Firefox crash, grind to a halt, or even stutter.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. Perhaps they’re just “optimized” for Chrome?
- microcolonel 7y ago
  > People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on Linux. It's a bit hard to compare, and part of the difference in perception is Firefox's weird animation function for smooth scrolling on stepped scroll wheels (it takes longer, and feels unnatural). Firefox regularly hitches on webpages that never miss a frame in Chromium-based browsers for me (and several other people share this experience, anecdotally, as you mention). When looking at most decent benchmarks, there is a clear quantitative difference, if anecdotes are not your jam. I've never gathered metrics or frame timings for both Firefox and Chromium, but I don't see why it would disagree with my experience. In my experience, slightly interesting CSS on documents, or scripts and layout on SPA-style applications, can cause Firefox to miss hundreds of milliseconds of frames. I've become accustomed to 144/165Hz with few or no missed frames, while I noticed Firefox missing frames even when I was on 60Hz monitors. > My only real complaint about FF on linux is a lack of hardware video decoding. Generally speaking, this is of little to no importance on a laptop or desktop. But yeah, that is a bit of a bummer. > You can't be serious. I'm fully serious; you won't convince me they wouldn't come out ahead, without some hard reason.
liamcardenas 7y ago
This is a thought-provoking response and does make me reconsider my position. It doesn’t please me, but perhaps we do need to encourage market pressures that force Mozilla to create a better product. However, as I said in my above post, my objection to Brave largely stems from how it is marketed and promoted. I’ll re-iterate: People try to sell it as the “pro-decentralization” and “good web citizen” browser. Brave isn’t doing anything compelling enough to earn that status in my eyes. I am not going to argue about how much Mozilla innovates. Rust is pretty cool — I agree they could do more. The people pushing me to use Brave seem to want me to do so as an act of charity. I will re-evaluate my choice to charitably direct my web traffic through Firefox, but, to be honest, my first choice otherwise still would not be Brave.
lawfulcactus 7y ago
> they put a Tor client in the default distribution Something that Mozilla is also doing[0], albeit with significantly more attention paid to the privacy-minded patches to Firefox made by the Tor Project. The end goal is to mainline these patches, such that Firefox gains the same privacy properties as the former-- they're working with the Tor team on this. If I wanted to use Firefox to access the Tor network, I'd just start a client locally and have the browser proxy traffic through it. Tor Browser's anti-fingerprinting measures are half the reason it's useful. It's half-baked "features" like this that turn me away from Brave; there's this feeling that it's marketed towards the sort of well-meaning crowd that won't know the difference between "Tor tabs" and Tor Browser. This isn't a bad thing; rather, it's the misleading material surrounding such features published by the developers. Just look at the relevant page[1]; there's just a vague mention near the end of the article about using Tor Browser if you need "leakproof privacy", and the rest of the page carefully tiptoes around the fact that this really only prevents websites from knowing your IP address (and likely not even that, considering the similar fingerprinting properties of normal tabs and Tor tabs). Excerpt: "Also, web destinations can no longer easily identify or track a user arriving via Brave’s Private Tabs with Tor by means of their IP address." To non-technical users, this reads more like "Brave (with Tor tabs) prevents websites from knowing who you are". It's lawyer-y, if that makes sense-- the whole thing just rubs me the wrong way. This is, of course, assuming said users even read the linked post; most will probably see 'Tor' and draw the relevant conclusions. > even if the browser does not implement some of the anti-fingerprinting measures that Tor browser does It's laughably easy to fingerprint Brave browser users, even compared to Firefox and its rather basic fingerprinting protections (at the moment). Though this is likely because Brave has a far smaller userbase. [0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tor_Uplift https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tor_Uplift [1] https://brave.com/tor-tabs-beta/ https://brave.com/tor-tabs-beta/
bayindirh 7y ago
> Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. No. Just, no. I want to share something that I experienced very recently. I use Firefox and Chrome (just for using Taskboard) at work. I also use Firefox at home. Both systems are Debian. The perceived browser speed was Chrome (Work) > Firefox (Work) > Firefox (Home). I always thought it was about DNS resolution, so I started running DNSMasq at home on an OrangePi Zero but, it didn't make much difference. Two days ago, my home ADSL modem suddenly died. I replaced it with a more modern version and everything about speed has changed. Now The speed of Firefox at home is equal with the speed of Chrome at Work, Firefox at work is slightly behind. It can be said that Firefox is much more sensitive to network parameters like DNS response times, but its rendering engine and other capabilities are not behind Chrome.
- doublement 7y ago
  I wish it wasn't true, but Firefox seems heavier on low-spec Linux laptops. A while back I was writing code on the road on a $200 HP Stream running Ubuntu, and I needed multiple tabs open with audio to debug. Switching from Firefox to Chrome was a noticeable improvement, where the UI remained responsive in all the tabs.
  - bayindirh 7y ago
    I’ll have access to an old laptop (~12 years old) after the new year. I’ll test this. :) P.S.: I’m genuinely curious, no other feelings.
    - doublement 7y ago
      Give it a try! Specifically I was using WebRTC audio in both Firefox and Chrome, with 2-3 tabs open, and Visual Studio Code open separately.
      - bayindirh 7y ago
        Can you drop me an e-mail (see my profile), so we can try this the proper way?
gilbertmpanga12 7y ago
When did you last use Firefox? I do mobile app development and observed when I use brave, it spins a bunch of tiny processes plus it's memory intensive as chrome. With Firefox I can open up multiple tabs + run Android studio without slowing down my machine
fractalf 7y ago
There's so much BS in this comment it's sad. The other answers covers most, I just had a strong urge to say that

thenewnewguy 7y ago

> Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on linux. Both feel equally fast to me. My only real complaint about FF on linux is a lack of hardware video decoding. > Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork Chromium) You can't be serious.

ReverseCold 7y ago
> People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on linux. It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. The other major win for Chrome is battery life on laptops. I know it's getting better for FF, but it's still not that close. Safari actually does the best on (nearly) any hardware you can convince MacOS to run on, but they broke extensions recently so it's not viable for me anymore. (I still run FF Nightly as my main browser.)
- kick 7y ago
  It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. The other major win for Chrome is battery life on laptops. I know it's getting better for FF, but it's still not that close. Is this because you're on Mac OS? Firefox has always had Mac as a third-class OS, especially since they started pushing Metal. I can't remember the last time I had Firefox crash, grind to a halt, or even stutter.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > It's pretty apparent in "web apps" - plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. Perhaps they’re just “optimized” for Chrome?
microcolonel 7y ago
> People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on Linux. It's a bit hard to compare, and part of the difference in perception is Firefox's weird animation function for smooth scrolling on stepped scroll wheels (it takes longer, and feels unnatural). Firefox regularly hitches on webpages that never miss a frame in Chromium-based browsers for me (and several other people share this experience, anecdotally, as you mention). When looking at most decent benchmarks, there is a clear quantitative difference, if anecdotes are not your jam. I've never gathered metrics or frame timings for both Firefox and Chromium, but I don't see why it would disagree with my experience. In my experience, slightly interesting CSS on documents, or scripts and layout on SPA-style applications, can cause Firefox to miss hundreds of milliseconds of frames. I've become accustomed to 144/165Hz with few or no missed frames, while I noticed Firefox missing frames even when I was on 60Hz monitors. > My only real complaint about FF on linux is a lack of hardware video decoding. Generally speaking, this is of little to no importance on a laptop or desktop. But yeah, that is a bit of a bummer. > You can't be serious. I'm fully serious; you won't convince me they wouldn't come out ahead, without some hard reason.

liamcardenas 7y ago

This is a thought-provoking response and does make me reconsider my position. It doesn’t please me, but perhaps we do need to encourage market pressures that force Mozilla to create a better product. However, as I said in my above post, my objection to Brave largely stems from how it is marketed and promoted. I’ll re-iterate: People try to sell it as the “pro-decentralization” and “good web citizen” browser. Brave isn’t doing anything compelling enough to earn that status in my eyes. I am not going to argue about how much Mozilla innovates. Rust is pretty cool — I agree they could do more. The people pushing me to use Brave seem to want me to do so as an act of charity. I will re-evaluate my choice to charitably direct my web traffic through Firefox, but, to be honest, my first choice otherwise still would not be Brave.

lawfulcactus 7y ago

> they put a Tor client in the default distribution Something that Mozilla is also doing[0], albeit with significantly more attention paid to the privacy-minded patches to Firefox made by the Tor Project. The end goal is to mainline these patches, such that Firefox gains the same privacy properties as the former-- they're working with the Tor team on this. If I wanted to use Firefox to access the Tor network, I'd just start a client locally and have the browser proxy traffic through it. Tor Browser's anti-fingerprinting measures are half the reason it's useful. It's half-baked "features" like this that turn me away from Brave; there's this feeling that it's marketed towards the sort of well-meaning crowd that won't know the difference between "Tor tabs" and Tor Browser. This isn't a bad thing; rather, it's the misleading material surrounding such features published by the developers. Just look at the relevant page[1]; there's just a vague mention near the end of the article about using Tor Browser if you need "leakproof privacy", and the rest of the page carefully tiptoes around the fact that this really only prevents websites from knowing your IP address (and likely not even that, considering the similar fingerprinting properties of normal tabs and Tor tabs). Excerpt: "Also, web destinations can no longer easily identify or track a user arriving via Brave’s Private Tabs with Tor by means of their IP address." To non-technical users, this reads more like "Brave (with Tor tabs) prevents websites from knowing who you are". It's lawyer-y, if that makes sense-- the whole thing just rubs me the wrong way. This is, of course, assuming said users even read the linked post; most will probably see 'Tor' and draw the relevant conclusions. > even if the browser does not implement some of the anti-fingerprinting measures that Tor browser does It's laughably easy to fingerprint Brave browser users, even compared to Firefox and its rather basic fingerprinting protections (at the moment). Though this is likely because Brave has a far smaller userbase. [0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tor_Uplift https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tor_Uplift [1] https://brave.com/tor-tabs-beta/ https://brave.com/tor-tabs-beta/

bayindirh 7y ago

> Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium. No. Just, no. I want to share something that I experienced very recently. I use Firefox and Chrome (just for using Taskboard) at work. I also use Firefox at home. Both systems are Debian. The perceived browser speed was Chrome (Work) > Firefox (Work) > Firefox (Home). I always thought it was about DNS resolution, so I started running DNSMasq at home on an OrangePi Zero but, it didn't make much difference. Two days ago, my home ADSL modem suddenly died. I replaced it with a more modern version and everything about speed has changed. Now The speed of Firefox at home is equal with the speed of Chrome at Work, Firefox at work is slightly behind. It can be said that Firefox is much more sensitive to network parameters like DNS response times, but its rendering engine and other capabilities are not behind Chrome.

doublement 7y ago
I wish it wasn't true, but Firefox seems heavier on low-spec Linux laptops. A while back I was writing code on the road on a $200 HP Stream running Ubuntu, and I needed multiple tabs open with audio to debug. Switching from Firefox to Chrome was a noticeable improvement, where the UI remained responsive in all the tabs.
- bayindirh 7y ago
  I’ll have access to an old laptop (~12 years old) after the new year. I’ll test this. :) P.S.: I’m genuinely curious, no other feelings.
  - doublement 7y ago
    Give it a try! Specifically I was using WebRTC audio in both Firefox and Chrome, with 2-3 tabs open, and Visual Studio Code open separately.
    - bayindirh 7y ago
      Can you drop me an e-mail (see my profile), so we can try this the proper way?

gilbertmpanga12 7y ago

When did you last use Firefox? I do mobile app development and observed when I use brave, it spins a bunch of tiny processes plus it's memory intensive as chrome. With Firefox I can open up multiple tabs + run Android studio without slowing down my machine

fractalf 7y ago

There's so much BS in this comment it's sad. The other answers covers most, I just had a strong urge to say that