5 ms·

Skimping on security and removing the thing that made Firefox at least as fast as the competition... What options do we have now then? Because I'm surely not

Skimping on security and removing the thing that made Firefox at least as fast as the competition... What options do we have now then? Because I'm surely not going to skimp on either of those things.

mtgx 6y ago
Brave, run by - wait for it - Mozilla's old CEO, is the best alternative right now. It's a shame this is happening at Mozilla. I was also quite shocked by their recent article to "safely return to shared memory between tabs", which I immediately thought was a bad idea. Lo and behold, a mere week after that update, I found that Firefox was eating up my entire memory and making the PC perform poorly. Shared memory is what made the old Firefox hang so much - I can't believe they thought it was a good idea. I've always believed Chrome's per process tab idea was brilliant, even if it uses a little more memory on average. I still prefer the security benefits and stability of that architecture over Firefox randomly hanging and peaking in memory use due to memory leaks even if it can use slightly less memory on average.
- msla 6y ago
  Brave has done more than enough shady things to disqualify itself. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23746117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23746117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    2 of those are simply bugs and the 3rd one was later fixed as well: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/10129 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/10129
lmm 6y ago
The browser that was built from scratch by open-source volunteers, before the distraction of Netscape releasing their code: Konqueror.
- majewsky 6y ago
  Konqueror is at this point just one of many WebKit browsers. Last time I checked (2011 when having a chat with one of the devs) they had two devs working on it in their sparetime, which is clearly not enough for a project of that scale. Some time after that, Konqueror switched from KHTML to WebKit as its default rendering engine, and at this point, I don't think KHTML is around anymore (or if it is, it's only around in kdelibs to satisfy API compatibility requirements).
  - lmm 6y ago
    Konqueror never had more than about five developers at a time, and yet managed to build a better browser than anyone else - by keeping the codebase clean and well structured, and by being able to welcome outside contributions in a way that Mozilla never managed. WebKit is KHTML, and since (as you say) it's the upstream rendering engine for many browsers, it makes sense for it to live in a "neutral" place; it's still an open-source project, and of course at this point it's had many contributions from outside KDE - which is how things are supposed to work. If you prefer another WebKit-based browser then by all means use it - I've yet to find any that match Konqueror though. Just things like the integrated shortcuts from the context menu are better than anything else offers.
KORraN 6y ago
I'm considering giving Vivaldi (created by ex-Opera founder and CEO) a shot. Yes, it's another Chromium-based browser and it's not open source, but neither was Opera back when I used it (version 9 & 10).
- throwdbaaway 6y ago
  While Vivaldi is not open source, they do provide the source code in tarballs: https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/ https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/
  - KORraN 6y ago
    As far as I understand, they only provide the code which the they are required to (e.g. by Chromium's license). Also: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/

Skimping on security and removing the thing that made Firefox at least as fast as the competition... What options do we have now then? Because I'm surely not going to skimp on either of those things.

mtgx 6y ago

Brave, run by - wait for it - Mozilla's old CEO, is the best alternative right now. It's a shame this is happening at Mozilla. I was also quite shocked by their recent article to "safely return to shared memory between tabs", which I immediately thought was a bad idea. Lo and behold, a mere week after that update, I found that Firefox was eating up my entire memory and making the PC perform poorly. Shared memory is what made the old Firefox hang so much - I can't believe they thought it was a good idea. I've always believed Chrome's per process tab idea was brilliant, even if it uses a little more memory on average. I still prefer the security benefits and stability of that architecture over Firefox randomly hanging and peaking in memory use due to memory leaks even if it can use slightly less memory on average.

msla 6y ago
Brave has done more than enough shady things to disqualify itself. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23746117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23746117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027
- chrisco255 6y ago
  2 of those are simply bugs and the 3rd one was later fixed as well: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/10129 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/10129

lmm 6y ago

The browser that was built from scratch by open-source volunteers, before the distraction of Netscape releasing their code: Konqueror.

majewsky 6y ago
Konqueror is at this point just one of many WebKit browsers. Last time I checked (2011 when having a chat with one of the devs) they had two devs working on it in their sparetime, which is clearly not enough for a project of that scale. Some time after that, Konqueror switched from KHTML to WebKit as its default rendering engine, and at this point, I don't think KHTML is around anymore (or if it is, it's only around in kdelibs to satisfy API compatibility requirements).
- lmm 6y ago
  Konqueror never had more than about five developers at a time, and yet managed to build a better browser than anyone else - by keeping the codebase clean and well structured, and by being able to welcome outside contributions in a way that Mozilla never managed. WebKit is KHTML, and since (as you say) it's the upstream rendering engine for many browsers, it makes sense for it to live in a "neutral" place; it's still an open-source project, and of course at this point it's had many contributions from outside KDE - which is how things are supposed to work. If you prefer another WebKit-based browser then by all means use it - I've yet to find any that match Konqueror though. Just things like the integrated shortcuts from the context menu are better than anything else offers.

KORraN 6y ago

I'm considering giving Vivaldi (created by ex-Opera founder and CEO) a shot. Yes, it's another Chromium-based browser and it's not open source, but neither was Opera back when I used it (version 9 & 10).

throwdbaaway 6y ago
While Vivaldi is not open source, they do provide the source code in tarballs: https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/ https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/
- KORraN 6y ago
  As far as I understand, they only provide the code which the they are required to (e.g. by Chromium's license). Also: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/