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It’s Time to Ditch Chrome
- alphabet9000 5y agoNot mentioned in the article is the 'ungoogled Chromium' project, which can be downloaded here [0] or compiled from here [1] [0] https://chromium.woolyss.com https://chromium.woolyss.com (look for the ungoogled tag) [1] https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
- gruez 5y agoProbably because your only options to get them on mac/windows are to download binaries from some random guy off the internet (who the hell is "Marmaduke" and why should I trust him?), or compiling it yourself (~1 hour build time on a mid-tier desktop CPU).
- ghoward 5y agoI use Ungoogled Chromium on Gentoo, and it takes my machine 5 hours. Well worth it, because I know that what is built is the source I see. Even FireFox is a binary on Gentoo. Just my 2 cents.
- approxim8ion 5y agoI empathize, but for a project as complex as a browser, how valid is this though? It's basically reliant on "the community", of which ungoogled chromium has a vanishingly tiny one, to flag any potential issues in a massive, complicated code base that is likely constantly moving. Sure, compiling yourself eliminates the middle-man who might have compiled the binary for you, but the trust element is still very much there. You're trusting eloston and other project maintainers.
- ghoward 5y agoThere is some trust there, but again, I can and have looked at what he's doing. Plus the fact that someone who has taken Google out of Chromium probably cares about privacy. It's still less trust required than the trust required for Google. It's not for everyone, not even close. But I am glad it's an option for me.
- duskwuff 5y agoAnd that probably means you don't rebuild the browser every time an update is available, because you don't want to load down your machine for five hours right now. And, in turn, that means you're vulnerable for significantly longer than you would be with a more centralized build.
- betwixthewires 5y agoYou're talking to a gentoo user. They compile every chance they get.
- ghoward 5y agoI...can neither confirm nor deny how much I love watching compiles happen...
- ghoward 5y agoI update every night, including Ungoogled-Chromium. I'm not awake for the night, so why not do it then? Gentoo may be rolling release, but they batch the updates every day.
- TheGoddessInari 5y agofirefox-bin is a binary on Gentoo. Regular firefox is not. You're not pushed toward the binary package at all.
- ghoward 5y agoMy mistake, though it seems that it might be default for something, since it is installed on my system. Edit: figured out what it is: firefox-bin can be installed, no fuss, but firefox requires elogind or systemd, neither of which I have on my system.
- nuker 5y agoungoogled Chromium is well known and good. Like uBlock Origin.
- pierrefermat1 5y agoWhy on earth are you complaining about compile time? There always is a necessary trade off between time exhausted and privacy/security
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- betwixthewires 5y agoI compiled it once and it took several hours, like 10. So I left it and came back only to find I was prompted and the prompt timed out and the process ended. Downloaded a binary from somewhere (I don't remember but it was some repo I have used before that I trust) and it needed some specific older version of some C library (I also don't remember) that I had to mess with for compatibility. Ungoogled chromium is a bit messy. I use it, it is my go to browser, but it certainly isn't something you're going to get by downloading installer.exe from "the official website."
- montroser 5y agoFirefox has really turned a corner with version 89. The UI looks great out of the box for the first time in a long while. Native context menus on macOS. Performance is absolutely on par with Chrome. Dev tools are fantastic. Even the Android build is totally competitive now. Never been a better time to make the jump!
- dmd 5y agoLiterally every version for the last 5 years people say "Firefox has really gotten better for real now with version N", and every single time, I try it and immediately find it's still an order of magnitude slower and more power hungry than Chrome.
- easton 5y agoWhat OS and sites are you talking about? Firefox is as fast (if not maybe a smidge faster every once in a while) as Chrome on macOS.
- ashneo76 5y agoSeriously, genuinely don't know what you're talking about. I have like 500 tabs open any given time. It is blazing fast, always
- jonny_eh 5y agoMaybe every new version converts more people?
- mxxx 5y agothat was my experience a couple of times, but the last time i gave it a shot it was permanent, haven't looked back.
- squarefoot 5y agoThat was true several years ago, when Firefox was essentially the only player and optimization seemed a concept unheard of in web browsers. Then came Chrome, which in its earlier versions was really fast compared to Firefox, this paired with pervasive advertising by Google made many users jump ship to Chrome (including myself, for a brief while before caring about privacy became more important than speed). Years passed with Chrome totally deserving the prize for speed, although it was just like today a nightmare privacy-wise, but hey, it comes from the #1 targeted advertising company in the world, what should I expect? Fast forward a few years (iirc it was roughly in 2018) and Mozilla devs show they learned the lessons: the next Firefox release runs on par with Chrome, then following versions get some further improvements in speed too. So yeah, Chrome was indeed faster than Firefox, but that is a thing of the past. Speaking personally here, but I value privacy a lot more than bells and whistles or speed, so Chrome is a no-no here regardless of its performance.
- luke2m 5y agohttps://vivaldi.com/ https://vivaldi.com/ . I know it isn’t fully open source, but it is amazing.
- approxim8ion 5y agoIt's not even partially open source, really, but that is me being pedantic. Really smooth browser, though.
- chocolait 5y agoI have been trying Opera just recently and I like it a lot, especially using workspace feature, feels more productive with less clutter on my screen.
- pjmlp 5y agoWhich is yet another Chrome based browser.
- emptyparadise 5y agoI've been pretty vary of Opera ever since that whole predatory lending thing happened. How is it now?
- unknown_error 5y agoIt's owned by a Chinese company now. Wouldn't trust it.
- rurban 5y agoYes, and on Fedora it's the only way to watch videos. I also use Firefox on Android for some months. For some sites you need to fallback to Chrome though, mostly Google sites.
- mikl 5y agoHigh time indeed. There are plenty of good alternatives: Vivaldi, Brave, Microsoft Edge, Firefox The first three are all Chromium-based, so their rendering is identical to Chrome’s, just without all the Google creepiness.
- ajkdhcb2 5y ago>its market dominance gives it the power to help set new standards across the web Using anything based on Chrome/Chromium defeats much of the point
- emptyparadise 5y agoGetting away from Chromium would be great, but if somebody doesn't want to switch to the only viable non-Chromium browser, getting them away from Google is still an improvement. "At least try Edge, it's literally the same thing as Chrome but with Microsoft instead of Google."
- jakeogh 5y agoI like Surf (webkit) https://surf.suckless.org https://surf.suckless.org
- Proven 5y agoHaven't been using it for 3 years now. I use 3 other browsers, each for a different use case.
- stephc_int13 5y agoEdge and Opera are working pretty well, from my experience.
- clarge1120 5y agoIs there any solid evidence that Microsoft Edge, which is based on Chromium, eliminates Google's built-in tracking?
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