55 ms·

LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

328 points by gizzlon 5y ago

pleb_nz 5y ago
So I might give this a go. Does it integrate with Firefox on mobile?
- ranguna 5y ago
  If you mean Firefox sync, it does not, due to privacy reasons.
ygjb 5y ago
Oh, another browser fork focused on security that patches a browser? Is there an inventory of their security program? Or is it just 'we take up patches from Mozilla?
no_time 5y ago
While all the patches are an improvement, I'm still on the fence about using it instead of vanilla FF. A browser is too security critical to trust in a handful of random people. I wonder how tedious would it be to set up a buildserver and audit all the patches and their updates with each release.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  If you want a secure Gecko browser, consider the Tor Browser. (The Tor part can be disabled and even removed).
  - no_time 5y ago
    The Tor browser sacrifices usability for fingerprint resistance and ironically becomes the most unique browser when used on the clearnet. The only way to achieve meaningful fingerprint resistance is either blending in (practically impossible because all browser users are too unique) or enforcing a good baseline which is also impossible because the current market leader, who is in dire need of an antitrust action, is interested in keeping up the status quo.
    - grogrecipe 5y ago
      Fingerprint resistance isn’t the only thing it has going for it though. And face it every device has a more or less unique fingerprint, many methods available these days. Much more important is security.
Comevius 5y ago
The arkenfox user.js can also do this for Firefox. https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js Contrary to what LibreWolf claims you do have to sacrifice usability though, including WebGL, DRM, Firefox Sync, autofill, history, and the occasional breakage. With arkenfox there is also letterboxing, and even more breakage. If you set uBlock Origin to the recommended medium mode you usually still have to whitelist third-party scripts to make websites work.
- amluto 5y ago
  Regular Firefox’s autofill is so terrible that I sometimes think that a complete removal would be a usability improvement.
  - agluszak 5y ago
    Unfortunately it's true :(
  - lillecarl 5y ago
    I always disable all of this, use bitwarden to autofill creds and CCs only.
  - beebeepka 5y ago
    What's wrong with it?
    - amluto 5y ago
      It seems to generate an effectively unbounded number of copies of my address, some correct and some wrong. The UI to manage it is hidden and very minimal. The obvious options like telling the autofill my address once, correctly, and with no further automatic guesses are absent. My general assumption is that, if I let Firefox autofill my address, it will insert portions of my address into various fields at random, biased somewhat but not very strongly toward getting them in the right place.
      - 5y ago
nicolasmelo12 5y ago
Isn't privacy, security and freedom the hole idea of firefox? As of my understanding, firefox, contrary of chrome and Edge, is really commited on privacy.
- Comevius 5y ago
  Firefox's default settings are optimized for usability and not breaking websites. For privacy and security some of that must be sacrificed. The Tor Browser, LibreWolf and arkenfox user.js all make Firefox less usable, or not usable at all in some cases.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    If I can't use site X using a secure browser, it's site X that's broken, not the browser. There's billions of websites, and only a few browsers. If a site doesn't want me to visit it, I'll just find another site.
- thinkmassive 5y ago
  “Each Firefox download has a unique identifier” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30715163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30715163
  - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
    Can you explain WHY that matters?
    - ranguna 5y ago
      The linked post has a lot of useful info that will answer your question on more that 1 way. Give it a read.
  - everdrive 5y ago
    But does that identifier ever get transmitted anywhere? How is this unique identifier used to track me?
AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
From glancing at the "main features", it looks like this is just Firefox with some preference tweaks and uBO preinstalled. I'm not seeing anything I can't already do in vanilla Firefox either by changing preferences or about:config. Is there anything in the browser code this fork actually changes?
- wafriedemann 5y ago
  Correct, but it also removes all the services Firefox comes bundled with (Pocket, Sync Sign-in, ...). Therefore less visual clutter and no more connections to Mozilla servers. I guess that's about it and I would not want it do anything more than that.
  - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
    Why is the sync a bad thing?
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      It's not a bad thing, it's a service that Firefox comes bundled with.
      - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
        But it was listed as if it was some kind of bloat. Maybe if you only have one computing device, but I find that hard to believe. Why wouldn't you want to sync your bookmarks, extensions and settings between your devices?
        qorrect 5y ago
        | Why wouldn't you want to sync your bookmarks, extensions and settings between your devices? Because you're afraid they'll get hacked.
        5y ago
roshansingh 5y ago
HN is a very tough crowd. First everyone wonders why there is no successful fork of Firefox, then someone makes one and nobody is happy.
- FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago
  Everyone just ignoring PaleMoon? https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/
  - gkbrk 5y ago
    Pale Moon is very hostile to packagers and distros, threatening them with lawsuits within the first few messages of a conversation. I wouldn't want to give a userbase to them if they treat people like that.
  - losingom 5y ago
    The problem with Pale Moon is it's effectively a dead end from a development standpoint. Yes, it gets security fixes from upstream (for which are applicable) but it doesn't receive much in the way of meaningful web compatibility (the elephant in the room being WebComponents, which none of the team have the capability of implementing in the current codebase). It's based on Firefox 52 and refuses to re-base on later versions, partially due to lack of XUL-based extensions and partly due to the introduction of Rust (which does not exist on some platforms which Pale Moon supports - including Solaris/Illumos).
    - jclulow 5y ago
      FWIW, illumos has excellent Rust support.
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  For some reason, Firefox (and its variants) seems to attract an especially tough crowd. People will let Chrome hoover up every last bit of information about you but FF will get relentlessly pilloried for every minor decision.
3np 5y ago
Librewolf is not primarily intended as the definite browser but a sane base template for easily customizable and extendable firefox builds. The librewolf AUR package is a great starting point to make custom builds of firefox; between two json files in the settings repo you can tweak basically any relevant setting, bundle extensions (e.g. use custom forked ones without needing to either sign through Mozilla or disable security), search engines, use your own fxa/syncserver, handlers, branding, etc. All in a git repo and you won't have to redo things next time you reinstall the browser or get a new machine (anyone else ever scratched their heads trying to recall that one about:config setting?) Building and tweaking vanilla firefox yourself is quite an exercise. Librewolf makes it a breeze. The sane privacy-by-default standards is just the cherry on the top. https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/settings https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/settings
- unmole 5y ago
  Does it also work for Android builds?
- roughly 5y ago
  > use your own fxa/syncserver Huh, is this tractable?
  - ancientsofmumu 5y ago
    > Huh, is this tractable? My opinion is "yes" - the source is available and runs as a docker container, the client setup is pretty trivial (on Android you'll need Fennec or another alternate build of Firefox to get at the settings). I'm aware of one user group running a shared instance and it seems to work as advertised. https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver
    - vladvasiliu 5y ago
      I didn't know it was possible to self-host the server, and I always felt somewhat uneasy with syncing this info on someone else's computer. So I click your link, but the repo says > Note that this repository is no longer being maintained. Use this at your own risk, and with the understanding that it is not being maintained, work is being done on its replacement, and that no support or assistance will be offered. So I guess I'll have to wait a little more...
david_draco 5y ago
> What is LibreWolf? > This project is an independent fork of Firefox [...] > LibreWolf is always based on the latest version of Firefox So it is a dependent fork of Firefox
- godshatter 5y ago
  I'm assuming that what they meant by "independent" was "we're not the Firefox dev team".
  - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
    Fork itself alone is enough since it implies they are not part of the original team. When they put "independent fork" which changes the meaning/intents, I would believe that they means they are forking Firefox and the original code will not the same or something. This is my assumption/observation that the owner or the members of this forked project is majority ESL. I would understand why they said independent fork because it made sense to them, however it implies different than "fork" alone.
    - ranguna 5y ago
      > Fork itself alone is enough since it implies they are not part of the original team. Sorry, it does not. Fork just means that it's based on the same code, that's all.
roughly 5y ago
Been using LibreWolf for a week or so since someone mentioned it in a comment elsewhere - UX-wise, it's pretty much identical to Firefox. I'm happy it doesn't have Pocket and the rest of Mozilla's recent product launches arguing for space in my life. My Firefox setup was already pretty solidly "paranoid/misanthropic", so I haven't really noticed any new issues from Libre, but you may. Overall, it's a pretty good implementation of "Firefox By Mozilla-the-Foundation not Mozilla-the-Corporation." I've been using Firefox at least in part because I think a mono- or even duo-polistic internet is a Bad thing, but Mozilla's been indifferent-bordering-on-hostile to me as a user class, so I appreciate LibreWolf as a kind of "Chromium for Firefox."
- gosukiwi 5y ago
  Pocket is one of the worst things that ever happened to Firefox.
  - discardedrefuse 5y ago
    I have my FF homepage set to the newtab page. And as much as I hate the idea of pocket integration, I find myself reading at least 1-2 articles from their recommendations every week.
    - 0ldskool 5y ago
      I also end up reading pocket even though I hate it. I'm pretty sure the articles come from places like hackernews, reddit, and digg since I noticed overlap. Its basically an "aggregate aggregator". Android's Newsfeed that comes up my pixel phone is even more annoying because it seems to track everything I read using the same latest techniques they use for ads. If anyone on my intranet or a private intranet I have connected to likes to read something, they'll recommend that category of news to me. I hate it but I end up reading some of the news anyways since it does interest me...
      - nixonpjoshua1 5y ago
        I always assumed that the recommendations are based on what people save to pocket or even save to pocket, and so the bias towards HN/reddit I figured was due to an overrepresentation of Firefox/pocket users on those sites compared and/or the bias of what pocket users choose to save vs simply a sampling of what gets published.
discardedrefuse 5y ago
This is really nice. Its almost like you peaked at my Firefox setup and decided to package it all together (right down to recommending xBrowserSync and Bitwarden!) I had never heard of dFPI. I've been using an extension, Temporary Containers, to basically do the same thing. I'm definitely going to check this out!
SubiculumCode 5y ago
I'm not against forks of Firefox but because the browser is one of the most important pieces of software in terms of security, I am unwilling to just jump onto a someone's fork without knowing and trusting their foundation/group...that takes time.
- gallerdude 5y ago
  I think is a completely reasonable take, and I'm surprised you're being downvoted for it.
pessimizer 5y ago
I'd be happy if something with the priorities Librewolf advertises here becomes to Firefox as Libreoffice is to Openoffice. Firefox needs forking, and I think that people are shopping for a project manager who they trust more than Mozilla's CEO. I haven't seen one in other Firefox forks and I hope this one does better. Please don't get into online flamewars with people or other projects (including Firefox), try to contribute upstream, accumulate good developers. You can change your priorities, but never change your values. They're foundational, so when they shift, it ripples throughout the product, making the entire thing erratic and undependable. People have enough in their lives to worry about.
ttybird2 5y ago
It seems to spawn a new process per tab, which makes it use a lot of memory.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > It seems to spawn a new process per tab Isn't that how all browsers work these days?
  - ttybird2 5y ago
    Firefox doesn't
    - doubled112 5y ago
      https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/95.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/95.0/releasenotes/ > Site Isolation is now enabled for all Firefox 95 users Doesn't site isolation launch a new process per site? I'm inclined to believe so https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/05/introducing-firefox-new-site-isolation-security-architecture/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/05/introducing-firefox-new-si... > Site Isolation builds upon a new security architecture that extends current protection mechanisms by separating (web) content and loading each site in its own operating system process.
      - cpeterso 5y ago
        Firefox’s site isolation uses one process per tab until you have more than four tabs open for the same site; then Firefox makes the tabs for that site share the four processes. So if you open four youtube.com tabs, you will have four youtube.com processes. If you then open two more youtube.com tabs, you will still have four youtube.com processes, but two of the processes are managing two tabs each and the other two processes are still managing one tab each. This design is to reduce memory usage. I think Chrome uses a separate process for each tab.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Feel kinda bad for Mozilla that their user base continues to dwindle down because of all these forks. But they only have themselves to blame. I'm using Fennec F-droid on my phone because someone at Mozilla decided to castrate extension support in their main branch (and nightly keeps breaking every few weeks so that's not an option).
- andrewshadura 5y ago
  It doesn't much, as barely anyone uses these forks.
  - account42 5y ago
    Barely anyone uses Firefox in the first place.
- ranguna 5y ago
  I installed fennec just now but is seems I'm still limited to a small list of Mozilla curated extensions. Did you have to enable some setting somewhere to install other extensions?
  - noisem4ker 5y ago
    https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-add-on-in-firefox-nightly-for-android-but-it-is-complicated/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-ad...
throwaway19431 5y ago
I was one of the two guys who came up with the original concept for Librefox. I was responsible for including uBO as default, among other things. Great to see that the project was brought back to life as LibreWolf - Mozilla lawyers had threatened us with legal action because the name was too close to their brand. They expected us to drop the "Fox" part of the name. Everytime I see LibreWolf on HN I feel proud that the spirit of Librefox is still alive. The biggest issue with LibreWolf and what's stopping it's further adoption is lack of auto-updates (especially on Windows) and lack of usability - it should work out of the box for everyone. Currently the security settings are too strict in default mode. There should be different levels of pre-configured security levels users can chose in the settings (i.e. "standard", "strict", "very strict"). (I don't use HN for commenting, which is why I created a throwaway account)
- colordrops 5y ago
  Brave has some good ideas that could be adopted. Instead of completely forgoing features like DRM video, make them opt-in instead. The user can choose their level of privacy.
  - fabrice_d 5y ago
    Opt-in DRM? Like in Firefox where you need to enable it for sites like Netflix or Spotify at first use?
  - fotta 5y ago
    DRM is opt-in on Librewolf. It's in the pref pane.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      Oh excellent. I had read that it wad removed from librewolf.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  The browser presents your client as being in the GMT timezone to reduce fingerprinting using timezones, supposedly. Guess what stands out like a sore thumb? Someone with a timezone many hours off from everyone else in their country/state/region. Fucking idiots.
Animats 5y ago
How does this differ from Fennec?
aceazzameen 5y ago
There's a lot of privacy focused forks of Firefox these days. But I'm still looking for a fork of Firefox on Android with a better UX. It's been abysmal these past few years.
- rsolva 5y ago
  I can recommend Fennec. You can activate a developer mode and install any extensions you want to.
  - aceazzameen 5y ago
    Yes, I use Fennec too. It's not lack of extensions that's the problem. It's the user experience of the mobile UI of Firefox in general. It's terrible. Too many actions behind too many taps, long animation durations within the UI, can't move tabs around (except in Nightly), new tab page getting in the way of everything, no tabs on tablets, and more. Firefox 68 is still so much faster and superior in those regards, despite any issues it had.
  - hda2 5y ago
    > You can activate a developer mode and install any extensions you want to. You mean a full feature-complete devtools like what you'd find in the desktop version of firefox?! If so, then it's a life saver. The only other browser that I'm aware of that offers full devtools on android is kiwi, but that browser force-disables ublock origin and other extensions on some sites.
  - ranguna 5y ago
    > You can activate a developer mode and install any extensions you want to I just installed fennec and for the life of me I cannot find these developer tools anywhere.
    - rsolva 5y ago
      It's pretty well hidden and involves quite a few steps. I think you should be able to follow the same steps as in this Firefox Nightly guide: https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-add-on-in-firefox-nightly-for-android-but-it-is-complicated/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-ad...
ModernMech 5y ago
Anyone else reminded of https://amarok.kde.org https://amarok.kde.org?
samizdis 5y ago
I've just downloaded the .dmg for MacOS and installed it, but I can't run it because I get a system message saying that the developer can't be verified. Anyone know how I can fix this?
- messe 5y ago
  Right click it, and select open from the context menu.
  - samizdis 5y ago
    Brill! Thanks for that.
Starmina 5y ago
Wish I could use LibreWolf as a replacement as Firefox, but for now I have one main issue left, some websites don't work correctly. For example, on this site : https://appdb.to/ https://appdb.to/ if you click on any app, it'll always open the same app (I think the 'first' one) instead of the one clicked, you can try on Firefox and it'll work correctly. I actually don't know what cause this issue right now. Thanks to someone here, I found why some links open in a new tab instead of a popup. Just need to set browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction to 2 (like in firefox), instead of 0.
nyanpasu64 5y ago
Check out their FAQ at https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/ https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/ for a more technical look at the changes they made.
throwra620 5y ago
smrtinsert 5y ago
> Delete cookies and website data on close. Why bother ever writing to a file system? Seems like an obvious misstep.
dont__panic 5y ago
On Android, I use Fennec, an open-source Firefox variant that's basically just Firefox without the Mozilla garbage. Does anybody know if there's a similar de-Mozilla'd Firefox for desktop? I currently use Firefox Developer Edition, but I'd love to get away from Mozilla's crappy "experiments" and constant configuration-breaking updates.
- ranguna 5y ago
  Librewolf, I recommend reading the linked article of the OP if you haven't already.
jcadam 5y ago
Brave is my current default browser. This might be worth a try for something non-blink/webkit :)
- slenk 5y ago
  The Brave token just feels weird to me.
throwaway81523 5y ago
I'm sure librewolf's intentions are good, but I think the gemini crowd has it right. If you want privacy, security, and freedom on the web, you not only have to fork the browser, you also have to fork the web.
- ranguna 5y ago
  I'd say doing 1 out of those two steps is better than doing 0.

328 points by gizzlon 5y ago

pleb_nz 5y ago

So I might give this a go. Does it integrate with Firefox on mobile?

ranguna 5y ago
If you mean Firefox sync, it does not, due to privacy reasons.

ygjb 5y ago

Oh, another browser fork focused on security that patches a browser? Is there an inventory of their security program? Or is it just 'we take up patches from Mozilla?

no_time 5y ago

While all the patches are an improvement, I'm still on the fence about using it instead of vanilla FF. A browser is too security critical to trust in a handful of random people. I wonder how tedious would it be to set up a buildserver and audit all the patches and their updates with each release.

webmobdev 5y ago
If you want a secure Gecko browser, consider the Tor Browser. (The Tor part can be disabled and even removed).
- no_time 5y ago
  The Tor browser sacrifices usability for fingerprint resistance and ironically becomes the most unique browser when used on the clearnet. The only way to achieve meaningful fingerprint resistance is either blending in (practically impossible because all browser users are too unique) or enforcing a good baseline which is also impossible because the current market leader, who is in dire need of an antitrust action, is interested in keeping up the status quo.
  - grogrecipe 5y ago
    Fingerprint resistance isn’t the only thing it has going for it though. And face it every device has a more or less unique fingerprint, many methods available these days. Much more important is security.

Comevius 5y ago

The arkenfox user.js can also do this for Firefox. https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js Contrary to what LibreWolf claims you do have to sacrifice usability though, including WebGL, DRM, Firefox Sync, autofill, history, and the occasional breakage. With arkenfox there is also letterboxing, and even more breakage. If you set uBlock Origin to the recommended medium mode you usually still have to whitelist third-party scripts to make websites work.

amluto 5y ago
Regular Firefox’s autofill is so terrible that I sometimes think that a complete removal would be a usability improvement.
- agluszak 5y ago
  Unfortunately it's true :(
- lillecarl 5y ago
  I always disable all of this, use bitwarden to autofill creds and CCs only.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  What's wrong with it?
  - amluto 5y ago
    It seems to generate an effectively unbounded number of copies of my address, some correct and some wrong. The UI to manage it is hidden and very minimal. The obvious options like telling the autofill my address once, correctly, and with no further automatic guesses are absent. My general assumption is that, if I let Firefox autofill my address, it will insert portions of my address into various fields at random, biased somewhat but not very strongly toward getting them in the right place.
    - 5y ago

nicolasmelo12 5y ago

Isn't privacy, security and freedom the hole idea of firefox? As of my understanding, firefox, contrary of chrome and Edge, is really commited on privacy.

Comevius 5y ago
Firefox's default settings are optimized for usability and not breaking websites. For privacy and security some of that must be sacrificed. The Tor Browser, LibreWolf and arkenfox user.js all make Firefox less usable, or not usable at all in some cases.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  If I can't use site X using a secure browser, it's site X that's broken, not the browser. There's billions of websites, and only a few browsers. If a site doesn't want me to visit it, I'll just find another site.
thinkmassive 5y ago
“Each Firefox download has a unique identifier” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30715163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30715163
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  Can you explain WHY that matters?
  - ranguna 5y ago
    The linked post has a lot of useful info that will answer your question on more that 1 way. Give it a read.
- everdrive 5y ago
  But does that identifier ever get transmitted anywhere? How is this unique identifier used to track me?

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

From glancing at the "main features", it looks like this is just Firefox with some preference tweaks and uBO preinstalled. I'm not seeing anything I can't already do in vanilla Firefox either by changing preferences or about:config. Is there anything in the browser code this fork actually changes?

wafriedemann 5y ago
Correct, but it also removes all the services Firefox comes bundled with (Pocket, Sync Sign-in, ...). Therefore less visual clutter and no more connections to Mozilla servers. I guess that's about it and I would not want it do anything more than that.
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  Why is the sync a bad thing?
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    It's not a bad thing, it's a service that Firefox comes bundled with.
    - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
      But it was listed as if it was some kind of bloat. Maybe if you only have one computing device, but I find that hard to believe. Why wouldn't you want to sync your bookmarks, extensions and settings between your devices?
      - qorrect 5y ago
        | Why wouldn't you want to sync your bookmarks, extensions and settings between your devices? Because you're afraid they'll get hacked.
        5y ago

roshansingh 5y ago

HN is a very tough crowd. First everyone wonders why there is no successful fork of Firefox, then someone makes one and nobody is happy.

FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago
Everyone just ignoring PaleMoon? https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/
- gkbrk 5y ago
  Pale Moon is very hostile to packagers and distros, threatening them with lawsuits within the first few messages of a conversation. I wouldn't want to give a userbase to them if they treat people like that.
- losingom 5y ago
  The problem with Pale Moon is it's effectively a dead end from a development standpoint. Yes, it gets security fixes from upstream (for which are applicable) but it doesn't receive much in the way of meaningful web compatibility (the elephant in the room being WebComponents, which none of the team have the capability of implementing in the current codebase). It's based on Firefox 52 and refuses to re-base on later versions, partially due to lack of XUL-based extensions and partly due to the introduction of Rust (which does not exist on some platforms which Pale Moon supports - including Solaris/Illumos).
  - jclulow 5y ago
    FWIW, illumos has excellent Rust support.
d3nj4l 5y ago
For some reason, Firefox (and its variants) seems to attract an especially tough crowd. People will let Chrome hoover up every last bit of information about you but FF will get relentlessly pilloried for every minor decision.

3np 5y ago

Librewolf is not primarily intended as the definite browser but a sane base template for easily customizable and extendable firefox builds. The librewolf AUR package is a great starting point to make custom builds of firefox; between two json files in the settings repo you can tweak basically any relevant setting, bundle extensions (e.g. use custom forked ones without needing to either sign through Mozilla or disable security), search engines, use your own fxa/syncserver, handlers, branding, etc. All in a git repo and you won't have to redo things next time you reinstall the browser or get a new machine (anyone else ever scratched their heads trying to recall that one about:config setting?) Building and tweaking vanilla firefox yourself is quite an exercise. Librewolf makes it a breeze. The sane privacy-by-default standards is just the cherry on the top. https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/settings https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/settings

unmole 5y ago
Does it also work for Android builds?
roughly 5y ago
> use your own fxa/syncserver Huh, is this tractable?
- ancientsofmumu 5y ago
  > Huh, is this tractable? My opinion is "yes" - the source is available and runs as a docker container, the client setup is pretty trivial (on Android you'll need Fennec or another alternate build of Firefox to get at the settings). I'm aware of one user group running a shared instance and it seems to work as advertised. https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver
  - vladvasiliu 5y ago
    I didn't know it was possible to self-host the server, and I always felt somewhat uneasy with syncing this info on someone else's computer. So I click your link, but the repo says > Note that this repository is no longer being maintained. Use this at your own risk, and with the understanding that it is not being maintained, work is being done on its replacement, and that no support or assistance will be offered. So I guess I'll have to wait a little more...

david_draco 5y ago

> What is LibreWolf? > This project is an independent fork of Firefox [...] > LibreWolf is always based on the latest version of Firefox So it is a dependent fork of Firefox

godshatter 5y ago
I'm assuming that what they meant by "independent" was "we're not the Firefox dev team".
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  Fork itself alone is enough since it implies they are not part of the original team. When they put "independent fork" which changes the meaning/intents, I would believe that they means they are forking Firefox and the original code will not the same or something. This is my assumption/observation that the owner or the members of this forked project is majority ESL. I would understand why they said independent fork because it made sense to them, however it implies different than "fork" alone.
  - ranguna 5y ago
    > Fork itself alone is enough since it implies they are not part of the original team. Sorry, it does not. Fork just means that it's based on the same code, that's all.

roughly 5y ago

Been using LibreWolf for a week or so since someone mentioned it in a comment elsewhere - UX-wise, it's pretty much identical to Firefox. I'm happy it doesn't have Pocket and the rest of Mozilla's recent product launches arguing for space in my life. My Firefox setup was already pretty solidly "paranoid/misanthropic", so I haven't really noticed any new issues from Libre, but you may. Overall, it's a pretty good implementation of "Firefox By Mozilla-the-Foundation not Mozilla-the-Corporation." I've been using Firefox at least in part because I think a mono- or even duo-polistic internet is a Bad thing, but Mozilla's been indifferent-bordering-on-hostile to me as a user class, so I appreciate LibreWolf as a kind of "Chromium for Firefox."

gosukiwi 5y ago
Pocket is one of the worst things that ever happened to Firefox.
- discardedrefuse 5y ago
  I have my FF homepage set to the newtab page. And as much as I hate the idea of pocket integration, I find myself reading at least 1-2 articles from their recommendations every week.
  - 0ldskool 5y ago
    I also end up reading pocket even though I hate it. I'm pretty sure the articles come from places like hackernews, reddit, and digg since I noticed overlap. Its basically an "aggregate aggregator". Android's Newsfeed that comes up my pixel phone is even more annoying because it seems to track everything I read using the same latest techniques they use for ads. If anyone on my intranet or a private intranet I have connected to likes to read something, they'll recommend that category of news to me. I hate it but I end up reading some of the news anyways since it does interest me...
    - nixonpjoshua1 5y ago
      I always assumed that the recommendations are based on what people save to pocket or even save to pocket, and so the bias towards HN/reddit I figured was due to an overrepresentation of Firefox/pocket users on those sites compared and/or the bias of what pocket users choose to save vs simply a sampling of what gets published.

discardedrefuse 5y ago

This is really nice. Its almost like you peaked at my Firefox setup and decided to package it all together (right down to recommending xBrowserSync and Bitwarden!) I had never heard of dFPI. I've been using an extension, Temporary Containers, to basically do the same thing. I'm definitely going to check this out!

SubiculumCode 5y ago

I'm not against forks of Firefox but because the browser is one of the most important pieces of software in terms of security, I am unwilling to just jump onto a someone's fork without knowing and trusting their foundation/group...that takes time.

gallerdude 5y ago
I think is a completely reasonable take, and I'm surprised you're being downvoted for it.

pessimizer 5y ago

I'd be happy if something with the priorities Librewolf advertises here becomes to Firefox as Libreoffice is to Openoffice. Firefox needs forking, and I think that people are shopping for a project manager who they trust more than Mozilla's CEO. I haven't seen one in other Firefox forks and I hope this one does better. Please don't get into online flamewars with people or other projects (including Firefox), try to contribute upstream, accumulate good developers. You can change your priorities, but never change your values. They're foundational, so when they shift, it ripples throughout the product, making the entire thing erratic and undependable. People have enough in their lives to worry about.

ttybird2 5y ago

It seems to spawn a new process per tab, which makes it use a lot of memory.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> It seems to spawn a new process per tab Isn't that how all browsers work these days?
- ttybird2 5y ago
  Firefox doesn't
  - doubled112 5y ago
    https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/95.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/95.0/releasenotes/ > Site Isolation is now enabled for all Firefox 95 users Doesn't site isolation launch a new process per site? I'm inclined to believe so https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/05/introducing-firefox-new-site-isolation-security-architecture/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/05/introducing-firefox-new-si... > Site Isolation builds upon a new security architecture that extends current protection mechanisms by separating (web) content and loading each site in its own operating system process.
    - cpeterso 5y ago
      Firefox’s site isolation uses one process per tab until you have more than four tabs open for the same site; then Firefox makes the tabs for that site share the four processes. So if you open four youtube.com tabs, you will have four youtube.com processes. If you then open two more youtube.com tabs, you will still have four youtube.com processes, but two of the processes are managing two tabs each and the other two processes are still managing one tab each. This design is to reduce memory usage. I think Chrome uses a separate process for each tab.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

Feel kinda bad for Mozilla that their user base continues to dwindle down because of all these forks. But they only have themselves to blame. I'm using Fennec F-droid on my phone because someone at Mozilla decided to castrate extension support in their main branch (and nightly keeps breaking every few weeks so that's not an option).

andrewshadura 5y ago
It doesn't much, as barely anyone uses these forks.
- account42 5y ago
  Barely anyone uses Firefox in the first place.
ranguna 5y ago
I installed fennec just now but is seems I'm still limited to a small list of Mozilla curated extensions. Did you have to enable some setting somewhere to install other extensions?
- noisem4ker 5y ago
  https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-add-on-in-firefox-nightly-for-android-but-it-is-complicated/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-ad...

throwaway19431 5y ago

I was one of the two guys who came up with the original concept for Librefox. I was responsible for including uBO as default, among other things. Great to see that the project was brought back to life as LibreWolf - Mozilla lawyers had threatened us with legal action because the name was too close to their brand. They expected us to drop the "Fox" part of the name. Everytime I see LibreWolf on HN I feel proud that the spirit of Librefox is still alive. The biggest issue with LibreWolf and what's stopping it's further adoption is lack of auto-updates (especially on Windows) and lack of usability - it should work out of the box for everyone. Currently the security settings are too strict in default mode. There should be different levels of pre-configured security levels users can chose in the settings (i.e. "standard", "strict", "very strict"). (I don't use HN for commenting, which is why I created a throwaway account)

colordrops 5y ago
Brave has some good ideas that could be adopted. Instead of completely forgoing features like DRM video, make them opt-in instead. The user can choose their level of privacy.
- fabrice_d 5y ago
  Opt-in DRM? Like in Firefox where you need to enable it for sites like Netflix or Spotify at first use?
- fotta 5y ago
  DRM is opt-in on Librewolf. It's in the pref pane.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    Oh excellent. I had read that it wad removed from librewolf.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
The browser presents your client as being in the GMT timezone to reduce fingerprinting using timezones, supposedly. Guess what stands out like a sore thumb? Someone with a timezone many hours off from everyone else in their country/state/region. Fucking idiots.

Animats 5y ago

How does this differ from Fennec?

aceazzameen 5y ago

There's a lot of privacy focused forks of Firefox these days. But I'm still looking for a fork of Firefox on Android with a better UX. It's been abysmal these past few years.

rsolva 5y ago
I can recommend Fennec. You can activate a developer mode and install any extensions you want to.
- aceazzameen 5y ago
  Yes, I use Fennec too. It's not lack of extensions that's the problem. It's the user experience of the mobile UI of Firefox in general. It's terrible. Too many actions behind too many taps, long animation durations within the UI, can't move tabs around (except in Nightly), new tab page getting in the way of everything, no tabs on tablets, and more. Firefox 68 is still so much faster and superior in those regards, despite any issues it had.
- hda2 5y ago
  > You can activate a developer mode and install any extensions you want to. You mean a full feature-complete devtools like what you'd find in the desktop version of firefox?! If so, then it's a life saver. The only other browser that I'm aware of that offers full devtools on android is kiwi, but that browser force-disables ublock origin and other extensions on some sites.
- ranguna 5y ago
  > You can activate a developer mode and install any extensions you want to I just installed fennec and for the life of me I cannot find these developer tools anywhere.
  - rsolva 5y ago
    It's pretty well hidden and involves quite a few steps. I think you should be able to follow the same steps as in this Firefox Nightly guide: https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-add-on-in-firefox-nightly-for-android-but-it-is-complicated/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-ad...

ModernMech 5y ago

Anyone else reminded of https://amarok.kde.org https://amarok.kde.org?

samizdis 5y ago

I've just downloaded the .dmg for MacOS and installed it, but I can't run it because I get a system message saying that the developer can't be verified. Anyone know how I can fix this?

messe 5y ago
Right click it, and select open from the context menu.
- samizdis 5y ago
  Brill! Thanks for that.

Starmina 5y ago

Wish I could use LibreWolf as a replacement as Firefox, but for now I have one main issue left, some websites don't work correctly. For example, on this site : https://appdb.to/ https://appdb.to/ if you click on any app, it'll always open the same app (I think the 'first' one) instead of the one clicked, you can try on Firefox and it'll work correctly. I actually don't know what cause this issue right now. Thanks to someone here, I found why some links open in a new tab instead of a popup. Just need to set browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction to 2 (like in firefox), instead of 0.

nyanpasu64 5y ago

Check out their FAQ at https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/ https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/ for a more technical look at the changes they made.

throwra620 5y ago

smrtinsert 5y ago

> Delete cookies and website data on close. Why bother ever writing to a file system? Seems like an obvious misstep.

dont__panic 5y ago

On Android, I use Fennec, an open-source Firefox variant that's basically just Firefox without the Mozilla garbage. Does anybody know if there's a similar de-Mozilla'd Firefox for desktop? I currently use Firefox Developer Edition, but I'd love to get away from Mozilla's crappy "experiments" and constant configuration-breaking updates.

ranguna 5y ago
Librewolf, I recommend reading the linked article of the OP if you haven't already.

jcadam 5y ago

Brave is my current default browser. This might be worth a try for something non-blink/webkit :)

slenk 5y ago
The Brave token just feels weird to me.

throwaway81523 5y ago

I'm sure librewolf's intentions are good, but I think the gemini crowd has it right. If you want privacy, security, and freedom on the web, you not only have to fork the browser, you also have to fork the web.

ranguna 5y ago
I'd say doing 1 out of those two steps is better than doing 0.