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I use Firefox as my default browser on my desktop and netbook (Windows/Linux), as well as my phone (Android), since the addons I want to use are available there

I use Firefox as my default browser on my desktop and netbook (Windows/Linux), as well as my phone (Android), since the addons I want to use are available there and there's no Manifest v3 weirdness. The UI and performance are both okay (though content process limit is no longer exposed through the UI which isn't that nice when your netbook has like 4 GB of RAM), I quite enjoy the DevTools in particular, even more so than the ones in Chromium browsers. However, I got some Apple devices for development and it seems like Firefox on the desktop breaks access to some sites (Private Internet Access, the one that got bought out by Kape, either in OpenVPN or WireGuard mode, same issue), which was apparently a known issue last I tried figuring out what's up. So there, I kind of moved to Brave which seems pleasant for the most part. It's also honestly be nice if Windows let me get rid of Edge or replace it with Chromium/Brave as my secondary browser easily instead of sticking around as bloatware. Maybe that's just me hating on software nowadays in general (since it isn't always very nice to the user, for a variety of reasons), but Firefox is pretty great when it works!

Aachen 3y ago
I don't understand. How does Firefox on desktop "break" access to some websites? They ban any IP address using Firefox desktop? And somehow detect when the same person uses a VPN service?
- KronisLV 3y ago
  > I don't understand. How does Firefox on desktop "break" access to some websites? When I checked, I think there were DNS resolution failures for some domains. This was regardless of whether PIA DNS or the existing DNS servers were used. It was also regardless of whether OpenVPN or WireGuard were used, or which VPN server was used - the only pre-requisite was that the VPN be active and Firefox be used on a MacBook in particular. It was very odd and hasn't ever happened on Windows/Linux with Firefox either, nor did happen on the MacBook with Brave afterwards either. I didn't care enough to dig into it, but some people had similar issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/18nhmpw/issue_using_pia_with_firefox_on_mac/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/18nh... https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/14ylzxi/connection_issues_with_firefox_on_macos/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/14yl... It seems that the suggested "fix" that worked for the other person is to disable IPv6 altogether: > This is a bug in Firefox, you can fix it by opening about:config in Firefox and set network.dns.disableIPv6 to true Not like it makes me like Firefox any less, it's just odd that we get super random issues like that for relatively basic use cases (albeit maybe various VPN implementations aren't necessarily that common, who knows). Would be nice to live in a world where everything "just works", though.

Aachen 3y ago

I don't understand. How does Firefox on desktop "break" access to some websites? They ban any IP address using Firefox desktop? And somehow detect when the same person uses a VPN service?

KronisLV 3y ago
> I don't understand. How does Firefox on desktop "break" access to some websites? When I checked, I think there were DNS resolution failures for some domains. This was regardless of whether PIA DNS or the existing DNS servers were used. It was also regardless of whether OpenVPN or WireGuard were used, or which VPN server was used - the only pre-requisite was that the VPN be active and Firefox be used on a MacBook in particular. It was very odd and hasn't ever happened on Windows/Linux with Firefox either, nor did happen on the MacBook with Brave afterwards either. I didn't care enough to dig into it, but some people had similar issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/18nhmpw/issue_using_pia_with_firefox_on_mac/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/18nh... https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/14ylzxi/connection_issues_with_firefox_on_macos/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/14yl... It seems that the suggested "fix" that worked for the other person is to disable IPv6 altogether: > This is a bug in Firefox, you can fix it by opening about:config in Firefox and set network.dns.disableIPv6 to true Not like it makes me like Firefox any less, it's just odd that we get super random issues like that for relatively basic use cases (albeit maybe various VPN implementations aren't necessarily that common, who knows). Would be nice to live in a world where everything "just works", though.