4 ms·

It’s getting hard to use and recommend Firefox

30 points by signa11 3y ago

spacedcowboy 3y ago
The main thing stopping Chrome from being the only web browser people cared about supporting was that Safari was the only thing that worked on iphones, and if you have to support 2 browsers you might as well go to 3 or 4. The cost calculation for support is 1 <<< 2 < Many. And that’s about to change - thanks EU. Safari is losing its protection, and soon enough the equivalent of “Have you tried turning it off and on again ?” is going to be “Have you tried installing Chrome ?” I actually think this is going to be one of the keystones in the dam holding back utter domination of the Web by a company that makes its money exploiting your privacy. Hope I’m wrong.
- metadat 3y ago
  > The main thing stopping Chrome from being the only web browser people cared about supporting was that Safari was the only thing that worked on iphones It's IE6 all over again.. so gross, right? but that's real life for you.
  - mickael-kerjean 3y ago
    Chrome is far above what IE ever was. Just thinking about supporting old version of IE again makes me sweat and I'm glad those days are gone.
    - trog 3y ago
      Huh? Isn't the entire point of GP's comments that they are /not/ gone? Just because Chrome is a bit less terrible than IE6 in terms of user/dev experience (which, to me, is entirely a matter of more sophistication in software development and Internet stuff, and a keen and burning desire to sell ads) doesn't mean we're in a good position. A browser monoculture is good for nobody but Google. This feels like the exact same bad old days to me, where if you're not using the modern-day IE6, the web is a pain in the ass. That was my takeaway from the article and (as a Firefox user that also reaches for Chrome far too often) one I sympathise with.
- philwelch 3y ago
  A bitter irony if the EU’s attempt at anti-monopoly regulation leads to a browser monopoly.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Not if they go after Google next.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - Apocryphon 3y ago
        Well, then maybe the DOJ will.
      - talldayo 3y ago
        Do the Gatekeeper regulations not also apply to Google as well? I'm confused.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  I’ve never bothered with Chrome on Apple machines thanks to the iCloud Keychain. Surely there are other services that can create stickiness.
  - bhaney 3y ago
    Apple published an official Chrome extension last year that integrates Chrome with iCloud Keychain. So that's one dump truck of dirt into their own moat.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      Well, I would call that them giving up the ghost, but the ship sailed a long time ago to mix metaphors, when Apple canned Safari for Windows. Maybe this much ballyhooed trust in mobile Safari as the last bulwark against Chrome ubiquity is just an affectation of the HN set and not even something Apple cares about very much at all. Maybe you’ve all been placing your trust in a champion who’s uninterested in your fight. As for me, I’m glad that Orion is an alternative if I ever was to switch away from Safari.
      - fredski42 3y ago
        Apple has warned about power usage when using other renderers than WebKit. Orion also mentions this as an advantage for them as they are using WebKit. Awesome browser if you are in Apple’s garden btw. Kagi also mentions that WebKit is developed by both Apple and FOSS community. I wonder how much of that holds.. https://blog.kagi.com/orion-features https://blog.kagi.com/orion-features
    - weikju 3y ago
      Isn’t that for windows only?
- echelon 3y ago
  Safari shouldn't be protected, but rather Chrome/Google should be regulated. Just as Apple and their iPhone/Safari/App Store monopoly are being regulated by governments worldwide. These giants get to push every society and their citizens and businesses into funnels while wrapped in straight jackets. Once regulation starts to catch up, we'll see open computing, proper competition, untaxed airwaves, mobile and device rights, and healthy market shares again.
- Voultapher 3y ago
  There is an argument to be made that Firefox is what is stopping Google getting hit with anti-trust, by being a competitor on paper. Unclear how much damage Google will do before getting slapped, WEI might have made it if Mozilla wasn't in the picture.
- idle_zealot 3y ago
  I can see the argument that allowing users to run Chrome on iPhones may hurt browser engine diversity, but I don't see how that translates to giving Google more dominance. Most alternative browsers are based on Chromium, and strip out Google shit. Even in the bleak potential future where running a non-blink browser is untenable, non-Chrome browsers will exist and stymy Google's attacks on the free web. That's not to say that there's nothing to be concerned about; engine diversity is valuable all on its own, and Google won't stop attempting to capture the web for as long as it exists and hasn't yet succeeded. This is one of those "patient monster vs eternally vigilant guards" deals where the monster is guaranteed eventual victory unless it is destroyed or victory is rendered impossible.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Orion is based on WebKit and not specifically Blink, at least.
  - shepherdjerred 3y ago
    Google can (and has) ignored web standards/pushed their own features. They are limited in what they can do today because every iPhone uses uses WebKit. e.g. Google _could_ do whatever they want today, but they'd miss out on iPhone uses. Even assuming that Google is benevolent, it makes less sense for developers to target alternative web browsers if they don't have sufficient market share. Today most businesses support Chrome and WebKit (because they want those iPhone uses). If Chrome is dominant then it becomes self-reinforcing. The market share for other browsers is minimal, so nobody is going to develop/test for other browsers, so the experience on other browsers becomes worse, so users are forced to use Chrome, so the market share for other browsers drops further.
- gigel82 3y ago
  If Apple hadn't stopped investing (for real) in Safari 10 years ago, maybe people would choose it based on the merits. It would be stupid to keep "protecting" Safari when it's clear to anyone the reason why so many web features were kept back from it were precisely to keep web apps from competing with the sweet sweet 30% store tax. I'm a Firefox daily user and will continue that until the browser becomes truly unusable, at which point I'll give Ungoogled Chromium another go.
- imustbeevil 3y ago
  I might be misreading you, but Chrome has worked on iPhones for 10+ years. I've never used Safari. https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/28/first_look_googles_chrome_browser_comes_to_ipad_iphone https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/28/first_look_google...
  - glandium 3y ago
    Chrome on iPhone is based on WebKit, like Safari, not Blink, like Chrome everywhere else.
- thefz 3y ago
  > And that’s about to change - thanks EU Lol, the EU law is there to protect you from a monopoly, not to force one. The mental gymnastics are in the circus territory for this one.
  - novariation 3y ago
    Have you been living under a rock for the last 20 years to think that regulations can't result in outcomes that are opposite to what was intended ? I'm not sure it will backfire, but it's absolutely not mental gymnastics to think it could.
  - drcongo 3y ago
    You've heard of unintended consequences right?
ByteCrusader 3y ago
i started trying ARC and I am loving it.
- idle_zealot 3y ago
  It has some neat UX ideas, and a bunch of not-so-neat ones. But look out for their privacy policy and non-existent business model. Not to mention that their roadmap is set to cram language models into every inch of the workflow. It's a real shame that there aren't more experimental browsers playing with tab management.
jefftk 3y ago
The author is running bleeding-edge Firefox and expecting stable-level performance. They'd probably also be disappointed in Chrome Canary.
- mtlynch 3y ago
  >I run Fedora on my personal laptop. This particular bug was on the latest version, and by running a bleeding-edge distribution I got cut. Doesn't that mean bleeding edge Fedora, not Firefox?
- javajosh 3y ago
  Yes, this article is somewhere between misleading and FUD. He even states that FF on Ubuntu LTE worked fine, the only issues were with the nightly build - a distribution that few people use, and those that do should know better than to write hit pieces based on issues with it. Instead, he should have written a bug.
  - glandium 3y ago
    To be clear, the issue did hit the release version of Firefox, but only when built with a specific flag that distros choose to opt into. It didn't affect the version you can download from Mozilla servers. (PS: it's she, not he).
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  "I know Mom told me not to play in the street but doggone it why do these cars keep honking at me. I fear for our civilization."
- trog 3y ago
  I run stable Firefox and have only ever done so and have had the same problems, especially with anything video related. To the point where I don't bother using Firefox for things like Google Meet almost all the time - I don't want to be That Guy turning up to a client meeting with the wacky config that can't get sound/video working. Edit: I haven't tried for a couple months at least so maybe it's improved lately, but certainly it's failed often enough in the past to make me reluctant to try it. I'll give it another go. (I also get that this is probably not a Firefox problem at least some of the time, but devs not testing properly or using Chrome-only features. Maybe it's improving now but it certainly feels like Mozilla could do more advocacy here?)
bevekspldnw 3y ago
The numbers for Firefox just no longer justify any form of real testing or investment. There’s a subtle, but real, event horizon when a platform is no longer big enough to have any external buy in and then the collapse accelerates. The old CEO spent years taking millions of dollars from Google that they pocketed personally with an outrageous pay package. Then Google called them up to testify in the anti-trust suit - which all smart Mozillans knew was the plan all along - keep Mozilla on a leash until needed to fight antitrust. Once the CEO did their job for Google they quit, it was insane. Such blatant greed and self interest ruined not only Firefox but the web with it. Baker is a true villain.
- dralley 3y ago
  The railing in the 2nd half of your comment is completely absurd. The DoJ referenced Mozilla directly multiple times throughout the suit they filed, of course Mozilla was going to end up testifying in the lawsuit. They were not "called up by Google". And the decline of Firefox was well underway before Baker even became CEO. It was basically inevitable once they were up against the 3 richest tech companies on the planet (Apple Google Microsoft), each with their own platforms under their control and marketing budgets that Mozilla could never hope to match. It blows my mind that people can look at how Chrome shoved their way into tens of millions of systems by paying off Adobe, Oracle, AVG, Avast and so forth to have their installers dump Chrome on people's systems and make it their default browser using pre-checked checkboxes - or how Google gave themselves free advertising on google.com by targeting Firefox users with exclusive ads - and still conclude that it must have been some kind of conspiracy that involves one of the founders of Mozilla destroying it intentionally from within. I don't like her pay package either but you have to be delusional to think that had anything to do with Firefox losing marketshare, a trend which started a full decade earlier.
glandium 3y ago
Ironically, the one bug the author is explicitly linking to wouldn't have happened to her if she had been using Firefox straight from Mozilla instead of the distro package. (and I'm saying this as the maintainer of the Debian package for Firefox, and yes, Debian had the problem too, but only in unstable. Guess why Debian prefers to stick to ESR?)
GMoromisato 3y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but can’t we get compatibility AND privacy by having Firefox use Chromium? Are privacy issues built-in to the rendering engine or does compatibility require layers above rendering?
- djbusby 3y ago
  When the ad company controls the rendering engine they can make all kinds of hard to remove user-hostile things. And also use their weight to push standards around (which has already happened). Diversity is key to the resilient web.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
LegitShady 3y ago
>This particular bug was on the latest version, and by running a bleeding-edge distribution I got cut. I didn't have the same issue on my work laptop, running an LTS version of Ubuntu. I use firefox every day without issue. The article is beyond ridiculous. The motivation here is beyond ridiculous. The author should be afraid for their credibility with this clickbait nonsense, not the free web. What a pile of utter horseshit.
vlod 3y ago
They don't have problems with lts ubuntu, but with bleeding edge Fedora? That sounds like a recipe for constant pain. Treat yourself and not do this! FYI: I have no problems with popos with Firefox (w/ video calls)
invalidname 3y ago
TL;DR I have a weird uncommon Linux setup and FireFox breaks here. Let's make a clickbait title... Using FF on a Mac/Windows with the current release works great and highly recommended to anyone.
- flakiness 3y ago
  Firefox used to be more friendly to these Weirdo / Nerd types, partly because the community was made of these people and they fixed the problems. That's apparently no longer true, maybe because Chrome/Chromium has a Linux version, vs. IE at 2000s.
hcurtiss 3y ago
I'm not sure I completely understand the interplay, but I use Edge and it's great. It uses Chromium as a back-end, and I have a couple Chrome-only extensions installed, but that strikes me as different than having to use Chrome (i.e., with a Google account attached). I use a lot of Microsoft products at work and at home, and using Edge works seamlessly. For a guy who prefers to avoid Google wherever I can, I feel like it's a good solution to have common technical interoperability without having to actually use Google's product. Similarly, I use Kagi, which uses Google's search results (in addition to others) wthout having to actually use Google.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Web browsers are Eierlegende-wollmilchsau [0]. I think in the future we will need to fragment again, into applications that do nothing but WebRTC/AV, and applications optimised for forms and js, and still others that strong on aesthetics for people who want CSS to make thing beautiful. The great circle of design more or less demands it because the centre cannot hold. [0] https://blog.inkyfool.com/2013/11/eierlegende-wollmilchsau-perferct-animal.html https://blog.inkyfool.com/2013/11/eierlegende-wollmilchsau-p...
habitue 3y ago
I remember being the only person I knew who used Firefox in the early 2000s and when I mentioned "standards based css" and got eye rolls and blank stares. It sucked, and it seemed like nothing would get better. It was a death spiral, nobody thought it was worth it to bother testing in Firefox, so IE's share kept growing, etc. It's crazy, but the web did recover from that horrible corner even though it didn't seem possible. There's no guarantee it will come back again, but it's possible if people keep pushing for it.
knightoffaith 3y ago
Re: firefox and privacy, if you want to use firefox for privacy, consider using https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js . There is a case to be made that Firefox (with arkenfox's user.js) is one of the best privacy-respecting but still fairly usable browsers.
- Vinnl 3y ago
  Given that we're commenting on a post about Firefox breakage... This will only cause more breakage, so be aware of that.
evmar 3y ago
In the bug report a commenter says: "This doesn't affect our own [Mozilla's] builds." I worked on Linux Chrome and over the course of doing so became pretty disillusioned about this problem in particular. In a very real sense, all a distribution does for software like this is apply patches that are not tested/supported by upstream. In other words, either the distro can ship upstream or it chooses to ship some less-tested variant. In an ideal world upstream would be able to support all these configurations, but supporting Linux at all is already a tiny fraction of the total userbase and different Linux variants are fractions of that fraction; it's simply not realistic to expect the disproportionate effort required.
jpalawaga 3y ago
I use firefox every day, and recommend it. I won't lie. sometimes things don't work exactly right, because companies largely seem to test things on chrome and call it a day. still, those incidences are infrequent, especially given Chrome's manifest v3 changes loom large for the future of adblock.
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> If users cannot reliably use a browser for everyday tasks, they will switch and never look back. I have a different opinion: use Firefox for basically everything. Additionally, have something like Chrome installed for those few crappy websites that don't work in Firefox, and use it only for these (and be very willing to switch away from using such websites as soon as an alternative to them appear). Additionally, be insanely vocal about how much you despise the fact that website X does not work in Firefox. This is the behaviour of most of the nerds in my echo chamber.
wenc 3y ago
I use Firefox daily (have done so since 2016, switched over from Chrome). I have encountered exactly 1 issue. This language learning plugin only has a Chrome release: https://www.languagereactor.com/ https://www.languagereactor.com/ Other than that, I have had no issues at all. In fact, Firefox has Multi-Account Containers which I use to login to isolated instances of AWS, which is a boon. I don't know if Chrome has something similar.
signa11 3y ago
not sure why this is flagged ? can someone please let me know ? thanks !
Ajay-p 3y ago
I begrudgingly use Firefox because I am trying to avoid Google's tracking, etc.

30 points by signa11 3y ago

The main thing stopping Chrome from being the only web browser people cared about supporting was that Safari was the only thing that worked on iphones, and if you have to support 2 browsers you might as well go to 3 or 4. The cost calculation for support is 1 <<< 2 < Many. And that’s about to change - thanks EU. Safari is losing its protection, and soon enough the equivalent of “Have you tried turning it off and on again ?” is going to be “Have you tried installing Chrome ?” I actually think this is going to be one of the keystones in the dam holding back utter domination of the Web by a company that makes its money exploiting your privacy. Hope I’m wrong.

metadat 3y ago
> The main thing stopping Chrome from being the only web browser people cared about supporting was that Safari was the only thing that worked on iphones It's IE6 all over again.. so gross, right? but that's real life for you.
- mickael-kerjean 3y ago
  Chrome is far above what IE ever was. Just thinking about supporting old version of IE again makes me sweat and I'm glad those days are gone.
  - trog 3y ago
    Huh? Isn't the entire point of GP's comments that they are /not/ gone? Just because Chrome is a bit less terrible than IE6 in terms of user/dev experience (which, to me, is entirely a matter of more sophistication in software development and Internet stuff, and a keen and burning desire to sell ads) doesn't mean we're in a good position. A browser monoculture is good for nobody but Google. This feels like the exact same bad old days to me, where if you're not using the modern-day IE6, the web is a pain in the ass. That was my takeaway from the article and (as a Firefox user that also reaches for Chrome far too often) one I sympathise with.
philwelch 3y ago
A bitter irony if the EU’s attempt at anti-monopoly regulation leads to a browser monopoly.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Not if they go after Google next.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      Well, then maybe the DOJ will.
    - talldayo 3y ago
      Do the Gatekeeper regulations not also apply to Google as well? I'm confused.
Apocryphon 3y ago
I’ve never bothered with Chrome on Apple machines thanks to the iCloud Keychain. Surely there are other services that can create stickiness.
- bhaney 3y ago
  Apple published an official Chrome extension last year that integrates Chrome with iCloud Keychain. So that's one dump truck of dirt into their own moat.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Well, I would call that them giving up the ghost, but the ship sailed a long time ago to mix metaphors, when Apple canned Safari for Windows. Maybe this much ballyhooed trust in mobile Safari as the last bulwark against Chrome ubiquity is just an affectation of the HN set and not even something Apple cares about very much at all. Maybe you’ve all been placing your trust in a champion who’s uninterested in your fight. As for me, I’m glad that Orion is an alternative if I ever was to switch away from Safari.
    - fredski42 3y ago
      Apple has warned about power usage when using other renderers than WebKit. Orion also mentions this as an advantage for them as they are using WebKit. Awesome browser if you are in Apple’s garden btw. Kagi also mentions that WebKit is developed by both Apple and FOSS community. I wonder how much of that holds.. https://blog.kagi.com/orion-features https://blog.kagi.com/orion-features
  - weikju 3y ago
    Isn’t that for windows only?
echelon 3y ago
Safari shouldn't be protected, but rather Chrome/Google should be regulated. Just as Apple and their iPhone/Safari/App Store monopoly are being regulated by governments worldwide. These giants get to push every society and their citizens and businesses into funnels while wrapped in straight jackets. Once regulation starts to catch up, we'll see open computing, proper competition, untaxed airwaves, mobile and device rights, and healthy market shares again.
Voultapher 3y ago
There is an argument to be made that Firefox is what is stopping Google getting hit with anti-trust, by being a competitor on paper. Unclear how much damage Google will do before getting slapped, WEI might have made it if Mozilla wasn't in the picture.
idle_zealot 3y ago
I can see the argument that allowing users to run Chrome on iPhones may hurt browser engine diversity, but I don't see how that translates to giving Google more dominance. Most alternative browsers are based on Chromium, and strip out Google shit. Even in the bleak potential future where running a non-blink browser is untenable, non-Chrome browsers will exist and stymy Google's attacks on the free web. That's not to say that there's nothing to be concerned about; engine diversity is valuable all on its own, and Google won't stop attempting to capture the web for as long as it exists and hasn't yet succeeded. This is one of those "patient monster vs eternally vigilant guards" deals where the monster is guaranteed eventual victory unless it is destroyed or victory is rendered impossible.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Orion is based on WebKit and not specifically Blink, at least.
- shepherdjerred 3y ago
  Google can (and has) ignored web standards/pushed their own features. They are limited in what they can do today because every iPhone uses uses WebKit. e.g. Google _could_ do whatever they want today, but they'd miss out on iPhone uses. Even assuming that Google is benevolent, it makes less sense for developers to target alternative web browsers if they don't have sufficient market share. Today most businesses support Chrome and WebKit (because they want those iPhone uses). If Chrome is dominant then it becomes self-reinforcing. The market share for other browsers is minimal, so nobody is going to develop/test for other browsers, so the experience on other browsers becomes worse, so users are forced to use Chrome, so the market share for other browsers drops further.
gigel82 3y ago
If Apple hadn't stopped investing (for real) in Safari 10 years ago, maybe people would choose it based on the merits. It would be stupid to keep "protecting" Safari when it's clear to anyone the reason why so many web features were kept back from it were precisely to keep web apps from competing with the sweet sweet 30% store tax. I'm a Firefox daily user and will continue that until the browser becomes truly unusable, at which point I'll give Ungoogled Chromium another go.
imustbeevil 3y ago
I might be misreading you, but Chrome has worked on iPhones for 10+ years. I've never used Safari. https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/28/first_look_googles_chrome_browser_comes_to_ipad_iphone https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/28/first_look_google...
- glandium 3y ago
  Chrome on iPhone is based on WebKit, like Safari, not Blink, like Chrome everywhere else.
thefz 3y ago
> And that’s about to change - thanks EU Lol, the EU law is there to protect you from a monopoly, not to force one. The mental gymnastics are in the circus territory for this one.
- novariation 3y ago
  Have you been living under a rock for the last 20 years to think that regulations can't result in outcomes that are opposite to what was intended ? I'm not sure it will backfire, but it's absolutely not mental gymnastics to think it could.
- drcongo 3y ago
  You've heard of unintended consequences right?

ByteCrusader 3y ago

i started trying ARC and I am loving it.

idle_zealot 3y ago
It has some neat UX ideas, and a bunch of not-so-neat ones. But look out for their privacy policy and non-existent business model. Not to mention that their roadmap is set to cram language models into every inch of the workflow. It's a real shame that there aren't more experimental browsers playing with tab management.

jefftk 3y ago

The author is running bleeding-edge Firefox and expecting stable-level performance. They'd probably also be disappointed in Chrome Canary.

mtlynch 3y ago
>I run Fedora on my personal laptop. This particular bug was on the latest version, and by running a bleeding-edge distribution I got cut. Doesn't that mean bleeding edge Fedora, not Firefox?
javajosh 3y ago
Yes, this article is somewhere between misleading and FUD. He even states that FF on Ubuntu LTE worked fine, the only issues were with the nightly build - a distribution that few people use, and those that do should know better than to write hit pieces based on issues with it. Instead, he should have written a bug.
- glandium 3y ago
  To be clear, the issue did hit the release version of Firefox, but only when built with a specific flag that distros choose to opt into. It didn't affect the version you can download from Mozilla servers. (PS: it's she, not he).
readthenotes1 3y ago
"I know Mom told me not to play in the street but doggone it why do these cars keep honking at me. I fear for our civilization."
trog 3y ago
I run stable Firefox and have only ever done so and have had the same problems, especially with anything video related. To the point where I don't bother using Firefox for things like Google Meet almost all the time - I don't want to be That Guy turning up to a client meeting with the wacky config that can't get sound/video working. Edit: I haven't tried for a couple months at least so maybe it's improved lately, but certainly it's failed often enough in the past to make me reluctant to try it. I'll give it another go. (I also get that this is probably not a Firefox problem at least some of the time, but devs not testing properly or using Chrome-only features. Maybe it's improving now but it certainly feels like Mozilla could do more advocacy here?)

bevekspldnw 3y ago

The numbers for Firefox just no longer justify any form of real testing or investment. There’s a subtle, but real, event horizon when a platform is no longer big enough to have any external buy in and then the collapse accelerates. The old CEO spent years taking millions of dollars from Google that they pocketed personally with an outrageous pay package. Then Google called them up to testify in the anti-trust suit - which all smart Mozillans knew was the plan all along - keep Mozilla on a leash until needed to fight antitrust. Once the CEO did their job for Google they quit, it was insane. Such blatant greed and self interest ruined not only Firefox but the web with it. Baker is a true villain.

dralley 3y ago
The railing in the 2nd half of your comment is completely absurd. The DoJ referenced Mozilla directly multiple times throughout the suit they filed, of course Mozilla was going to end up testifying in the lawsuit. They were not "called up by Google". And the decline of Firefox was well underway before Baker even became CEO. It was basically inevitable once they were up against the 3 richest tech companies on the planet (Apple Google Microsoft), each with their own platforms under their control and marketing budgets that Mozilla could never hope to match. It blows my mind that people can look at how Chrome shoved their way into tens of millions of systems by paying off Adobe, Oracle, AVG, Avast and so forth to have their installers dump Chrome on people's systems and make it their default browser using pre-checked checkboxes - or how Google gave themselves free advertising on google.com by targeting Firefox users with exclusive ads - and still conclude that it must have been some kind of conspiracy that involves one of the founders of Mozilla destroying it intentionally from within. I don't like her pay package either but you have to be delusional to think that had anything to do with Firefox losing marketshare, a trend which started a full decade earlier.

glandium 3y ago

Ironically, the one bug the author is explicitly linking to wouldn't have happened to her if she had been using Firefox straight from Mozilla instead of the distro package. (and I'm saying this as the maintainer of the Debian package for Firefox, and yes, Debian had the problem too, but only in unstable. Guess why Debian prefers to stick to ESR?)

GMoromisato 3y ago

Forgive my ignorance, but can’t we get compatibility AND privacy by having Firefox use Chromium? Are privacy issues built-in to the rendering engine or does compatibility require layers above rendering?

djbusby 3y ago
When the ad company controls the rendering engine they can make all kinds of hard to remove user-hostile things. And also use their weight to push standards around (which has already happened). Diversity is key to the resilient web.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

LegitShady 3y ago

>This particular bug was on the latest version, and by running a bleeding-edge distribution I got cut. I didn't have the same issue on my work laptop, running an LTS version of Ubuntu. I use firefox every day without issue. The article is beyond ridiculous. The motivation here is beyond ridiculous. The author should be afraid for their credibility with this clickbait nonsense, not the free web. What a pile of utter horseshit.

vlod 3y ago

They don't have problems with lts ubuntu, but with bleeding edge Fedora? That sounds like a recipe for constant pain. Treat yourself and not do this! FYI: I have no problems with popos with Firefox (w/ video calls)

invalidname 3y ago

TL;DR I have a weird uncommon Linux setup and FireFox breaks here. Let's make a clickbait title... Using FF on a Mac/Windows with the current release works great and highly recommended to anyone.

flakiness 3y ago
Firefox used to be more friendly to these Weirdo / Nerd types, partly because the community was made of these people and they fixed the problems. That's apparently no longer true, maybe because Chrome/Chromium has a Linux version, vs. IE at 2000s.

hcurtiss 3y ago

I'm not sure I completely understand the interplay, but I use Edge and it's great. It uses Chromium as a back-end, and I have a couple Chrome-only extensions installed, but that strikes me as different than having to use Chrome (i.e., with a Google account attached). I use a lot of Microsoft products at work and at home, and using Edge works seamlessly. For a guy who prefers to avoid Google wherever I can, I feel like it's a good solution to have common technical interoperability without having to actually use Google's product. Similarly, I use Kagi, which uses Google's search results (in addition to others) wthout having to actually use Google.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

Web browsers are Eierlegende-wollmilchsau [0]. I think in the future we will need to fragment again, into applications that do nothing but WebRTC/AV, and applications optimised for forms and js, and still others that strong on aesthetics for people who want CSS to make thing beautiful. The great circle of design more or less demands it because the centre cannot hold. [0] https://blog.inkyfool.com/2013/11/eierlegende-wollmilchsau-perferct-animal.html https://blog.inkyfool.com/2013/11/eierlegende-wollmilchsau-p...

habitue 3y ago

I remember being the only person I knew who used Firefox in the early 2000s and when I mentioned "standards based css" and got eye rolls and blank stares. It sucked, and it seemed like nothing would get better. It was a death spiral, nobody thought it was worth it to bother testing in Firefox, so IE's share kept growing, etc. It's crazy, but the web did recover from that horrible corner even though it didn't seem possible. There's no guarantee it will come back again, but it's possible if people keep pushing for it.

knightoffaith 3y ago

Re: firefox and privacy, if you want to use firefox for privacy, consider using https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js . There is a case to be made that Firefox (with arkenfox's user.js) is one of the best privacy-respecting but still fairly usable browsers.

Vinnl 3y ago
Given that we're commenting on a post about Firefox breakage... This will only cause more breakage, so be aware of that.

evmar 3y ago

In the bug report a commenter says: "This doesn't affect our own [Mozilla's] builds." I worked on Linux Chrome and over the course of doing so became pretty disillusioned about this problem in particular. In a very real sense, all a distribution does for software like this is apply patches that are not tested/supported by upstream. In other words, either the distro can ship upstream or it chooses to ship some less-tested variant. In an ideal world upstream would be able to support all these configurations, but supporting Linux at all is already a tiny fraction of the total userbase and different Linux variants are fractions of that fraction; it's simply not realistic to expect the disproportionate effort required.

jpalawaga 3y ago

I use firefox every day, and recommend it. I won't lie. sometimes things don't work exactly right, because companies largely seem to test things on chrome and call it a day. still, those incidences are infrequent, especially given Chrome's manifest v3 changes loom large for the future of adblock.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

> If users cannot reliably use a browser for everyday tasks, they will switch and never look back. I have a different opinion: use Firefox for basically everything. Additionally, have something like Chrome installed for those few crappy websites that don't work in Firefox, and use it only for these (and be very willing to switch away from using such websites as soon as an alternative to them appear). Additionally, be insanely vocal about how much you despise the fact that website X does not work in Firefox. This is the behaviour of most of the nerds in my echo chamber.

wenc 3y ago

I use Firefox daily (have done so since 2016, switched over from Chrome). I have encountered exactly 1 issue. This language learning plugin only has a Chrome release: https://www.languagereactor.com/ https://www.languagereactor.com/ Other than that, I have had no issues at all. In fact, Firefox has Multi-Account Containers which I use to login to isolated instances of AWS, which is a boon. I don't know if Chrome has something similar.

signa11 3y ago

not sure why this is flagged ? can someone please let me know ? thanks !

Ajay-p 3y ago

I begrudgingly use Firefox because I am trying to avoid Google's tracking, etc.