4 ms·

"There are a few alternatives available. Unfortunately, moving to Firefox may not be a viable option for her, especially given Mozilla’s recent behavior." The

"There are a few alternatives available. Unfortunately, moving to Firefox may not be a viable option for her, especially given Mozilla’s recent behavior." The world has gone crazy. So this relative has casually used the most bloated spyware disguised as a browser for literally a decade, but she can't switch to firefox because 'Mozilla’s recent behavior'.

phito 2y ago
It's crazy the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify not using Firefox. They should just be honest and say they're too lazy to switch.
- nijave 2y ago
  I've been using Firefox for nearly 15 years and there's technical reasons, too. Mainly memory leaks (which I haven't noticed for a few years anymore) and loading just "feels" slower. Webrender with GPU acceleration helped but it was much more complicated poking at about:config than it "just working" Recently, I've noticed a "this SaaS only works in Chrome" trend again. Usually that means "only works in Blink" but it still sucks if you need to use SaaS (for work) that has this silly limitation. I've noticed cheaper restaurant web ordering software tends to have problems in Firefox. For technical or even semi-technical folks those aren't an issue. For non-technical folks, those issues above can easily lead to a poorer web experience without them understanding why. On the other hand, the author didn't actually call out technical issues
  - madeofpalk 2y ago
    You'll be happy to know that recently I shipped a bug that only crashes (in) Chrome, but not Firefox, because I only really develop in Firefox.
    - paulryanrogers 2y ago
      Wow, crashes all of Chrome and not only the tab process?
      - madeofpalk 2y ago
        Ah sorry no. Just a naive error throwing an exception that's easier to hit in Chrome than Firefox. Pro tip - don't try and spread 200k arguments into a function!
  - tucnak 2y ago
    The reason Firefox feels slower is because it uses a subpar caching strategy that's minimizing RAM usage. Otherwise, they could no longer claim Chromium is "wasting memory" which is Firefox-speak for "we refuse to implement comprehensive caching"
    - nijave 2y ago
      iirc more about:config tweaks from FasterFox project helped a bit. Anecdotally, I've never seen Chromium be any more or less memory efficient (well maybe 10 years ago but not recently). For the longest time, if you left Firefox sitting open > than 1-2 weeks it'd start leaking memory to the tune of 10s of GB Chromium is pretty good about suspending pages when it's left sitting for long periods of time
      - tucnak 2y ago
        Chromium is amazing about suspending pages, & evictions in general. They maintain multiple levels throughout the render pipelines, and because the tabs are composed of individual processes, it can trade-off somewhat against kernel. This is what a comprehensive caching strategy is: a layered, machine-aware strategy that is both aggressive and predictable under real workloads. It wasn't always perfect, but it's pretty near-perfect these days. And this is not even considering V8 and the talent pool it has acquired due to quality engineering and the network effect that came from it. Firefox engineers are trying, and you cannot blame them (like you would blame Mozilla) because it has not seen the kind of commitment from industry talent that Chromium. There have been multiple re-writes of major components in Chromium, and they tried really hard to keep the codebase somewhat up-to-date. Firefox is comparatively dated, it's not at all sexy; had people understood this, they wouldn't be so quick with jumping to conclusions, & all. There are many objective, engineering reasons why Firefox is lagging behind the gigantic Chromium+V8 ecosystem of browsers and JS backend industry. For some champagne-socialist reason, it's really vogue to call for Firefox adoption, donating to Mozilla, etc. However, it's rarely an argument made on merit. I think, they just hate to admit that Google has largely succeeded in elevating Chromium to the likes of Linux. If you're making a browser in 2025, unless you're making an artistic point a-la privacy, or contra Chromium specifically, you would rather pick it up at upstream like you would pick up Linux, instead of re-inventing the kernel because Linux bad. That is not to say that OpenBSD, or whatever, Plan9—is without merit, just that it wouldn't surprise anybody had you picked Linux for the job. If you hate Google's SWE people, or its leadership that ostensibly could sway the course of Chromium development, then this is probably really painful! If you don't hate them, you just carry on about your business. And so everyone complies. Because why the hell wouldn't you? There's battles to fight, and there's the other kind. It doesn't help that Mozilla is cutting the branch from underneath itself.
ewenquim 2y ago
She can't switch to firefox because she's used to Chrome and she's 80. TBH I added the sentence about recent Mozilla behaviour because it pisses me off but it shouldn't be an argument, you're right.
- jajko 2y ago
  What special feature does she use that is absolutely untransferable to FF? I have both browsers icons next to each other and sometimes I launch the other by mistake. For normal browsing I only spot the difference due to various pages having different logins ie from my wife or not being logged in. If somebody is able to use internet (god forbid even do some payments on it) then I am pretty sure they could understand the concept of another, very similar app with same behavior. Sometimes new releases change UI at least as much as those browsers differ between each other.
  - ewenquim 2y ago
    The UI is not exactly the same. Maybe it can be OK if I transfer all the favorites, homepage, install a Chrome-looking theme, and more importantly if I change the icon lol. Not even kidding. She only uses it because she needs to, but she would be happier without it.
    - birdiesanders 2y ago
      I installed Ubuntu for many people in their 80s. Give her some time with FF, you don’t have to remove chrome, just hand her FF. I bet she does just fine.
      - flowerthoughts 2y ago
        Are you taking upon yourself to do this for all uBO users that need it without knowing? If you do, you acknowledge that "Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat." If you don't, then "Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat" seems even more true. Either way, I'm curious on the size of your bet here. Talk is cheap, and you've only given OP the laziest and most obvious solution. Do you believe what you said is profound and/or an interesting argument?
nijave 2y ago
Isn't the simple middle ground to use a Chrome fork that doesn't block uBlock? Edit: Chromium forks/derivatives
- baq 2y ago
  define 'simple'. if chrome ripped the whole extension framework out of the source code, a 'simple' fork will suffer the same fate. (notably Edge also doesn't support uBlock Origin anymore.)
  - nijave 2y ago
    They haven't ripped the whole extension framework (yet...) they just marked 1 extension as "malicious" which causes Chrome to automatically disable it. Presumably this is based on proprietary logic that ties Chrome to the Chrome Web/Add-on Store
- soraminazuki 2y ago
  Advocating for the entire browser landscape to be taken over by Chromium is definitely not a middle ground. It's letting the world's largest ad company be the dictator of the web.
  - nijave 2y ago
    I never advocated for that. There's nothing saying a fork has to be 100% in sync with upstream and can cherry-pick what parts it wants to keep. Besides that, there's other Blink-based browsers which are very similar but another level removed from Google Using a fork to work around Google marking addons are malicious seems like a middle ground between "living with ads" and "using a whole new browser the author has political issues with"
    - barotalomey 2y ago
      Suggesting we all stay on Chrome forks is indeed advocating for Chrome when options exist.
barotalomey 2y ago
> Unfortunately, moving to Firefox may not be a viable option for her, especially given Mozilla’s recent behavior. This is such an unfair comparison, where Google made billions on your user data and Mozilla is barely living off the scraps. Clearly we should support Mozilla and not Google here.
aceazzameen 2y ago
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the complaints I see against Firefox is a campaign to keep people on Chrome. But more likely it's just an excuse due to laziness. Either way these people can be dismissed outright.

phito 2y ago

It's crazy the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify not using Firefox. They should just be honest and say they're too lazy to switch.

nijave 2y ago
I've been using Firefox for nearly 15 years and there's technical reasons, too. Mainly memory leaks (which I haven't noticed for a few years anymore) and loading just "feels" slower. Webrender with GPU acceleration helped but it was much more complicated poking at about:config than it "just working" Recently, I've noticed a "this SaaS only works in Chrome" trend again. Usually that means "only works in Blink" but it still sucks if you need to use SaaS (for work) that has this silly limitation. I've noticed cheaper restaurant web ordering software tends to have problems in Firefox. For technical or even semi-technical folks those aren't an issue. For non-technical folks, those issues above can easily lead to a poorer web experience without them understanding why. On the other hand, the author didn't actually call out technical issues
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  You'll be happy to know that recently I shipped a bug that only crashes (in) Chrome, but not Firefox, because I only really develop in Firefox.
  - paulryanrogers 2y ago
    Wow, crashes all of Chrome and not only the tab process?
    - madeofpalk 2y ago
      Ah sorry no. Just a naive error throwing an exception that's easier to hit in Chrome than Firefox. Pro tip - don't try and spread 200k arguments into a function!
- tucnak 2y ago
  The reason Firefox feels slower is because it uses a subpar caching strategy that's minimizing RAM usage. Otherwise, they could no longer claim Chromium is "wasting memory" which is Firefox-speak for "we refuse to implement comprehensive caching"
  - nijave 2y ago
    iirc more about:config tweaks from FasterFox project helped a bit. Anecdotally, I've never seen Chromium be any more or less memory efficient (well maybe 10 years ago but not recently). For the longest time, if you left Firefox sitting open > than 1-2 weeks it'd start leaking memory to the tune of 10s of GB Chromium is pretty good about suspending pages when it's left sitting for long periods of time
    - tucnak 2y ago
      Chromium is amazing about suspending pages, & evictions in general. They maintain multiple levels throughout the render pipelines, and because the tabs are composed of individual processes, it can trade-off somewhat against kernel. This is what a comprehensive caching strategy is: a layered, machine-aware strategy that is both aggressive and predictable under real workloads. It wasn't always perfect, but it's pretty near-perfect these days. And this is not even considering V8 and the talent pool it has acquired due to quality engineering and the network effect that came from it. Firefox engineers are trying, and you cannot blame them (like you would blame Mozilla) because it has not seen the kind of commitment from industry talent that Chromium. There have been multiple re-writes of major components in Chromium, and they tried really hard to keep the codebase somewhat up-to-date. Firefox is comparatively dated, it's not at all sexy; had people understood this, they wouldn't be so quick with jumping to conclusions, & all. There are many objective, engineering reasons why Firefox is lagging behind the gigantic Chromium+V8 ecosystem of browsers and JS backend industry. For some champagne-socialist reason, it's really vogue to call for Firefox adoption, donating to Mozilla, etc. However, it's rarely an argument made on merit. I think, they just hate to admit that Google has largely succeeded in elevating Chromium to the likes of Linux. If you're making a browser in 2025, unless you're making an artistic point a-la privacy, or contra Chromium specifically, you would rather pick it up at upstream like you would pick up Linux, instead of re-inventing the kernel because Linux bad. That is not to say that OpenBSD, or whatever, Plan9—is without merit, just that it wouldn't surprise anybody had you picked Linux for the job. If you hate Google's SWE people, or its leadership that ostensibly could sway the course of Chromium development, then this is probably really painful! If you don't hate them, you just carry on about your business. And so everyone complies. Because why the hell wouldn't you? There's battles to fight, and there's the other kind. It doesn't help that Mozilla is cutting the branch from underneath itself.

ewenquim 2y ago

She can't switch to firefox because she's used to Chrome and she's 80. TBH I added the sentence about recent Mozilla behaviour because it pisses me off but it shouldn't be an argument, you're right.

jajko 2y ago
What special feature does she use that is absolutely untransferable to FF? I have both browsers icons next to each other and sometimes I launch the other by mistake. For normal browsing I only spot the difference due to various pages having different logins ie from my wife or not being logged in. If somebody is able to use internet (god forbid even do some payments on it) then I am pretty sure they could understand the concept of another, very similar app with same behavior. Sometimes new releases change UI at least as much as those browsers differ between each other.
- ewenquim 2y ago
  The UI is not exactly the same. Maybe it can be OK if I transfer all the favorites, homepage, install a Chrome-looking theme, and more importantly if I change the icon lol. Not even kidding. She only uses it because she needs to, but she would be happier without it.
  - birdiesanders 2y ago
    I installed Ubuntu for many people in their 80s. Give her some time with FF, you don’t have to remove chrome, just hand her FF. I bet she does just fine.
    - flowerthoughts 2y ago
      Are you taking upon yourself to do this for all uBO users that need it without knowing? If you do, you acknowledge that "Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat." If you don't, then "Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat" seems even more true. Either way, I'm curious on the size of your bet here. Talk is cheap, and you've only given OP the laziest and most obvious solution. Do you believe what you said is profound and/or an interesting argument?

nijave 2y ago

Isn't the simple middle ground to use a Chrome fork that doesn't block uBlock? Edit: Chromium forks/derivatives

baq 2y ago
define 'simple'. if chrome ripped the whole extension framework out of the source code, a 'simple' fork will suffer the same fate. (notably Edge also doesn't support uBlock Origin anymore.)
- nijave 2y ago
  They haven't ripped the whole extension framework (yet...) they just marked 1 extension as "malicious" which causes Chrome to automatically disable it. Presumably this is based on proprietary logic that ties Chrome to the Chrome Web/Add-on Store
soraminazuki 2y ago
Advocating for the entire browser landscape to be taken over by Chromium is definitely not a middle ground. It's letting the world's largest ad company be the dictator of the web.
- nijave 2y ago
  I never advocated for that. There's nothing saying a fork has to be 100% in sync with upstream and can cherry-pick what parts it wants to keep. Besides that, there's other Blink-based browsers which are very similar but another level removed from Google Using a fork to work around Google marking addons are malicious seems like a middle ground between "living with ads" and "using a whole new browser the author has political issues with"
  - barotalomey 2y ago
    Suggesting we all stay on Chrome forks is indeed advocating for Chrome when options exist.

barotalomey 2y ago

> Unfortunately, moving to Firefox may not be a viable option for her, especially given Mozilla’s recent behavior. This is such an unfair comparison, where Google made billions on your user data and Mozilla is barely living off the scraps. Clearly we should support Mozilla and not Google here.

aceazzameen 2y ago

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the complaints I see against Firefox is a campaign to keep people on Chrome. But more likely it's just an excuse due to laziness. Either way these people can be dismissed outright.