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With Firefox, especially with Firefox on Linux, which always had and still has poor GPU support, I frequently encounter sites that do not work well or they do n

With Firefox, especially with Firefox on Linux, which always had and still has poor GPU support, I frequently encounter sites that do not work well or they do not work at all. So I must keep a backup browser, which is normally Vivaldi, because typically any site that works in Chrome also works in Vivaldi. Moreover, Vivaldi has a great advantage over both Firefox and Chrome, in it the command to print a Web page usually works fine, while in both Firefox and Chrome it almost never works correctly. Both Firefox and Chrome are almost never able to render correctly a "printed" page, even if they render the same page perfectly on screen. In the printed page, the graphic elements have almost always wrong sizes, which results in overlapped or invisible page elements. I suppose that this is caused by the fact that many Web pages stupidly use element sizes in pixels, instead of using length units, e.g. points or inches or mm, and both Firefox and Chrome might scale pixels wrongly when rendering for resolutions that differ from that of the screen, while Vivaldi scales them correctly. Besides the "Print" command, the second feature that I like in Vivaldi better than in Firefox or Chrome is that it accepts mouse gestures for most commands, as alternatives to keyboard shortcuts, so you do not need to move the hand from the mouse while browsing.

dijksterhuis 5mo ago
> the second feature that I like in Vivaldi better than in Firefox or Chrome is that it accepts mouse gestures for most commands vivaldi was doing something weird for me, can’t exactly remember what now. seemingly unprompted it would switch tabs or go back in history or something. turns out i’d tried to be clever, set up a mouse gesture and forgotten about it. xD
- Barbing 5mo ago
  > set up a mouse gesture and forgotten about it. xD Classic To do list: make huge spreadsheet of hotkeys across programs and periodically feed them back to myself as flashcards based on [lack of] usage KeyCue didn’t seem to cut it but maybe skill issue
netsharc 5mo ago
> mouse gestures Vivaldi is made by people who left Opera after it was bought by a Chinese company, and the mouse gestures are similar. Ny favorites: "Hold right mouse button, click left" is the browser back gesture, and "hold left, click right" is forward.
- tuoret 5mo ago
  I switched to Firefox when Opera ditched Presto and mouse gestures were the thing I missed the most (along with windowed tabs). Took me a long time to stop trying to use them, those commands were etched deep in my muscle memory. I remember trying a few extensions but they never managed to replicate how smoothly it worked in Opera. You can tell the Vivaldi devs care about that kind of stuff. I don't want to use a chromium-based browser as my daily driver, but I like a lot of what they're doing.
dmos62 5mo ago
I ran into broken printing when I was trying to turn web pages into PDFs. Both Chrome and Firefox couldn't "print" without breaking layout.
- Barbing 5mo ago
  Tried Print Edit WE? “Recommended” extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit-we/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit-we...
  - dmos62 5mo ago
    That's not really the problem I was having. My problem was that HTML+CSS wasn't being properly rendered. A web page of same dimensions as the printed page would have different layout.
jorvi 5mo ago
Vivaldi is the only Chromium browser that actually breaks sites that work on Chromium(based) browsers itself. Mostly stuff like government ID login. A few European logins don't work, and haven't for years (!) with Vivaldi not giving a crap despite ample reports. Extra ironic since Vivaldi is touted as an EU alternative to US tech.
- surgical_fire 5mo ago
  Not sure what country you lived in, but having lived in different European countries, I never found this issue. Have been a Vivaldi user for many years.
- nar001 5mo ago
  Do you have examples of websites that don't work? Both because I'm curious and also so the devs can look into it?
- Unai 5mo ago
  I really doubt that's as general of an occurrence as you make it up to be. There's a particular government process I can only do on Edge (no other browser works, chromium or not). For a certain login process in a different branch of government I can use Vivaldi or Firefox, but not Edge. I don't think you can single out a browser for this kind of thing.
- sys_64738 5mo ago
  I've never seen or heard of this before. Perhaps it is a user error.
- bityard 5mo ago
  I have issues with sites on Vivaldi but it's never due to Vivaldi itself. It always ends up being that case that either uBlock Origin or Vivaldi's own built-in ad/privacy blocker ended up blocking some javascript library that the site needs. ProTip: Try to do your thing in Guest Mode. It will almost certainly work there.
MaXtreeM 5mo ago
I always see these kind of comments, that many sites don't work in Firefox while they do in Chrome. When I encounter a broken site I always also check it in Chrome but the times where it is actually a browser's fault is like once a year. Usually it is some blocking of cookies or something that I have enabled in Firefox. Even sites from Google which everyone seems to describe that they are specifically made to work only in Chrome I never had issues with.
- RoryH 5mo ago
  Yes I agree, there was a time where it was worse and FF just did not have the same support coverage for Browser APIs etc, but now if I encounter a problem in FF I tend toward blaming the website developer for ensuring it works ok.
- __jonas 5mo ago
  Most of the time I switch to Chrome it's for web apps that use APIs like Web Bluetooth or Web USB. No way to use those in Firefox as far as I'm aware.
- adrian_b 5mo ago
  Perhaps you use Firefox on Windows. Firefox on Linux has much more problems than Firefox on Windows, mostly because it does not support many GPUs, so it frequently disables WebGL or it cannot use hardware support for playing videos, even now, in 2026. This breaks many sites. Unlike Firefox, the Linux versions of Vivaldi/Chromium/Chrome do not appear to have any deficiencies in comparison with their Windows versions.
  - RedShift1 5mo ago
    Which is not Firefox's fault. It's up to the operating system to provide a stable API to make things like this work.
    - gilrain 5mo ago
      > Unlike Firefox, the Linux versions of Vivaldi/Chromium/Chrome do not appear to have any deficiencies
ozgrakkurt 5mo ago
I am on linux with amd gpu and Firefox has been so much better than chromium browsers for a very long time. You can open whatsapp web or a pdf or most other websites and just scroll. The difference is massive.
mplanchard 5mo ago
Firefox Linux user (wayland) here. I can’t remember the last time I had a browser issue or had to open an alternative browser.
- fransje26 5mo ago
  Same here, with X11.
  - startpage_com 5mo ago
    Same here, with Xlibre.
bennyp101 5mo ago
Maybe I just don't surf the web as much anymore, but everything I use or click on works in Firefox on Linux, I can't remember the last time I found something that didn't work (other than some Show HN fancy graphics thing)
zimmund 5mo ago
> I frequently encounter sites that do not work well or they do not work at all What kind of sites do you visit frequently? Because as a Firefox user, I rarely see issues like this and it's usually related to either chrome-specific things they didn't bother to implement in a compatible way or very cutting-edge features that are not fully available in browsers yet. I know Firefox had issues in the past (I suffered them myself) but I don't remember having issues with it over the last bunch of years, and it's my main (only) browser.

dijksterhuis 5mo ago

> the second feature that I like in Vivaldi better than in Firefox or Chrome is that it accepts mouse gestures for most commands vivaldi was doing something weird for me, can’t exactly remember what now. seemingly unprompted it would switch tabs or go back in history or something. turns out i’d tried to be clever, set up a mouse gesture and forgotten about it. xD

Barbing 5mo ago
> set up a mouse gesture and forgotten about it. xD Classic To do list: make huge spreadsheet of hotkeys across programs and periodically feed them back to myself as flashcards based on [lack of] usage KeyCue didn’t seem to cut it but maybe skill issue

netsharc 5mo ago

> mouse gestures Vivaldi is made by people who left Opera after it was bought by a Chinese company, and the mouse gestures are similar. Ny favorites: "Hold right mouse button, click left" is the browser back gesture, and "hold left, click right" is forward.

tuoret 5mo ago
I switched to Firefox when Opera ditched Presto and mouse gestures were the thing I missed the most (along with windowed tabs). Took me a long time to stop trying to use them, those commands were etched deep in my muscle memory. I remember trying a few extensions but they never managed to replicate how smoothly it worked in Opera. You can tell the Vivaldi devs care about that kind of stuff. I don't want to use a chromium-based browser as my daily driver, but I like a lot of what they're doing.

dmos62 5mo ago

I ran into broken printing when I was trying to turn web pages into PDFs. Both Chrome and Firefox couldn't "print" without breaking layout.

Barbing 5mo ago
Tried Print Edit WE? “Recommended” extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit-we/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit-we...
- dmos62 5mo ago
  That's not really the problem I was having. My problem was that HTML+CSS wasn't being properly rendered. A web page of same dimensions as the printed page would have different layout.

jorvi 5mo ago

Vivaldi is the only Chromium browser that actually breaks sites that work on Chromium(based) browsers itself. Mostly stuff like government ID login. A few European logins don't work, and haven't for years (!) with Vivaldi not giving a crap despite ample reports. Extra ironic since Vivaldi is touted as an EU alternative to US tech.

surgical_fire 5mo ago
Not sure what country you lived in, but having lived in different European countries, I never found this issue. Have been a Vivaldi user for many years.
nar001 5mo ago
Do you have examples of websites that don't work? Both because I'm curious and also so the devs can look into it?
Unai 5mo ago
I really doubt that's as general of an occurrence as you make it up to be. There's a particular government process I can only do on Edge (no other browser works, chromium or not). For a certain login process in a different branch of government I can use Vivaldi or Firefox, but not Edge. I don't think you can single out a browser for this kind of thing.
sys_64738 5mo ago
I've never seen or heard of this before. Perhaps it is a user error.
bityard 5mo ago
I have issues with sites on Vivaldi but it's never due to Vivaldi itself. It always ends up being that case that either uBlock Origin or Vivaldi's own built-in ad/privacy blocker ended up blocking some javascript library that the site needs. ProTip: Try to do your thing in Guest Mode. It will almost certainly work there.

MaXtreeM 5mo ago

I always see these kind of comments, that many sites don't work in Firefox while they do in Chrome. When I encounter a broken site I always also check it in Chrome but the times where it is actually a browser's fault is like once a year. Usually it is some blocking of cookies or something that I have enabled in Firefox. Even sites from Google which everyone seems to describe that they are specifically made to work only in Chrome I never had issues with.

RoryH 5mo ago
Yes I agree, there was a time where it was worse and FF just did not have the same support coverage for Browser APIs etc, but now if I encounter a problem in FF I tend toward blaming the website developer for ensuring it works ok.
__jonas 5mo ago
Most of the time I switch to Chrome it's for web apps that use APIs like Web Bluetooth or Web USB. No way to use those in Firefox as far as I'm aware.
adrian_b 5mo ago
Perhaps you use Firefox on Windows. Firefox on Linux has much more problems than Firefox on Windows, mostly because it does not support many GPUs, so it frequently disables WebGL or it cannot use hardware support for playing videos, even now, in 2026. This breaks many sites. Unlike Firefox, the Linux versions of Vivaldi/Chromium/Chrome do not appear to have any deficiencies in comparison with their Windows versions.
- RedShift1 5mo ago
  Which is not Firefox's fault. It's up to the operating system to provide a stable API to make things like this work.
  - gilrain 5mo ago
    > Unlike Firefox, the Linux versions of Vivaldi/Chromium/Chrome do not appear to have any deficiencies

ozgrakkurt 5mo ago

I am on linux with amd gpu and Firefox has been so much better than chromium browsers for a very long time. You can open whatsapp web or a pdf or most other websites and just scroll. The difference is massive.

mplanchard 5mo ago

Firefox Linux user (wayland) here. I can’t remember the last time I had a browser issue or had to open an alternative browser.

fransje26 5mo ago
Same here, with X11.
- startpage_com 5mo ago
  Same here, with Xlibre.

bennyp101 5mo ago

Maybe I just don't surf the web as much anymore, but everything I use or click on works in Firefox on Linux, I can't remember the last time I found something that didn't work (other than some Show HN fancy graphics thing)

zimmund 5mo ago

> I frequently encounter sites that do not work well or they do not work at all What kind of sites do you visit frequently? Because as a Firefox user, I rarely see issues like this and it's usually related to either chrome-specific things they didn't bother to implement in a compatible way or very cutting-edge features that are not fully available in browsers yet. I know Firefox had issues in the past (I suffered them myself) but I don't remember having issues with it over the last bunch of years, and it's my main (only) browser.