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The Linux beta feels nice. Built-in ad-blocking and nested vertical tabs satisfies the two main things keeping me on Firefox (unnerfed uBlock Origin and Tree S

The Linux beta feels nice. Built-in ad-blocking and nested vertical tabs satisfies the two main things keeping me on Firefox (unnerfed uBlock Origin and Tree Style Tabs, respectively). Some things feel like obvious oversights, like the lack of “Search for...” when right-clicking on selected text. Also some of the settings pages are broken (like the one with per-site settings), though I assume this is just a quirk of it being a test build. The only showstopper is the lack of publicly-available source code. Transparency is a dependency of trust. As much as I want to trust Kagi's browser (I certainly have trusted them enough to be paying them every month for their search engine + AI), web browsers are the biggest attack surface on a modern desktop, and I'd be a lot more comfortable with my daily browsing being done with a user agent that has nothing to hide. I don't even necessarily need it to be FOSS (though that'd be preferable); source-available would be enough.

matheusmoreira 2mo ago
> Built-in ad-blocking Definitely enjoying this trend. I think Brave was the first to do it, and now Kagi is doing it too in their own browser. The web without adblocking is so unusable it might as well be considered broken. Ad blockers are the new popup blockers: they should be built into the browsers themselves as first class features. Only conflicts of interest prevented that. Couldn't trust a company funded by Google to maintain an ad blocker. I'm so glad alternatives are showing up.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- c16 2mo ago
  As an ad-blocker user for years, I agree. On the flip side, how do blogs, news, and every day ad-serving websites survive without them? If it dies, it dies? Maybe this is not a discussion for here right now. But it's definitely something I've thought of. Not everyone want to pay for news.
  - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
    > how do blogs, news, and every day ad-serving websites survive without them? Same as they do now. The quality ones charge for their content. The low-quality ones survive on serving ads to the masses.
    - Rebuff5007 2mo ago
      There is a third option, that the content does not need to be monetized.
      - mrngld 2mo ago
        Full time journalists do in fact enjoy eating like the rest of us.
        Rebuff5007 2mo ago
        The parent comment mentioned "blogs" and "everyday websites." Do you want to make a case for why exactly a percentage increase calculator app needs ads?
    - neodymiumphish 2mo ago
      I want to pay good sites for their content, but I don't think it's economical to expect a subscription from every semi-regular reader. I'd like for the internet to settle on some sort of micro-transaction system where your browsing history pays out a fraction of a penny each time you browse to a site, so as long as you maintain a balance in your wallet, you can browse the web ad-free across all the sites that support the transaction system.
      - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
        > micro-transaction system Doesn’t make sense commercially or socially. If you’re dabbling in specialist content, you’re fine waiting for it to filter out through ad-funded sources. The information density will be lower. And timing, too. But the whole point of the subscription is you have a stable base of financing and a committed community of knowledgeable people (likely in positions of power). And practically speaking, the archive.is workarounds sort of are the solution for dabblers. It just taxes your time instead of wallet, which seems fair.
- tjpnz 2mo ago
  Not only unusable, it's an outright security risk. Even the purportedly less scammy ad networks like Google sell ads to scammers and malware developers.
  - mrngld 2mo ago
    You're right. My elderly mom has fallen victim, or nearly fallen victim at least, to tons of ads or sponsored spots served within Facebook, which are a bit harder to block. They can also outrun DNS-based block lists, probably because LLM's are allowing crooks to move faster and be more prolific. I actually started making an LLM-powered browser extension that I thought could read the page and determine if it passed a smell test and block it if it didn't meet some strict criteria I'd set for her, but I didn't get very far before I became too concerned about prompt injection. Wanted to do the same on her e-mail, because gmail's built in filters sometimes let her down, but same concern. Prompt injection there may be trivial as well.
  - deaton 2mo ago
    Its been a while since I've seen an ad on Youtube since I got premium, but I remember, at least for a while, every ad on there was a scam. At some point I think Google realized nobody would stop them, so they just started accepting anyone who wanted to advertise with them.
  - MrMember 2mo ago
    I used to read the games site Rock Paper Shotgun. At some point they decided they were going to block everyone who blocked ads. There were ways around it but the writing had gone downhill so I chose to stop reading it entirely. A few months later I saw they had issued an apology for serving malware through their ads. I will never, ever, under any circumstances stop using an adblocker.
- shevy-java 2mo ago
  > Couldn't trust a company funded by Google to maintain an ad blocker. Agreed. Google can not be trusted. They once tried to run the "acceptable ads" campaign. That one died down quickly after people pointed out the hypocrisy by Google. Nowadays it seems nobody likes Google anymore, so it is much easier to reject its various rubbish claims. See also how Google is waging war against ublock origin.
- Xerox9213 2mo ago
  I also think it’s interesting that Ladybird is decidedly not including ad blocking, but leaving it to third party extensions. In some ways it makes a lot of sense to keep doing it that way.
  - antonok 2mo ago
    Ladybird is natively integrating Brave's adblock engine https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/pull/9587 https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/pull/9587
- midnightbobarun 2mo ago
  I also like the more browsers have built-in adblock, but so far I've never seen any of them copy uBlock Origin's "element picker" (the little eyedropper tool) feature... it's good for getting rid of annoying stuff on certain websites and only uBlock Origin seems to do it. :(
  - antonok 2mo ago
    Brave has it on both desktop and mobile https://brave.com/privacy-updates/34-block-page-elements-android/ https://brave.com/privacy-updates/34-block-page-elements-and...
saghm 2mo ago
I don't understand what the point of keeping a browser closed-source is. Are they trying to monetize it or something?
- yellowapple 2mo ago
  It seems like they're indeed trying to sell “Orion+”, but it doesn't look like it buys you much besides bragging rights, in which case an Ardour-like business model of “source code is free but we charge for pre-built binaries” seems like it'd accomplish the same thing.
jorvi 2mo ago
Are browser UIs themselves vectors for serious exploits? Orion uses WebKit and I assume they try to track as close to the release branch as possible. So if you trust WebKit, you can trust Orion. Personally I'm more of a Brave guy though, despite having been a Kagi user since 2024 :). What I'd really wish for is an EU browser that 'just works'. Vivaldi is nice but it often has papercuts because it has a small team behind it that have to try to support a mountain of features.
- pegasus 2mo ago
  > What I'd really wish for is an EU browser that 'just works'. Have you tried Zen Browser? It's entirely open source but the core team and sponsor are European, and it's actively positioning itself as the European alternative. I've been giving it a go lately. So far, so good, and I like most of their UI/UX choices.
  - ezst 2mo ago
    Not OP, but your comment had me looking into it: the fact that it's Firefox-based is reason enough to give it some consideration: the Chrome monopoly we are currently under is not compatible with a healthy and neutral web.
  - jorvi 2mo ago
    I've considered Zen, but the problem there is no Widevine, which means no DRM video. I do love the design and how the interface has vertical and pinned / favorite tabs as its foundation. It's where I expect other browsers to go eventually.
- laserbeam 2mo ago
  > Orion uses WebKit and _I assume_ they try to track as close to the release branch as possible. So if you trust WebKit, you can trust Orion. The problem is you're stuck at assuming, but can't verify.
  - saagarjha 2mo ago
    This in particular is not very difficult to verify
colordrops 2mo ago
I think FOSS is far better. Restrictive licenses lead to much less people inspecting and working with the code.
- nicce 2mo ago
  > less people Less agents these days
brynx97 2mo ago
My main issue with Linux beta is the inability to sync with my Macbook and iPhone sessions. I move tabs between devices quite often in Firefox. Although, I will confess not spending much time looking at this problem or any solutions. Agree with the lack of publicly-available source code.
arnoooooo 2mo ago
> Transparency is a dependency of trust. I'd recommend reading Byung-Chul Han. In his book The Transparency Society, he argues - quite convincingly IMHO - that transparency is asked when trust is missing.

matheusmoreira 2mo ago

> Built-in ad-blocking Definitely enjoying this trend. I think Brave was the first to do it, and now Kagi is doing it too in their own browser. The web without adblocking is so unusable it might as well be considered broken. Ad blockers are the new popup blockers: they should be built into the browsers themselves as first class features. Only conflicts of interest prevented that. Couldn't trust a company funded by Google to maintain an ad blocker. I'm so glad alternatives are showing up.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
c16 2mo ago
As an ad-blocker user for years, I agree. On the flip side, how do blogs, news, and every day ad-serving websites survive without them? If it dies, it dies? Maybe this is not a discussion for here right now. But it's definitely something I've thought of. Not everyone want to pay for news.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
  > how do blogs, news, and every day ad-serving websites survive without them? Same as they do now. The quality ones charge for their content. The low-quality ones survive on serving ads to the masses.
  - Rebuff5007 2mo ago
    There is a third option, that the content does not need to be monetized.
    - mrngld 2mo ago
      Full time journalists do in fact enjoy eating like the rest of us.
      - Rebuff5007 2mo ago
        The parent comment mentioned "blogs" and "everyday websites." Do you want to make a case for why exactly a percentage increase calculator app needs ads?
  - neodymiumphish 2mo ago
    I want to pay good sites for their content, but I don't think it's economical to expect a subscription from every semi-regular reader. I'd like for the internet to settle on some sort of micro-transaction system where your browsing history pays out a fraction of a penny each time you browse to a site, so as long as you maintain a balance in your wallet, you can browse the web ad-free across all the sites that support the transaction system.
    - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
      > micro-transaction system Doesn’t make sense commercially or socially. If you’re dabbling in specialist content, you’re fine waiting for it to filter out through ad-funded sources. The information density will be lower. And timing, too. But the whole point of the subscription is you have a stable base of financing and a committed community of knowledgeable people (likely in positions of power). And practically speaking, the archive.is workarounds sort of are the solution for dabblers. It just taxes your time instead of wallet, which seems fair.
tjpnz 2mo ago
Not only unusable, it's an outright security risk. Even the purportedly less scammy ad networks like Google sell ads to scammers and malware developers.
- mrngld 2mo ago
  You're right. My elderly mom has fallen victim, or nearly fallen victim at least, to tons of ads or sponsored spots served within Facebook, which are a bit harder to block. They can also outrun DNS-based block lists, probably because LLM's are allowing crooks to move faster and be more prolific. I actually started making an LLM-powered browser extension that I thought could read the page and determine if it passed a smell test and block it if it didn't meet some strict criteria I'd set for her, but I didn't get very far before I became too concerned about prompt injection. Wanted to do the same on her e-mail, because gmail's built in filters sometimes let her down, but same concern. Prompt injection there may be trivial as well.
- deaton 2mo ago
  Its been a while since I've seen an ad on Youtube since I got premium, but I remember, at least for a while, every ad on there was a scam. At some point I think Google realized nobody would stop them, so they just started accepting anyone who wanted to advertise with them.
- MrMember 2mo ago
  I used to read the games site Rock Paper Shotgun. At some point they decided they were going to block everyone who blocked ads. There were ways around it but the writing had gone downhill so I chose to stop reading it entirely. A few months later I saw they had issued an apology for serving malware through their ads. I will never, ever, under any circumstances stop using an adblocker.
shevy-java 2mo ago
> Couldn't trust a company funded by Google to maintain an ad blocker. Agreed. Google can not be trusted. They once tried to run the "acceptable ads" campaign. That one died down quickly after people pointed out the hypocrisy by Google. Nowadays it seems nobody likes Google anymore, so it is much easier to reject its various rubbish claims. See also how Google is waging war against ublock origin.
Xerox9213 2mo ago
I also think it’s interesting that Ladybird is decidedly not including ad blocking, but leaving it to third party extensions. In some ways it makes a lot of sense to keep doing it that way.
- antonok 2mo ago
  Ladybird is natively integrating Brave's adblock engine https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/pull/9587 https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/pull/9587
midnightbobarun 2mo ago
I also like the more browsers have built-in adblock, but so far I've never seen any of them copy uBlock Origin's "element picker" (the little eyedropper tool) feature... it's good for getting rid of annoying stuff on certain websites and only uBlock Origin seems to do it. :(
- antonok 2mo ago
  Brave has it on both desktop and mobile https://brave.com/privacy-updates/34-block-page-elements-android/ https://brave.com/privacy-updates/34-block-page-elements-and...

saghm 2mo ago

I don't understand what the point of keeping a browser closed-source is. Are they trying to monetize it or something?

yellowapple 2mo ago
It seems like they're indeed trying to sell “Orion+”, but it doesn't look like it buys you much besides bragging rights, in which case an Ardour-like business model of “source code is free but we charge for pre-built binaries” seems like it'd accomplish the same thing.

jorvi 2mo ago

Are browser UIs themselves vectors for serious exploits? Orion uses WebKit and I assume they try to track as close to the release branch as possible. So if you trust WebKit, you can trust Orion. Personally I'm more of a Brave guy though, despite having been a Kagi user since 2024 :). What I'd really wish for is an EU browser that 'just works'. Vivaldi is nice but it often has papercuts because it has a small team behind it that have to try to support a mountain of features.

pegasus 2mo ago
> What I'd really wish for is an EU browser that 'just works'. Have you tried Zen Browser? It's entirely open source but the core team and sponsor are European, and it's actively positioning itself as the European alternative. I've been giving it a go lately. So far, so good, and I like most of their UI/UX choices.
- ezst 2mo ago
  Not OP, but your comment had me looking into it: the fact that it's Firefox-based is reason enough to give it some consideration: the Chrome monopoly we are currently under is not compatible with a healthy and neutral web.
- jorvi 2mo ago
  I've considered Zen, but the problem there is no Widevine, which means no DRM video. I do love the design and how the interface has vertical and pinned / favorite tabs as its foundation. It's where I expect other browsers to go eventually.
laserbeam 2mo ago
> Orion uses WebKit and _I assume_ they try to track as close to the release branch as possible. So if you trust WebKit, you can trust Orion. The problem is you're stuck at assuming, but can't verify.
- saagarjha 2mo ago
  This in particular is not very difficult to verify

colordrops 2mo ago

I think FOSS is far better. Restrictive licenses lead to much less people inspecting and working with the code.

nicce 2mo ago
> less people Less agents these days

brynx97 2mo ago

My main issue with Linux beta is the inability to sync with my Macbook and iPhone sessions. I move tabs between devices quite often in Firefox. Although, I will confess not spending much time looking at this problem or any solutions. Agree with the lack of publicly-available source code.

arnoooooo 2mo ago

> Transparency is a dependency of trust. I'd recommend reading Byung-Chul Han. In his book The Transparency Society, he argues - quite convincingly IMHO - that transparency is asked when trust is missing.