Hey there,
I’ve been using Firefox for ages now, and I was completely satisfied with it… until very recently, that is. For space-saving reasons, I started to convert my media library to H265, since all devices in my network support it now. Or so I thought. One very noticeable omission is my desktop PC with Firefox. Now, if I watch something from my local media server, the server has to waste resources to convert to H264, which is a noticeable performance hit to all other things running on the server. The GPU in my Desktop PC (or the CPU for that matter) could have displayed H265 without even changing clock speed from idle. So I tried to use the native Plex App for Windows for that, but that one does not support RTX Super Resolution which was really nice when watching old DVD stuff.
From what I can see, to get both, I need a Chromium browser. Since I would rather not have two browsers open all the time: Is there any browser based on the latest Chromium Builds that is not a massive insult to one’s privacy?
The only Chromium I know which isn’t an insult to privacy is Vivaldi
…closed source web browser? Really?
Why do you not advocate for Ungoogled Chromium, the only safe Chromium based option?
Edit: oh, and I almost forgot, how is Vivaldi or adblocker on any of these browsers better than uBO Lite by gorhill, that you can slap on UGC?
Vivaldi is an ungoogled Chromium, there don’t go any data to Google, except if you use the optional Google Save Search in the privacy settings. OpenSource, well, Vivaldi isn’t strict OpenSource, because 5% of the script corresponding to the UI is proprietary, but full auditable and even accessible and moddeable by the user, in the forum they show how to do it (logically at own risk). There isn’t any privacy issue or hidden things in it. User data in a Mozilla-Firefox Account is shared with Alphabet, googleanalytics and google-tagmanager, in Vivaldi nothing is shared with Google or other companies.
Nobody needs a Mozilla account, and Google analytics domains can be disabled in uBlock Origin with 2-3 clicks, something problematic on Vivaldi since Chromium browsers hate a full featured uBO. However, I cannot opt out of the 5% closed source code in Vivaldi, if I use Vivaldi, and their “performance and security” reasons are very vague and fishy.
The user respecting choice seems clear.
You need an account if you use sync and don’t want third party or self hosted solutions. I don’t think that there is nothing vague or fishy in Vivaldi, it’s all very transparent. Chromium (Blink) is used by the vast majory of browsers in the web and Vivaldy, apart of beeing the only EU browser is a very small cooperative in Norway. What do you think ocurres if Vivaldi release its nique UI as OpenSource, which compañies in less a second will use it for the own browser? Chrome and EDGE and killing with this definitively the competence and a free internet, include Vivaldi.
Google dominate the internet and battle against Vivaldi and others, or buy them, like Mozilla, since several years, first with discriminatory browsersniffing, blocking the access of several sites if it detected Vivaldi in the UA. Because of this, Vivaldi was disguised by the devs as Chrome against the own interests, later introducing several tracking APIs in the Chromium base, which the Vivaldi devs stripped out (except security updates) since years, before using it for Vivaldi (Because of this the Chromium base in Vivaldi is somewhat behind (~< a month) the official Chromium version. Later Google tried it with webpage APIs (FloC, idle API and others) also skipped by V devs. Mv3 also not affect Vivaldi with the inbuild blockers, no need to have the daily battle which Gorhill has to maintan uBO up to date. For YT I’ve enough with the Vivaldi trackerblocker and a userscript, to have YT 100% free of ads and nags since more than 8 month.
I have been using Vivaldi for 8 years and I have seen all of Google’s tricks to eliminate Vivaldi as an uncomfortable competition, especially due to von Tetzchner’s activism against Google’s practices and web surveillance, which together with others and the Norwegian organization of consumers has driven this GDPR in the EU.
As a user I don’t care about these 5% UI proprietary scripts, but I do care about the ethics and transparency of the company with the user and this is beyond any doubt
etc.
You can’t buy trust with OpenSource, the trust must be gained by the author
And Google has nothing to do with Mozilla account. This is a bizarre conspiracy theory. It takes 1 minute with uBO to disable Google domains.
Closed source web browser is fishy. The “security” reasoning is the most insane kind of reasoning and is given by the likes of Apple.
I care about transparency, which UGC is and Vivaldi is not.
Vivaldi was not alone. The most affected browser has always been Firefox, the global leader in rooting against Big Tech and Chromium engine monopoly. Vivaldi instead contributes to it, going against what Opera once stood for.
You do not care about your internet web browser being closed source. This is a you problem, and a Vivaldi problem. This makes UGC the only viable Chromium based browser for privacy recommendations. Very few closed source internet programs have gained trust over time, like IDM on Windows.
Nobody buys trust with open source. The development model itself encourages transparency, unlike closed source development inventing excuses about obscurity. Internet tools with closed source code should be avoided unless no feasible alternatives exist, and Vivaldi has alternatives.
vs
Do you trust OpenSource made by Facebook, MS or Google? Vivaldi don’t, because of this use a lot of work to gut the Chromium code (100% FOSS) before using it. For an user it’s irrelevant if part of the UI is proprietary, knowing that the script is clean of any hidden things. Anyone with knowledge of programming can check it and even modify it without problem, the only limitation: it cannot be used by other browsers or companies. Any advanced browser has parts which are not fully OpenSource because of a amount of very different licenses from the scripts of the different features which a browser offer, also Firefox , eg the translation tool of FF, which is from Lingvanex, the same as hosted by Vivaldi, which is proprietary soft. Maybe the definition of OpenSource need an update, currently it’s a pretty grayzone.
For the rest https://vivaldi.com/source/
Why are you pushing this narrative, despite uBO domain disabling available 2-3 clicks away? Mozilla account is not dependent on google telemetry.
Android, yes. Chromium, yes, but as second opinion browser as it leaks a lot of metadata. Anything written in D language would be fine. Zstd is made by Facebook, even if I do not like it as much for technical reasons over 7Z/RAR/ARC/LOLZ, but Yann Collet did a great job just like with the legendary LZ4.
Vivaldi itself keeps 5% closed source code for fishy reasons, and it has alternatives, and it promotes Chromium engine monopoly which harms internet.
No. It is critical to have transparency for an internet application, unless trust is gained over decades. https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/
I have rarely heard of reasons more bullshit than this to stay closed source.
This is misinformation. This is the repository of FF translations (https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-translations) marked read only due to moving issue tracker to Bugzilla, which is based on the open source Bergamot toolkit (https://github.com/browsermt/bergamot-translator), not Lingvanex proprietary code.
Or maybe… Vivaldi must be considered closed source proprietary internet web browser software.
How is the ad blocker? I use Brave at work for debugging frontend code, but I don’t really trust the org behind it. But I need something in the Chromium family to test our app, and the ad blocker is nice (main browser is Firefox).
If Vivaldi’s ad blocker is as good as Brave’s, I’ll switch. I’ll probably keep Chromium on my personal computers though (all Linux) because Vivaldi isn’t open source. I use it very rarely since Firefox meets my needs, so it’s less of an issue.
I use no other, the ad/trackerblocker in Vivaldi is full customizable, you can add the filterlists you want. In the adblock test I got between 90-100% (You must test the best filter combination, because too much can break some sites, adblocking is always a balance game). If you want more privacy, you can use the privacy extensions you want or use userscripts, which you can install directly as extension, if you don’t want to use Tamper-,Greasy- or Violentmonkey to do this. It’s a EU company (strict GDPR), no tracking, ads or third parties behind, own sync server e2ee.
Cool, I’m playing with it. One concern is that it’s closed source.
I’m not going to use it as a main browser most likely though, I’m happy with Firefox, but I need something for when websites refuse to work w/ it.
Besides, you can always just throw uBlock on it and be done with the adblock stuff
Its always good to have several browsers at hand. The perfect browser is the one which fits the needs of the user.
Eh, several seems like a bit much, but diversity in general is good. I use Firefox because it solves my needs, but I need a Chromium-based browser for random broken sites.
Instead of FF I¡ve also Mullvad, apart Otter and SSuite Netsurf. so I’ve 4 different engines at hand, if needed. Blink, Gecko, Qt5 and WebView.