I switched to Watefox myself. It is comfy and no AI.
or just download vivaldi or librewolf.
These don’t have the tab organization and swiping gestures I like, which is a bummer.
FYI if you want to edit the Firefox policies directly and save it in /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json, this is the file they are using
"policies": { "DisableFirefoxStudies": true, "DisableTelemetry": true, "DontCheckDefaultBrowser": true, "FirefoxHome": { "SponsoredStories": false, "SponsoredTopSites": false, "Stories": false }, "GenerativeAI": { "Enabled": false }, "SearchEngines": { "Remove": [ "Perplexity" ] } } }`This shows how unhinged the whole recent hate on Firefox is. Turning off GenAI is literally one single setting AND Mozilla is doing things infinitely better than others (e.g. the translation feature is completely local, and having a chatbot in the sidebar is opt-in)
That’s because the people who are fine or happy with firefox aren’t the type of people to talk about it, the vocal ones are the people that have complaints
I have my settings in
/etc/firefoxand a symlink to distro’s/usr/lib/firefox-esr/distribution. Easier to remember.
Just use Librewolf
As a libreworlf user, I’d have to advise some caution to regular users. A lot of sites are broken as images won’t load and “fancier” web apps don’t work super well either. Yes it’s an easy fix, but expecting someone to go look in the config files to get an image to load is too much for a lot of people
That’s why I recommend Waterfox instead to non technical users
The defaults are bad and some options are either: fully protect fingerprinting OR no protection at all
I really like the Zen browser. It’s Firefox-based, open source and privacy focused with AI removed but it’s also really pretty and is built around vertical tabs
You know what would be nice? If the group gets saved as bookmarks (maybe
Session/group-name) and you could just save/load such a session as a group.I love zen browser and its workspaces. I just cannot use any other Firefox forks anymore without it. It’s more than just containers in Firefox.
Ia this just desktop? No mobile?
For the time being yeah. I still use Firefox on mobile myself but I do hope they release a mobile version at some point
Zen browser my beloved 🥰
For those interested
I switched from Firefox to Librewolf about a month ago and it’s been wonderful. I can’t imagine what it would take for me to switch back to Firefox. I’ll probably ride Librewolf until the project dies or gets corrupted.
I know I’ll get flak for this, but I am sticking with FireFox, because it saves my passwords.
I’d recommend switching to something like Bitwarden for your passwords so you can take them with you and also switch your stuff around if you ever want to
You CAN export them. I migrated to Ff from Chrome a while back.
You can, and they sync with your Mozilla account. I had your reasoning when using Microslop Edge and Microslop Authenticator. I set up Bitwarden now and while it’s not perfect, I do prefer to have full control of my passwords.
I’m going to start my own password software and call it PassWizard. I think that’s a good name.
EDIT: Ah, shit. It’s already taken.
YOU SHALL NOT PASSwizard!
You can switch to WaterFox and it seamlessly uses the FireFox sync to use all your passwords. Very easy drop in replacement.
I’ve been using Librewolf for some months now. You can migrate your Firefox profile into Librewolf, that’s what I did and it retained my passwords. I’m not very tech savvy but it does have some kinks, my browser clock is off I’ve tried tinkering with it but gave up. And especially with the Resist Fingerprinting enabled it seems to not retain my 2 factor id for sites when I ask it to remember me.
Your browser clock is not off. LibreWolf, Tor Browser, Mullvad Browser etc. set your browser’s reported timezone to GMT to not reveal which timezone you’re actually in.
And I don’t understand what you’re talking about in the last sentence.
I’m going to save your comment and install it on my Linux machine when I get home.
Was about to say exactly this same thing…
LibreWolf here I come…
So can librewolf… its got settings!
You can still use firefox sync as well
it’s got settings
Well yeah, Librewolf is basically nothing but settings.
Firefox settings.
Confuses me no end when people rage against Mozilla and then recommend a product that cannot exist without Mozilla.
A software has roughly three parts: core functionality, UI, default settings. Zen does the UI part and default settings different.
Whats confusing about it? People took something that was going bad and made it good again. Thats the benefit of open source. Even if Mozilla goes closed source the already existing forks can continue
Try waterfox maybe?
Waterfox are you talkin’ about? Am I right?!?!?!?! lol
Waterfox? Fennec-about-it!
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I think even with Librewolf you need to open the about:config page and disable browser.ml settings.
afaik is that fixed by now - the team strongly opposes ai and stated that they want to keep it as clean as possible
Oh, glad to hear that. I still check out of privacy-guarding habit.
Fair and valid.
given what “edge” means among the teens these days, microsoft really should go back to the old browser name…microsoft goon
I don’t get what was wrong with the name of Internet Explorer.
They don’t want you exploring anymore. Exploration would take you away from their profitable walled garden.
I think we should go back to Netscape.
You know, like Landscape or Manscape, this is Netscape, where it automatically trims out all the AI, Trackers and Ads.
I mean, I use SeaMonkey still, and that’s the direct descendant of Netscape Communicator. So at least some of us are close.
Marketing sucks, IE was forever tainted. Like now, even if Copilot ran entirely on solar power and cured cancer, solved all hardest math problems, somehow achieved world peace and solved hunger, etc, people would still hate it.
Great move for those that don’t want to migrate, but I’d recommend just switching to Vivaldi if you like chromium browsers, librewolf if you are used to Firefox, and if you use edge you aren’t even reading this so whatever.
Edit: I guess if you can get this to work on a work computer where edge is your only browser option perhaps, that would be nice.
Don’t mind about the AI addition. The worse thing for me is that it doesn’t seem to support custom OpenAI compatible endpoints nor Ollama. Wtf?! This should be the norm for the more privacy conscious community
Shopping features: coupon codes
This feature doesn’t seem like the others.
If you’re familiar with the controversy around the Honey coupon addon, there are a lot of parallels in terms of privacy, ethics etc.
It kind of is. For example, Edge will automatically pop up in the corner at checkout and offer coupon codes, most of them will never work, then they’ll steal the affiliate revenue from whoever actually sent you to the site in the first place, or add an affiliate link where it didn’t previously exist, so that the site now has more expenses that are just… paying Microsoft for no reason, making everything you buy more expensive in the long run.
It pops up whether you want it or not, it’s convoluted to disable, it slows down your browser when it’s running, it financially harms the shops you buy from, and it often just lies about having coupons to waste your time while pretending it’s helping you.
Would anyone know if this would work for all Firefox derivatives as well? Zen browser in my case. Also would it work for flatpak installations as well?
Does Zen Browser even include the AI shit from Mozilla? I know for a fact that neither Waterfox nor Librewolf do.
I see, at least initial read/reviews seem to mention Zen removes Firefox telemetry and AI so that’s good. (I also have waterfox installed but didn’t really use it as main browser)
Now need to see if flatpak Firefox is supported by this script.
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