What web browser do you use and why?

[benenglish]

I get the feeling that ever since Internet Explorer had competition everybody goes on a seasonal hunt for a better web browser. I know I've used a bunch. I guess I finally settled on Firefox since it seems to be the default on almost every Linux distro I've tried.

Lately, though, I've gotten disenchanted with Firefox. The way I use it, it has serious performance issues. Chrome works better in most ways but I hate that it's basically spyware, reporting everything back to the mother ship and, well, lots of other places, too.

Right now I'm trying to transition to Thorium which is basically Chrome after stripping out all the stuff that reports on your activities to pretty much everyone who asks. The Chrome add-ons that would be convenient don't work but it is a big step up in performance.

So what do y'all use and why?

 

[TheDan]

I remember a few years ago there was a big kerfuffle at Mozilla about some updates they made to Firefox that caused security/privacy concerns to the point where several developers left Mozilla to create a fork, but I'm having a brain fart and can't remember what exactly it was.

I've never been a big Firefox user, tho. For a little while it was the better option, but it's always had shitty performance.

I've been liking Brave for general use lately. The built in adblock just seems to work more seamlessly than addons in other browsers. It's based on chrome so it works as well as that does everywhere. Plus their "vision" is cool. I don't participate in their token nonsense, tho.

I use several browsers at the same time, but for different purposes. I keep what I log into and types of things I search for specific to specific browsers. That way the data collection they get is never a full picture, plus I can train the robots to only affirm a certain bias on that browser instance. For example I only use Firefox to log into one specific gmail account, and only search specific topics in that browser. I can just let youtube autoplay in that browser and it'll stay on a very specific genre of music

I'll check out Thorium.

 

[Otto_Mation]

I use Brave also. I can sync it across platforms including on my phone. It has a built in ad blocker and uses chrome extensions.

 

[orbitup]

I use Opera. I know it's Chinese but I like it. Every one in a while I run across a website that doesn't like it but for the most part it works well.

I'll give Thorium a try.

 

[alternative]

Firefox, it integrates well with my password manager.

 

[Army 1911]

Ben don't worry about the Spyware. Your vacuum has been collecting dirt on you for years.

 

[Whistler]

Was using Brave but recently switched to DuckDuckGo due to performance.

 

[benenglish]

I use Opera. I know it's Chinese but I like it.

I spent a long time on Opera but iirc that was long ago and it wasn't Chinese. It was from somewhere in Scandinavia. It had some very cool messaging, remote control, video calling, and encryption options that I used extensively. As they developed it, they dropped features I liked and I moved on.

ETA - I looked it up. Yeah, it was developed in Norway. It's now Chrome-based and a completely different animal. Interesting. I didn't realize.

ETA2 - Of course, back in those days my favorite search engine was Northern Lights and I still miss some things it could do that are no longer available. Things change. Phooey.

 

[Sam7sf]

I’m fine with whatever. I don’t look at porn. Got a smoking hot gf. I’m sorry. I’m terrible.

 

[Brains]

I use multiple browsers and separate them by use-case. It's not perfect, but it helps to barrier off some of the tracking.

 

[TheDan]

Oh yeah, LibreWolf was the privacy focused fork of Firefox I was thinking about earlier...

 

[kbaxter60]

I have used Opera and Brave, each for a while. I put Duckduckgo on the wife's phone. I since went to Firefox, mostly because I use it on my desktop. I do like their tabbed browsing feature, but call it the "reluctant browser" because when you click a link it opens a new tab and usually just sits there. If you manually tell it to go, Voila! the page loads. Weird.
I like the privacy plugins on the Windows version...

 

[benenglish]

when you click a link it opens a new tab

Do you left-click or center-click on links? For me, this behavior only happens when I center-click; I thought that was the default.

Of course, defaults can be changed.

 

[kbaxter60]

Oh, sorry, I meant on the phone behavior, so just a click. It's all left clicks on desktop and no issues there.

PS - I use Thunderbird for email (desktop), and am mostly pleased with Mozilla.

 

[Coyote9]

I get the feeling that ever since Internet Explorer had competition everybody goes on a seasonal hunt for a better web browser. I know I've used a bunch. I guess I finally settled on Firefox since it seems to be the default on almost every Linux distro I've tried.

Lately, though, I've gotten disenchanted with Firefox. The way I use it, it has serious performance issues. Chrome works better in most ways but I hate that it's basically spyware, reporting everything back to the mother ship and, well, lots of other places, too.

Right now I'm trying to transition to Thorium which is basically Chrome after stripping out all the stuff that reports on your activities to pretty much everyone who asks. The Chrome add-ons that would be convenient don't work but it is a big step up in performance.

So what do y'all use and why?

Firefox then Duck Duck Go

 

[MountainGirl]

Brave.

 

[oldag]

What are the advantages of Brave or Duck over Firefox?

 

[no2gates]

For all my personal stuff I use Brave. For all the business stuff I use Chrome.
Brave does a better job blocking ads and has a slightly smaller memory footprint.

 

[deemus]

Firefox. Because it supposedly didn’t have the holes Explorer did. My IT guys put it on everything I have.

 

[studenygreg]

Brave. It works well with my Chrome account/extensions.

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