cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/68754751
There was a time I chose Firefox over the Chromium browser without a second thought. But nowadays, installing and opening Firefox seems like a time-consuming, very bloated experience.
Too many unnecessary features, promotions, sponsored links, and widgets are filled on the homepage. All the settings are now more complex, and there is a lot to set up after a fresh install.
When I compare modern Firefox with Firefox ESR, I feel like I am using browsers like Vivaldi or Opera instead of Firefox. Seriously, Firefox must consider releasing a browser like Brave Origin (Firefox Origin or something).
Isn’t anybody else frustrated with the new Firefox changes? If yes, what practical solutions exist? Debloat using any script or install any forks (no forks seem to be good; some are outdated, some are too much hardened, some are just not for daily browsing, etc.).
I’m just looking for a browser like Ungoogled Chromium but for Firefox (Unmozillaed Firefox).
Librewolf, Waterfox and GNU IceCat are all Firefox forks.
For what you’re asking for, GNU IceCat is probably the best fit - the project syncs up with Firefox ESR but removes all proprietary stuff and maintains it’s own extensions. It has some privacy improvements too but is otherwise set up as a standard browser. It’s basically Ungoogled Chromium for Firefox. The downside is the project doesn’t release project binaries; you have to look for binaries in your distro (and many don’t provide them) or use GNU Guix - the package manager from the GNU project (which can be installed on any system; it’s a bit like NIX). Or build them yourself from Github. Details are here: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
Librewolf and Waterfox are both excellent but by default are very privacy focused and locked down, so you may need to make config changes to get them back to a more “standard” default browser set up (sacrificing the privacy benefits in the process).
Personally I use Firefox; I understand what you’re saying but the steps you talk about are at first install and that’s not something I do often so can tolerate it.
EDIT: Just checked, IceCat isn’t in OpenSuSE’s default repos (disappointingly) but I did find it in Fedora’s repos (both standard and it’s Flatpak store). So it’s a bit hit and miss. Guix is universal but it’s a bit of a bloaty way to do it if you only want one item from it’s repos. Fedora Flatpaks can of course be installed on pretty much any X86/AMD64 system by adding registry.fedoraproject.org as a flatpak remote (alongside Flathub).