The Best Browser You Never Heard Of?

[minderasr]

 

[minderasr]

After playing around with this browser, I find that I like it.  Not exactly the fastest, but it's not Chrome and Brave has been pulling some shady dealings lately, so I was looking at alternatives.

One thing I wish it had that Brave does.  The ability to sync across multiple computers without signing in to Google.  Google knows more than enough about me, I don't need to feed it more info.

[minderasr]

As a follow-up, I decided to go with LibreWolf (Firefox based, with Tor security levels minus the Tor network part) instead of Thorium.  You can utilize Firefox sync with LibreWolf, but I found it messed up some of my Firefox settings.  So I installed the XBrowserSync extension and use that to easily (and securely) share bookmarks across multiple instances of LibreWolf (laptop and desktop).

So far so good!

[LostinTexas]

I tried the Thorium, and never could get it to work after a LOT of frustration to just find a download. If you get it running, more power to you, just seems like a lot of add ons to make it work right. Maybe not, but it never worked for me.

So far Brave has been fine, and I don't use their "rewards" so that seems to be the sketchy part. I never see adds or browsing advertising, so no complaints. Not sure about having to sign into Google to sync. I just dumped mine because of some sketchy quirks and it restarting more and more. Mission accomplished, and I was able to sign into Brave to get my browser and all the setup back, seamlessly.

Vivaldi has been solid as well. If you like Opera, Vivaldi is up your alley for the way it works, just a lot more private. Funny, I didn't care for Opera, but like Vivaldi, and they are all but a mirrored browser.  Vivaldy has been sort of a rebuild after the reset, but all seems to be up and running now. It took several hours with the Brave reset to get things back on, but that made it much easier. The Vivaldy had to be rebuilt, and it isn't a disaster to do, just remembering all the addresses and passwords. 

Firefox has wet the bed as far as I'm concerned. A lot of hinkie things going on there after the hostile takeover. They flip and flop and I don't like that. LostWife uses it and is very happy, so there is that.

[minderasr]

23 hours ago, LostinTexas said:

I tried the Thorium, and never could get it to work after a LOT of frustration to just find a download. If you get it running, more power to you, just seems like a lot of add ons to make it work right. Maybe not, but it never worked for me.

So far Brave has been fine, and I don't use their "rewards" so that seems to be the sketchy part. I never see adds or browsing advertising, so no complaints. Not sure about having to sign into Google to sync. I just dumped mine because of some sketchy quirks and it restarting more and more. Mission accomplished, and I was able to sign into Brave to get my browser and all the setup back, seamlessly.

Vivaldi has been solid as well. If you like Opera, Vivaldi is up your alley for the way it works, just a lot more private. Funny, I didn't care for Opera, but like Vivaldi, and they are all but a mirrored browser.  Vivaldy has been sort of a rebuild after the reset, but all seems to be up and running now. It took several hours with the Brave reset to get things back on, but that made it much easier. The Vivaldy had to be rebuilt, and it isn't a disaster to do, just remembering all the addresses and passwords. 

Firefox has wet the bed as far as I'm concerned. A lot of hinkie things going on there after the hostile takeover. They flip and flop and I don't like that. LostWife uses it and is very happy, so there is that.

I was an enthusiastic Brave user for a long time.  But they've done some shady things during that time.  I never used their proprietary bitcoin type rewards, but I see constant complaints from users not able to receive or outright losing their rewards.  But the final straw for me was them quietly installing a VPN service and Wireguard service during a recent update.  I only learned of it when Windows (11 Home) notified me of the services suddenly launching at startup.  Worse yet, the only way to get rid of them was to completely uninstall Brave (which I did).  The folks at Brave finally came clean on this nonsense, claiming the services were not meant to run UNLESS the user was PAYING for the VPN service.  However they did not admit to any wrong doing. It's supposed to be corrected in an upcoming update (if not fixed already).  But for me the damage was already done.

Longtime Firefox user here, going back to the very early days of the browser.  No complaints from me, it does what I need it to do. Probably why I fell into LibreWolf so easily/seamlessly.

With that said, I usually run with multiple browsers, each for unique specific needs. My goal is privacy, at least as private as I can be short of staying offline altogether.  I still have Thorium installed, but it's not getting much use lately. I do think it's a good alternative to Chrome, especially if you'd like something similar to Chrome for your browsing needs.

[LostinTexas]

1 hour ago, minderasr said:

I was an enthusiastic Brave user for a long time.  But they've done some shady things during that time.  I never used their proprietary bitcoin type rewards, but I see constant complaints from users not able to receive or outright losing their rewards.  But the final straw for me was them quietly installing a VPN service and Wireguard service during a recent update.  I only learned of it when Windows (11 Home) notified me of the services suddenly launching at startup.  Worse yet, the only way to get rid of them was to completely uninstall Brave (which I did).  The folks at Brave finally came clean on this nonsense, claiming the services were not meant to run UNLESS the user was PAYING for the VPN service.  However they did not admit to any wrong doing. It's supposed to be corrected in an upcoming update (if not fixed already).  But for me the damage was already done.

Longtime Firefox user here, going back to the very early days of the browser.  No complaints from me, it does what I need it to do. Probably why I fell into LibreWolf so easily/seamlessly.

With that said, I usually run with multiple browsers, each for unique specific needs. My goal is privacy, at least as private as I can be short of staying offline altogether.  I still have Thorium installed, but it's not getting much use lately. I do think it's a good alternative to Chrome, especially if you'd like something similar to Chrome for your browsing needs.

Thorium just defaulted to Google straight off. That well may be the plan just gutted, Dunno

I never experienced any of the Brave anomalies you described, lucky I guess. I read that Brave was doing shady crap with thier rewards program, and got hit on it. Maybe it is legit any more, but I don't feel the need to bother. They were said to be doing a lot of off color tracking with the service, so that was an instant turn off. It took a long time and several interventions and growth levels for my warming up to brave though. I left them several times over their glitchy start. I have never warmed up to any VPN. They seem to break sites and I don't spend time hooked to coffee house wifi, so there is that. They slow things to such a crawl that the lame public wifi speeds make them unusable anyway.

FF works extremely well, but after the takeover, and a lot of :plans" announced, I walked away and never looked back. I don't know if any of them fruited, but the fruits seem to be running the asylum. Chrome works better than probably most anything out there, but it is what it is.

From my understanding, the ousted CEO of FF started the Brave project and may be the driving force of the browser staying somewhat middle of the road. Sadly, when it gets big enough, one person, or even a few persons, like the folks he brought with him, can't keep up with it all. Vivaldi is much the same as Brave The CEO left after the Chinese bought Opera and brought some of his team with him to the Vivaldi project, while attracting some FF and Chrome assets.

I still like Brave better than most I've tried, and I've tried a lot. Vivaldi is a solid offering, and is catching up on things like prisonization and other fun things. Both are subject to Chrome extensions, and some don't work well with the altered code the private browsers use, but they do OK, mostly. Libre anything seems to be rather solid, so I may check that one out.

[pipedreams]

I like Vivaldi, been tinkering with LibreWolf but not up to speed on it yet.

[LostinTexas]

4 hours ago, minderasr said:

I was an enthusiastic Brave user for a long time.  But they've done some shady things during that time.  I never used their proprietary bitcoin type rewards, but I see constant complaints from users not able to receive or outright losing their rewards.  But the final straw for me was them quietly installing a VPN service and Wireguard service during a recent update.  I only learned of it when Windows (11 Home) notified me of the services suddenly launching at startup.  Worse yet, the only way to get rid of them was to completely uninstall Brave (which I did).  The folks at Brave finally came clean on this nonsense, claiming the services were not meant to run UNLESS the user was PAYING for the VPN service.  However they did not admit to any wrong doing. It's supposed to be corrected in an upcoming update (if not fixed already).  But for me the damage was already done.

Longtime Firefox user here, going back to the very early days of the browser.  No complaints from me, it does what I need it to do. Probably why I fell into LibreWolf so easily/seamlessly.

With that said, I usually run with multiple browsers, each for unique specific needs. My goal is privacy, at least as private as I can be short of staying offline altogether.  I still have Thorium installed, but it's not getting much use lately. I do think it's a good alternative to Chrome, especially if you'd like something similar to Chrome for your browsing needs.

Any way to stay signed in on my favorite sites using LibreWolf?

 

Edit: Found it.

 

[LostinTexas]

Been playing with the LibreWolf all afternoon. I think I like it. Pretty easy to personalize and seems to work well. A few of the settings are so strict they seem to break sites, but after some trial and error, they are toned down a bit.

Not locked down as tight as probably intended, but feels pretty familial and seems to be working well.

[minderasr]

I will never use Chrome, especially when signed in to a Google account.  The "privacy" settings are a facade IMO.

Sadly most of the more popular browsers are all Chromium based (Google owned), included MS Edge and Brave.  Google trying to control everything on the internet (I wonder why?).  Brave was certainly a viable option...was (again IMO), especially as an ad blocker.  Fairly secure and reasonably private with the right settings/extensions.

Which is why I prefer Firefox based browsers from a privacy perspective.  And I'm able to block ads and secure things with the right extensions.  LibreWolf is just a more hardened version of Firefox, and again I'm really liking it.

On 11/24/2023 at 7:39 PM, LostinTexas said:

I have never warmed up to any VPN. They seem to break sites and I don't spend time hooked to coffee house wifi, so there is that. They slow things to such a crawl that the lame public wifi speeds make them unusable anyway.

I run a VPN 24/7/365 on both my computers and my phone.  While I don't see ISP advertised speeds (Gigabit FiOS), speed is still up there enough that I'm okay with it.  Some of the location options on my VPN offer higher speeds than others.  If I find my speed slowing down, I simply hop to another location.  However I do find some sites don't like certain VPN locations.  Either pushing that captcha crap on my or blocking me altogether.  But changing locations usually resolves this.

[minderasr]

Just a final comment on this topic.  I ditched Thorium.  Not that it didn't work, but it was never updated where as Chrome has had multiple updates during this time.  I'm still running Firefox, but LibreWolf is my new go-to browser.  Very happy with it.

[LostinTexas]

It's been a couple of weeks here for LibreWolf. It took a little loosening up to stop breaking some sites and to get things the way I like them, but that was an afternoon to be honest. 

Thanks for the heads up. I think I found my new favorite. I still use Brave and Vivaldi, but the LibreWolf seems to be the one I gravitate to at the moment.

[Peng]

Aren't the privacy issues of Google mostly eliminated by not signing in?  I've never signed in to Google (or Gmail - same thing) for everyday browsing.

Remember, a bigger privacy concern you have are your DNS servers.  Many people do not even know what they are or what they do.   

I'm thinking you would be far better off changing those than switching browsers but I'm not an expert.

DNS servers have privacy policies and language just like Google does.  Google even operates a few of them.

 

 I like the idea of a VPN but have not yet pulled the trigger on one.  Waiting for a good free one I guess.

[minderasr]

18 hours ago, Peng said:

Aren't the privacy issues of Google mostly eliminated by not signing in?  I've never signed in to Google (or Gmail - same thing) for everyday browsing.

Remember, a bigger privacy concern you have are your DNS servers.  Many people do not even know what they are or what they do.   

I'm thinking you would be far better off changing those than switching browsers but I'm not an expert.

DNS servers have privacy policies and language just like Google does.  Google even operates a few of them.

 

 I like the idea of a VPN but have not yet pulled the trigger on one.  Waiting for a good free one I guess.

It's extremely difficult to escape Google.  About every website you visit is linked with Google in some way.  You don't have to sign in to Google when they can tie you to a specific IP address.

I'm using NextDNS for security/privacy/ad-blocking, with logs enabled for fine tuning but expiring after six hours (hosted in Switzerland).  Great product!

I also run a non-logging VPN, changing servers frequently.

I'm doing my best not to make it easy for the meta-data slurping SOBs!  

[JMag]

Brave and Brave Search or Startpage for me.

[pipedreams]

What has happened to Qwant search engine, seem like every time I use it they are doing maintenance.  

[LostinTexas]

3 hours ago, pipedreams said:

What has happened to Qwant search engine, seem like every time I use it they are doing maintenance.  

Up and running as I type this. Hard to say.

[minderasr]

I just found out about this, and thought it would be appropriate to share here.  If you installed and are still running Thorium browser, you might want to remove it.  My apologies for even starting this thread.

 

[Eric]

The best Bowser no one ever heard of.

 

[LostinTexas]

57 minutes ago, minderasr said:

I just found out about this, and thought it would be appropriate to share here.  If you installed and are still running Thorium browser, you might want to remove it.  My apologies for even starting this thread.

 

Well, I guess it wasn't the end of the world since I couldn't get it going my way. Probably a risk with any open source content to an extent.

No worries, the thread was still useful, I'm loving the Libre Wolf browser. It took some loosening up, but still solid and no irritating adds or quirks.

[minderasr]

17 hours ago, LostinTexas said:

I'm loving the Libre Wolf browser. It took some loosening up, but still solid and no irritating adds or quirks.

I'm using LibreWolf as my daily driver, and I'm very pleased with it.  If you're using it on multiple devices, check out the XBrowserSync add-on.  It allows you to instantly sync bookmarks securely.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xbs/