I’ve been trying out a bunch of “alternative” browsers based on what I’ve read here, but there’s a couple I haven’t really seen discussed much: Epic and Maxthon browsers. I know you guys will have deets and opinions so let me hear them!

So far, I like Maxthon, but it’s a bit “sign up for an account” which you can bypass but still… I don’t need an account to use a browser, thank you. Otherwise it seems fine. I only just found Epic so I’m still trying that.

Update: I’ve uninstalled Maxthon because it installs AI chatbot uuGPT on my computer without asking.

We don’t keep Epic in an online repo just because Chromium is a massive codebase and Epic is not a fork but a modified version of Chromium so we don’t have a consistent codebase rather it changes with each new version of Chromium. Chromium which Epic is built on is open source software which anyone can immediately download and audit.

That is from the Epic FAQ page and doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy. They basically are hacking stuff onto Chromium and saying “just let us know what you want to see”, and “BTW Chromium is auditable but since we are making who knows what kind of hacks to its codebase it’s kinda a moot point”.

Matt
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GNOME Web maybe?

Hellfire103
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Definitely neither. Epic is not private, and Maxthon is Chinese. Both are based on Chromium anyway.

Care to elaborate on how Epic is not private? It’s whole pitch is about privacy, and I wonder what they’re hiding then.

@KingDingbat@lemmy.world
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Update again: I just uninstalled Maxthon. It actually installed uuGPT on my computer as a separate program, and pinned a shortcut to the taskbar. I did not notice (& am pretty watchful for these things) it ask permission to do so during setup.

Previous Update: Just tried to search for something instead of search results, Maxthon uses an integrated AI chatbot called uuGPT - which apparently integrates all of the major chatbots into one. Not great, I guess.

deleted by creator

My thoughts: basically all browsers are just chrome or firefox with some extra bells and whistles. So it doesn’t really make a difference.

I don’t remember hearing Maxthon mentioned since the 00s, I’m a bit surprised it still exists! Epic is proprietary and Chromium-based, so avoid.

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