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. Firefox no longer allows deleting default search engines like google, perplexity, etc but can disable it. What kind of privacy feature is that? Also, all the data collection options are ticked by default. Users are needed to manually tweak it their own. Update after update instead of improving they make all the settings more complex, and there is a lot to set up after a fresh installation.
When I compare modern Firefox with 4–5 years behind Firefox, I feel like I am using browsers like Vivaldi or Opera instead of Firefox. Once we praised Firefox for its ram management in Linux but nowadays, it’s bloat causes using more ram and not a lightweight option anymore. 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 Debloat using any script or install any forks (no forks seem to be good; some are outdated, some are too much hardened, some are just not for daily browsing, etc.).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 (Unmozilla Firefox).
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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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Try out Brave. AFAIK, Morphe has a patch where it unlocks the Brave Origin features for free, so you can turn off all the bloat like Brave News, Wallet etc.
I would say this is most browsers from what i’ve seen. Just let me do my searches, stop trying to advertise to me, stop trying to get my data…and get the fuck out of the way.
I think the sponsored links, promotions and Ai efforts come from their crisis trying to make money and to depend less on Googles money. While trying to focus on privacy and not sell user data. That’s a tricky situation to be in, if the browser isn’t making money. I wouldn’t call Firefox bloatware, as it is bloated like any other modern browser.
And it’s not like I wouldn’t have an issue with Firefox either. For long time I am looking for an alternative, and almost switched over to Librewolf. But unfortunately Librewolf have removed the internal password manager of Firefox, and they recommend to use an external manager. Which is the deal breaker for me. So even if Firefox is flawed, I’ll stay with it and do the customization and settings myself, which is a lot.
You can re-enable the integrated password manager of librewolf, it’s just a setting; be aware of the risk though
It’s saved in clear text too.
Most people aren’t doing fresh installs often enough to get annoyed. There’s also an understanding that Mozilla will need to do things we don’t necessarily like to generate revenue and stay viable. Google isn’t going to fund them forever. As long as we can turn those things off and configure firefox to our liking, we can tolerate such changes.
Librewolf is a good browser. Not bloated with features and doesn’t have AI installed by default.