Replacing Chromium

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Hello all,

I'm just looking to get some feedback here. For years now, I have used a combination of Chromium & Firefox (with some lighter alternatives of Dillo & eLinks "just in case"). I'm tired of Chromium due to the extremely long compilation times, and privacy concerns with Google. I'm planning on sticking with Firefox, but looking to replace Chromium with one or more of the following browsers:

Midori
Opera
Vivaldi

Midori seems like a good choice for my needs, but I am also considering Opera or Vivaldi. I know that they are both based on the Blink engine from Chromium.

Any feedback regarding these browser choices alongside Firefox? Pros or cons regarding compilation time, usability, and privacy?

Thank you!

Cheers,
Nathan Zachary
_________________
“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
---avatar cropped from =AimanStudio---

Jaglover · Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2020 11:00 pm Post subject:

I thought Opera and Vivaldi are closed source? Thus, there is no compiling time and being closed source there is no way to tell how private they really are. I keep Chromium because in past there were a few sites where Firefox had problems.
_________________
My Gentoo installation notes.
Please learn how to denote units correctly!

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

It looks like Vivaldi's source code is available:
https://vivaldi.com/source/ and https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/

However, it is always iffy since it is based on the Blink engine.

I have primarily older hardware, and it is becoming unfeasible to compile Chromium regularly. I also don't like the reliance on Google. I'm thinking that Midori may really be the only option for me besides Firefox, but I'm still open to suggestions.
_________________
“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
---avatar cropped from =AimanStudio---

Makersmarx · n00b Joined: 16 Feb 2019 Posts: 57 Location: Costa Rica

I am a longtime Firefox user, but as of the last 4-6 months have been using Vivaldi for work. I was unable to get FF to work with a service we use to call out to customers sometimes. Anyways, the best part of Vivaldi has got to be the speed dial which imo is the best out there for a landing page. I also enjoy being able to access all of chromes extensions easily, codecs may be included now so no need for https://help.vivaldi.com/article/html5-proprietary-media-on-linux/ (I may be wrong here), but its still much easier then using the codecs from chromium or some overlay . Its my understanding that the folks that created Opera left to create Vivaldi and opera is now owned by a Chinese company so no clue what happens with your data there. Vivaldi also has a beta for Android that runs decently on my old beater phone running Lineage OS.
_________________
Pura Vida

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

Vivaldi's source isn't open in any meaningful sense - you can't reproducibly build the browser binary they distribute, it's just a tarball dump of the chromium they use as a backend (aka the bare minimum they can legally get away with doing, in much the same way Apple shafted KDE back in the day).
The webapp UI on top, and any data exfiltration it performs, is all secret sauce and the EULA which forbids reverse-engineering makes that very clear.

If you want a backup browser I'd suggest Midori (or anything else webkit-gtk based; Qt doesn't have any light-weight equivalent). Also Netsurf as an alternative to Dillo.

axl · Veteran Joined: 11 Oct 2002 Posts: 1144 Location: Romania

the web, as we generally call it, or html, is the most used language of the world by a huge margin. like... really really huge. and it's the most unreliable language. still... most popular.

i think, nobody expected that 20 years ago. web browsers that contain a movie player, an audio player, an image viewer, and tones of programming languages.

some might say everything else is just noise, and the web made us just to bootstrap itself. through us.

I don't know what you guys expect from your browsers. I expect it to not bother me with ads, and not share cookies between domains. I feel like chromium with adblock plus and privacy badger from EFF does exactly that. while maintaining a high level of understanding and interpreting the web. movie player. audio player. picture viewer. gps data interpreter. maps. office apps. there's really nothing the browser hasn't been asked to do and didn't do. it's an os in itself. and all the rest are pretending to be like it.

a joke ...

Juippisi · Developer Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 724 Location: /home

I really liked vivaldi, I used it as my main browser from its birth to ver 2.0. They seem to take privacy pretty seriously and I'd like to trust them on that behalf.

But I had to drop it because it introduced some bugs that didn't get fixed (yes I reported them). And back then getting the h264 video support was a bit painful, although it should work now though ffmpeg[chromium] USE flag.

Been sticking with Firefox since Quantum and really liking it so far. With ryzen it builds in 10-15 minutes.

Terry_Davis · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2019 Posts: 35

ungoogled-chromium & Pale Moon are the most trustworthy I've found.
However, seems like many developers think Pale Moon will quickly become untenable:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604070

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

I had hoped that Midori might be a good replacement for Chromium and backup for Firefox, but it is quite sluggish when rendering most sites. I will continue with migrating to Firefox for most of my needs, but would like a suitable backup browser as well. NetSurf seems to be pretty fast, but obviously it doesn't render more "modern" sites appropriately. Thanks for the recommendations so far!

Cheers,
Nathan Zachary
_________________
“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
---avatar cropped from =AimanStudio---

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

figueroa · Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 8:10 pm Post subject:

I've used Vivaldi in place of Chrome or Chromium for over a year. One must trust a bit to even be on the network. I don't use Vivaldi a lot because Firefox fails less and less, but when needed, Vivaldi hasn't failed. As a registered Vivaldi user, I also have a free Vivaldi email address.
_________________
Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi

tld · Veteran Joined: 09 Dec 2003 Posts: 1816

For what it's worth, I've been very happy for quite some time now with the unofficial palemoon overlay:

https://github.com/deu/palemoon-overlay

It now supports gcc up to 9.2. I've even been managing compiling it on my archaic x86 system, though on that it takes about 13 hours.

Tom

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

So, I'm thinking that I'm going to try to rely as much as possible on Firefox. It seems to meet most of my needs. One thing that I haven't been able to figure out though is why my webcam is available in Google Video calls, but the microphone on it doesn't seem to work in Firefox (though it works in Chromium). Other than that problem, it seems like Firefox will become my main browser with NetSurf and eLinks as backups.
_________________
“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
---avatar cropped from =AimanStudio---

figueroa · Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 3:35 am Post subject:

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

tld · Veteran Joined: 09 Dec 2003 Posts: 1816

Zucca · Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 3:04 pm Post subject:

Quick question: Is palemoon unmozzillad-firefox in the same vein as ungoogled-chromium?
_________________
..: Zucca :..
Gentoo IRC channels reside on Libera.Chat.
--

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1249

Terry_Davis · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2019 Posts: 35

Terry_Davis · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2019 Posts: 35

tld · Veteran Joined: 09 Dec 2003 Posts: 1816

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Can you detail what you mean by Pale Moon working with "pure alsa"? I'm guessing that somewhere along the line, Firefox started requiring something else as an abstraction layer? I'm fighting with it regarding input/output devices for sound & video.
_________________
“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
---avatar cropped from =AimanStudio---

RoGeorge · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2020 Posts: 19

Another vote for Pale Moon for having a working hardware video decoding support. Can play full screen 4K/60Hz youtube videos with Pale Moon, but not with Firefox. (nVidia driver and 'media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled' set to true in both browser's 'about:config' page)

Terry_Davis · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2019 Posts: 35

Anyone test 120hz+ functionality in various browsers?
This seems to be the go-to tool:https://www.testufo.com/
Don't be fooled by their default message - since currently Linux distros do have bad support - it doesn't mean this isn't a valid tool to test with.