[HN Gopher] LibreWolf - A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, s...
___________________________________________________________________
LibreWolf - A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and
freedom
Author : gizzlon
Score : 245 points
Date : 2022-03-18 10:05 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (librewolf.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (librewolf.net)
| roughly wrote:
| Been using LibreWolf for a week or so since someone mentioned it
| in a comment elsewhere - UX-wise, it's pretty much identical to
| Firefox. I'm happy it doesn't have Pocket and the rest of
| Mozilla's recent product launches arguing for space in my life.
| My Firefox setup was already pretty solidly
| "paranoid/misanthropic", so I haven't really noticed any new
| issues from Libre, but you may.
|
| Overall, it's a pretty good implementation of "Firefox By
| Mozilla-the-Foundation not Mozilla-the-Corporation." I've been
| using Firefox at least in part because I think a mono- or even
| duo-polistic internet is a Bad thing, but Mozilla's been
| indifferent-bordering-on-hostile to me as a user class, so I
| appreciate LibreWolf as a kind of "Chromium for Firefox."
| gosukiwi wrote:
| Pocket is one of the worst things that ever happened to
| Firefox.
| causality0 wrote:
| There's no telling just how many times I've had to turn
| Pocket off.
| 3np wrote:
| Sounds like Librewolf might improve your life, then!
| asdff wrote:
| Meanwhile I did it like once and haven't seen pocket in
| years now
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I am confused by this. When Pocket first appeared, I simply
| set my new tab to blank and haven't thought about it since
| unless I read the extreme vitriol. Is there something I am
| missing?
| TingPing wrote:
| You aren't missing anything. It was just a PR failure that
| users here won't forgive.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It's a user failure, IMHO.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Seriously - it has never once interfered with my standard
| browser usage, and my dad loves it to build his reading
| list.
|
| What's the issue? It's not open source?
| mike50 wrote:
| Adware.
| [deleted]
| depingus wrote:
| I have my FF homepage set to the newtab page. And as much as
| I hate the idea of pocket integration, I find myself reading
| at least 1-2 articles from their recommendations every week.
| 0ldskool wrote:
| I also end up reading pocket even though I hate it. I'm
| pretty sure the articles come from places like hackernews,
| reddit, and digg since I noticed overlap. Its basically an
| "aggregate aggregator". Android's Newsfeed that comes up my
| pixel phone is even more annoying because it seems to track
| everything I read using the same latest techniques they use
| for ads. If anyone on my intranet or a private intranet I
| have connected to likes to read something, they'll
| recommend that category of news to me. I hate it but I end
| up reading some of the news anyways since it does interest
| me...
| nixonpjoshua1 wrote:
| I always assumed that the recommendations are based on
| what people save to pocket or even save to pocket, and so
| the bias towards HN/reddit I figured was due to an
| overrepresentation of Firefox/pocket users on those sites
| compared and/or the bias of what pocket users choose to
| save vs simply a sampling of what gets published.
| depingus wrote:
| I don't actually use pocket. I even removed the icon from
| the toolbar. I just some times click articles on the
| newtab page. Here is some info on how FF handles those
| recommendations.
|
| https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-
| reco...
| pleb_nz wrote:
| So I might give this a go.
|
| Does it integrate with Firefox on mobile?
| roshansingh wrote:
| HN is a very tough crowd. First everyone wonders why there is no
| successful fork of Firefox, then someone makes one and nobody is
| happy.
| pixxel wrote:
| HN seems to shoot down everything with negativity. Maybe I'm
| romanticising my memories, but where's the hacker spirit gone?
| Perhaps we're all jaded.
| uncomputation wrote:
| Meh, go back to this day, 2013 [0] and you'll see the same
| constructive/non-constructive criticism. It's an exacting
| crowd, which is what I love personally.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I wouldn't say that it is negativity. It's criticism that is
| mostly constructive, which I appreciate because nowadays it
| is popular to ban/cancel criticism on forums or social
| networks.
| jart wrote:
| The project is 100% negative liberty so it doesn't surprise
| me that there's a negative reaction. The selling point to
| unbundling can't be pure fear. Consider supporting the
| SerenityOS browser. Andreas Kling is breaking his back
| creating an entirely new browser, and it actually works. It
| takes a true genius to do something like that.
| roughly wrote:
| @dang pointed out when I commented similarly on another
| thread that early comments on threads seem to tend towards
| the negative, and sentiment often shifts more positive as
| things go on (which is exactly what happened on that other
| thread)
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| I'll fill in for dang here. It's the contrarian dynamic.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&qu
| e...
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| For the chemistry-inclined, it's also known as Le
| Chatelier's Principle.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > HN seems to shoot down everything with negativity
|
| Except marketing-driven products, which get really overhyped
| here.
| rvz wrote:
| Brave used Firefox's core Gecko (and forked it) several years
| ago, encountered problems with it and called it a day. Then
| they switched to Chromium and they are more alive than ever.
|
| Had they kept using it, well that would have certainly been
| another dead Firefox-based browser fork.
| hereforphone wrote:
| Careful. Every time I've mentioned Brave here I've been
| downvoted. Getting on point: I've used Brave for awhile now
| and it's been fine. Major issues for me are updates are
| frequent enough to be annoying, and I haven't been able to
| access sites with self-signed certificates.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Reminds me of a Star Wars quote:
|
| Luke Skywalker: Is the dark side stronger?
|
| Master Yoda: No, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive
|
| I try to stay far away from Google.
| uncomputation wrote:
| I think this is the reckoning of people realizing that
| technical solutions do not always solve social problems.
| Firefox itself started as a fork against Netscape's
| commercialization, and now has reintroduced many of the same
| issues: Pocket, telemetry, DRM. Google's original paper
| explicitly identified the conflict of interest in search
| engines funded by ads, and now it is the largest ad marketplace
| in existence. I think now when people see something like
| LibreWolf they ask "for how long?"
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| Everyone wonders why there's no widely used alternative to
| Chrome, then someone makes a great one (Firefox) and nobody is
| happy.
|
| In reality, there are two categories of users - one group (the
| vast majority) is perfectly happy with the status quo
| regardless of privacy issues or anything else, and the other is
| simply looking to endlessly nitpick and complain about
| everything in pursuit of some hypothetical perfection that can
| never be reached. There's no wonder then that new products will
| mostly cater to the first group than the second.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is a bad view of users and people in general. It's also
| a really bizarre view of the Firefox complainers, who are the
| ones demanding that the status quo be _kept._ One can end up
| in contradictory situations like that when you judge people
| based purely on how much they agree with you, or with
| institutions you support. People who hate the thing you hate
| are not "haters," and people who like the thing you hate are
| not "sheep." Very few people are choosing their opinions in
| order to annoy you, or in order to annoy Mozilla.
|
| Supporting the management status quo is the opposite of
| supporting the product status quo; Firefox now is an
| absolutely unrecognizable product compared to Firefox 5 years
| ago. Not coincidentally, Chrome isn't unrecognizable, it's
| dependable. I wonder why it's successful? Is it because
| google isn't playing fairly, or because anyone who has ever
| been satisfied with Chrome has never been given any good
| reason to leave, while every change in firefox seems tuned to
| peel off 2% of the userbase?
|
| If there's an effective way Google isn't playing fair, it's
| probably that they have some indirect but strong influence in
| directing Firefox development.
| mmastrac wrote:
| The parent of your post is pretty accurate. I've complained
| about it before, but Firefox is unfairly targeted by an
| outsized number of complainers here on HN.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I disagree that it's unfair or outsized. You're talking
| about a browser that has lost 95% of its userbase and is
| financially dependent on its main competitor. The
| complainers are drawn from the tiny proportion of the
| people dissatisfied with Firefox development who
| _stayed._ The other 98% just fucked off somewhere else
| like they were told to.
| mmastrac wrote:
| "just fucked off somewhere else like they were told to"
|
| Ah yeah, that seems like a completely reasonable
| interpretation of Mozilla's actions.
| moonshinefe wrote:
| Here's a quote directly from you in this very same topic:
|
| > The comments like this from people who will complain
| about everything are completely valueless.
|
| > We're lucky to have an alternative to the WebKit
| oligopoly. If you don't like Firefox, just stick with the
| other browsers and let the rest of us that are trying to
| prevent a monoculture continue our work.
|
| Looks like you're doing the job just fine by yourself.
| mmastrac wrote:
| And from your comment history you seem to be over-blowing
| telemetry privacy issues yourself.
| [deleted]
| dblohm7 wrote:
| > has lost 95% of its userbase
|
| That's not an accurate number.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| Yes, the way they influence Firefox development is called
| sabotage:
| https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686
| mmastrac wrote:
| I thought this was a bit of a conspiracy theory at the
| start, but it's starting to feel more likely.
| parineum wrote:
| All this looks like to me is Google developers use Chrome
| (surprise!). I've seen plenty of issues exactly like this
| at web shops where developers primarily use Chrome.
| fouc wrote:
| You missed the part how it was about the conflict of
| interest. "We're on the same side" wasn't really true.
|
| Especially at the higher level, Mozilla was complicit in
| accepting money from a competitor.
|
| Make no mistake, that absolutely distorted how they ran
| the company over the next decade. That's why Firefox is
| so "meh" right now, why Servo got killed, why Mozilla is
| being seriously mismanaged.
| kk6mrp wrote:
| I just can't understand why Chrome can't handle a hundred
| open tabs if the developers use it primarily. Firefox
| handles it with about the same RAM usage as six hundred
| open tabs.
| chasil wrote:
| I am partial to the Bromite fork of Chrome on Android.
|
| It has built-in adblock, and DNS-over-HTTPs in the setup
| menus.
|
| https://www.bromite.org/
|
| I understand that stock Chromium can do DoH with options on
| the command line; I have been meaning to set this up in a few
| places.
| eslaught wrote:
| HN is not a hivemind. There could easily be two groups (or
| more) of people: one who shows up to Firefox threads and
| complains, and another who shows up to Firefox fork threads and
| complains. There may be some overlap between these groups, but
| there doesn't have to be.
|
| In my opinion, it's pretty easy to spot this pattern, because
| when you've read HN long enough, you know what sorts of posts
| are likely to elicit reactions from a particular group. But
| that's not to say any given group is representative of HN as a
| whole, which I think is still largely dominated by lurkers.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| > HN is not a hivemind.
|
| Big claim. Add the keywords "Rust", "Webasm" or "Burnout" to
| your title and your chances of making it to the frontpage
| increase significantly.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Also make sure you note somewhere in your post:
|
| * that MBAs and VCs are useless leeches
|
| * but rich tech founders are folk heros and visionaries
|
| * that all regulations are just market capture by
| entrenched players
|
| * Europe's government health plans work great and America's
| private one is an embarrassment
|
| * but that also government cannot possibly be an efficient
| provider of services and the only true answer is pure
| libertarianism
| timeon wrote:
| Maybe you are just closer to the group that gets triggered
| by these keywords. And that is OK. But my point is that
| these 'opposing' sentiments are always present in those
| threads. Which begs the question: where is the hivemind?
| infogulch wrote:
| _Users that comment on a post are not a random sample of the
| community at large._ So you can 't draw conclusions about the
| community by looking at a biased sample of posts, because it
| just projects that bias into the comments. This is a truism
| of most online platforms, e.g. Twitter.
| sjmm1989 wrote:
| Lurker here. Made an account because fuck it, why not.
| a9h74j wrote:
| > what sorts of posts are likely to elicit reactions from a
| particular group
|
| Also: given such sorts of posts, once one seeming/presumed
| group acquires dominance in a thread of comments, that
| "others" may self-select out of commenting on that particular
| article.
| tedunangst wrote:
| I think the question is why you apparently see rather few
| people show up in adjacent threads. You see this with many
| topics. There's the people who complain about Apple's
| monopoly, and there's the people who say Apple is dying
| because they have no marketshare, but you might reasonably
| expect both groups to fall under the umbrella of people
| interested in Apple's marketshare.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Everyone just ignoring PaleMoon? https://www.palemoon.org/
| gkbrk wrote:
| Pale Moon is very hostile to packagers and distros,
| threatening them with lawsuits within the first few messages
| of a conversation. I wouldn't want to give a userbase to them
| if they treat people like that.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| For some reason, Firefox (and its variants) seems to attract an
| especially tough crowd. People will let Chrome hoover up every
| last bit of information about you but FF will get relentlessly
| pilloried for every minor decision.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Those are two different groups of people. The Firefox
| complainers are Firefox users. The people satisfied with
| Chrome are Chrome users.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Please stop making excuses for Mozilla - their management has
| made many questionable decisions including bundling
| unnecessary extensions like Pocket and closed source DRM
| plugin without user permission, aggressive telemetry
| tracking, downloading and running codes / features without
| your knowledge (it's opt-out but only if you know what to
| opt-out of) and now even bundling adware into the browser.
|
| Instead of ensuring their engine is easily modular and usable
| they are more concerned about others making competing
| browsers and thus let greed drive their design decisions to
| make a clunky and poorly architected product that just lags
| in development.
|
| Fire the greed driven management of Mozilla, and bring a team
| more concerned about developing a good product than letting
| money drive the design decisions, and Firefox will be back on
| track.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Honestly, do you think you'd ever be happy with anything
| Mozilla produces? The comments like this from people who
| will complain about everything are completely valueless.
|
| We're lucky to have an alternative to the WebKit oligopoly.
| If you don't like Firefox, just stick with the other
| browsers and let the rest of us that are trying to prevent
| a monoculture continue our work.
|
| I don't work for Mozilla or have ever done work on Firefox
| other than bugfixing, but I'll gladly run an alternative
| browser so the web doesn't end up stagnating like it did
| before.
| webmobdev wrote:
| > _do you think you 'd ever be happy with anything
| Mozilla produces?_
|
| I switched to Mozilla Gecko after Opera Presto was sold
| to a chinese firm and they switched engines to Chromium.
| After that, I have been using various Firefox forks since
| Firefox started bundling useless software and made really
| questionable decisions sacrificing user privacy for their
| greed. I am really glad that forks that respect the user,
| like LibreWolf and Tor browser, exists.
|
| > _The comments like this from people who will complain
| about everything are completely valueless._
|
| I have given specifics. Your comment though is less
| useful.
|
| > _We 're lucky to have an alternative to the WebKit
| oligopoly._
|
| We are unlucky that the current management of Mozilla is
| slowly selling out on this, under the influence of Google
| and their own greed - 100's of millions of dollars and
| yet, making a modular browser engine is not a priority
| for them as that means more competition and innovation
| from other open and closed source developers that will
| threaten their cash cow.
| mmastrac wrote:
| > I have given specifics. Your comment though is less
| useful.
|
| I disagree. You list a number of random topics that are
| exaggerated and overblown, then attack the leadership of
| the organization personally and ascribe motivations that
| you have invented. Your comments are not useful for
| setting future direction of a browser, and you are
| contributing to a browser monoculture.
|
| When we lose the only viable competitor to WebKit because
| you and other commenters hold Firefox to your unreachable
| standards, it will be a sad day.
| brimble wrote:
| > Honestly, do you think you'd ever be happy with
| anything Mozilla produces?
|
| I used to be happy with their output, many years ago. So
| yes, of course.
|
| I haven't liked FF in a very long time. But I used to
| love it.
|
| > I'll gladly run an alternative browser so the web
| doesn't end up stagnating like it did before.
|
| The only thing _actually_ stopping Google from completely
| owning the Web is Apple 's mandating Safari's engine for
| all browsers on iOS. Firefox has been floundering for too
| long (a decade? More?) and no longer matters much, aside
| from providing some kind of value to Google. Microsoft's
| probably maneuvering to open a second front on that,
| despite using Google's engine now, unless they decide to
| team up with Google to go after Apple. FF has been an
| also-ran for years.
| ILMostro7 wrote:
| Agreed. Except to say that many recent decisions have
| moved Firefox closer in alignment with the monoculture.
| So, you have to at least consider that maybe, even if
| it's just a few of the people complaining have good
| intentions, or might even be canaries in a dark mine with
| potential dangers of collapse. Unfortunately, canaries
| can't do much to fix the problems. They can only be used
| as warning signs by the people who can do something to
| fix things.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| > running codes / features without your knowledge (it's
| opt-out but only if you know what to opt-out of) and now
| even bundling adware into the browser.
|
| I'm unfamiliar with these last two things. What code do
| they run? And what adware?
| lazyeye wrote:
| What if their "greed" is simply an unpleasant choice
| they're forced to make to allow their organization to
| continue to exist?
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| > bundling unnecessary [...] closed source DRM plugin
| without user permission
|
| _Not_ making including a plugin required for a top 50 site
| would be user hostile, and I will die on this hill.
|
| This is exactly the thing everyone else in the thread is
| pointing out as the issue, complaints from FOSS-or-nothing
| folks expecting to be catered to at the expense of the
| other (probably) 99% of potential users. The fact that it's
| even a plugin at all (that you can disable!), rather than
| an integrated part of the browser, is them already catering
| to that. Firefox already caters to this niche a ton, and
| nothing is good enough.
| bkberry352 wrote:
| What part of the telemetry is aggressive?
| moonshinefe wrote:
| https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-
| has-...
|
| From the top of HN literally yesterday. They can match
| user downloads to multiple installs across systems now.
| The "solution" is to select "opt out of telemetry" in the
| settings, which you can't get to until after you've
| installed the browser and it's already happened.
| jwilk wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30715163 (425
| comments)
| bkberry352 wrote:
| Telemetry waits 30 minutes to start sending to give users
| time to opt out, see the note in the documentation:
| https://firefox-source-
| docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/t...
| moonshinefe wrote:
| Ah interesting. Thanks for the info. Not sure most people
| will know about that, but it's something!
|
| Edit: It appears to be for the new-profile ping not the
| install pings.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| Not my opinion, but from what I've seen, it's a different
| standard.
|
| FF has historically been concerned with privacy and
| transparency. When they move contrary to that, people "hold
| them accountable" by issuing public critiques.
|
| In comparison, I'm not sure that the Chromium project ever
| intended to have privacy as one of their forefront values.
| coldpie wrote:
| You see the same thing with non-profits. For-profit companies
| can ask $50 for a product, do whatever they like with the
| profit, and everyone is happy. A non-profit asks for
| voluntary donations for a similar product and gets all of
| their receipts to local pizza joints examined.
| wink wrote:
| The problem with Mozilla is that most of us seem to be
| holding them to a higher standard. It's not minor details
| that are scrutinized but more like "HOW IN THE HELL DID THEY
| THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA", and sadly there's been about 1-2
| of those per year.
| jeltz wrote:
| That is pretty much a problem they created themselves by
| claiming to be a champion of tge free Internet and then
| doing stuff like invetsing in an adtech company and then
| handing a sample of user browser history to said company.
| Why does a corporation owned by a foundation do stuff like
| that? If you have an official mission other than making
| money people will hold you to a higher standard than normal
| for profit companies.
| [deleted]
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I'm not against forks of Firefox but because the browser is one
| of the most important pieces of software in terms of security, I
| am unwilling to just jump onto a someone's fork without knowing
| and trusting their foundation/group...that takes time.
| gallerdude wrote:
| I think is a completely reasonable take, and I'm surprised
| you're being downvoted for it.
| Comevius wrote:
| The arkenfox user.js can also do this for Firefox.
|
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js
|
| Contrary to what LibreWolf claims you do have to sacrifice
| usability though, including WebGL, DRM, Firefox Sync, autofill,
| history, and the occasional breakage. With arkenfox there is also
| letterboxing, and even more breakage. If you set uBlock Origin to
| the recommended medium mode you usually still have to whitelist
| third-party scripts to make websites work.
| amluto wrote:
| Regular Firefox's autofill is so terrible that I sometimes
| think that a complete removal would be a usability improvement.
| agluszak wrote:
| Unfortunately it's true :(
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| I always disable all of this, use bitwarden to autofill creds
| and CCs only.
| rsolva wrote:
| I went from LibreWolf to arkenfox a few months back. I like the
| idea of having a vanilla FF installed and applying the arkenfox
| rules to a profile, with a few personal tweaks. The LibreWolf
| flatpak had a few quirks that Firefox did not have.
|
| I now prefer a browser without any history and cache and make
| heavily use of the bookmarks and adding exceptions for specific
| sites that should keep cockies between sessions. I can use the
| address bar to quickly find a site that i have bookmarked
| without having the results cluttered by search suggestions and
| years of history.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Thanks for this comment. I guess I'll continue paying the
| disable Pocket, download installer ID, and other cruft of bad
| policy costs to continue using FF because Sync is too useful
| for Bookmarks and plugin auto install to discard.
| ShowalkKama wrote:
| >WebGL, DRM, Firefox Sync, autofill, history
|
| These considerations rely __HEAVILY__ on your browsing habits.
|
| I've been using librewolf for quite a bit and only two sites
| required webgl (to use them I simply had to toggle
| webgl.disabled in about:config which I find acceptable since
| I've never had the need to use them after that occasion).
|
| I do not visit sites that use DRM (I used to use Netflix but
| their service sucks so much I'd rather pirate stuff)
|
| There are extensions to sync browser data with e2e encryption.
|
| I find password managers are more usable than the builtin
| manager of the browser.
|
| History has always been an annoyance more than a feature and
| I'd disable it either way
|
| This is just my opinion, try it yourself for a couple of months
| and see by yourself if it's something you'd consider daily
| driving.
| Comevius wrote:
| I actually use arkenfox and uBlock Origin at medium mode. I
| meant that normal people would find this setup inconvenient.
| In any case there are tradeoffs involved, and the benefits
| are not always obvious. It depends on your threat model. I
| would argue that most people don't benefit from a setup like
| this.
|
| Replacing a core functionality with an extension is not
| obviously beneficial either when it comes to privacy or
| security.
| ttybird2 wrote:
| It seems to spawn a new process per tab, which makes it use a lot
| of memory.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > It seems to spawn a new process per tab
|
| Isn't that how all browsers work these days?
| ttybird2 wrote:
| Firefox doesn't
| doubled112 wrote:
| https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/95.0/releasenotes/
|
| > Site Isolation is now enabled for all Firefox 95 users
|
| Doesn't site isolation launch a new process per site? I'm
| inclined to believe so
|
| https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/05/introducing-firefox-new-
| si...
|
| > Site Isolation builds upon a new security architecture
| that extends current protection mechanisms by separating
| (web) content and loading each site in its own operating
| system process.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'd be happy if something with the priorities Librewolf
| advertises here becomes to Firefox as Libreoffice is to
| Openoffice. Firefox needs forking, and I think that people are
| shopping for a project manager who they trust more than Mozilla's
| CEO.
|
| I haven't seen one in other Firefox forks and I hope this one
| does better. Please don't get into online flamewars with people
| or other projects (including Firefox), try to contribute
| upstream, accumulate good developers. You can change your
| _priorities,_ but never change your _values._ They 're
| foundational, so when they shift, it ripples throughout the
| product, making the entire thing erratic and undependable. People
| have enough in their lives to worry about.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| From glancing at the "main features", it looks like this is just
| Firefox with some preference tweaks and uBO preinstalled. I'm not
| seeing anything I can't already do in vanilla Firefox either by
| changing preferences or about:config.
|
| Is there anything in the browser _code_ this fork actually
| changes?
| wafriedemann wrote:
| Correct, but it also removes all the services Firefox comes
| bundled with (Pocket, Sync Sign-in, ...). Therefore less visual
| clutter and no more connections to Mozilla servers.
|
| I guess that's about it and I would not want it do anything
| more than that.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Why is the sync a bad thing?
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's not a bad thing, it's a service that Firefox comes
| bundled with.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| But it was listed as if it was some kind of bloat. Maybe
| if you only have one computing device, but I find that
| hard to believe. Why wouldn't you want to sync your
| bookmarks, extensions and settings between your devices?
| digisign wrote:
| No, I have thousands on my desktop, and none on my movie
| tablet and prefer it to stay that way.
|
| Not to mention I use safari on the iphone. I don't want
| work or personal mixed either.
|
| Even if did want some of these, companies are not
| trustworthy any longer.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| What are you putting your trust into? A set of links and
| list of extensions. If you use the browser to visit these
| links and use the extensions then they already have all
| that info about you.
|
| As for mixing work and personal. You can setup multiple
| accounts and switch between them. And I don't see what
| the amount of bookmarks has to do with anything, it just
| brings up relative things faster if you have them
| bookmarked.
|
| Feels almost like you are just trying to come up with
| reasons to dismiss useful feature.
| digisign wrote:
| No, they don't have info about me, at least that part.
| That's the point.
|
| I don't need to switch between accounts, but screens, my
| client work is on a separate laptop.
|
| Try navigating even hundreds of objects on a mobile
| device, it's not practical. Most of the stuff is not
| needed there either, for example (at random) I never use
| stack-exchange from a mobile device.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| >I don't need to switch between accounts, but screens, my
| client work is on a separate laptop.
|
| yeah, so it is not for you.
|
| > No, they don't have info about me, at least that part.
| That's the point.
|
| is that really THE point? If so can you please clarify
| why.
| digisign wrote:
| From a user standpoint, information should be given out
| on a need-to-know basis. We're in a post-storage-scarcity
| world, after 2005 or so. Data is collected for everything
| and no longer deleted if it has any value.
|
| The fact that organizations are starving for data means
| they will correlate and profile on anything they are
| allowed to gather. Once gathered, never deleted, bought
| and sold. More ethical employees replaced as needed.
|
| You're in a librewolf thread, maybe wondering why it
| exists? For a primer I recommend the Frontline doc, "The
| United States of Secrets." It is on Kanopy, maybe PBS app
| for free. Worth paying for. Their more recent Facebook
| doc was interesting as well.
|
| In themselves, bookmarks are not important. But they'd be
| pretty valuable (combined with other things) to use as an
| input to an advertising algorithm, no?
| qorrect wrote:
| | Why wouldn't you want to sync your bookmarks,
| extensions and settings between your devices?
|
| Because you're afraid they'll get hacked.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Mozzilla? OK. Let's play this out. Mozzilla gets hacked
| and now they have all of your bookmarks. What are they
| gonna do with that? What is at stake? Only thing I can
| think about is if you have some taboo erotica bookmarked.
| Do you have actual examples?
| grogrecipe wrote:
| Put you on a list. What if Mozilla gets hacked by Russia
| for instance? They could use that data to profile
| partisans in Ukraine. Just one teeny tiny example. You
| can think of many real life risks when other people have
| your data.
| jcadam wrote:
| Brave is my current default browser. This might be worth a try
| for something non-blink/webkit :)
| Animats wrote:
| How does this differ from Fennec?
| throwaway19431 wrote:
| I was one of the two guys who came up with the original concept
| for Librefox.
|
| I was responsible for including uBO as default, among other
| things.
|
| Great to see that the project was brought back to life as
| LibreWolf - Mozilla lawyers had threatened us with legal action
| because the name was too close to their brand. They expected us
| to drop the "Fox" part of the name.
|
| Everytime I see LibreWolf on HN I feel proud that the spirit of
| Librefox is still alive.
|
| The biggest issue with LibreWolf and what's stopping it's further
| adoption is lack of auto-updates (especially on Windows) and lack
| of usability - it should work out of the box for everyone.
| Currently the security settings are too strict in default mode.
| There should be different levels of pre-configured security
| levels users can chose in the settings (i.e. "standard",
| "strict", "very strict").
|
| (I don't use HN for commenting, which is why I created a
| throwaway account)
| colordrops wrote:
| Brave has some good ideas that could be adopted. Instead of
| completely forgoing features like DRM video, make them opt-in
| instead. The user can choose their level of privacy.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| Opt-in DRM? Like in Firefox where you need to enable it for
| sites like Netflix or Spotify at first use?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The browser presents your client as being in the GMT timezone
| to reduce fingerprinting using timezones, supposedly.
|
| Guess what stands out like a sore thumb? Someone with a
| timezone many hours off from everyone else in their
| country/state/region.
|
| Fucking idiots.
| gkbrk wrote:
| UTC, GMT or the +0 timezone is pretty standard when using a
| browser that does not leak data like a sieve. So I don't
| think it will stick out that much. If they picked another
| value though it might be problematic.
| jart wrote:
| But auto-update would require not only telemetry but remote
| system administration capabilities too. You'd have to monitor
| people's browsers to make sure a change you made isn't causing
| everyone's browser to break. In the event that it does, you'd
| be able to halt the incremental rollout before it impacts too
| many people.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| There's a lot of privacy focused forks of Firefox these days. But
| I'm still looking for a fork of Firefox on Android with a better
| UX. It's been abysmal these past few years.
| rsolva wrote:
| I can recommend Fennec. You can activate a developer mode and
| install any extensions you want to.
| Starmina wrote:
| Wish I could use LibreWolf as a replacement as Firefox, but for
| now I have one main issue left, some websites don't work
| correctly.
|
| For example, on this site : https://appdb.to/ if you click on any
| app, it'll always open the same app (I think the 'first' one)
| instead of the one clicked, you can try on Firefox and it'll work
| correctly.
|
| I actually don't know what cause this issue right now.
|
| Thanks to someone here, I found why some links open in a new tab
| instead of a popup. Just need to set
| browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction to 2 (like in firefox),
| instead of 0.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Feel kinda bad for Mozilla that their user base continues to
| dwindle down because of all these forks.
|
| But they only have themselves to blame. I'm using Fennec F-droid
| on my phone because someone at Mozilla decided to castrate
| extension support in their main branch (and nightly keeps
| breaking every few weeks so that's not an option).
| andrewshadura wrote:
| It doesn't much, as barely anyone uses these forks.
| no_time wrote:
| While all the patches are an improvement, I'm still on the fence
| about using it instead of vanilla FF. A browser is too security
| critical to trust in a handful of random people.
|
| I wonder how tedious would it be to set up a buildserver and
| audit all the patches and their updates with each release.
| webmobdev wrote:
| If you want a secure Gecko browser, consider the Tor Browser.
| (The Tor part can be disabled and even removed).
| no_time wrote:
| The Tor browser sacrifices usability for fingerprint
| resistance and ironically becomes the most unique browser
| when used on the clearnet.
|
| The only way to achieve meaningful fingerprint resistance is
| either blending in (practically impossible because all
| browser users are too unique) or enforcing a good baseline
| which is also impossible because the current market leader,
| who is in dire need of an antitrust action, is interested in
| keeping up the status quo.
| grogrecipe wrote:
| Fingerprint resistance isn't the only thing it has going
| for it though. And face it every device has a more or less
| unique fingerprint, many methods available these days. Much
| more important is security.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Check out their FAQ at https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/ for a more
| technical look at the changes they made.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Anyone else reminded of https://amarok.kde.org?
| dont__panic wrote:
| On Android, I use Fennec, an open-source Firefox variant that's
| basically just Firefox without the Mozilla garbage.
|
| Does anybody know if there's a similar de-Mozilla'd Firefox for
| desktop? I currently use Firefox Developer Edition, but I'd love
| to get away from Mozilla's crappy "experiments" and constant
| configuration-breaking updates.
| 3np wrote:
| Librewolf is not primarily intended as the definite browser but a
| sane base template for easily customizable and extendable firefox
| builds.
|
| The librewolf AUR package is a great starting point to make
| custom builds of firefox; between two json files in the settings
| repo you can tweak basically any relevant setting, bundle
| extensions (e.g. use custom forked ones without needing to either
| sign through Mozilla or disable security), search engines, use
| your own fxa/syncserver, handlers, branding, etc.
|
| All in a git repo and you won't have to redo things next time you
| reinstall the browser or get a new machine (anyone else ever
| scratched their heads trying to recall that one about:config
| setting?)
|
| Building and tweaking vanilla firefox yourself is quite an
| exercise. Librewolf makes it a breeze. The sane privacy-by-
| default standards is just the cherry on the top.
|
| https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/settings
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| Should have called it Foxium instead
| roughly wrote:
| > use your own fxa/syncserver
|
| Huh, is this tractable?
| ancientsofmumu wrote:
| > _Huh, is this tractable?_
|
| My opinion is "yes" - the source is available and runs as a
| docker container, the client setup is pretty trivial (on
| Android you'll need Fennec or another alternate build of
| Firefox to get at the settings). I'm aware of one user group
| running a shared instance and it seems to work as advertised.
|
| https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver
| Teever wrote:
| Is this code actually usable?
|
| I didn't look into it personally but a few years ago I
| tasked an employee with setting up local instance of this
| for a very privacy conscious small business and after a few
| days of looking at it he said that it would be too much
| work to get the released material into a state that end
| users could make use of.
|
| This could have changed since then however.
| 3np wrote:
| > Is this code actually usable?
|
| Yes. See my comment above. Nothing that a persistent
| admin can't pull off. I wouldn't blame your coworker for
| giving up, though.
| milescrabill wrote:
| I believe that https://github.com/mozilla-
| services/syncstorage-rs is intended to be the modern
| syncserver replacement.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I didn't know it was possible to self-host the server, and
| I always felt somewhat uneasy with syncing this info on
| someone else's computer.
|
| So I click your link, but the repo says
|
| > _Note that this repository is no longer being maintained.
| Use this at your own risk, and with the understanding that
| it is not being maintained, work is being done on its
| replacement, and that no support or assistance will be
| offered._
|
| So I guess I'll have to wait a little more...
| 3np wrote:
| Kiiind of.
|
| For the syncserver itself, where all the data is synced and
| stored, you just need tokenserver+syncstorage, plus a
| database backend of choice. Easy-peasy, you can set it up
| trivially in minutes if you're used to spin up docker
| containers and have a database server. Loads of people do
| this.
|
| However, you still need a way to authenticate. Most people
| just piggyback on Mozilla's servers for this. This means some
| metadata (not the synced data itself, mind you, but still)
| will be shared with Mozilla and a surprising number of third-
| parties.
|
| To get the last meter and be fully self-reliant you need to
| go down quite the rabbit hole and set up the fxa stack. It
| involves several interconnected microservices and a handful
| of separate mysql databases. I managed to but it took a
| couple of days to dig through the sources and figure out
| exactly what is necessary and disable all the third-party
| integrations. The pieces are all there and it's all done in
| the open but it's clearly built with the mindset of a cloud-
| based startup.
|
| https://github.com/mozilla/fxa
|
| Once up and running it has been hands off, not much
| maintenance at all. Happy I did it but unless you like doing
| this kind of stuff as a challenge, I'd probably recommend
| using some alternative extension, until it becomes more
| approachable.
|
| If you take it on, there are helpful people in the
| #fxa:mozilla.org Matrix room. More activity there, and self-
| hosting related discussion/issues/PRs in the fxa github repo,
| might push them to put in more effort to make it easier to
| self-host the stack and bring/keep docs up to date.
|
| Hoping to do a proper write-up soon to make it more
| approachable for others, once things cool down a bit at work.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| > Delete cookies and website data on close.
|
| Why bother ever writing to a file system? Seems like an obvious
| misstep.
| depingus wrote:
| This is really nice. Its almost like you peaked at my Firefox
| setup and decided to package it all together (right down to
| recommending xBrowserSync and Bitwarden!)
|
| I had never heard of dFPI. I've been using an extension,
| Temporary Containers, to basically do the same thing. I'm
| definitely going to check this out!
| samizdis wrote:
| I've just downloaded the .dmg for MacOS and installed it, but I
| can't run it because I get a system message saying that the
| developer can't be verified. Anyone know how I can fix this?
| messe wrote:
| Right click it, and select open from the context menu.
| samizdis wrote:
| Brill! Thanks for that.
| nicolasmelo12 wrote:
| Isn't privacy, security and freedom the hole idea of firefox?
|
| As of my understanding, firefox, contrary of chrome and Edge, is
| really commited on privacy.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Default config of Firefox include advertisement and
| "participate in studies". That means intense tracking. You
| _can_ disable all of that garbage, but most do not even know,
| that it exists and _is_ enabled by default (along with
| telemetry).
| chasil wrote:
| Does Firefox Focus (for Android) do the same?
|
| It does have a "Send usage data" option that is enabled by
| default.
|
| There is also a "Studies" option which I had not seen before.
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-opt-out-studies-
| fir...
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "There is also a "Studies" option which I had not seen
| before."
|
| Yup. This sort of behavior, of where stuff like this just
| creeps in with an update, is why I would never consider
| donating to mozilla at its current shape.
|
| (along with the fact, that they continue to reduce
| engineers, but increase the CEO salary, despite marketshare
| is falling)
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| You have to ask yourself what is more important to you having
| to do couple option changes, but keeping the browser up to
| date and secure or having sane(r) defaults, but lacking
| behind in security updates.
|
| Yes, I'm sure the author does their best, but I doubt this is
| their day job. Meaning if there is an update during working
| hours he might not get to update his fork until several hours
| later or if he is on vacation it might be days or weeks. What
| happens when he abandons the project? Usually the fork
| projects wind down after some time and there is no indication
| for the users that they are using abandonware with God knows
| how many missing security patches.
|
| Of course there is ideal world where we wouldn't have to make
| these choices, but at least I am going to stick with Firefox
| until something actually bad happens.
| 0ldskool wrote:
| libreWolf seems to be built regularly using the latest
| version of Firefox. If it ends up using the nightly build
| of of firefox nightly or dev edition in the future it could
| release security updates even faster then firefox
| "mainstream" itself. LibreWolf does not appear to be
| maintained by a single person like you implied. Its a
| relatively new project it can either go one of two ways:
| become popular and gain lots of supports + maintainers, die
| a slow death. After having actually used it for a few days
| it seems good to me. I'll continue to evaluate it as my
| daily browser.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| I am not convinced that is better. Firstly important
| security fixes will be pushed as hotfixes past nightly
| into main instead of waiting for a regular patch cycle.
| Otherwise you are just announcing bugs to the world.
|
| Secondly there is a reason why nightly channel exists. It
| is because it is not stable. Yeah, back in the day I ran
| nightly for years without seeing an issue, but also I'm
| not really sure if there was any benefits.
|
| As far as I am aware the dev channel is just main Firefox
| with better webdev console/tools. So I don't know if that
| has anything going for it security wise compared to the
| main.
| Comevius wrote:
| Firefox's default settings are optimized for usability and not
| breaking websites. For privacy and security some of that must
| be sacrificed. The Tor Browser, LibreWolf and arkenfox user.js
| all make Firefox less usable, or not usable at all in some
| cases.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| If I can't use site X using a secure browser, it's site X
| that's broken, not the browser. There's billions of websites,
| and only a few browsers. If a site doesn't want me to visit
| it, I'll just find another site.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| "Each Firefox download has a unique identifier"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30715163
| Iolaum wrote:
| If you are using Windows [which is where the above applies],
| does that firefox download token make a difference to your
| privacy?
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Can you explain WHY that matters?
| everdrive wrote:
| But does that identifier ever get transmitted anywhere? How
| is this unique identifier used to track me?
| digisign wrote:
| There's only a few use cases for a unique identifier, zero
| for one that is never used.
| vondur wrote:
| Look at the highest comment on that thread from
| car_analogy, he lays out a plausible scenario at what the
| consequences of Mozilla tracking downloads could be.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Except that scenario is not plausible at all.
|
| Why would you be downloading a network installer only to
| move it with USB to another supposedly "secure" machine
| just so THAT machine can then do the downloading part
| instead of just downloading the binary on that machine in
| the first place?
|
| Secondly who is downloading Firefox binaries off of
| Mozzilla website for a "secure" machine? That only
| happens if you are running Windows and at that point your
| pants are already soiled.
|
| Most plausible is that some IT department would have same
| installer on all the machines and then Mozzilla would
| know that all these machines belong to same organization,
| but if your IT department is running network installer
| for every instance for Firefox they install then please
| fire your IT department.
|
| Literally all this info does is to tell Mozzilla that you
| installed a Firefox or if you are some kind of weirdo who
| moves some 10kb web installer from friend to friend to
| install Firefox they might know that all these people at
| some level know each other, but again this only applies
| to Windows users.
|
| I just don't understand why HN is making this out to be
| some Firefox killer.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| and instead, they move to a totally untested unknown fork
| like LibreFox who is ran by who exactly? Almost sounds
| like an intelligence operation.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Kids, please start using Debian again. apt-
| get install firefox
| goodpoint wrote:
| THIS is why Debian exists.
| perihelions wrote:
| I think that one's only on sid (unstable). For the rest of
| us it'd be apt install firefox-esr
| nunobrito wrote:
| Yeah, not really.
|
| That's only minimally possible with a whole lot of plugins that
| should be added there by default, plus removing the fingerprint
| function.
| throwra620 wrote:
| david_draco wrote:
| > What is LibreWolf?
|
| > This project is an independent fork of Firefox [...]
|
| > LibreWolf is always based on the latest version of Firefox
|
| So it is a dependent fork of Firefox
| godshatter wrote:
| I'm assuming that what they meant by "independent" was "we're
| not the Firefox dev team".
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| Fork itself alone is enough since it implies they are not
| part of the original team. When they put "independent fork"
| which changes the meaning/intents, I would believe that they
| means they are forking Firefox and the original code will not
| the same or something.
|
| This is my assumption/observation that the owner or the
| members of this forked project is majority ESL. I would
| understand why they said independent fork because it made
| sense to them, however it implies different than "fork"
| alone.
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