Sorry if wrong section. I’ve tried the new Firefox Quantum and I like it. I’ve been a Chrome user for years now because even though it’s a resource hog it runs pretty smooth. Should I switch to Firefox or stay with Chrome?
Whichever you prefer and works with the sites you use.
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I use Firefox with a heavily customized set of plugins to make the web work my way.
I use Chromium when “my way” breaks things, and I need a default experience.
Both get used daily, but mostly Firefox.
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I mainly use Firefox and on occasions Chromium. Both configured to always run in private browsing mode. Good for keeping my memory good, no bookmarks or history.
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I have used Firefox continuously since 2007 or so. Have no plans to use anything else going forward.
Really, no big reason for you to switch if you’re happy with chrome on Windows. Firefox is a bit more convenient if you’re using Linux imo, especially if you would otherwise consider chromium. It seems a bit better optimized for Linux (in general, but especially compared to the full chrome version) and many thing ‘just work’ that would not work out of the box with chromium (DRM / proprietary things such as netflix).
I also think it’s bit better for web developement too, because from my experience it’s more frequent to encounter something that does not quite work as intended in firefox, but works in chrome (as intended does not mean it will functionally break). It happens the other way around sometimes, but less so. I know that’s a strange backwards reason to recommend firefox for…
But mostly it works great, is fast and it does that cross platform. The dev tools are also great (and I’m more used to them at this point). So I use it (mostly but not exclusively).
I would echo the notion of trying both. At home I’d run either of the two with a fair amount of extensions and tweaks, and I can’t really say either is better out of the box.
I haven’t used Firefox as my main browser at home for more than a couple of months now but it’s been a good experience. I have some doubts about the current path that the Chrome development seems to be on, but we’ll see about that as time goes.
I like having my software in a “portable” state when possible and Firefox Portable has been great so far with updates that seem practically as fast as the regular version.
Both do a great job, are open source and have really big amounts plugins and support. Pragmatically just use what you like best.
Personally i prefer Firefox mostly because they are much more privacy aware and when they screw up the community tends to be much more harsh and have influence; As opposed to Chrome that google can pretty much do what ever they want. I generally would not trust google stuff when it comes to browsing for various privacy reasons and if wanted to use chrome i would go for chromium or one of its forks.
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I used to recommend and religiously use Vivaldi, which is a Chrome based browser but since last week’s update i’ve been having some performance issues with multiple computers.
It works fine for the first 20 minutes or so, after that it starts to slow down and the tabs get very slow. I though it was a RAM leak issue at first, or disk usage, but those never pass normal levels, so i’m really puzzled as to what it may be.
So far i’ve been using Firefox, it was my main browser before Vivaldi so i feel at home with it.
I like Firefox. You can send tabs across your devices (come across something and want to read it later) which I think is exclusive to FF at the moment
I don’t use anything else, I will use Edge if something is broken. I am heavily invested into Firefox with the amount of bookmarks and shit I have
I now use Brave. https://brave.com/features
It is based on Chrome but with a greater focus on privacy. It has built-in ad blocking capabilities that are actually good among other things.
Brave isn’t perfect yet but it’s worth checking out for sure. As a note, I believe all extensions in the Chrome web store are compatible with Brave but I’ve only installed LastPass from the Chrome web store which works fine.
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Both do a great job, are open source
I’m being pedantic here, but folks who care about open source will probably care about this difference.
Chromium is open source, but Chrome is not. In the past, it was really hard to find Windows builds for Chromium, and that led to a lot of unofficial builds. Many of which were crap quality or outright bundled with malware.
The Chromium Project seems to have addressed this recently, and now official builds are more reliable.
I thought all the extra google tracking/ad stuff were also open sourced a while ago out of popular demand.
I also use brave for certain websites.
But unfortunately Brave isn’t as good as it used to be.
I’m still using the Muon version and that is a pretty decent browser.
But the new versions are all based on Chrome / Chromium.
So Brave has degraded from a pretty nice different browser to yet another chrome clone.
Which is very unfortunate.
If you want to use Chrome extensions but don’t want to use chrome. Try Vivaldi. The only browser left that is not visualy ugly.
The one who must not be named made a good video on vivaldi.
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Logan is not Voldemort
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I didn’t start this. Long time ago I saw some people referring to him like that thought it was funny.
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The Google tracking has been included in Chromium, unfortunately.
The main stuff in Chrome that’s not open source are codecs. Chrome includes AAC and H.264 codecs that aren’t freely licensed. Crash handling and error reporting is also a Chrome-specific thing, and that has some privacy implications.
Chrome is restricted to Google Web Store for extensions, Chromium does not have that limitation. Chromium does not have an auto-updater. Chrome for Windows and Mac do.
Chrome also ships the Wildvine DRM plugins by default. This component is open source (the DRM itself is not, for obvious reasons), while restricting yourself with DRM is an optional step for Chromium.
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Give it a go, you can always change back if you want. I mostly use Firefox, but I think I have a copy of Chrome somewhere too. Perhaps in the recycle bin.
Since we are talking about it anyways: Is the whole Chrome Addon Substyem open-source as well? Could i build a new browser that is able to utilize Chrome Addons?