[RANT] The death of Waterfox

Software & Operating Systems Open Source & Web-Based
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Who here is of the mind “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” with browsers?

Who here hates it when people bow to money?

Who here is as stubborn as me with ancient browsers?

I predict, not many.

For the minority though, this is the last straw.

The website Weasyl has officially deprecated Waterfox according to their devs and will not fix something because it is a feature that was “standardized” in modern “standards.”

You know I have the biggest sinful hate when Chrome drives web standards that only benefit them narcissisticly. Chrome isn’t the standard for the web, it’s just super dominant and it’s not even the proper open source project for it, like AOSP is to Android.

The kicker is they said “the thing that broke your browser coming to more sites” so that the version of Waterfox that still supports XPI addons will get even more crippled as time goes on. The problem is so serious it solicits 403 Forbidden on POST requests. (think CSP, but more strict)

And the reason I’m not going for Waterfox 3.x.x is the Startpage fiasco where a data mining company paid a huge sum of money to the Waterfox dev and entered a strategic partnership. All the reason to be weary.

You want to talk ancient? I have an iPad 3rd Gen. The first gen with the retina display, and that can still use all my banking sites, even PayPal to an extent.

Being of the perspective of being on the autism spectrum, forcing change is something none of us on the spectrum appreciate.

The closest thing that would meet my needs doesn’t exist yet… Librewolf based on Firefox ESR source code. To me the regular update channel may as well be the nightly channel with the pace of versions now (begrudgingly) at the same speed as Chrome versions.

Just a little bit of stability is all I ask this pandemic, but they sped up “Chrome dictated” web standards. If banking sites are required to build redundancies and backports to support older browsers, why can’t people that aren’t Glassholes wearing Google Glass browsing Chrome see that there are these people that won’t give up something as precious as Waterfox Classic?

Don’t try to suggest alternatives if you know me well. I recently lost my internet and am making this post on my phone’s data plan and I’m in no mood for debate on something to migrate to. I already found Librewolf, but damn it just needs a ESR version.

Edit: Nope, Librewolf blocks way too much stuff. *sigh*

Anyone have a checklist of what Librewolf does to Firefox source? It may be easier to do the tweaks one by one to an actual ESR install rather than have it rebranded.

Better yet, can anyone audit Waterfox 3.x.x to see if I’m just being super paranoid about Startpage?

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Basilisk, I’m just going to leave this here, but mostly agree with you.

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Eh, is it as fast as Waterfox 3.x.x? Or is the latest ESR in general slower?

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I use quite a bit of heavy extensions, so mine is slower, I have no idea though how fast Waterfox 3.x is so I can’t compare. But I imagine Basilisk is slower.

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*sigh* All I use XUL extensions for are the better XUL uBlock Origin and Classic Theme Restorer.

ESR would work, but if the next version is an indication the Proton skin is god awful. (WIndows 11 and Big Sur inspired) So is removal of FTP. (DD-WRT fanboys weep)

If there’s a ESR 78 continuation by Waterfox, I still need to goddamn trust it after seeing evidence they haven’t been sullied by ad money from Startpage.

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Not familiar with the project, but can you take the source code, root out any stuff you don’t want and build a private version just for yourself? Or even share it as a fork or just a one-off?

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I want to know the nitty gritty, but I fear it might be out of my skill level.

This guide apparently was deprecated 6 months ago. The only active project doing this kind of stuff is LibreWolf, but they only follow the “Release” (IMHO it’s a Nightly) channel: Mozilla Firefox Spyware Mitigation Guide — Spyware Watchdog

Also, the old UI should be default, and FTP should be brought back in a more secure in-browser fashion for ESR 91. Found out how to revert the UI:

This honestly should be default in LibreWolf.

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image
The new tab design combined with the removal of the ‘compact’ density option is almost enough to make me go use Brave lol

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Heh, compact density might be something to ask for a return in a fork of ESR 91.

They wanted to be ready for Big Sur and Windows 11, both very bad copies of KDE.

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I don’t understand the problem here? Could you elaborate? I quite enjoy librewolf.

You can tune this back in I’m pretty sure. It’s mostly just overly paranoid defaults in the “under the hood” options.

I would look at the patch set for that information check the aur package for the upstream repo.

I too am frustrated with browsers these days, and hope you can find something that satisfies your requirements.

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Librewolf is on the “release” fast lane. ESR is the slow lane that focuses on wide compatibility for enterprise, but I want to use it because it’s not throwing new features and changes every week with a new FF version.

Now that I know Proton UI can be reverted, it’s just a few other tweaks like a secure in-browser FTP browser (Enterprise migrating away from a web browser for FTP is like pulling teeth) and a good one mentioned is the return of all the density settings like compact, normal and cozy.

The problem is there is no easy to digest resource for first timers and you’re left to brave the wilds in terms of setup, something I 100% don’t need right now.

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Ahh, definitely makes sense.

You really use the in browser ftp? You’re the first I’ve heard of.

That’s a very fair assessment.

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You can check all the patches from the AUR makepgk

But the most annoyances are from a restrictive librewolf.cfg and policies.json please you can checkout
Allow overriding prefs
 at $HOME/.librewolf/librewolf.overrides.cfg

“omg it triggers my XDG itch, will try to figure out if xdg path can be added”

// allow settings to be overriden with a file at `~/.librewolf/librewolf.overrides.cfg`
// or `~/.var/app/io.gitlab.librewolf-community/.librewolf/librewolf.overrides.cfg` (Flatpak).
let profile_directory;
if (profile_directory = getenv('USERPROFILE') || getenv('HOME')) {
  pref('autoadmin.global_config_url', `file://${profile_directory}/.librewolf/librewolf.overrides.cfg`);
}

I also created pacman hook to comment out policies and settings so they can be set via javascript at /usr/lib/librewolf ~freed00m/librewolf-comment-out-cfg-hook - sourcehut git

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Pale Moon?

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I also used the FTP functionality in Firefox, sporadically. Like maybe a couple times in a year. It was just really convenient when I ran into ftp:// links.

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Found a boolean to help that, but the option even says it’s “not supported,” so ESR 91 is the only sure fire way to maintain that boolean. https://www.askvg.com/tip-restore-compact-mode-density-option-in-firefox-customize-window/

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Another point I should bring up is these super fast release cycles both Chrome and Firefox have taken will drive me crazy going “What the hell is this?” every week or 2 weeks. This is why ESR exists and is a necessary evil so sensible devs don’t go too crazy implementing too many “modern” web standards without redundancy.

That’s the other thing I’ve noticed, ever since both Chrome and Firefox went to the fastlane release cycles, average devs tend to ignore redundancy for compatibility until a product exits beta or when it becomes fully stable. This is harmful to people that just want an alternative webapp to just damn work. Running from the man (like when Discord was gonna be sold and people ran to Matrix) shouldn’t be hampered by “cyberpunk” web standards that Chrome narcissisticly promotes.

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Lets not forget… Vista, shudder, was a sorry-AF copy of KDE

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If you really can’t find a newer browser you can stand, you could go through WRP:

I use an older version of Firefox on Android because they broke all add-ons, and there’s nothing I hate more than trying to read a page when a video pops-up in the corner and stars playing. Image Video Block easily solves that, but can’t get that add-on into recent Firefox on Android versions. I’d be more likely to switch to Brave than upgrade to a broken Firefox.

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so do i, because ftp is simple and rocks for simple photo/file sharing.

no bs adds no likes and no tracking just a simple link and BAM theres your photo …