If you're already using Chrome you likely don't care much about free software, but to address your specific complaints I would recommend GNU Icecat! It strips out some things like pocket, has some about:config tweaks out of the box with privacy in mind, etc. I will give the unfortunate tip that you should probably disable librejs which comes with it out of the box. I am not against its goal, but it breaks so much stuff. I also use umatrix and ublock origin so I already am often clicking around to unbreak a page. I didn't deal well with adding librejs on top of that. That said, if I made my own website, I'd strive for librejs compatibility for sure.
Far from true. Chromium on Arch is entirely open source and includes hardware acceleration, unlike Firefox which doesn't think Linux is relevant.
Pocket is a deal, search providers are a deal. All to put some money in Mozillas pocket to allow continued development of Firefox. They can't rely on donations and Google funding alone.
Whatever happened to being community-based and developers working on it because they wanted to help build a great application? Why do they even need a corporation giving them money to implement tracking and other features to compromise user privacy and security?
Re:Did Google Sabotage Firefox?
by CharlesColeman on Wednesday April 17, 2019 @01:49PM
(#19684785)
> Whatever happened to being community-based and developers working on it because they wanted to help build a great application? Why do they even need a corporation giving them money to implement tracking and other features to compromise user privacy and security?
Browsers being:
1. massively complicated,
2. requiring massive feature support for compatibility with the ecosystem,
3. the biggest attack surface on anyone's computer, and
4. made by people doing huge amounts of work who want to eat.
I don't think we can have a secure, feature-complete, fully community-developed browser unless there's a massive refactor and simplification of HTML and related technologies.
Re:Did Google Sabotage Firefox?
by icebraining on Thursday April 18, 2019 @09:43AM
(#19690922)
Pocket isn't a deal, it's a service owned by Mozilla itself.
I saw Pocket on there once or twice when they initially included it, and have not seen it since. I don’t see that they are “keep trying to push” it in any way. Just say no/disable it and move on.
I'd be more inclined to use Firefox if it didn't feel so clunky, didn't keep trying to push Pocket on me, and took a more aggressive stance fighting against web annoyances and adtech.
Heck I might consider switching to Firefox if it could actually, reliably block autoplaying video - something that Safari and Chrome seem incapable of doing.