Here's a bit more information, though i do believe that there indeed could be more clarity about the project's goals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfox

It appears that Waterfox is one of the few ways to use the legacy extensions that Firefox removed the support for and to use a browser that Mozilla doesn't have control over.

I'd maybe also look at GNU IceCat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat

It's actually curious to see a discussion about a fork of Firefox, since a little bit ago i personally felt that there might just be a rise of more forks and attempts to abandon Mozilla due to their recent behaviour: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28785896

It doesn't ship ads in your web browser, unlike Firefox. It allows you to install WebExtensions from any source (even if you don't sign them with Mozilla!), unlike Firefox.

I wouldn't recommend it, but that's just because I wouldn't recommend any web browser right now.

>It doesn't ship ads in your web browser

Well, Waterfox is owned by an advertising company.

Sure, and I'm not saying it's good for privacy. But Firefox in its default setting is also bordering unusable, inserting ads in the address bar!

It's incredible that an advertising company does better than a for-profit owned by a non-profit in this regard.

Sorry, context for this? I take a pretty thorough scalpel to removing any traces of sponsored content from Firefox, and it never occurred to me that they might have ads in the address bar. Is there a previous discussion an announcement about this?

You want both of these to be false.

browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest.sponsored

browser.urlbar.sponsoredTopSites

For aesthetics and anti-stupidity's sake, might I also recommend:

browser.urlbar.trimURLs

False.

It is possible that I'm so culturally eccentric that the obstruction of useful information fails to appeal to me.

Thanks.

They were already off for me, and I don't remember being asked about enabling them after an install...

They won't ask or inform you of this it just gets enabled. (Currently just in US). HN discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28804588

There were stories about it a few days ago. It's US only thing, for now.

They added it unannounced in the last update, Firefox 93. There was a small outrage on behalf of the dozens of people still paying attention to Firefox, but nothing came of it. If you're on a good distribution, you'll probably see it disabled by default.

Honestly I have been disappointed beyond the capacity for outrage with Firefox. Do you know of any positive cases of a distribution that disables this?

Edit: just to add to this, my understanding is that Mozilla uses (abuses?) their trademark on Firefox to keep the distributions in line. If you distribute a version of Firefox that's been patched to remove anti-features, you can't call it Firefox.

Arch Linux seems to have disabled it. Both the config flags are false for me and I haven't touched that.

They do not. You can check their build files yourself here: https://github.com/archlinux/svntogit-packages/tree/packages...

Indeed, it would be rather surprising if they did, as I'm an Arch user as well and they have not disabled the sponsored new tab suggestions or the Pocket article recommendations. Hard to say what would be beyond the pale for the Arch maintainers.

From what I can tell from this thread, they are currently selectively enabling this for certain users. Maybe it just hasn't been enabled for you yet, or you're in a region (non-US) that doesn't get it enabled?

I've never seen ads in the address bar and when I checked the about:config for those two items they were both false. I installed it from the Pop OS! repository.

It isn't a patch to Firefox just configuration.

As far as I can tell, they do not. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that their Firefox package is just taken directly from Ubuntu, and they only apply a single theming option on top of that: https://github.com/pop-os/default-settings/blob/master_focal...

Whoa, borderline unusable because of something Chrome has effectively been doing for a long time?

https://imgur.com/a/baXZDrN

Yes, actually. Chrome is unusable adware. Firefox is borderline unusable adware, and it takes a long time to remove all of the proprietary components and proprietary services from it. Waterfox is probably doing something to snatch your data, but it probably won't outright impede your use of the browser. Epiphany exists, but they still aren't shipping with WebExtensions a year after implementing them because it goes against the "GNOME way" or some garbage knockoff-HIG.

There really isn't a good web browser.

Yes, that's one of the many reasons Chrome is unsuable.

The main point, which many people are looking for, is that it’s a version of Firefox maintained by anyone except Mozilla.

It had earlier 64bit builds, but that was then and … now it seems mostly for the niche that are pissed off at the new Firefox tabs and the audacity that Mozilla wants to partner directly with advertisers instead of having Google be the middleman.

Firefox also has some telemetry which Waterfox cuts out.