Re:Betterfox: User.js to harden Firefox and optimize privacy...
by Nezteb on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @06:26PM
(#36779884)
That's a good point, thanks!
I should have rephrased my question to: "How do the levels of privacy/security/speed differ between Firefox+Betterfox and LibreWolf?"
I'm sure both have their tradeoffs, but I was just curious if anyone has tried and extensively compared both.
Re:Betterfox: User.js to harden Firefox and optimize privacy...
by yokoffing on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @09:38AM
(#36786123)
Librewolf is essentially Arkenfox but as a browser instead of a user.js. You may gain more privacy but at the expense of potential site breakage.
Betterfox is for everyday use cases and should rarely cause site breakage. It also has prefs to prevent annoyances and improve browsing speed.
Unless something has changed dramatically, the Firefox team (and other teams) test and fuzz Firefox extensively - obviously default prefs and features will get more coverage.
An actual fork like LibreWolf that adds or removes code and ships a different build fundamentally changes how the software is built and invalidates a significant portion of the security work that has been done by the Firefox security team.
I am not arguing that Librewolf or any of the other forks of Firefox[1] are necessarily worse for security, just that browsers are ridiculously complex pieces of software and making claims about security requires more than just gutting or adding features.
[1] other than Palemoon, because screw those guys; when I challenged them on the security program for Palemoon, their loopy leader tried to harass me and other former Mozilla folks. Given their propensity for instability I wouldn't trust them at all.