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Re:Firefox on the Brink? by nequo on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:32AM (#38531180)
I want Firefox to not be on the brink. I have had no problems with it on Linux over the last few years since I switched from Chrome. I do not wish to touch Chrome with a ten-foot pole.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by BossingAround on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:39AM (#38531316)
The one thing I miss from Chrome is the `thisisunsafe` feature to ignore whatever misconfiguration the webpage you're trying to access uses.

Recently, one of the dev servers that I tried to access misconfigured HSTS, which made it really difficult for Firefox to access the web UI. I fired up chromium, simply typed the magic word, and accessed it no problem.

Of course, ideally, there'd be no misconfigurations, but sometimes, I just need to access whatever dev server and I don't want to waste time on learning how to disable that particular security feature in Firefox temporarily.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by elashri on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:43AM (#38531398)
While not recommended, and I would run firefox developer edition for that, you can disable (make the value false) `security.ssl.enable_ocsp_stapling` in `about:config`. You will be able to view sites with invalid certs/config. But will still prompt you that that something is invalid, and you have the choice to proceed forward.

Again, I would not recommend doing that on vanilla Firefox, they have Firefox developer edition version for these reasons. And you can run both side by side.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by BossingAround on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:45AM (#38531455)
That's exactly the problem though. I know it's somehow possible, but the fact that I have to search for what's the internal boolean name for whatever feature I want to disable is simply a bad dev UX.

If there's a Firefox developer edition (I had no idea), they should enable all "I want to continue anyways" buttons by default. I mean, it's a developer edition!

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by godelski on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @12:46PM (#38534309)
> That's exactly the problem though.

Is it? The default options are for default users. Default users are dumb. It sounds like you have a non-standard case and the capacity to know the difference between misconfiguration and actual threats. It also makes sense that you are able to turn off certain features for default users when you want to do non-standard (default) tasks.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by elashri on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:53AM (#38531556)
> That's exactly the problem though. I know it's somehow possible, but the fact that I have to search for what's the internal boolean name for whatever feature I want to disable is simply a bad dev UX.

I think as a developer, searching for things are just part of the job, so if you have a niche need to debug or work with sites with invalid certs/configs, then it is not that hard to look on how to allow that. Firefox's docs are one of the best docs you can read to be fair.

> If there's a Firefox developer edition (I had no idea), they should enable all "I want to continue anyways" buttons by default. I mean, it's a developer edition!

To be honest, I use developer edition as my main browser and my profile is optimized and highly customized, so I don't remember is that was the default, or I changed it at some time (I keep it true).

But for vanilla Firefox which most of the users or potential users are not developers, I think this is reasonable default.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by sp332 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:00AM (#38531668)
Compared to typing a nonstandard string in a nonstandard place? Going to about:config where all the deep settings are and searching for "ocsp" is downright obvious.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by BossingAround on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:18AM (#38531941)
Not really... I don't even remember `about:config`. I know of its existence, but is it `config`, `:config`, or `about`, or ...?

So what I do is, I google, right? First page that comes up references how to fix the problem on both Firefox and Chromium-based browsers.

So on Firefox, I have to type the config page, then search for ocsp, then disable it. Then, I can finally access the webpage, but of course, I should remember to re-enable it after I'm done on the misconfigured server.

On Chrome, I can fire up an incognito window, type a magic keyword, do what I need, close the incognito window and go back to default.

Honestly, the latter is a vastly better experience in my world (I do backend/integration dev, mostly Python nowadays, probably a FE engineer will not care either way).

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by elashri on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:26AM (#38532072)
> On Chrome, I can fire up an incognito window, type a magic keyword, do what I need, close the incognito window and go back to default.

You can do the same on Firefox (at least developer edition). I thought that you want to do that without going to incognito mode.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by toast0 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:53AM (#38532466)
How is searching for oscp obvious when the problem was HSTS?
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by sp332 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @11:23AM (#38532923)
I was just copying what someone else said in this thread. It might actually be network.stricttransportsecurity.preloadlist but I have not tried it.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by zamadatix on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @03:16PM (#38536373)
It might be this, it might be that, it might be all sorts of things. The point is you have to know what it is for each scenario, then you have to know where to go change it, then you have to know what the variable name is. Or you can know "thisisunsafe" which, while not being something you'll find using the settings for your saturday reading material, is something easily found and universally applicable to all situations without simultaneously turning every other connection you make into a security risk.

It's a great hidden feature just like Firefox has shift+right click/double right click opening the native context. No amount of "well you can just put this in the console in these cases or this in the console in those cases" makes these kinds of features any less useful.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by jeroenhd on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:52AM (#38531555)
To be fair, "thisisunsafe" isn't exactly an advocated feature either.

I would like a better way to bypass these TLS errors, but hidden booleans and secret phrases aren't that dissimilar.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by BossingAround on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:11AM (#38531832)
The biggest difference is a catch-all phrase vs feature-specific booleans. So rather than have one place for everything, you have multiple of booleans.

I agree that if there was at least one boolean to always show the "continue anyways" button, that'd be acceptable to me as well.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by ThatMedicIsASpy on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @11:41AM (#38533240)
And I refuse use chrome because I use

full-screen-api.ignore-widgets

which makes videos full screen to the browser size.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by swozey on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:45AM (#38531449)
Browsers need some advanced/i'm-a-dev mode. I'm getting sick of things (TLS details, urls, unsafe) getting hidden away/removed.

edit: Well comment below me just mentioned a Firefox developer version, wasn't aware of that.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by Night_Thastus on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:59AM (#38532566)
This drives me up a wall. I know the site. I trust the site. Yes, they screwed up something with their configuration or it's just ancient. I STILL WANT TO GO THERE!
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by javier_e06 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:59AM (#38531659)
Indeed, Chrome is bloated. Safari is, well Safari. Firefox is a good Open Source option.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by jjoonathan on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:38AM (#38531314)
Google finally beat my hands with a stick firmly enough to get me off Firefox.

It was youtube. Not the ads -- I pay for premium -- but the fact that on FF they added an artificial 5s page load delay on firefox plus a bug has lingered for months where it always loads the last video, so you have to load every video twice. 12s/video is too much delay.

Ah well, it was good while it lasted.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by rumdz on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:44AM (#38531415)
I have not experienced this. Could it be because I only browse the web with uBlock Origin enabled?
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by southwesterly on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:18AM (#38531929)
Yes. It is exactly that.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by jjoonathan on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:32AM (#38532155)
Hmm. Maybe I should try uBlock. I usually don't like adblockers -- both on principle, because I believe in paying for what I consume, and because they tend to subtly break a website and cause hours of headaches at least once a year -- but I don't like feeding the beast either. I'll look into this.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by klabb3 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:48AM (#38532390)
Adblockers are highly configurable, you can simply disable them selectively in cases where you want to “support” those that sell your data to the highest bidder, if that’s your jam..

Your former comment indicates that you care about page load times, in which case an adblocker will typically reduce both UI yank and certainly network usage, in case you’re constrained.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by jjoonathan on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @12:10PM (#38533700)
> you can simply disable them selectively

Last time an ad-blocker caused a multi-hour debugging debacle, that turned out to not be the case. It was preventing me from logging into my bank even when it was supposedly disabled.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by btreecat on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:43AM (#38531395)
12s of your time is the cost of compromised morals? That seems p cheap and unfortunately indicative.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by ragnese on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:50AM (#38532420)
Even besides the compromised morals, just the fact that they know and understand that Google is intentionally doing nefarious shit to make us switch to Chrome and they just went along with it.

I must just be a naturally defiant person, but in that situation, I would go far, FAR, out of my way to make sure I never let them "win" with that kind of bullshit tactic.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by taylodl on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:55AM (#38531594)
Compromised morals? WTF is the CEO of the Mozilla Foundation doing to earn $7M per year in salary? What about the Mozilla Foundation forcing out Brandon Eich because of a personal donation he made to a cause they didn't like?

Morals my ass!

I stopped using Firefox the day they kicked Brandon out and here's the kicker: I don't agree with the cause Brandon supported but I agree his employment shouldn't be affected by donations he made to support a ballot issue.

So yeah, the Mozilla Foundation can go straight to hell with that shit.

Good riddance!

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by sgift on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:17AM (#38531918)
Brendan Eich was not forced out. He made the donation, he couldn't stand the heat of defending it, he left.

Also, personal donations can make you unfit for some positions. Significant parts of the community felt his donation was not in line with the values they wanted to see represented. And since you didn't agree with them you decided to leave.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by croes on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:15AM (#38531884)
So you shoot yourself in the foot to teach Mozilla a lesson?

We all lose if it's only Chrome.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by taylodl on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:29AM (#38532115)
Last I looked Safari isn't Chrome.

Also, anybody can use the Gecko web rendering engine, yet project after project after project has picked the WebKit or Blink rendering engines.

And no, I haven't "shot myself in the foot" - when I replaced Firefox I found two great browsers: Brave and Vivaldi.

The better question is why you continue to support a compromised organization?

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by toyg on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @12:26PM (#38533957)
Gecko being a mess for embedded use pre-dates the Eich affair and Baker's payday.

As for Mozilla being compromised - maybe, but it's still less compromised than advertisement companies, crypto companies, tax evaders, and their likes.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by glenstein on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @12:20PM (#38533851)
Just to make sure I'm following along, we were talking about how youtube includes a delay of several seconds if it detects a certain ad blocking browser extension. Firefox has that browser extension, and therefore Mozilla is a "compromised organization."
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by taylodl on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @04:22PM (#38537072)
You violated YouTube's T's & C's and you're complaining about Google putting you in timeout for doing so. You steal from YouTube's content creators yet present Mozilla as the good guys. Have I summed that up accurately?
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by glenstein on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @01:47PM (#38547936)
None of that was my question, so, no.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by croes on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @03:48PM (#38536703)
Safari is a niche and is missing features.

And Brave and Vivaldi are based on Chromium, so they help Google that Chromium sets the standards for the web.

You already shot yourself, just didn't recognize yet.

Why do you support a crooked company like Google?

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by taylodl on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @04:32PM (#38537198)
> Why do you support a crooked company like Google?

Get back with me when the Mozilla Foundation has done a fraction of what Google has done in furthering our knowledge of computer science. Other companies making significant contributions to our knowledge of computer science are AT&T, IBM, and Microsoft. Would you prefer them to Google?

Also, the Firefox against the world meme is juvenile.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by croes on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @03:23AM (#38541618)
It's not about Firefox against the world, it's we against Google and at the moment Firefox is all we have.

>Get back with me when the Mozilla Foundation has done a fraction of what Google has done in furthering our knowledge of computer science.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by taylodl on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @09:11AM (#38544094)
Like I said, get back with me when the Mozilla Foundation has done a fraction of what Google has done in furthering our knowledge of computer science.

I would also consider which Big Tech company you're fighting. Last I looked, Google wasn't cited as the cause of a significant uptick in US teenagers committing suicide and being plagued with mental health issues. I could go on, but in the realm of Bad Actors in the land of Big Tech, Google is actually one of the least problematic entities.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by theandrewbailey on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:12AM (#38531849)
What really moved me away from Firefox was using Brave search. I had been using DuckDuckGo since the Snowden leaks. When DuckDuckGo announced they would derank results if they thought it was Russian propaganda or disinformation, I moved to Brave search. A week or so later, I decided that Mozilla was too woke for my liking, and started using Brave's browser, too.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by worksonmine on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @12:06PM (#38533640)
You seem to value integrity, are you aware that Brave browser replaced affiliate URLs with their own? So if you wanted to support someone and use their affiliate link they took the liberty to replace that. I wouldn't touch that spyware if I got paid.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by Timshel on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:26AM (#38532062)
Don't know, the pro LGBT stance of Mozilla/ Mozilla Foundation was not new in 2014 I believe.

So not having leadership with opposing view does not seem strange to me; donation was done privately but it end-up being public enough. There's enough hypocrisy and pink-washing ...

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by taylodl on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:36AM (#38532203)
Is the Mozilla Foundation a software organization or a LGBTQ+ advocacy organization?

If it's the former then what business do they have caring about Brandon Eich's personal donation to support a ballot initiative?

If it's the latter then it's a conflict of interest and Brandon Eich should be asked to leave.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by Timshel on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:53AM (#38532471)
At the moment they appear to want to be both.

Might at times be at the detriment of Firefox but it's not like there is any alternative imo. So I don´t mind, it's not like if they remove their LGBT manifesto they suddenly will become relevant again and people will start to care about privacy.

Might be that LGBT people care more about privacy and that this manifesto will help them stay relevant.

And it's not like 2% is not a lot of people, TOR browser is certainly even less and it does not change the fact that I believe it's an highly important piece of software.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by mrgalaxy on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @11:47AM (#38533322)
I use Chrome for Google's sites (Gmail, Youtube, etc) and Firefox for everything else. On Chrome you can install Youtube as an "app". That makes it easy for me to keep YT up and running while using Firefox for general browsing. Definitely recommend trying this approach out!
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by Timshel on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:49AM (#38531515)
Sad when I had the 5s issue on FF I switched to Freetube.

No surprise Google is doing those tactics if people react like you :( ...

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by jjoonathan on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:39AM (#38532260)
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give freetube a spin!
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by ape4 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:21AM (#38531986)
Wasn't this 5s delay for Firefox only debunked
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by jjoonathan on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:34AM (#38532179)
I lived it. Someone saying they "debunked" it doesn't change my experience.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by mroche on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:46AM (#38531462)
Does this occur for you with an ad blocker active (like uBlock Origin)?
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by ncts on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:51AM (#38532423)
FYI there is Invidious.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by dartos on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:35AM (#38531233)
Firefox regularly crashes for me on wayland.

It slows down my whole system when it tries to load a page in first boot (but librewolf doesn’t for some reason) the HID and webgl/webgpu support is bad…

It’s just not a very good browser compared to chrome forks or webkit based ones.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by BossingAround on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:36AM (#38531253)
Sounds like a configuration problem. Firefox on Fedora/Wayland is very fast, haven't had it crash in a long time.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by red-iron-pine on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @11:12AM (#38532749)
Same. About the only thing that's stable on F37. Updates to the kernel and other things have been giving me headaches, but FF and Steam are still solid.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by jacquesm on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:36AM (#38531268)
I haven't seen a FF crash in the last five years and I typically have a few hundred tabs open across multiple instances.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by bildung on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:43AM (#38531400)
Can confirm, I currently have around 240 tabs open (yeah I know...), and most of those a running for at least multiple weeks now.

I am on X though, perhaps a Wayland related bug or config thing?

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by TimeBearingDown on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:42AM (#38531372)
I also have crashes on sway, but there’s a rough workaround now which prevents the issue totally.

I believe there’s a design issue with Firefox and GTK handling input events; some Wayland compositors have workarounds but others do not.

https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/7645

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1743144

Firefox is my preferred browser and I hope we can keep its engine alive in this era of Chrome dominance.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by OfSanguineFire on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:38AM (#38532242)
I have been using Sway and Firefox for the last three years at least, and have never experienced crashes. Sway and Firefox as packaged by Debian Stable. I really wish people on HN threads complaining about Firefox bugs clearly stated 1) their environment, and 2) who packaged the Firefox, because those are what could make all the difference.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by the8472 on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:46AM (#38532349)
The bug depends on a few factors that aren't really packaging-specific. A) the default socket buffer size B) the polling rate of your mouse C) whether there's anything on your system or in your firefox profile that can cause enough lag that the buffer overflows D) whether your compositor has any workarounds for that protocol limitation

Well, I suppose a packager could have disabled wayland in firefox...

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by ParetoOptimal on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:38AM (#38531305)
Firefox on Wayland for me has 0 problems.

Have you tried:

- running with terminal to see errors

- running with a new profile

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by ravenstine on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:39AM (#38531326)
I haven't used it super extensively with Wayland, but so far I've not experienced any crashes. To clarify, I've been using Firefox on Debian virtualized with QEMU on aarch64, and the compositor is Weston, so maybe there are quirks on other setups. Overall, it runs impressively.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by jeroenhd on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:55AM (#38531592)
I had the same after forcing Firefox to do hardware acceleration on my Nvidia GPU. Firefox wanted to disable it, but I wanted to use my GPU anyway. Perhaps try resetting the GPU acceleration configuration?

Firefox isn't as stable as I would like it to be, but it's much better than any Webkit alternative I can find on Linux.

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by bryanlarsen on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:36AM (#38531257)
I had that problem, too. It went away when I replaced my Nvidia card with an AMD one.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by riskable on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:54AM (#38531575)
I was running Firefox in Wayland just fine with my AMD Radeon 6650 XT but recently switched to an Nvidia 4060 Ti (16GB) and suddenly I started having crashes. I don't blame Firefox for this since other applications started giving me issues too (e.g. Dolphin and Discord). I place the blame squarely on Nvidia.

Nvidia's drivers suck but if you want to do AI stuff their cards are basically the only option until Intel and AMD complete ramping up their support for AI stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if two years from now AMD takes the crown with Intel being a close second (providing the best bang-for-the-buck) but for that to happen AMD needs to focus more on making actual implementations faster (e.g. PyTorch) and not just making minor incremental improvements to ROCm (and also make it so you don't need to use `amdgpu-install` to use it!).

Re:Firefox on the Brink? by BossingAround on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:40AM (#38531331)
Ah, well, Nvidia still has a lot of problems with Wayland I hear, that might not be Firefox's (or Wayland's) error.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by caution on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:40AM (#38531344)
That's strange. I use Nvidia, on Wayland and have 0 issues with Firefox
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by dartos on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:36AM (#38531272)
I’m using an amd card :(
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by bshacklett on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @10:46AM (#38532361)
I can’t speak to the second point, but I’d look for OOM events in dmesg for the crashes.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by ChubbyGlasses on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:44AM (#38531436)
I've had very similar experiences on Windows and Mac. I really wish Moz would fork WebKit or Blink and work on a browser for the modern age.
Re:Firefox on the Brink? by resonious on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @09:36AM (#38531270)
Huh... I've exclusively used Firefox on Wayland for a long time now due to good fractional scaling support (unlike Chrome which took ages to stop using x11 by default). I agree that the webgl/webgpu support is bad but haven't seen the whole-system slowdown.