Firefox still the best for Linux?
 

Moving back to Linux, just wondering if Firefox is still the best browser to be using?

Ehh... you might want to test Firefox and its competition against https://www.vsynctester.com/

Last time I checked, Firefox performed notably worse than Chrome. Even on Windows.

Thanks, I've been using it on windows 10 ok, (up to a point, if you can put up with shit ;) ) but your post has given me pause for thought!

First thing I do on my Mac dev box and my Windows dev box install firestorm.
I want nothing to do with chrome based browsers.

Define "best".

At work, the recommended, official browser is Edge on Windows. The browser used by all the technical people accessing the in-house-written web applications is Firefox (and it's supported/maintained by the desktop support team). A fair amount of the Firefox use is within Virtualbox VMs running CentOS. (Chrome might be usable in either environment but I think you might need a special dispensation from the CIO to use anything other than Firefox or Edge. :) )

Firefox gets some criticism from people whose purpose in life is to benchmark software for performing slower than some other browsers. (In previous lives they obsessed over how fast PCs could formatt floppy disks.) My experience is that when Firefox was "slow" it was likely due to the sheer number of tabs I had open---especially tabs to sites that employ "infinite scrolling" pages. IMHO, poor performance can be mainly due to the sites one's visiting what with the previously mentioned scrolling model but also (mainly?) the vast quantity of Javascript that sites feel they need to push to your PC and page design that causes the page to re-render when every little graphics file is received.

Firefox has some warts -- its penchant for wanting to creating a new, crypticly-named profile every time I upgrade is pretty annoying -- but all browsers have their own annoyances. If you want something that's not tied to Google as closely as Chrome is, try Chromium. I find that it works pretty well as a backup browser when encountering sites that seem to prefer you used Chrome but it's a little lighter weight. Depending on the distribution you've chosen, you may have around ten browsers that could be installed. Install all of them and try each out one out. Remove the ones that don't work out for you.

Good luck...

And keep ALL the ones that do work, you never know what a web site is going to insist on having (eg one site I must access doesn't work with Firefox 89 - but is happy with Firefox 80).

I use FF all the time, I have tried others, but always return to it. :)

I also use Firefox almost all the time. One reason is that I wouldn't use Chrome on a bet. I know that Google likely knows everything there is to know about me, but I'll be darned if I'm going to help them.

I also respect Mozilla's commitment to privacy.

Firefox for linux still doesn't support hardware video acceleration, and plugin massacre wasn't done nicely either. Google on the other hand is making noises about severely restricting adblockers in chrome. Talk about lesser of two evils.. Still using firefox though.

Yes. I usually kept quite a few besides my daily work horse (FF). However, after a recent re-install, I thought back on which ones I used the majority of the time and decided to only load FF and Chromium. Most of the other browsers seem to be based on Chrome's innards so I figured that cosmetics wasn't enough of a reason to keep more than one of each. The ISO for my distribution is still around in case I really need one of the others.

For years, the only non-IE browser that would work with one web site was Konqueror. The web site changed over time and even Konqueror wouldn't work any more. Based on my previous experience with the site's technical people (over a problem where one of their servers sending out emails with broken MIME sections that crashed my mail reader), I decided it was easier to simply delete the bookmarks to the site than to convince them to make their site more broadly accessible. And one less browser cluttering up my application menu. :^)

Cheers...

The term "best" is imprecise at best. Best for what, whome, on what hardware, for what purpose, and depending upon what metrics?

For ME, the Mozilla engine does a great job and I much prefer it for most normal use. It is not the most secure, but it has far less tracking by default (and more built-in protections) than anything chrome based. (TOR beats it, but should not be used for anything where you must authenticate, since that bypasses some of the protections by providing data to the endpoint.Also, while it is very secure TOR performance does suck a bit.)

I use four browsers, each based upon a different service or codebase and providing a specific advantage.

What is your criteria? For what do you use a browser? Anyone providing an answer without questioning what you need in a browser is only telling you what THEY find best, not what is best for YOU!

I prefer Pale Moon, but it's not just up to me. There are always sites, like JSTOR, which don't work unless I use Firefox.

Mozilla/FF have run low on cash and 'sold their soul (and their browser) to the devil.' I nolonger respect their commintment to privacy, largely because they talk about it, but don't deliver.

I went through a FF clone phase. Waterfox seems as bad as FF, and Palemoon devs (Palemoon has better privacy) show such disrespect for linux users that I feel better staying away. Also their javascript stuff sucks.

So I keep

• Chromium for daily use. I'm using Alien Bob's "Chromium-ungoogled" version.
• Palemoon because my mail is on mail.com and that site sucks. Palemoon alone shows me 10/10 news items, whereas others show me 5/10, along with 5 pages of ads.
• Firefox,for the 'if nothing else works' scenario. It's never used now.

Palemoon deletes it's own cache & cookies. I have commands in ~/.bash_profile to perform the service in Chromium and firefox. I don't like having my history scanned.

EDIT: The big minus for Chromium is that it thinks it's Chrome :rolleyes: So if you need an addon, it drops you in the Chrome web store, and what you grab may be spyware. Luckily, I don't want much.

Thanks everyone, very helpful!

Seamonkey, set to delete everything when browser is closed.