To make eOS even better, and to distance it further away from Google and chromium, I suggest that Murena cooperates with the devs behind LibreWolf.
LibreWolf is a fork of Firefox with no telemetry and with Unblock Origin added by default. It gets updated as fast as Firefox:
The Android version is not up and running (just an unfinished project on the hub), but that can change if they get more resources/an official partnership with Murena.
I don’t really like chromium browsers for Android, but the good alternatives have telemetry
This could also make eOS unique and allow for interesting addons for the browser.
There r alot of privacy browsers these days. I myself have started using Brave browser since a couple of weeks. I must say, it works pretty good. I have Librewolf on my desktop, but I haven’t used it alot yet.
Works pretty well for me, plus I can choose multiple search engines, which I couldn’t with Brave (not to mention the annoying ads for their private VPN).
Yes the telemetry and Librewolf is privacy out of the box. On my desktop I use Firefox as my credit card browser for Amazon and Ebay, and Librewolf for websites that I don’t use a credit card for.
I haven’t used bromite before. Like I said, there r many privacy browsers these days. I must say that the “ads” u refer to don’t bother me. It’s that u mention them now, I don’t even look at them.
Actually /e/ currently defaults on “extremely old” fork of bromite - Browser 100.0.4896.57 (on /e/ OS V1.1R dev) while Bromite at it’s f-droid repo offers version 103.0.5060.140
There’s huge difference at security patches between those.
But not only that, but Manoj has hinted on another thread, that /e/ team is discussing about changing base of default browser. I think that’s one reason people suggests new base.
About topic, I do have LibreWolf installed on Fedora and am open for suggestion to pick that as default, but don’t have strong opinions about this yet.
That’s the problem with forking apps, rather than using the upstream, and submitting patches for necessary changes. All of /e/'s forked apps lag behind the upstream apps in terms of new featrues and bug fixes.
I use Firefox on my Linux machines, Waterfox on my Macs, and Fennec F-Droid on my phones. Mozilla-based browsers are important to preserve variety in the browser / webview market, and ensure that Chromium-based browsers don’t gain a monopoly.
Unfortunately so, browser issue could be solved by using Bromite or whatever upstream browser, but unlikely to happen. I afraid what ever will be new base it will be behind upstream more than would be ideal.
One good example is pdf reader when using dark theme, shows also pdf at black background and on top of that with inverted colors. Issue has been fixed on pdf reader upstream months ago, but not on /e/ OS V1.1. This has effect on me to not yet report some other issues if basic ones can’t be handled. I also think it’s kind of not wished behavior to say things straight about these. But now this is getting offtopic on my side so I stop.
Firefox is also my default browser on linux, just have also Libre Wolf which I use more rarely.
On mobile used to use Fennec too, but now been using Mull in comparison after clean install of R based /e/ OS. Works same for me as Fennec did. I also use DuckgDuckGo browser on mobile for quickly reading things and settings so that cookies & data will be deleted and tabs closed on exit or 1 hour of inactivity. This partially to not have around 100 tabs open at the end. I focus usage of Mull more on sites like forums etc. where I’m logged in and prefer to leave tabs open.
