|
There are isolated problems with current patches, but they are well-known and documented on this site. |
This colossal *faux pas* by Firefox with their add-ons being disabled going on 3 days now has me ready to dump them for good. Problem is I do not want to use Chrome, IE or Edge. And not a big fan of Opera now that it is Chinese-owned. Any recommendations for a solid browser with good security? I would like to be able to use NoScript or uBlock Origin/uBlock Matrix to block ads and scripts if possible. Thanks.
Edit: Please refer to lounge rules pertaining to acceptable language
I always worry that a “fork” of a major browser will never have the resources to keep security bugs patched in a fast, efficient manner.
So I throw in the towel on privacy issues, in favor of the presumed security of the major flagships… 🙂
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
The fork devs don’t have to fix security issues themselves. The fixes Mozilla provides are open-source too, so all they need to do is apply them. Backporting the security fixes is a lot less work than having to fix it all from scratch! Linux distros regularly maintain older versions of various programs than whatever the current version is, keeping them updated with backported fixes. One example would be the Linux kernel version 4.15, which is already EOL as far as the main kernel team is concerned. Ubuntu will still be maintaining it until 2023, though.
It is still a concern that a small project might simply disappear one day if the developer decides to quit (though it can be picked up by someone else, since it’s open source, though they may end up changing the name). This can also happen to larger projects that fall into disarray when the leader quits, and sometimes they just wither away as everyone seems to lose interest at once and it stops getting updates. Waterfox is still being maintained now, though, as is Pale Moon, so I will cross that bridge if and when I come to it.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11 for maintenance)
I have been using Waterfox as my primary browser ever since Firefox 52 ESR went EOL. I was using it as a secondary browser prior to that. I have had zero problems with the browser. I forget I’m not using Firefox until I see the logo.
If one runs into an issue with a site giving you grief about using an out of date browser, just change the user agent.
I am using the user agent verbatim from Firefox. Again, zero problems on the web.
Much agreed. I won’t use Chrome or Firefox proper to get into a site on principle alone… I’ll willingly spend a lot more time trying to get what I want to work than to do what I’m supposed to do. As I’ve said before, if you ask me to do something I would rather not do, I may say yes or I may say no. If you try to force me to do something I would rather not do, you’ve just guaranteed I will do all in my power to avoid doing whatever it is you’re trying to make me do.
Useragent sniffing is generally a bad practice (though there are some rare exceptions), and whitelisting a few browsers while denying access to the rest, even though they may well be operating on an up-to-date engine, is a bad practice within the bad practice of sniffing. For the most part, it’s better to detect features and to serve up the site accordingly, rather than having specific versions for specific browsers, which necessarily limits the browsers that are allowed to a handful. If there’s a particularly dangerous bug that affects specific versions of a browser, it may be advisable to blacklist the afflicted browser versions, but otherwise, the web devs/banks should lay off the useragent sniffing and treat their users/customers like adults.
Chase bank was one of the worst offenders. I’m not sure if they are or not anymore, but at one point, they even went as far as to specify (on the “access denied” landing page) which operating systems one was allowed to use to access their site– and Linux was not among them. Do they think that Linux users are more likely to be affected by malware than Windows or MacOS? I believe I’d require a citation on that if the answer was “yes!”
I don’t know if Chase ever denied access to somone using an otherwise supported browser just for not having “Windows” or “Mac” in their useragent string, but I do know they denied Waterfox access once it got its own useragent (which was how I got to see the “access denied” landing page in the first place). When Waterfox used the Firefox useragent by default, it worked just fine, as you’d expect, given that it is functionally Firefox from the end the bank sees.
Waterfox users can still do that now, of course. It’s a simple matter to reset the useragent string to a Firefox string, though the Waterfox dev has been trying to find a string that will allow Waterfox to be counted while still working with sites that are restrictive in that way. It can be done with the about:config prefs (in general or for specific sites), but you can also use an addon to make it easier. You can “be” anything you want, including an iPhone or the Google spider.
I’ve used “iPhone” before (years ago) to get the HTML5 versions of videos when sites insisted that I had to install Flash. Refusing to serve up the HTML5 version that they do have, and that works fine for me, because Flash exists for my platform, is just ridiculous. Humorously, such sites often used a canned message telling me that my technology may be out of date when it failed to start the Flash applet. Are they sure it’s my tech that is out of date?
Bank of America is better… it warns that a browser is not supported, but it doesn’t block access. Seems like someone there understands what “support” actually means, and that it’s not a synonym for “allow.”
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11 for maintenance)
I’ve been using Pale Moon for around 10 years now, stable (40+ days uptime’s not impossible) and lightweight (eg. currently 60+ tabs open at less than 1GB on x86), fast enough for my needs.
Secondary is Basilisk from the same stable.
Hmm, that’s an amazingly low memory usage by what I’m used to.
I use Waterfox, but with my particular set of addons, it uses a lot of RAM (and it is quite possible that my addons are responsible for some of that). On my desktop PC and my Dell G3, I have 16GB installed, so it’s not a problem, but my Swift only has 4GB (soldered), and the video RAM takes some of that. I learned that they do have an 8GB model, but they don’t offer it in the US. (Come on, Acer! I even put that in a suggestion to their forum for that purpose. I don’t want another model… all of the higher-line models have more powerful CPUs that are not passively cooled, a feature of the Swift 1 I really like.)
I’m trying Pale Moon out on the Swift now to see if it works better with its limited RAM. I first used PM many years ago, so I am well aware of it, but thanks for the reminder about RAM usage. I prefer Waterfox for its e10s (multiprocess) feature, which makes scrolling just so beautifully smooth, but a minor amount of jank (which I previously saw with PM) is more than okay if it is more thrifty on RAM and does not hit the CPU as hard. My desktop (i5-2500k at 4.5 GHz) and my G3 (i7-8750H) have power and RAM to spare, but not the Swift.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11 for maintenance)
I’ve been very comfortable using Pale Moon, so it has become my main browser. Can configure it nicely to my tastes. The number of add-ons has grown, and I’m not left feeling like I’m missing anything. Never had any problems after updating. I like being able to make StartPage my default search… too many browsers are limiting the choices in search engines.
I do keep multiple browsers available, because it is sometimes useful to check if it is a browser problem or if something else it going on, or to see how different sites display in different browsers. Sometimes, when helping friends or family it is useful to be able to switch to the same browser they are using, if they are trying to problem solve.
Brave is experimenting with anonymizing users, to advertisers, but providing advertising… so you can ‘pay’ for using it by being served ads, without having to worry about privacy and being tracked. That is an interesting idea for supporting the browser, and more respectful than Chrome and Edge vacuuming of data.
Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter
Chromium based browsers for the most part. You can add other search engines, but not to use them in the address bar. For that you are limited to the ones provided. A few examples:
Google Chrome- Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Duck Duck Go
Comodo Dragon- Yahoo, Google, Bing, AOL, and Ask
Epic Privacy Browser- Epic Search engine
I don’t know anything about Edge or Safari. Firefox and its various forks seem to allow greater choice of a default browser.
Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter
Thank you, @b. This is something that has caused me some frustration. I reviewed the instructions, and apparently I’d forgotten to do step # 4 (for Chrome), which is replace the search term with ‘%s’, and I would only be able to edit or delete additional engines. Replacing allowed me to set it as a default.
One of the things I struggle with (being non-techy) is knowing whether something is working the way it should… and I made the assumption that the browsers were deliberately limiting browser choice when I thought I was actually following directions and not getting to set a default… going through, anew, step by step, clarified my error.
It is one of those things that I’m definitely happier to have cleared up. I’d been using StartPage on those browsers, having set it up to show when a new tab is opened… but having it also in the address bar is comforting.
Thank you!
Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter
Vivaldi is nice but might not be for everyone.
I do use it myself but the user interface takes some getting used to, so might not be a drop-in replacement.
Also on some platforms it’s notably more resource-hungry than some other Chromium-based browsers.
Donations from Plus members keep this site going. You can identify the people who support AskWoody by the Plus badge on their avatars.
AskWoody Plus members not only get access to all of the contents of this site -- including Susan Bradley's frequently updated Patch Watch listing -- they also receive weekly AskWoody Plus Newsletters (formerly Windows Secrets Newsletter) and AskWoody Plus Alerts, emails when there are important breaking developments.
