I prefer Librewolf as it is easier and simpler to use

64 points

Remember, all these forks are possible because Firefox is open source

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26 points

Arkenfox is not a fork FYI

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3 points

TIL.

Thanks.

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3 points

How is it not a fork?

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24 points

It is a script that automatically changes the internal flags of Firefox (accessed manually through “about:config”) but isn’t a recompile. A fork that uses most of the Arkenfox config is Librewolf.

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8 points

It’s a template to help set all the security and privacy hardening features that Firefox already ships with but are disabled by default.

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1 point

Arkenfox is simply a set of configuration you can (and should) apply yourself onto a clean Firefox installation.

A fork means taking the source code and modifying it directly, not providing an alternative configuration file.

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1 point

Not entirely

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-11 points

Every fork creates fragmentation. Then you get forks of forks. Then you get forks of forks of forks. Eventually, you get a knife, and a spoon, and a spork, maybe even a fpoon. And every fork splits your developer pool in half! And once you’re down to one developer each, the developer splits in half! And then you have no project.

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13 points

And that’s why we should use Chrome?

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-7 points

No, but cargo-culting Mozilla isn’t ideal.

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5 points

that’s not how things work. open source projects don’t start with a set amount of developers and start splitting. even if they do, they don’t split in equal parts. if you have 500 developers working on a project, and 10 of them create 8 different forks, that doesn’t really change much.

some developers may move around, and more developers can join the pool all the time, on any fork. i don’t understand how any of this is a problem.

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3 points

Nice FUD.

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31 points

Librewolf my beloved. Unfortunately not on mobile iirc

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22 points

Use Mull

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That’s what I do. LibreWolf on desktop and Mull on Android, with FF Sync enabled between them. Works like a charm!

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3 points

What about iOS ?

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10 points

Safari is your only option as all iOS browsers are Safari. Also there are not as many apps as Apples ecosystem is locked and requires a lot of money to develop for. Add that to the fact that it is closed source and you have a anti freedom device. Apple also is bad about data collection despite there claims.

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1 point

no great options but Orion by kagi is much better than base safari since you can at least get extensions like ublock

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16 points

If you are willing to compromise I would recommend Betterfox as it breaks far fewer sites while still being better than the default Firefox profile.

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16 points

Its better to just go through the settings yourself then rely on arkenfox. This just adds a middleman into the process of keeping your settings updated.

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3 points

Have you seen the user.js, you have to change a lot of settings and you cannot keep up to date with them, secondly Arkenfox prefers you to go over their user.js by your self and their updater script has the -c flag to show you the difference between current user.js and new user.js

Overall it would be very difficult to manage something like this on our own as most things are not visible on the settings page of Firefox

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2 points

In addition, if you use user.js then you essentially cannot change those settings at runtime (via about:config or otherwise), because your user.js will override the settings on next startup. Maybe that’s desired for some, but good to keep in mind nonetheless.

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4 points

There’s the provided user-overrides.js that’s meant to do this

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1 point

I don’t think that could work. Not unless we are talking about different things, or unless you run their updater script everytime before starting Firefox.

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1 point

That is not how Arkenfox works. You apply the patch using the script, and then re-run this patch everytime Arkenfox receives an update. In between running, you can change settings in about:config and settings, but it will be overwritten if a different value is included in the user.js. A more permanent solution is using the user-overrides.js file required by the script before patching to create a persistent config.

Something like: user_prefs(“privacy.resistFingerprinting.letterboxing” , “false”);

More details about user overrides can be found here.

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1 point
*

I have independently tested you can change settings before. I will test again tomorrow if I remember to.

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1 point

What I’m trying to point out here, is that prefs declared in user.js (whether they are put there using scripting or otherwise) cannot be persistently modified at runtime from within Firefox. That may or may not be a huge problem, but something to be aware of.

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2 points

than*

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9 points
*

My approach to use internet nowadays (joke)

https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

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3 points

I unironically run everything in VMs

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2 points

me too

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