If the only reason you hate Chrome is being locked into the UI, you should switch to Vivaldi. Sure, it's a Chrome clone, but the UI is super configurable (and as far as I'm aware, it doesn't do any opt-out user tracking).
Is Vivaldi free software (as in speech, not as in beer)? Last time I gave it a serious go, it didn't seem to be (and it was buggy anyway, but that was when it was first made publicly available, so I'm sure that's improved, right?).