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Comment by bootlooped | Hacker News Reader

This seems like one of the most difficult solutions to the problem of switching to a browser that's not Chrome.

Not only are there other browsers like Firefox and Safari, but there are other Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi and Opera.

I would have liked to read about some expected use-cases in the readme.

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Yeah, Chrome isn't so good that I find a need for the open source community to maintain a fork of it. ⌘Space Safari and I get on with my life.

It's been interesting to experience Internet Explorer, then Firefox, Chrome, and finally coming back to operating system default browsers with Edge and Safari and being perfectly content.

The leverage Microsoft and Apple are utilizing with their operating system ecosystems is fairly pleasant, creating better out of the box experiences. Installing more software just feels like such a nit-picky user experience that I don't want, especially with refreshing my systems now and again.

Why is this downvoted so heavily? It's a legitimate opinion. I don't agree with it and you may not either, but it highlights the fact that for at least a portion of the user base the default browser may be an acceptable option.

I would appreciate it more if people mentioned why my comment doesn't contribute to the discussion, but I think it's more realistic to say that I've been downvoted simply because someone didn't like what I had to say.

I didn't downvote you, but perhaps people are thinking that attitudes like the one presented in your original comment are what lead to IE6 and the general state of the internet in the late 90s / early 2000s?

Could be; I can understand that.

why not Safari? Or is the issue non-MacOS OSs

That's a pretty significant issue. "Oh, it's a great browser! No, it doesn't work on 95% of computers."

but it only needs to work on _your_ computer (or whoever you're making the recommendation to).

The problem for me is that no one I know has a mac (I think their market share is like 10 percent). It's too expensive for many of the people I know and the rest play video games so they can't use a mac.

And in this forum, I would guess the OS being proprietary is a deal braker for many, including me.

That is a pure assumption. I don't use Linux for desktop.

Well that settles it, the "many" have spoken.

My computer isn't a mac.

I use Epiphany (aka GNOME Web) and it's like Safari: a minimal WebKit-based browser with no Google integration, but it's cross-platform, open source, and features Firefox sync integration for history/bookmarks/passwords/etc. I can't recommend it enough.

And it does have a built-in ad blocker.

I am never going to use any GNOME product if intend to use it for more than a week. Too many breaking changes, too many feature changes, too often.

I might recommend using an operating system that matches your values. Maybe something like Debian? I have my own criticisms of the GNOME project, but I really enjoy their release cycle.

Safari isn't open source, only the rendering engine is. Doesn't matter to most, but does matter a great deal to some.

Safari is worlds less hardened than Chrome from a security standpoint.

Evidence?

https://securityzap.com/pwn2own-2017-chrome-remains-winner-b...

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-1224...

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-49/p...

I am using 2017 because 2018 is not over yet

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