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.