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Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

I would be happier if Brave made an "Enterprise" version of their browser without the Tor or crypto stuff. My company recently banned the use of Brave because it is a Tor client. I had been using Brave as a Chrome-adjacent browser for testing and web dev but I've had to go back to the Google-monitored version of Chrome.

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Vivaldi[1] is another Chromium family browser that people seem to like (I use Brave w/o their crypto features for Google-y things like Gmail and Maps that never seem to work quite right in Firefox for me).

1: https://vivaldi.com/features/

You haven't been flooded with comment advising to use firefox instead yet ? Must be a slow day on HN.

But, joke aside, firefox is great and we do need people to use more to preserve rendering engine diversity.

I wish there were more Firefox forks. I would love to have some of the features of Vivaldi, but running with Firefox's underlying engine. But that just isn't a thing, as far as I'm aware.

Why a fork though ? about:config + addons probably allows you to make it the browser you want already.

I'm meaning in terms of appearance, and especially customizing shortcuts. I already use Firefox customized mostly to my liking, but I don't like having the same generic (very tall) top bar that everyone gets. Tab management leaves some to be desired compared to Vivaldi. Yes, there are extensions for that, but they don't function as sleek.

You could consider using the admin policy for disabling the Tor functionality: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/454

Not my choice to make anymore: literally cannot run Brave anymore -- it's blocked at the binary executable level (via CarbonBlack).

run the usb pendrive version perhaps?

Chromium isn’t an option?

Okay... I feel like an idiot: I didn't realize there was a Chromium browser -- I thought there were just Chromium-based browsers (like SRWare Iron which I haven't touched in over ten years). Will check this out but to get it close to what Brave does for my useage I will need to add adblocking and a few other privacy things first (hopefully that's all supported and works).

Here: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/

Yeah if you got a million CPUs to compile the darn thing!

Why? They already provide compiled binaries: https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-bina...

Portapps build: https://portapps.io/app/ungoogled-chromium-portable/

If you're not satisfied with them, there are even more options here: https://chromium.woolyss.com/

If they blocked a browser because it has tor built in, I assume they would also block those binaries:

"IMPORTANT: These binaries are provided by anyone who are willing to build and submit them. Because these binaries are not necessarily reproducible, authenticity cannot be guaranteed. For your consideration, each download page lists the GitHub user that submitted those binaries."

Brave was most likely blocked to prevent people from using TOR to bypass their office firewall filters (e.g. on NSFW sites, etc). I'm doubtful they will be scrutinizing every single binary that happens to be on OP's workstation, though I can't say for sure what kind of office culture they have, of course.

You're intentionally led to this conclusion.

I'd recommend Vivaldi, they have a similar privacy and user control ethos. More toggles, a smidge less tinfoil, 0% evil.

Why not use Edge?

The point of FF or Brave is to not have Google collecting telemetry info about my browser usage. I am even less inclined to let Microsoft get such info and their info gathering in Edge is supposed to be worse (probably because they don't have a clue what they need so they are over-collecting in the hopes they can query out what for whatever their needs are).

I haven't checked this myself, but Edge might not be that private:

- https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-professor-says-edge-is-the-w...

- https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf

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