I remember these old-days of Linux with other browsers pre-installed. Like Konqueror (I see it's still in development), or others even more niche ones. Cannot even remember their names.
- The only non-Chrome browser available across 3 operating systems I use.
- The only mobile browser that supports extensions.
These two alone make it an objectively a better solution for me than Chrome or Safari, regardless of how I feel about any of them. If I was on iOS and didn't run Linux on my personal computer, then Safari might've been a worthy alternative. Since I'm not, Firefox is really the only one that satisfies both of those criteria, no "ideological" reasons necessary.
It's not a great state of affairs. This is speaking as someone who's used Firefox as primary browser for many, many years.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?promoted=re...
Open a website in Firefox, click on three dots, click on "install", and you have an ad-free version of the app you'd otherwise find in the Play Store.
Just that one extension alone makes Firefox objectively better than Chrome or any of its Android forks. It is a slam dunk. Having all extensions available is a nice cherry on top, but no other desktop extension is as important as uBO.
I don't use any Google products/services except when I need to at work. Firefox is perfectly fine for now; I agree that Mozilla's future is concerning but there is absolutely no downside to sticking with Firefox for now.
It's too bad that Mozilla doesn't push for more adoption; the vast majority of users would never know the difference between Firefox and Chrome once they're browsing. It's not like it's an inferior product.
There are a few government website where I live that block Firefox, although those are just checking the user-agent so easy to work around.
And yes I complain all the time about it.
The underlying WebKit engine is the interesting part and is portable, with multiple other browsers using it.
I tend to use Firefox elsewhere too, primarily because of my disdain/distrust for/of Google and Microsoft. I know the WebKit/Konqueror relationship soured after a few years of Apple giving them massive, untenable patch sets, but haven’t kept up with their development. In the early 2000s it was really impressive what they were doing compared to the Mozilla bohemoth of the day.
I also find it sad that Opera and other implementations are out of the running. I’m sure one day some Blink challenger will arrive, just like some Gecko challenger arrived, just like some IE challenger arrived, but table stakes are so much higher than they were 15 years ago.
Safari in WSL
Edge Linux :P
I just run Degoogled Chromium forks (Cromite/Thorium) these days. Maybe its still Chrome underneath, but if I'm blocking Google Ads and their native browser tracking, at least its still a middle finger to Google's business model.
How? There is no Safari for Linux and never has been, AFAIK.
There was Safari for Windows until 5.x and it was good -- I liked it and used a Windows XP VM just to run it on Linux. Dead and gone now.
You can run Epiphany on WSL and get a Webkit browser that way, but that is not at all what you said.