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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

Mmmm.. interesting stuff. I've only just recently switched back to using Firefox as my primary browser after going with Chrome for most of the past 2-3 years. FF performance finally seems to be mostly on par with Chrome, and the extensions situation is as good or better. After going back to FF about 2 months ago, I can honestly say that I see no real reason to prefer Chrome at this point.

I'm speaking as an individual / developer user though. For enterprise use, I haven't stayed up to date on what their response was to the brouhaha over the rapid release cycle stuff. Perhaps that is still a concern for organizational use.

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I use Chrome on Windows because I like the behavior and don't need a lot of supported extensions when I'm using Windows. What I really need is lightness of weight, sandboxing, and standards support. When I'm using Linux, however, I can't use Chrome. I've previously documented my tribulations with Chrome on Linux here [1], and there was some good feedback both in my favor and to the contrary of my opinions.

It's not just that Chrome on Linux doesn't behave how I want it to, it's that the behavior of Chrome on Linux doesn't conform with the principles of Linux as I understand them. Even as the devs swear up and down that Chrome on Linux behaves like a true Linux browser, it's really just paying lip service, making a superficial attempt at pretending it's down with the Penguin while really behaving more like Apple. It acts like standard Linux, but it doesn't let you alter a single damn setting that actually matters.

Plus with Firefox on Linux, the normal painless Ubuntu updates take care of the browser updates automatically. So there's one point of Firefox consternation out of the way.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4172129

This matches my own experience. I started using Chrome from version 1. A few months ago, I just decided to check how Firefox was doing and was surprised to see that it is as fast as (or faster) than Chrome. More importantly, it handles multiple tabs much better than Chrome. So, I think the pendulum is swinging to Firefox' side again, it just needs to get their users familiarized with the new release cycle.

I recently did the opposite, back to Chrome. FF tends to lock up for a few seconds on me a lot, even on silly little things like switching tabs.

you should try both without any addons. I find firefox a lot faster in that state. some addons can make it a lot slower unfortunately.

Hmm... It's a valid point, but my only addon is Adblock.

> FF performance finally seems to be mostly on par with Chrome

It's always been faster for me, especially with a nontrivial number of tabs and on start-up.

> the extensions situation is as good or better.

Much better, especially for the things I care about, such as themes. I can't find out how to theme Chrome; if you don't like the default, you're apparently still stuck with it.

More to the point, Firefox respects me. I can turn off the speed dial feature in Firefox. I can't in Chrome. I can theme Firefox to a level unheard-of in Chrome. Firefox extensions seem to be able to dig deeper into Firefox than Chrome extensions can into Chrome.

It's about respect: Firefox allows me to shape it the way I want to, whereas Chrome constantly demands to shape me.

> I can't find out how to theme Chrome

A variety of themes are available in the web store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/themes

> I can't find out how to theme chrome

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ThemeCreationGuide

(searching for "create chrome theme" gives many more tutorials, online tools, whatnots)

Can I move the tabs to below the address bar? Can I give Chrome a permanent status bar?

> It's about respect

You are the only one choosing to frame software design decisions as lack of respect for the user.

> You are the only one choosing to frame software design decisions as lack of respect for the user.

The existence of the Free Software Foundation means this is factually incorrect.

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