this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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If Mozilla really starts to go downhill, what are the chances we get a Linux kernel-style community fork that we can rely on instead? Curious why that hasn't happened before -- perhaps because Mozilla has always toed the line of not-quite-awful enough?
I just hope we can keep an alternative browser engine alive. Would be nice if some rich person would just set up a funding model that can pay a few devs to keep it going indefinitely without ads or spyware.
Librewolf is kind of like that. It pulls a lot from Tor
Because developing and maintaining an entire browser is a huge task. That's why we don't see much competition in browsers (I mean independent browsers). Also Mozilla isn't doing that bad, the browser is still really good. It's not the technical side that is a problem, its mostly marketing and the image of Mozilla.
It’s one thing to tweak a browser that comes in kit form from Mozilla’s code. It’s another thing altogether to continue maintaining it if Firefox ever dies. I don’t know if any of these clones have the kind of teams needed to do all the work Mozilla have done for them.
Funny enough
Though with a target of 2026...
Its also sadly maintained by transphobic weirdos
I was excited for it up until I saw what happened. I get the perspective the maintainer might be coming from, but they made a huge deal out of something that shouldn't have been.
Have you seen the amount of web standards? HTML5 by itself is huge
Don't you like the Ladybird Browser and the browser based in Servo projects as alternatives?
They're literally happening right now, not ready for prime time but with continued development and support they'll become usuable
Servo is ridiculously behind Firefox
By that simple logic any new browser will be ridiculously behind Firefox. Firefox's code base has been in development for nearly 30 years - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator
Yes, and I seriously don't expect Ladybird to get anywhere near being a complete browser like Firefox.
Even the idea of being a "web standards first" browser seems prone to failure, looking at how many websites these days "work best on Google Chrome".
Firefox follows web standards pretty closely, and then some websites don't work correctly because they don't support a new Chrome feature not yet in a proper standard. How will this be different for Ladybird.
I'll be positively surprised if Ladybird gets to a point where it works for all websites, just like I hope Firefox continues to do the same.
Check out AlternativeTo
I've been thinking of different browsers as well, but not sure which.
Def not Chrome or Safari though.
The biggest obstacle to people joining Linux is all the Linux stans who don't shut up about it