Which obscure browser do you daily drive?
The Firefox ToC discussion pushed me down the browser engine rabbit hole (again). Have you had a chance to daily drive some really good but obscure web engine that is not Gecko (Firefox), WebKit (Apple) and Blink (Chromium)? How viable is it for a complete switch - this includes banking, chatting, logging into websites, etc.
Edit: Added link to the Firefox discussion to give better context to my question.
Cannot wait to try Ladybird in a somewhat stable form.
If you want obscure, I can recommend Lagrange. It can browse only gemini pages though, so you can't visit your favourite html websites.
Gemini is so weird and cool! My first day with it really made me want to start a little microblog on it or something
Iceraven, it let's me install desktop firefox extensions on android.
Lynx.
If I don't need image or video content, it's great.
Falkon for clearweb Librewolf for Tor Netsurf for i2p
Isn't accessing TOR network from any other browser than Tor Browser a serious anonymity risk?
Mayhaps. I shall investigate.
I'm going to stick with some form of Firefox fork, personally. Chromium forks are questionable, as if I recall right they include a binary blob provided by google, which could be hiding god knows what.
Firefox is fully open source, so any code supporting this potential data harvesting can't hide, and will be removed by most forks.
I used librewolf until there was some concern about them updating in a timely manner.
Now I used Firefox with Phoenix to maybe get the best of both worlds and IronFox on mobile.
with the recent news of a ToS from FF which forks would you recommend as a daily driver to replace FF?
Librewolf has been solid for me. I've seen others plug waterfox as well
Mullvad Browser is a good one; it's a partnership between Mullvad and the Tor Project.
I don't know if Librewolf counts as obscure enough but Mozilla's decisions on things as of late have been very questionable. It's probably not enough to just use Librewolf but it's a start...
Zen
I don't think there are any viable engines other than the three you mention. Other browsers than the three you mention are viable, I am typing this in LibreWolf, but they are all based on one of these three engines.
I recently tried Ladybird and it crashes e.g. when I try to access my Lemmy instance. Definitely not viable yet in 2025, but this doesn't mean it must remain so.
I mean it isn't even in beta yet.
I'm really hoping the new ladybird browser is delivered sooner than expected
I've been using IronFox on mobile since Mull went away, but I'm ready to hear why that's a bad option from anyone who knows better.
So far its worked very similarly to Mull, in that I've had no issues with it so far. I don't do banking or financial shit on my phone though, so I can't comment on how well it works for that functionality.
Librewolf on desktop and ironfox on mobile. The prior for over a year and the latter a few months. Occasionally need to use something else on desktop that needs webgl or similar. I don't want to change librewolf setting so I use something else. Usually a work related thing anyway
Reminds me to check out lynx again.
Please don't bank with a bleeding edge web engine that isn't forked from one that's been around for decades. It's really not secure to use things that people haven't had time to attack yet.
Fennec (Firefox based)
I’ve used librewolf and it seems good but I’m not a browser expert.
GNOME Web (Epiphany)
I kind of daily drive it as I made webapps with it for some services I host (which Firefox still doesn't offer natively)
The UI is quite nice but it isn't always the smoothest in terms of performances. Still, a very respectable effort
Epiphany is making headway. It’s gotten much better in the last year or so.
I can still crash it with too many tabs, JS sometimes makes it crash, and the extension experience is bad, but it’s gotten better.
It is covered by WebKit call out though.
Zen for desktop: https://zen-browser.app/
Ironfox for mobile: https://ironfoxoss.org/
Is Arc considered obscure?
I use floorp (firefox fork) because I like having the tabs at the bottom. Makes them closer to the taskbar and a bit easier to navigate.
seamonkey but it's pretty hard to use without much love nowadays with so many incompatible websites. It's a perfect mail client tho.
Just get Firefox ESR with arkenfox, that should be enough.
I decided on LibreWolf for work, Mullvad for sensitive search such as places near me, Firefox for random stuff and Tor for piracy sites. I'm currently looking to replace Firefox as well
Articfox librewolf
What's the Firefox ToC discussion you mention?
It is their data now boy
I'm trying out waterfox for mobile and librewolf for desktop. No complaints so far
Just don't try to schedule a video for publication in LibreWolf; its time zone obfuscation will totally have it publish at an unexpected time unless you figure that out first! I've been on Waterfox for both mobile and desktop and have enjoyed them equally.
I’ve been using Orion on iOS for a while. It’s not bad.
They are porting to Linux was just announced not long ago... however dont know how long that will take. I am just gonna keep using FF until I can try Orion.
I use 4 different browsers, on desktop and mobile. No standard browser.
I'm just curious, why?
Just using them for different tasks. I think its helping me not to be "addicted" to one system. Just like not putting all eggs in one basket 😃
Only IceCat and Librewolf
I use qutebrowser, it's a keyboard driven browser that uses QtWebEngine (based on Chromium).
Deskstop Mullvad and librewolf
Android fennec
Cromite. it is a very good and private, easy to use browser, but can be heavy on resources https://github.com/uazo/cromite. It uses Chromium engine. There are browsers like Ladybug and there is also an another project that use their own web engine, but anything that doesn't use the engines you mentoioned, is impossible to daily drive, most of them doesn't evem support javascript, or any script execution, which means you can only browse the most basic blogs, and forget about shopping, social media, and even forums
Internet Explorer 11
(just kidding)
On one of my OSes, I still use Brave.
Brave is a series scam company.
Yeah; unfortunately on that particular computer, it’s the only modern browser that still functions. I don’t trust it with anything.
If the question had been “what trustworthy browsers do you use?” I wouldn’t have mentioned it.
No real data to backup this claim other than complaints about their addons which can be disabled, and their CEO doesn't have the best morals and principles. Like we all believe the exact same things everyday all day.
Multiple highly reputable non profits and other sources show the browser itself performs as one of the best when it comes to privacy. Leave the negativity against Nestle.
If you need or want to use a Chromium browser, Brave seems to be the best, at least according to https://privacytests.org/.
holy shit fearless freep