How my Firefox became a LibreWolf
New blog-post: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1065/how-my-firefox-became-a-librewolf
#firefox #librewolf #tos #webcomic
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org Thank you! Putting the Firefox dilemma in pictures makes it less academic and more approachable issue. I hope many people realize how empowering it is to use free software that can be replaced easily.
It is not always so easy:
Holy crap thank you for sharing that. Spectacular. Also, the last minute of that had the kind of inspirational vibes that I last got in the 90s reading things on cult of the dead cow.
cDc is still at it!
@mray@social.tchncs.de Thanks! Oh yes it’s not easy to find the time and do a change and walk the path of frustration of changing habit and studying settings.
Thanks for the video, I’m already subscribed to this animator artist, James Lee.
He recently announced moving to GNU/Linux. It’s not the best period to do this for artists, with Wayland, all container war etc…I don’t remember I saw an update of them about how they succeed to make it. Certainly hard time ^ ^ I hope he found my blog post about it.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org
For me, it is, honestly, sad. I’ve been using Firefox since… it was Firebird. Twenty+ years.Great art, as always!
From the blog post…
You won’t be pampered with a one-click installation for all. Instead, you’ll need to take the time to review the documentation and set up the security and privacy features that you’re willing to trade off for comfort and convenience.
Yeah, ouch, thats not going to sell with the Plebs, and limit buy-in from them, and market share.
They really should try to fix that, and not just hand wave it away as a problem.
Market share is the lifeblood of the browser wars.
Pleb here
You are correct
Everything is on by default. So is actually quite easy.
It’s very nice because you don’t really have to worry about which add-ons you need.
It’s about the most simple browser I’ve ever used.
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world “[…] not going to sell with the Plebs”
😆 I don’t think LibreWolf has view for market share and plebs. As far as I know it’s a community initiative, not a company. Yes, it require time to install and setup, and understand the implication of what security and privacy setting one decide to lower. But I’m happy I took this time, I feel I understand even more how the web of 2025 is broken and how web browser interacts with it to try to ease the experience.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world I mean I don’t hate for-profit companies that much unless they have done questionable/nefarious things repeatedly; but I really don’t like for-profit companies hiding behind non-profits/benefit corporations/co-ops especially to do questionable things.
😆 I don’t think LibreWolf has view for market share and plebs.
I’ve never met a software developer yet who wouldn’t want their program to be popular and widely used.
Also, when it comes to browsers, the name of the game is to get support from the big websites, which is done by having major/popular usage of their browser.
For android, there’s also fennec on fdroid
i have ironfox for android.
Gorgeous artwork friend!
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org Excellent art, as always.
I switched this week too. It was very simple on Linux Mint, but I worry about the future of the Firefox code base.
@darkbeth @davidrevoy hopefully we have to worry about that only a few years until independent engines become usable. #Verso and #Ladybird are candidates if #mozilla codebase rots. GNOME Web / #epiphany is another browser that has an engine not depending on Google (Apple webkit engine though, but at it it will be a real competition and even though they are bad to their own usets, they are not as powerful on the web like Google).
@praveen @darkbeth Thank you Elizabeth.
LibreWolf is just a layer of community reviewing in case Mozilla pushes something bad to their audience. My metaphor about the layer of ash on top of a fox works for this reason.
I also worry for the future of Firefox. I hope their executives will see larger community forming around forks, and it will make them find back their focus to privacy, and security. I’ll be back to Firefox if they do that.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org @praveen @darkbeth@mastodon.coffee I mean this is one of the benefits of open source and free/libre software, is that it help users to have alternative in case the original went bad and have a voice to push back harmful changes.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org
I’m hooked on the Wolf, been using it for over a year.Once in a while I use furryfox for some fussy-ass site that I have to do one thing on once in a blueish moon.
@matera@mastodon.sdf.org Haha, I typed in a search engine for “furryfox” before realizing it was your way of naming Firefox. 😆
Catchy name.
Yes, I’ll keep my Firefox too in background. Right now mainly to compare when I have an issue with LibreWolf, and also to test my blog and peppercarrot website. 😉@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org LOL Yeah, I get too cute sometimes.
It’s good to have a few different browsers for website testing. I have an assortment of different browser profiles too. I use dedicated profiles mostly to keep Gahoogle and Zuckland noses out of my business.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org
For those coming here in search of Firefox alternatives, I just want to point out https://zen-browser.app/ that is also a fork of Firefox though perhaps a more customised fork… Check it out if you are in the mood for trying a different layout from the default Firefox experience…i also have floorp./
Hows your experience so far?
@technikhil @davidrevoy I just gave #Librewolf and #Zenbrowser a try. Both seem to work perfectly fine, and reimporting my date from #Firefox was easy (which seems logical since they’re both based on Firefox).
I’m not switching now though. I took a minute to check my Firefox settings and opt out from everything that seemed not to be data privacy friendly.I’m wondering if those forks are actually viable if Firefox dies one day… So for now I’d rather not cut the branch I’ve been sitting on for 2 decades, wait and see.
I like the look of Zen browser though, looks like arc!
@louischance @davidrevoy Yep, perfectly rational… I too have not (yet) given up on Firefox, I have just started compartmentalizing what I use it for. The Firefox sync allows me to still keep parity between the 2 browsers, though given the direction Mozilla is going I am probably going to delete that account quite soon.
The similarity with Arc is what drew me to the Zen browser initially. I also like the amount of space it provides for the content in it’s “compact mode” layout.@technikhil @louischance Yes, Zen Browser was on my list when I tested, beautiful interface and screenshot on their website.
> I’m wondering if those forks are actually viable if Firefox dies one day…
Louis: yes, this THE central real question about all these forks. I personally don’t think any forks around could survive that.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org @technikhil@toot.cafe @louischance@piaille.fr
forks can survive if the maintainer team is ‘for the people’. Look at “Jellyfin”, a fork of " emby". Still surviving.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org
Excellent, as usual.@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org
@protonprivacy@mastodon.social also flounced off Mastodon after they received well deserved criticism.
Is @mozillaofficial@mastodon.social doing the same? 🫤🤷♂️
The ceo gravy train keeps going.
@simonzerafa@infosec.exchange @protonprivacy@mastodon.social @mozillaofficial@mastodon.social I’m not sure how official the account you linked here is, the branding feels off and it’s not really noted in the bio this is their official new account.
Before December, Mozilla had their instance, and decided to remove it ( src. https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/17/mozilla-exits-the-fediverse-and-will-shutter-its-mastodon-server-in-december/ )
Proton also really manage their PR like rotten potatoes imo ( https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/ )
… both company also abuse marketing bs wording and praise AI. Not surprising they are criticized here.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org @simonzerafa@infosec.exchange @protonprivacy@mastodon.social @mozillaofficial@mastodon.social I mean something as simple like text-to-speech or OCR or machine translation models (like Google Translate/DeepL) can be considered “AI” technically. I’m a student and many courses involving creating our own models from scratch and many of my projects involving use models like tesseract-ocr, turtle-tts, YOLO, LLaMA,… for some tasks and this is painful for me as many outputs don’t even make sense and I had to tweak a lot.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org yippiee
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org Thanks for this post and the fun artwork, you convinced me to finally make the jump!
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org Ce projet LibreWolf semble sympathique mais pas compatible avec firefox syncs, ce qui est sans doute logique, mais sans alternative.
Je teste également Floorp…J’ai utilisé LibreWolf et il a bien fonctionné avec Firefox sync. Si je me souvenir bien, il faut activer (permettre) Firefox sync dans les options. Maintenant, j’utilise Floorp. Il, également, bien fonctionne avec Firefox sync.
(Désolé pour mon mauvais français.)
I have used LibreWolf and it works well with Firefox sync. If I am remembering correctly, it must be enabled in the options. Right now, I use Floorp. It also works well with Firefox sync.
(Sorry for my poor French.)
@yalle tu peux facilement activer firefox sync dans la configuration de librewolf. 100% compatible.
@zulo @yalle @ilumium Yalle: https://librewolf.net/docs/settings/#enable-firefox-sync pour l’avoir en permanent (ou dans about:config , identity.fxaccounts.enabled to true )
Zulo: La partie “vulnerabilities” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfox#Vulnerabilities ) m’a refroidi lors de mes recherches, et j’ai trouver pas ouf leur business modèle basé sur les revenues de la vente de data pour les recherches.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org Arf, good catch.
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org I switched to LibreWolf two month ago and it works nicely.
LibreWolf needs to adopt a Foxkeh like mascot since Mozilla refuses to do it even though it would make them so much bank and popularity. <3
