this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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Privacy
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Is KDE browser hanging around still? I know apple based their browser off of it.
We will get Orion-Browser soon which is based on webkit.
However, Servo ist currently what we need to lay our hopes on. Do everything you can to contribute there. From donations over reports to code. Even if it is just spreading the word. It is currently the single most important FLOSS project out there.
God I can't wait until Servo is viable
Well it was fun while it lasted I guess
Another common mozilla L
OK peeps, crowd sourcing time.
What other gecko (or non-webkit) browsers are out there?
Except that *Fox, *Fennec and *Wolf are downstream to Firefox, so if the main trunk goes shit, they will become outdated soon.
You kinda want it to be based on Firefox, as the only other option is chrome. The forks already strip out all the mozilla bullshit, it'll just be more work to strip out all the AI nonsense.
I'm mainly familiar with librewolf, it's not just stripped of nonsense but also hardened by default. Actually so much so that I stayed on Firefox as it was too much effort (so far) to "unharden" all the aspects I didn't want or need.
We'll cross that bridge when and if we come to it. Or rather we won't, but the devs behind these projects will.
FOSS to thrive needs people who can afford to spend time and energy on it. With the recent enshittification of workers collective power developers have less of both, and the trend is pessimistic.
The answer is, and always has been, unions and strikes.
Do your part.
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Aren’t these all soft forks of Firefox? What we need is a hard fork with the funding and team capable of sustaining it.
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If you want to sidestep firefox, all firefox descendants would eventually pose the same problem. So I think many options others provided are suboptimal in that regard.
I'm keeping my eyes on ladybird: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird https://ladybird.org/
But it still is in its early stages.
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Ummmmm, what is an AI browser? I mean, other than something I don't want.
Does it browse AI generated content? Does it generate AI web pages for me? Does it just set chatgpt/copilot/grok/gemini as the homepage/default search? Does it use AI to customize content to your language/reading level? Does it flag non-AI content as potentially malicious like an http site?
I'm so lost.
You made me read the Comet browser review, as I did not have the courage to install it myself.
Seems useful if done privately and under supervision:
- has an AI chat sidebar that can interact with what you're viewing
- can fill out forms (eg. you can dump unstructured text and have it fill, instead of copying field by field)
- it can browse the internet for you - you ask it a question and watch it browse pages to find one with an answer
- it can summarize the currently watched page. Which at first I thought was ridiculous but sometimes you need to get information from shitty bloated articles with 10 paragraphs of introduction
As long as it's optional and done right (eg. It can fill the form but it's me who submits it, and the model is running locally), sounds very useful. Also no reason why it can't be a Firefox addon instead of built in.
It AI's the AIable content that AI hasn't already AI'd.
No, Pleaso no, god no
so long as it's optional, local, and private.
so long as it’s optional, local, and private.
... yes but also
- open source,
- open model,
- all annotations done with proper respect to
- labor law (ideally verified by 3rd party)
- IP
- clear on ecological cost
- CO2 eq in model card (ideally verified by 3rd party)
- analogy non technical user can understand
... which makes for a rather limited list.
My own constraints https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/CollaborationRelyingOnAI recommendations welcomed, both on such rules but also on models that do fit, if any.
I'm sorry, but it's not going to be. Mozilla set the stage of this when they changed from FOSS to source available.
So I'm not ready to burn it all to the ground just yet. Mostly because chromium is still so much worse but also because, at least so far, I can disable that and I understand that "ai is money" for fundraising.
But... anyone have any thoughts on the various forks like waterfox and the other one? I don't mind grabbing the extensions I need on a new install but I DO need a way to be able to send tabs between devices. In theory that is something I can selfhost but I am not aware of a good solution.
That's actually a decent take on it.
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I use LibreWolf and Tor. I don't care what Mozilla does. The garbage will be removed from the forks.
How long can they do they for. Like it or not Mozilla does most of the coding for those browsers. 0
At what point does removing garbage become so complicated that they just stop merging anything in at all.
I heard that it's hard as hell, but now I can't remember if the dev who said it was from Firefox or Chrome.
I remember stories of Google intentionally making it hard for people to fork the project and maintain updates on it.
Never heard anything like that about Firefox, but doesn't mean they don't.
That will be up to the dev.
The article quotes him as saying:
AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off.
No big deal. If it turns out to be unethical it will be switched off in Librewolf.
Just in time since 2026 we get the alpha of the ladybird browser. This will be a big boost for the new engines currently in development and the popularity of Librewolf.
Ain’t ladybird the browser with project lead Andreas Kling? Well… I don’t know if I wanna be part of that.
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