cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/20260243
Google Chrome warns uBlock Origin may soon be disabled
Google Chrome is now encouraging uBlock Origin users who have updated to the latest version to switch to other ad blockers before Manifest v2 extensions are disabled.
It’s a good opportunity for any Chrome users in the crowd to switch to Librewolf. It may be a small project but it’s been around for a while and they haven’t made any mistakes that I’ve heard about. Google has its various off-brand browsers using the engine, why shouldn’t Mozilla get some? It comes with uBlock Origin preinstalled, and has none of the telemetry and ads of Firefox.
Have they implemented the update option yet, or does it still rely on unofficial methods for updating?
They provide official deb and rpm builds for linux, which get updated in the usual ways. I don’t know about windows but the website says:
The LibreWolf WinUpdater works great. You get a small pop-up when there’s an update and it updates super quickly (in my experience in like 15 seconds).
Librewolf is also available as a Flatpak
For mobile, there is Fennec, which is just Firefox with those elements removed.
I also recommend iceraven (Note link uses github) which adds pc extensions to mobile and removes telemetry and more
I don’t care about telemetry that reports what features I use and sends crashes, only actual marketing telemetry. Is Fennec a good choice for me? Stuff like Pocket is annoying but you can sort.of disable it in
about:config. Basically, I hate stuff like Pocket but don’t mind stuff like syncing or non-ad based telemetry.I used Fennec for the last year and it is great, but I ultimately switched to Mull because it is exactly the same just with the additional privacy hardening. If You’re considering Fennec, I’d instead recommend just using Mull.
I just said I don’t care about privacy hardening though lol
Yeah IMO there is nothing in vanilla Firefox to complain about that you can’t disable easily from the settings. You only need librewolf or the arkenfox user.js if you’re a privacy nut.
“Privacy nut” might be a little harsh, as it’s a valid concern.
I don’t mean it as a derogative, but there’s a certain point at which you have to either go whole hog on minimizing your digital footprint, or accept that some companies are gonna know more about you than you would maybe prefer. I think the Firefox defaults are much less onerous than, say, signing up for a loyalty program with any major retailer, and you can disable the few things that do any tracking.
Agreed, Firefox is better than most. I’m using it myself on both mobile, Windows and Debian.
One thing to note about using forks is that they have no chance of being on corporate software whitelists, while firefox does. For that reason, adding to firefox numbers is potentially important. I’ve already seen companies wanting to only allow chrome/edge/safari (even while they officially support firefox …)
Honestly Firefox is generally easy to maintain. Just update it once in a while and maintain some basic group policies