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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Deciding for ourselves: 98% of people want a browser choice screen, Mozilla study finds (blog.mozilla.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/476611

What if we got to easily choose our web browser, and didn’t have to rely on complex operating system settings to change the pre-installed default?

Do you keep the default browser on your Linux distro, or do you change it? If yes, why?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The dominance of Internet Explorer had longstanding negative effect on the web. Even today there're industrial and internal banking applications that only run on IE, and nothing else. With Chromium being increasingly the only supported browser we soon won't have a choice which browser to use for certain websites anymore (e.g. Firefox).

IE's decline came to be because it was slow and didn't progress for many years, unlike Firefox at the time. With Google being interested in the continued development of the web this won't happen. Google pushes detrimental standards like "Web Environment Integrity API" today, they tried it with FLoC a while back. If Google succeeds in making the web more closed, another browser won't have a chance to catch up.

At this point we have only 3 mostly feature complete browser engines (Chromium's, Safari's and Firefox's). With Firefox declining it might soon only be 2 that work on all websites. It isn't good for an open standar if there're only few implementations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

With Chromium being increasingly the only supported browser we soon won't have a choice which browser to use for certain websites anymore (e.g. Firefox).

That’s where I disagree. I think that if we do get an internet where Chrome is the only option and it sucks, we’ll get another browser option. Firefox for example went through a few years of being a bad browser but it has gotten past those hurdles. People are lazy and change is slow, but once it starts I think it is unstoppable.