I actually never switched from Firefox since the early 2000s.
Chrome's UI never clicked with me and even at its release it was already public knowledge that every entry in the URL bar was sent to Google and I wasn't confortable with that.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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I don’t want to use a browser / browser engine from an advertising company as my daily driver. It’s in their best interest to track me as much as possible. Only Firefox and Safari satisfies my criteria, and one of them is the obviously better choice.
Even the mobile version (on android) supports addons. It's great having adblock on my phone.
A pretty limited subset right now, but it has the most important ones.
- It is more open source oriented,
- The Linux support is better than chromium alternatives
- especially for scrolling on touchpads
- the Wayland support is just plain better
- I like to use an independent product
- I don't want Google to have a web monopoly
- I like to use Ublock Origin to its fullest potential
Well, before WEI became a thing, my main reason was that I do a lot of browsing on a Raspberry Pi 4 and Chromium was basically unusable performance-wise in that environment.
- Light on system resources
- Run by a non-profit that values core values of the internet
- I have written my own add-ons that suit my workflow. Google asks for money to develop and submit an add-on (even if the code is open source and you are not making any money on it).
- Keyword searches/smart keywords
- Custom userContent.css and userChrome.css
- Fantastic screenshot tool
I'd been using Firefox on desktop for years and years (excluding the Macbook I had when I was working on my masters, where I used Safari).
The main reason I switched to Firefox on Android was Chrome insisted on displaying tabs in grid view, which drove me nuts. After switching, I started to learn more about privacy and concerns about corporations like Google and Microsoft exerting too much control over the internet and how we use it. Now I use Fennec on Android, and on desktop I use Firefox proper, Librewolf, and Tor, depending on what I'm doing and what level of functionality I need.
I'm also gradually migrating from Windows to Linux on my personal machines.
It gave me fine control of colour management, which was necessary in my field.