this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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If Firefox could allow their engine to be packaged like this I'd use it. The problem I see here is chromium. Everything is a trade off and we need more ways to build maintainable cross platform applications.
Slack, for example, is Electron and it runs great. One of the best apps I've used. And it works better than the browser version...
The hate on Lemmy of electron is a bit of an overreaction if you ask me. Yeah it uses more ram than is necessary but again everything is a trade off. Not everything can be a hard to maintain rust app. Let's try to embrace cross platform solutions, though yes fuck chrome/google, so sure criticize that part of it.
There is Tauri which packages it with WebKit and uses Rust as backend.
I think tauri uses the OS web view, so it depends
I just checked, and it seems that it indeed only uses WebKitGTK on Linux
[JavaFX has entered the chat.]
I don't know what javafx is, but java is hell. For me. I'm glad it works for others
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaFX
The issue is mainly developers using Electron when things like React Native and Flutter exist. I don't know a lot about Flutter, but React Native uses native UI widgets and feels a lot nicer than Electron.
Rust is infinitely easier to maintain than mountains of untyped js garbage libraries built upon left pad
🙄
Let me get this right... you're complaining about Chromium, but you use Slack? You do realize Chromium had better Linux support for things like HW-accelerated decoding than Firefox? Also, the Chromium sandbox is superior to Firefox.
I realize Firefox business practices aren't total garbage for humanity and that they are constantly working to improve it on like .1% budget of Google. And that they are the only real competition which keeps us in a situation where we actually have a choice in browsers. So yeah let's only care about the technical aspects, or something
That isn't true. You've got WebKit-based browsers, LadyBird/LibWeb/LibJs, Goanna, and others. Why choose Mozilla to lead the efforts, when another open source community/foundation may be better? You can also participate in the various new web specifications yourself too if you're not happy with the direction they're headed.
They said competition, not alternatives. As things are right now, and knowing people, not just trying to make a technical point, Firefox is the only competition.
What do you think alternatives are exactly? Firefox has what, 3‒5% usage across all platforms? What did Mozilla do to fix that other than exploring Pocket, a iOS only Password app, and now reselling a crippled VPN & email/phone relay? At some point, people will have to move on from anything Mozilla-owned. Want a better browser, then find a community you can donate to that is focusing on building a better browser. It's time to take off the rose-colored glasses.
Source? Experienced the exact opposite, especially on Wayland.
You can track the bug history here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1751363
You can see here Chromium had support for this for several years prior:
https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/log/PKGBUILD?h=chromium-vaapi
Android being based on Linux prob has something to do with Chromium's strong Linux support, but Mozilla has consistently prioritized Windows/Mac. Despite it still be challenging, building Chromium from source has always been a lot easier IMO than trying to create a custom build of Firefox.
Regardless, when it comes to privacy, Chromium itself is pretty stripped down and has policy-based integrations that put it on par with Firefox in terms of security. Even with Firefox, you'd have to modify quite a few policies to improve security. Tor/Mullvad Browser though do a better job in many ways and there is no equal to those privacy enhancements on Chromium that I know of, unless you're using something like GrapheneOS.
Point being, people like to complain about Chromium a lot & act like Apple fan bois for Firefox, when in reality privacy is nearly the same with both with some minor configurations.
What the heck are you talking about? Chromium is one of the hardest packages to build and it takes forever. Firefox has FAR fewer dependencies. Chromium's privacy enhancements are a joke.
You should go tell that to the maintainers of GrapheneOS, which is known as the most secure mobile OS... which uses a custom Chromium build, because of Chromium's superior sandboxing.
Chromium is not stripped down at all, just use googerteller and see. It contacts Google everywhere, on the password list, on the account list, in some settings pages, and just randomly sometimes.
It is very crazy. And also it is not fingerprint resistant at all.
I am using all flag settings, policies and GUI settings possibly existing and it still is like that. So no, it is not the same privacy-wise.
Oh really, what policies are you using? Cause my Firefox does all the same things you mention regarding calling Mozilla services for all sorts of things, including telemetry. Oh, and it isn't fingerprint resistant either... so please, share what you're doing.
For Firefox I am either using Librewolf or Arkenfox user.js
But as Librewolf has a good CI/CD system I think I will switch to that. Problem is they are not active at all, while the arkenfox guy is very active.
For Chromium I use the secureblue policies in /usr/etc/chromium/policies/managed