My main browser is Librewolf but I keep a chromium browser just in case. Previously used brave but their flatpak is shit. Ungoogled chromium seems ok but it looks like they don’t change much from upstream chromium. Any good chromium browsers which harden their browsers like librewolf does for more privacy?
I would stick to librewolf. Supporting Chromium is not good for freedom.
Anyway, ungoogled chromium is probably the best answer. There also is Cromite which supports android and windows
looks like Cromite bad beacuse it has AdBlock plus instead of uBlock origin and uses google as a default search engine and includes the chrome web store
I’ve been using Thorium recently with no issues. Before I was using Vivaldi.
Edit, Firefox is my main browser. Thorium is used as an alt for the 2 websites that don’t work in Firefox.
Edit 2; seems the developer of Thorium has made some err questionable choices. Not with the browser itself, but a mild furry nsfw easter egg, and a link to some site talking about their beliefs against a common medical procedure performed on baby boys. I have not seen either for myself as they have both been removed as the browser gained a sudden spike in popularity.
I’m currently using thorium as an appimage and it is god enough. But to be honest if you want privacy use Firefox or a fork of it.
- not sandboxed
- no repo, no updates, always the risk of malware
- not hardened
- outdated version
The point of useing it is that privacy invasive sites like twitch or skribbl.io would still work. Twitch technicality works fine on stock Firefox unless you don’t save your history, how dare you.
Yea I don’t know a better one yet
They will work on ungoogled chromium too though, I guess.
In theory there is even the ability to store a chrome:flags override and use it like a user.js. So you could use upstream chromium and not rely on outdated stuff.
I will try it out after work. Do you know a way to provent automatic openings instead of librewolf? I’m currently using Hyprland and was using the appimage so it doesn’t have any conflicts.
Automatic openings? Like default Webbrowser? Also dont use Appimages, just dont.
Depending on the Distro I recommend using Firefox or Brave, add their signed repo and call it a day.
Exactly default browser. Yes I tryed native and flatpak packages but it would constantly open all other browser instead of librewolf. Even if I defined a other one in the mineapps file
No default browser works normally but no idea how to set that in Hyprland.
I highly advise against Appimages. Flatpak is only useful if you dont trust the app which is a valid opinion, but poorly then the browser cant sandbox websites on its own. So native packages are the best option for security it you trust the browser.
Perfect would be to have the browser isolated and also using its sandbox to isolate websites from each other. I dont know if this works though, on Android it does (not with Firefox poorly as they didnt implement it)
I use hardened Chrome with a lot of flags/features disabled and some privacy extensions. It’s good enough for me.
hardened chrome
lmao.
What’s so funny?
Chrome or Chromium? Because that “hardening” is only the switches they allow you to use, so if its full of proprietary tracking software it is not hardened at all
Chrome. I know that might be hard to believe but the switches work. You can absolutely stop Google from prefetching their usual services. Plus I don’t login with a Google account on the browser, that makes a huge difference.
Why not use Chromium then? Give it a try?
There really isn’t much difference. I used Ungoogled-chromium before now. I use Chrome for selfish reasons. The flatpak for it(dev version) is auto updated with no human input required so I get fixes and security patches earlier and I kinda like that release.
Just so you know, Chromium Browsers are more secure if you use the native package. But just for privacy reasons I would not run Chrome unrestricted in my system.
Automatic system updates work great.
https://github.com/trytomakeyouprivate/braveinstall-fedora-atomic
Also great Browser, not sure about how early releases come I use Beta
Chromium Browsers are more secure if you use the native package.
This conclusion is relative for everyone as we all have different security needs. Plus there’s no easier, better supported way to sandbox Chrome on Linux other than using Flatpak’s permission model.
It’s also ironic for you to be speaking about security when you are installing/updating your browser using random curl bash scripts.
You havent looked at the repo. And we are talking about different sandboxes here.
The browsers sandbox websites, this is broken if the entire browser is sandboxed as you need to remove that capability to do so.
My bash script pulls in the official brave repo and gpg key, fix the access permissions and that is it. Brave has no documentation on how to use their repo without dnf so this is needed.
The repo has gpg verification enabled and the system will update the browser.
Please dont spread misinformation if you havent even looked at the “random bash script” that does not handle the updatingô
Thanks to everyone for replying! I have decided to stick with brave for now since after an update to the flatpak the thing’s font is back to readable again.
Cromite is the closest thing i can think of to Librewolf. Tons of hardening. but i dont think he ships a Linux version. just android and windows.
Thorium is good for privacy and speed but not security, Vivaldi isn’t that private, ungoogled chromium removes everything google. Brave also has packages available for manual installation if you want to give it another try
How is Thorium privacy optimized?
Its version is outdated and it has no focus on Privacy. Also important to see if privacy from Google or from the actual sites you visit i.e. fingerprint prevention.
Brave is better here
I use Vivaldi, I don’t know a better Chromium for privacy nor because other features (made in the EU by a employee-owned cooperative, no extern investors, gutted Chromium base (no phones to Google), no tracking, no logging, inbuild ad- and trackerblocker with customizables filterlists, encrypted sync, feed reader, mail client, calendar, reader list, reader view, splitscreen, full customizable UI, command chains, etc…). Apart with your account an own blogging platform, mail service, included an Mastodon account in the Vivaldis own instance, which you can use with your account. https://vivaldi.com
Yeah, but it is closed sourced.
Yes and no, 5% of the script, corresponding to its unique UI is proprietary, but 100% auditable and even moddeable by the user (in the Forum they show you even how to do it, at own risk, logical). And its better so this way, making it OpenSource too, Chrome and Edge are the first in forking it, which will be the end of Vivaldi and any other Chromium. Anyway, with more than 100 browsers curretntly in the market, OpenSource or not isn’t the most important poiny, more important the ethics and transparency respect the user of the company. Respect privacy it is irrelevant, it depends only of the manufactor of the product, not if it OpenSource or not, all spying APIs of Google, Facebook, MS & cia are all OpenSource and included in a lot of the FOSS in the market (also in Firefox, eg the “save” browsing API is from Google, not really needed if you use an adblocker (uBO), which contains a similar function, this API send your browsing data to Google who host the list of phising sites but also logs your activity, If you can, desactivate it, in Vivaldi you can do it in the privacy settings)
Opensource is a very important point. If its only the UI that is a different thing though.
Save browsing in Firefox is anonymized and afaik even proxied. In FF you can also deactivate it but shouldnt. No personal data is sent and it is not identifiable. But you may really not need it.
FOSS nowadays isn’t the same anymore since BigBrothers entered this world, first Google and Microsoft, the latter even acquiring GitHub, FOSS is no longer the same as it was a few years ago. Many companies no longer focus on communities, developing their products tangentially to the user more in their own interests. In the world of browsers, there are already more than 100 on the market, forks of Gecko, Blink and Webkit, some exotic ones aside, like Otter, which is also fighting for its life to avoid passing to the more than 70 browsers that were abandoned and discontinued in this Browser war that exists, where everyone fights to survive against the great Mainstreams Chrome, EDGE, or the Chinese Opera.
I have been using Vivaldi for more than 7 years and I have seen Google’s tricks to eliminate it, even leading to the point that the Vivaldi team removed the Vivaldi UA, disguising it as Chrome, against their own interests, so that the user not getting blocked by Google services and related pages with the argument “browser not compatible” which was absurd. Since then there has been a continuous war against Google’s attempts to control this browser, which has until now always resulted in Google coming to hit the teeth on a rock, (IdleAPI, FLoC, and other crap)
Meanwhile Mozilla made a contract with Google, for using Google as main search, apart from sending Data of the accounts to Alphabet, googletagmanager and googleanalytics to survive. That is the value of FOSS today, not the user or the community, nor the ethics or transparency of the company.
FOSS is important, yes, for devs who want to launch another fork more, but not so much for the normal user, for this it counts excellent support, an active community, a real interaction with the devs and the team, honesty and ethics of the company. But yes Vivaldis 5% of the script of its unique UI is proprietary, to avoid that Google, EDGE or Opera can fork it, same with Brave, it also isn’t fullOpenSource for similar reasons (see its TOS about copyrights) Other engines are easier to go OpenSource, because Chrome or EDGE can’t fork it for the own browsers. It’s not the same problem.
Not all what is proprietary soft is crap nor all FOSS is the panacea, it’s by way not so simple, with ugly surprises when you walk with fixed ideas
Do you have sources what Data firefox sends to Alphabet etc?
Good website! Mozilla.org is not used by the browser though
https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=addons.mozilla.org
https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=accounts.firefox.com
https://webbkoll.dataskydd.net/de/results?url=http%3A%2F%2Faccounts.firefox.com
So far I cant reproduce that?
Why bother with such micro optimisations when the purpose is to be used extremely infrequently for compatibility reasons?