What makes waterfox more useable?
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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I had never heard of Waterfox before seeing this post. I went and checked it out. Basically, their "thing" seems to be that they have Firefox's privacy settings automatically defaulted to stronger settings, yet still mild enough for normal web browsing (it won't break as many websites as when you have Firefox fired up on all privacy cylinders, I guess?).
They also have incognito tabs instead of just incognito windows.
Other than that, I don't see any differences in the GUI for ease of use.
Oh wow I have played around with waterfox but never realized that you could mix private/incognito tabs together. That’s kinda cool, but not really a game changer.
It not for non tech savy users. That's the problem
What do you mean?
Its UI is clunky and unintuitive
Mozilla can't compete against Google. Any attempts of growing their marketshare by advertising is going to fail. Google will just outspend them. Then Mozilla will either go bankrupt or have to recoup their investment by jumping on the data collection train. I much prefer they stay sensible with their business modell and focus on being sustainable. Firefox will naturally grow as people start caring more and more about their online-privacy.
Same with any kind of new innovations or projects. I don't want to outright discourage them but I much prefer their current pace of doing things slow and safely. Because if we lose Firefox due to Mozilla taking some kind of gamble the alternative browsers remaing don't really seem appealing.
I like the idea of Mozilla providing, even thou it can just be rebranding, some privacy concious services. Like reselling real private VPN, email, storage... with their brand.
Firefox is losing market share. People who care about privacy are choosing brave
Firefox loss in market share is more complicated. It's mostly due to growth in areas Firefox never had a foothold. Mainly the mobile browser and the Asian market (which mostly is mobile on top of it). On the desktop front in US and especially Europe the situation isn't nearly as dire as the global stats imply.
Firefox Android recently implemented extension support, so perhaps we will see some increased use there. But the majority of mobile users simply don't care and considering how interlocked Google and Android is, there is little hope for a third party browser gaining a foothold.
Brave had a lot of controversies and that's because their aggressive marketing strategy is so expensive. That's why they did shady stuff like hijacking links and insering their own affiliate codes. Something I don't want Mozilla doing with Firefox. Also Brave uses Chromium and the future of Chromium seems bleek. If it actually starts disabling support for adblock extensions then Brave has no future at all.
People who care about privacy are choosing brave
[citation needed]
What do you like about Waterfox? From skimming their page I'm not really sure what it's doing aside from a pre-applied profile with some settings tweaked.
Its fast and has a clean UI
Mozilla needs to get fired and forks for both mobile and desktop need to take over.
Or they need to get new management
After I used waterfox for a bit I started thinking more and more about Mozilla the company. What are they even doing these days? It seems like they have stopped with the innovation. They could of setup a competitor to google with a custom nextcloud but they haven’t made any competitive products other than a VPN.
Honestly, much of the problem is us, not them. At some point they did Firefox Send, but people misused it for sending malware and stuff, resulting in Mozilla having to shelve the project for legal reasons, for example. (Now, if it was me, I'd just have said "just base Send's operations on Sealand or someplace without DMCA", but that's a call they did not make). They now created a VPN but the problem is, AFAIK, it's not their own product it's just Mullvad with extra steps, so people just use that instead. And when they do stuff for web freedom / digital sovereignty awareness, such as campaigns against DRM or a study on the car IoT market, people (aka: we) complain that they are "doing useless stuff". Just about the newest good thing they've done is Relay, and I'm pretty sure there's hefty complaining about that.
And then there's the idiots who moan than "peOpLe wHO wANt prIVacY uSE BraVE", so there's that too.
With our attitude like that, there's no way for them to win.
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