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1 • Fedora 32 (by Mike on 2020-05-18 00:24:15 GMT from United States)
Montana State University puts out Montana Linux (no, not Hannah Montana Ubuntu ), but a remix of Fedora, CentOS and Scientific Linux. It reminds me of the old Korora Project as it has a lot of extra repo's available by default such as Chrome, wine, Adobe, Rawhide, RPMFusion, etc. It's the first Fedora distro I've used since Korora went belly-up and it's
my daily driver now and I've been distro hopping and testing various distros since Debian 2. It's worth taking a look at. Available at https://img.cs.montana.edu/linux/montanalinux/
2 • Fedora (by Andy Prough on 2020-05-18 01:19:59 GMT from United States)
Ever since the convergence of Fedora and Ubuntu on a single DE and systemd, there's been hardly anything to differentiate them, except that Ubuntu has more and better apps and has ZFS. I'm trying to think of a use I would have for it. I tried it a few years ago and kind of liked it, but battling with Gnome which kept killing the extensions I needed for a sane desktop was not worth the trouble.
3 • Fedora (by César on 2020-05-18 01:42:23 GMT from Chile)
Hello!
I install Fedora 32 in my PC, but with Mate Desktop, and works good, stable and 600 Mb RAM in idle, with Opera use 900 Mb RAM +-, DNF Dragora for the packages management. I install Visual Studio Code (PHP & HTML) and XAMPP (MariaDB) for development, without problems or freezes.
Works fine, stable and fast.
In other hand, i really sad for the bad news of TrueOS, i remember when born as PCBSD, with the goal of make FreeBSD usable and friendly, but their project is discontinue, really sad.
Greetings from Santiago de Chile.
4 • trueos shutdown (by john on 2020-05-18 01:47:35 GMT from Republic of Moldova)
Now it is clear why project trident switched to void,
they were flying a sinking ship,
it is sad though that ghostbsd wasted time to switch from freebsd base to trueos,
will they still be on truenas, or will switch to freebsd ?
5 • Browser source (by DaveW on 2020-05-18 02:24:21 GMT from United States)
My normal browser is Firefox, the default version from the OS. However, I also occasionally use Brave, which is maintained from their repository.
6 • Fedora Jam (by the Marquis de Sade on 2020-05-18 02:39:27 GMT from United States)
For all the musicians out there, I'd like to give a quick shoutout to Fedora Jam. Was in danger of being dropped from the Fedora Labs list, but Erich Eickmeyer (the guy who saved Ubuntu Studio) gave it life and is promising more for F33.
Not sure what happens with Red Hat deprecating KDE, but I'm feeling good about what Erich and his team are doing. It's nice for Linux-based audio and video artists to have a RPM option.
Want to also give props to Planet CCRMA. We're lucky to have so many choices.
7 • Thoughts on Fedora (by randomly generated entity on 2020-05-18 02:47:55 GMT from United States)
I've been running Fedora for years now on my test-bed machine, though rarely for anything but testing as I'm not a Gnome person. Also, as the owner of an almost-obsolete Nvidia graphics card (GT 240), I've found that Fedora has been the leader in completely dropping support, while most other distros have not. It was always a pain to set up via RPM Fusion or Copr, but it's been impossible now for a few versions, which I find unfortunate for a distro that has the resources that Fedora does.
It's a fine distro overall though I suppose, especially if one likes Gnome and has relatively new hardware and a speedy internet connection. While DNF is powerful and versatile, it uses curl, which does not play nicely with throttled wifi, as my Verizon plan becomes once I burn through the first 15GB/month. Lots of timed-out tries and fails retrieving packages, sometimes forcing me to use wget to manually grab 'em and put 'em in the correct slot in the maze of DNF's /var/cache folders. This could so easily be fixed, couldn't it? Arch also suffers from this but recovers more gracefully, wasting less bandwidth (and can be configured to use wget or aria2 easily).
One last gripe, related to this week's poll: if you use Mozilla's "generic" binary for Firefox, as I do, you'll have trouble using the Gnome extensions web site to install extensions. Maybe this happens even with their package, I'm not sure, but even with all hoops jumped through you'll get a native host connector error unless you manually symlink /usr/lib64/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts to /usr/lib/mozilla/native-messaging-hosts. A known bug apparently, never fixed for this specific scenario at least. It's rather important too, as Gnome Software no longer lets you search and install extensions.
So... Fedora's not my cup of tea. Maybe it would be if I liked Gnome, fit their use case better hardware and preference-wise, and didn't need so many extensions to make it bearable. On the other hand, I've had great experiences in the past with the KDE spin, back when I could use the Nvidia driver anyway. Nouveau just ain't there yet, not on this hardware. Hard lock-ups every time, just when you least expect 'em.
8 • Fedora 32 (by crimson_king on 2020-05-18 03:38:17 GMT from Brazil)
With the GStreamer H.264 plugin available since Fedora 31, we can play .mp4 videos without needing to add RPM Fusion. It doesn't work with Firefox, as Firefox doesn't use GStreamer, but it works with GNOME Web, which is what I use when I need to play such videos online.
I couldn't reproduce Joshua's language tools problem. I use Portuguese (Brazil) and English (US). Only the localization packages for Brazilian portuguese were not installed automatically, so I had to install them myself with GNOME Software.
With only 120 GB of SSD storage, the automatic partitioning Anaconda performs makes my home partition too small (~30 GB), while the root partition is too big (~60 GB). I always run out of space on the home partition with this setup. However, after discovering Anaconda's manual partitioning functionality, it was easy to customize it, while leaving everything else from the automatic setup untouched. I even changed the LVM group name while at it.
I like its vanilla GNOME approach, I think it's more beautiful and consistent. Once you get used to the keyboard shortcuts or gestures, it's much faster than switching between icons on a sidebar/taskbar. To be efficient with GNOME you have to make heavier use of workspaces, to avoid cluttering your current workspace with too many windows.
Last, but not least, I can install things like 'composer', 'nodejs' (LTS) and 'youtube-dl' from the repository. Unlike Ubuntu, Fedora updates its packages regularly.
9 • TrueOS (by Дмитрий on 2020-05-18 06:08:34 GMT from Russia)
I hope TrueOS takes Lumina with it.
10 • @ Fedora 32 (by crimson_king) (by whoKnows on 2020-05-18 12:36:54 GMT from Switzerland)
"With only 120 GB of SSD storage, the automatic partitioning Anaconda performs makes my home partition too small (~30 GB), while the root partition is too big (~60 GB). I always run out of space on the home partition with this setup."
That was highly probable done on purpose so one can add a second user account if needed.
An installer can't predict how much space different users will actually need and often not even a system administrator can do it.
One could change the size of partitions once the OS is installed and one's missing space, but there is much easier way to get extra space if suddenly needed: simply make a new “archive” folder in root, take the ownership and set the needed permissions and make a symbolic link in your home. Done.
11 • Browser choice (by namemandatory on 2020-05-18 12:49:09 GMT from United States)
No matter as long as the browser browses. Right now Firefox from the repositories, Chrome and Opera from their PPAs.
12 • OS branded firefox (by Pikolo on 2020-05-18 13:24:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
Distrowatch missed the key reason for distro-specific builds of firefox - search engine revenue! This is the main source of income for most distros, as they get paid by... Yahoo(Linux Mint had a long term deal with them) or duckduckgo to be the default in a certain distro
13 • Fedora (by systemdfanboy on 2020-05-18 13:33:56 GMT from United States)
"Ever since the convergence of Fedora and Ubuntu on a single DE and systemd,"
What drugs are you on, I want some! No wait...
14 • Fedora (by systemdfanboy on 2020-05-18 13:39:12 GMT from United States)
@2 post @13 was directed for you, I forgot to reply in the comment.
15 • Vote (by Friar Tux on 2020-05-18 13:52:52 GMT from Canada)
I voted the distro's default as it really doesn't matter to me so long as the browser browses (@11). I do use Brave browser occasionally (*.deb install version). While I don't mind the Flatpak versions, I find a lot of them seem to be missing options/actions that are available in the repository, or *.deb versions. (I also find, in most cases, that the AppImage format seems to work better, and be more complete, than either Snap or Flatpak, but that may just be me (or my dumputer). Anyway, I use Firefox as my main browser and Brave as my secondary. That combo seems to work beautifully for me.
16 • Browser source (by Jesse on 2020-05-18 14:08:32 GMT from Canada)
!2: "Distrowatch missed the key reason for distro-specific builds of firefox - search engine revenue!"
You don't need to build the web browser from source to add branding and customize search engine settings. This is a run-time configuration, not a build-time configuration. Distros don't need their own Firefox package to set up search engine deals.
17 • @13, and Brave and other browsers (by Andy Prough on 2020-05-18 14:58:04 GMT from United States)
@13 "systemdfanboy" - I'm assuming yours is a joke post? Ubuntu developed and supbsequently gave up on both upstart init system and Unity desktop, and moved to systemd and Gnome some years ago.
Separately, regarding Brave, Waterfox, Vivaldi, Palemoon, and other browsers, MX Linux offers a one-click install for them from the MX Package Installer. There's no reason to go out and get installers from websites, as MX either builds each browser or optimizes its installation.
18 • browser choice (by harbl on 2020-05-18 15:41:24 GMT from Philippines)
The only time I noticed Firefox being different in the official repository was when I tried Linux Mint, where it takes extra steps to add Google to the browser's search engine integration. Even then, I still went with the repository anyway because it was less trouble installing it that way. However, the one time I needed to install a browser using the binaries from the website was for Seamonkey. I use Seamonkey as a secondary browser for niche cases where the site I visit happens to have Flash content, and I don't want Flash active on my primary browser. For some reason, the Seamonkey from the repository couldn't load Flash content, but it works with the binary from the website, so that's the setup I rolled with. Looking at Jesse's response in this article, I guess what I should've done was leave a feedback on the distro's forums or something where they might've been able to fix it.
19 • BackBox Linux 7 (by DistroScreens on 2020-05-18 16:07:58 GMT from Singapore)
BaxBox Linux is good as a penetration testing distribution & as an daily driver operating systems. Everything works out of the box with a decent Xfce experience.
20 • Browser builds (by barnabyh on 2020-05-18 16:09:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ubuntuzilla's .deb files for repackaged Mozilla builds of Seamonkey and Firefox.
I have to second the Firefox / Brave combo. Since being weaned of Chromium as it's always out of date in Debian and related distro repositories I discovered Brave as the better Chrome based browser. Does everything Chromium does without the syncing and more privacy features. Although with all the suppressive add-ons I had in Chromium not sure that matters. It was pretty locked down, to the extent that many sites would not work anymore.
21 • @1 - Montana Linux (by OstroL on 2020-05-18 16:41:38 GMT from Poland)
Thank you for the info. Found the distro creator's web site. Quite interesting. Downloaded Fedora release 33 (Rawhide) KDE version, default of the Montana Linux. The most interesting thing is that the creator of it doesn't name it as Montana Linux, but leaves the Fedora name. Only the iso is named as ML-F33-0506. He also includes scripts to create your own live iso. I'll download other DEs check the rest. The KDE version is excellent. Firefox starts practically immediately, for example. And, Chrome too!
Thank you again.
22 • Browsers (by Cheker on 2020-05-18 17:27:23 GMT from Portugal)
I use Brave on both Manjaro and Q4OS. On Manjaro it's actually brave-bin, which comes from AUR. I think the reason for this was that I felt the main one was too far behind. On Q4, it comes from it's own repo/PPA
23 • Browsers (by Dan on 2020-05-18 20:01:15 GMT from United States)
I'm probably in the minority, but the browser I use the most is Epiphany (WEB). My favorite desktop environment is Gnome, and Epiphany is the default browser for Gnome.
24 • Browsers (by hotdiggettydog on 2020-05-18 20:23:29 GMT from Canada)
I use mostly third party repositories and the default repositories for Firefox.
I used to like Seamonkey but have no need for the suite.
I like Brave and Vivaldi. Both have available ppa.
Min browser is pretty sweet and fast. Sadly no ppa.
TrueOS folding? That's too bad. Found it quite useable for a BSD.
25 • Browsers & Fedora (by M.Z. on 2020-05-18 21:41:24 GMT from United States)
I always go with the version of Firefox shipped by my distro for most of my browsing. I do use often use Vivaldi I got from their website via a .deb, so repos + upstream binary = other for me.
As for Fedora, well I don't really want to try it again given how it tended to get buggy on my the last couple of times I ran it. In my experience Mageia is a much more reliable RPM cousin of Fedora & if I want something a bit more cutting edge it's close cousin PCLinuxOS fits the bill well enough for me.
26 • Fedora 32 (by penguin386 on 2020-05-18 22:12:09 GMT from United States)
I tried Fedora 32 on my older Dell laptop. I considered using as the main OS on my laptop, but I ran into problems with the Synaptics touchpad. No driver support. Older versions of Fedora had Synaptics touchpad support, but not this one. The mouse/touchpad cursor would jump around at times making it difficult to use. It was especially noticeable with scrollbars. So, I gave up and switched to LMDE4 as my main laptop OS.
I also tried the Fedora 32 LXDE spin in a KVM/QEMU virtual machine. It works very well and it's fast. No touchpad problems running it in a virtual machine. So for now, I'll be running Fedora 32 virtually instead of natively.
27 • @7 and wireless ISP (by RJA on 2020-05-18 22:54:05 GMT from United States)
This problem appears to be common, despite an indication of bars, possibly even with still a strong enough signal, the OS reports having no internet at all and that would cause a failure.
I see that a lot with my phone! Chrome would keep saying that I have zero internet.
-RJA
28 • Browser package (by Arthur on 2020-05-18 23:25:08 GMT from Australia)
I use the SUSE Firefox package, it does some magic to make it use the KDE file picker which has image thumbnails which firefox usually lacks on Linux.
29 • Deepin, Extix 20.5 (by namemandatory on 2020-05-19 00:09:27 GMT from United States)
For anyone interested in the newest Deepin and would like to try it live, Extix 20.5 is quite good. Even runs well on VBox, which is not easy with DDE. Note that once it's installed it identifies itself on the boot-splash as UOS, which is China's hope for a Windows-less future. It's based in Wuhan, so beware of viruses.:-)
30 • TrueOS (by Mr.Bob on 2020-05-19 00:39:44 GMT from Mexico)
This will get a lot of hate but.....I'm glad that the dumpster fire known as TrueOS is finished. What an absolute debacle and mess of a once great OS. Adios muchacho.
Plenty of other BSD's, real BSD's to take its place and do a much better job. There is no place for sentimentality in the Linux/Unix world.
As for which browser? I use IceCat....free of the telemetry B.S. which Firefox has in it.
31 • browsers (by zephyr on 2020-05-19 01:25:36 GMT from United States)
@ 23 Dan: Epiphany is a great choice for a lightweight and stable browser. Used default in the install of CROWZ and STAR Linux with Devuan.
32 • Tried installing Fedora 32 (by Reuben on 2020-05-19 01:47:28 GMT from United States)
I tried to install Fedora 32, but got frustrated with the partitioning. First, what exactly does automatic partitioning do? It wasn't clear from the installer, so I selected custom. It crashed a couple of times. The crashes seemed to happen when I removed a mount point. Then it was insisting that I have a bios partition even though I have a UEFI system.
33 • the strange choices distros make (by Jake74 on 2020-05-19 02:12:33 GMT from New Zealand)
Interesting that Linux Mint had a deal with Yahoo on the search. I had been wondering why of all search engines, they would default to Yahoo. I anyway post-install first customize FireFox with add-ons for privacy and the search / homepage settings. I guess most people don't and that is what they counted on.
So mainly I'm a Mint user, but Manjaro is nice. Very nice, especially with the community edition Cinnamon. Something went wrong with the latest 20.0 release because I tried to install it and it went nowhere. Then I recalled seeing a set of all new ISOs tagged 20.0.1 - and that worked great.
And then in Manjaro I found an unexpected oddity. Under "Office" there was no LibreOffice at all, but a lone entry for "Microsoft Office Online." In a LINUX? Really? First thing I killed (with great zeal I must admit).
And then LibreOffice had 6.3 and 6.4, which was confusing, but why run last week's model? 6.4 it was.
34 • TrueOS and GhostBSD (by Ankleface Wroughlandmire on 2020-05-19 04:23:46 GMT from Ecuador)
@4 Good point about GhostBSD and their TrueOS base. But it looks like it's a non-issue:
https://forums.ghostbsd.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=1610
> We still continue the current direction we are on right now, there is no major change coming. GhostBSD does not depend on TrueOS since 19.09. The project that we depend on is FreeBSD and OpenRC.
35 • Fedora Workstation (by Kanwar on 2020-05-19 05:06:49 GMT from Australia)
I know this is a flame-bait of sorts (it always is) bit all these "workstation" distros should be desktop-agnostic unless they customize the default desktop offering heavily.
For instance, whether it's Ubuntu or Fedora, the default GNOME is basically stock GNOME with a theme pasted on it. So why is it necessary to bake one in? During installation, the user can choose the desktop of choice, isn't it?
It baffles me that despite open-source being about choice, it is being limited by more and more distributions.
36 • @35 (by Arky on 2020-05-19 07:33:55 GMT from France)
@35 simple enough, the installation process is already tedious as it is. Desktop environments can take time to download, and if they're all included, the iso might be heavier. Better choose before the download.
If you have fiber connection, it may comes in split seconds, but remember most of the world is yet to get 1Gb in the course of 5-10 minutes if the moon is aligned with the sun and Earth.
37 • the strange choices distros make (by James on 2020-05-19 10:07:51 GMT from United States)
33 • the strange choices distros make
I don't know for sure, but I don't see the choices as all that strange. Developers need to make money, and that is not always easy with open source. When is the last time you donated to a project? How much did you donate? The same as buying some closed source software would have cost you?
I understand why they make deals with companies like Yahoo. MONEY!
38 • TrueOS Shuts Down (by bruce on 2020-05-19 16:29:13 GMT from United States)
I hate to see a project die, but I can't say I'm surprised. The BSD community seems pretty antagonistic to desktop use, and it's not easy to swim against the current.
The biggest problem with Unix has always been the luddites. Between 1980 and 2000 I worked in several *ix shops that migrated to WindwsNT just so we could modernize. These days, I expect that they switch to Linux for much the same reasons.
39 • Iceweasel (by sananab on 2020-05-19 16:30:30 GMT from Canada)
Remember Iceweasel, when Mozilla decided that their source code was open but their trademarks needed to be protected?
40 • @35, @36 (by Mr. Opinionated on 2020-05-19 18:33:38 GMT from United States)
@35, @36 Another reason to prefer desktop-at-download is to inform the distro builders which environment is actually wanted. Gnome 3 has given me the screaming heebie-jeebies every time I have tried it, yet that seems to be the one most promoted.
I want them to know that I like the straightforward simplicity of Xfce. They don't get that sort of feedback with a take-Gnome-now-and-add-what-you-actually-want-later environment.
41 • Browsers (by cykodrone on 2020-05-19 22:11:09 GMT from Austria)
I am so sad now, I just new tab--'about:config'---searched 'telemetry' in TB, you would think they would shut that off in what is supposed to be the most private browser on the planet. There is no pure privacy anymore, even if you try to open a social media account anonymously, eventually they will hold it hostage until you cough up something that definitely ties it to you, like a phone number, etc (that is their ultimate goal, rope you in to using their app, so they can data-mine your smartphone, major sites despise PC browser users now, especially those that frequently clear their history and cookies). The days of opening sock-puppet accounts with disposable email addresses are long gone. If you truly want to stay anonymous, don't use ANYTHING that connects to the internet.
I answered default repo for the poll question, but it may be time to dump Spyrefox again. Oh, before now, I used a combo of downloads, foreign repos, and default repos. Add 'combo' to future poll questions if it applies?
42 • choices, (by isitjustme on 2020-05-19 23:56:37 GMT from United States)
@35 Distrowatch shows 277 active distros, with several of offering choices of desktops, etc. But inevitably, someone will be complaining about the lack of choices. Just another day in LinuxWorld.
Strictly, a workstation is a type of PC. A workstation distro is meant for such machines, as is. It's not a DIY project. Regardless, if what you want is a net installer or a humongous ISO providing all possible available desktops with whatever packages and features you desire, why are you looking at Fedora, or Ubuntu? And why do you expect them to provide you with something just because you wish it? There are plenty of distros providing plenty of choices. What's wrong with those? They don't call themselves workstations?
@40 The easiest way of inform developers what environment is wanted is to download and use a distro providing such an environment. Look at the top 10 ranked distros on DW will tell. Yep, people like those. You don't even need to be a developer to figure that out.
43 • Web browser (by Francesco Turco on 2020-05-20 11:54:34 GMT from Italy)
I use qutebrowser on Gentoo Linux, so I could have selected both "My distro's default repository" and "I build it from source code".
44 • Browsers (by Wally on 2020-05-20 16:30:22 GMT from United States)
I package palemoon and Waterfox browsers for my distros' package managers for myself. I also use my distro's Firefox builds. And unfortunately, I've had to start using Chromium because webrtc stuff really only works in that browser.
45 • Browsers (by aguador on 2020-05-20 20:41:56 GMT from Spain)
I prefer using my distro's build of browsers as I trust the care the Mageia packager put into building everything from source. However, with the changes in Firefox that have rendered iit less useful for me, I have resorted to installing the binary of Basilisk which has all the features I need except, at the moment, sound WebRTC support, for which I guiltily use the non-free Vivaldi for its privacy and interface features.
It is a shame that Mozilla chose to dumb down the FF interface or it would still be my daily driver.
46 • Fedora, DWW opinion poll (by Stefan on 2020-05-21 21:47:54 GMT from Brazil)
I stay within the 9 or 10% of DWW readers who install Web-browsers from third-party repositories. By the way, I do not touch Firefox anymore, always replacing it by "Waterfox Classic", a lighter and faster version of that application. Being much inferior to Waterfox, even less configurable than it, Firefox does not make sense as the default browser of just about every Linux distro under the Sun.
In my opinion, some developers did a very bad software selection. They chose "mainstream" applications instead of "suitable" applications. Another example is Thunderbird instead of Claws-Mail or Sylpheed. Sometimes, WICD is preferable to the ubiquitous Network-Manager. But I know it's impossible to please everybody...
As for Fedora 32, I cannot emit an opinion since I still use version 31, which is less buggier than version 30. In reality, my main distro is MX Linux, because I hate systemd, but Fedora XFCE is my wife's distro; so I like to test it in a USB-connected HDD just to please her. (O.K., just to find bugs and tell her: "Look! Do you really wanna keep using this f***ing system?" :)
47 • Waterfox, @46 (by Nickthenose on 2020-05-21 23:56:08 GMT from United States)
Curiosity took me to the Waterfox site, where I came across this:
"If you’d really like to help Waterfox out, please consider using the default search (Bing) with adblock disabled on it, it would be such a huge show of support! The default search is fairly privacy friendly."
Are they kidding? Searching with Bing is like driving with eyes closed. No adblock? Not on your life! I might take it for a spin just to see, but they ain't getting that kind of support.
48 • Waterfox browser and Bing search engine (by Stefan on 2020-05-22 00:28:55 GMT from Brazil)
@47 (Nickthenose):
If you are so afraid of Bing spying on your online activities, simply use another search engine... I also do not use Bing. My choice is DuckDuckGo (or Google, when DuckDuckGo fails to find out what I'm searching for).
In what concerns to Waterfox, I'm pretty sure you will love it. That browser is a gem. And maybe it's not a bad idea to use Bing sometimes "with adblock disabled" just to help Waterfox devs to make some money. They deserve every dollar they can get!
49 • Waterfox and Bing @48 (by Nickthenose on 2020-05-22 00:45:17 GMT from United States)
Not so much concerned with privacy. Just that Bing is really bad. Even DuckDuckGo seems to do better although it's searching blindly. But it does seem odd for a privacy focused browser to suggest Bing with no adblock and call it "fairly privacy friendly".
50 • Browsers and online security (by Stefan on 2020-05-22 01:20:46 GMT from Brazil)
@49 (Nickthenose):
You're wright for being cautious and not to blindly trust Waterfox developers. But I think that, nowadays, the biggest privacy issue is not the browser security configuration itself. Since the vast majority of websites require JavaScript, and use cookies to track us, we have almost no privacy at all. Look at YouTube, for example...
And worse: Due to the American antiterrorism laws, mail servers based in the U.S.A. (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc) are scanned by agents at NSA and FBI. Even Skype is monitored... Yes, Big Brother is watching us!
51 • Firefox Security / Privacy Hardening Strategy & Tactics (by David on 2020-05-22 01:22:33 GMT from United States)
@41 @46 @47 @48
From GitHub - https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js/ -
"Firefox Configuration Hardening"
"A user.js configuration file for Mozilla Firefox designed to harden browser settings and make it more secure.
This is a default template with every possible hardening measure enforced. See the relaxed branch for a variant providing more usability."
Also, two informative sites that offer instruction relative to disabling all telemetry, canvas fingerprinting, disk caching, prefetching, and many privacy settings that I never knew existed until I followed the instructions on both of these sites.
https://restoreprivacy.com/firefox-privacy/
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/firefox-hardening-guide/
For example -
"Disable ALL Telemetry Features – These are features that explicitly collect data.
To Disable All Telemetry – Type “telemetry” into the search bar. A large number of settings will pop up in the search. Search for the following and set them all to false:
browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.telemetry browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry
browser.pingcentre.telemetry
devtools.onboarding.telemetry-logged
media.wmf.deblacklisting-for-telemetry-in-gpu-process
toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.bhrping.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.firstshutdownping.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.hybridcontent.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.newprofileping.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.unified
toolkit.telemetry.updateping.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.shutdownpingsender.enabled
These changes prevent all kinds of metadata from being stored about your connection both locally and by Mozilla."
It takes a little time & study to figure out how extensively you want to take these steps...or not.
JMHO
52 • Firefox Security / Privacy Hardening Strategy & Tactics (by Stefan on 2020-05-22 01:39:41 GMT from Brazil)
@51:
Great tips! Thanks a lot, David!
Tomorrow, I will certainly change those configuration settings on Waterfox. Don't forget to disable WebRTC, too.
53 • Firefox Security & Privacy (by David on 2020-05-22 02:13:10 GMT from United States)
@52
Thanks to you, as well.
I used Waterfox briefly some yars ago, but I reverted to Firefox because of its support infrastructure & massive extensions library. I seem to recall that it was a one-man support & development team at the time.
I forgot to mention, for readers that are interested, these settings can be found within about:config.
WebRTC - Already disabled - just one of the many settings that I isolated & disabled with guidance from these sites. As I said, you'll find that you can disable settings that you may have never been aware of before.
I use Chromium as well. Much the same privacy & security hardening can be achieved with Chromium/Chrome within chrome://flags. The verbiage is different, and I've had to web search the terminology more carefully to get it right, but it's easier to correct a mistake with the "Reset All" button at the top of the page. Be sure to Relaunch after you change settings, to get an advisory of any changes that may compromise your security.
Lastly, I'd suggest that you check out an extension called Trace that offers a full suite of easily adjustable security settings., and it is available for both browsers.
JMHO
54 • Waterfox packaging @48 or anyone (by Nickthenose on 2020-05-22 03:02:21 GMT from United States)
Tried both Waterfox classic and current. Nice browsers, but don't see so much difference from Firefox, especially after hardening (Per @51, David). I prefer Brave as a compromise.
What I find interesting is the packaging. Downloading a tarball, I expected to have to compile it, but it works just by extracting the files in /opt and adding to the menu. (Ubuntu as well as Arch) I've been trying snaps and flatpaks. Snaps work better for me, but neither is very convincing. Yet this browser is a small download, and it works across different distros. I tried the appimage for Waterfox, but that was different and didn't work well. Do you, or anyone know what the packaging is?
55 • Bing (by OstroL on 2020-05-22 07:44:05 GMT from Poland)
I am not sure, if Bing is bad, any more. I bought a laptop for wife with Windows 10S, just because it has very nice screen and very light. I could change the Windows 10S to normal windows and install other web browsers. She'd been using Google as the search engine before on a Linux distro. I wanted to see how long she'd stay with Windows 10S and Bing. No complains, what so ever! She doesn't even remember/feel what OS and what web browser or what search engine she's using. This was done as an experiment, to see how far it'd go without complains. Few months going on now.
56 • bro (by fonz on 2020-05-22 09:00:58 GMT from Indonesia)
guess a ton of people prefer browsers from their repos, i voted for the upstream. my reasons for it is ive never had issues with generic builds from official sites. i also like having fewer updates and whatnots.
for those that like waterfox, id also suggest trying palemoon/basilisk as theyre trying hard to keep an updated browser that isnt really firefox anymore. waterfox may be dropped sooner or later, but palemoons still going strong. sure it may have a few bumps when dealing with sites that rely on gulag though. ive honestly dumped firefox ever since they went webaxed and honestly, sooner or later itll just become yet another chromium -_-
57 • Bing has its uses (by CS on 2020-05-22 15:57:27 GMT from United States)
Bing does a much worse job at filtering out torrent and putlocker search results than does Google. Bing is a great standby search engine for pirating stuff.
58 • Browsers, browsers, browsers... (by Stefan on 2020-05-22 20:34:37 GMT from Brazil)
@53 (David): "Lastly, I'd suggest that you check out an extension called Trace that offers a full suite of easily adjustable security settings., and it is available for both browsers."
__ Another very nice tip. Thank you, once again!
@54 (Nickthenose): "Tried both Waterfox classic and current. Nice browsers, but don't see so much difference from Firefox, especially after hardening (Per @51, David). I prefer Brave as a compromise."
__ Stability is paramount in Waterfox Classic. (I did not try the Current version, yet.) Brave was a little bit buggy when I tried it, almost two years ago. And neither Brave nor Firefox run as fast as Waterfox. Because I test software in a "pre-historic" PC based on an Intel Atom CPU with only 2GB of DDR3 RAM, I can feel a big difference between all those browsers in terms of speed. By the way, Otter Browser was the fastest, by far, and it renderizes graphics much better than the any other. Unfortunately, Otter cannot be used to see YouTube videos because it does not decode HTML5.
@56 (fonz): "for those that like waterfox, id also suggest trying palemoon/basilisk as theyre trying hard to keep an updated browser that isnt really firefox anymore. waterfox may be dropped sooner or later, but palemoons still going strong."
__ I have tried Pale Moon. Very good browser! But I use Waterfox just because it is more "Firefox-like" than Pale Moon. Some sites only decode HTML "correctly" when we use a browser based on one of these mainstream projects: Chrome, Opera, and Firefox. YouTube is one of those sites.
59 • Claws Mail (by cykodrone on 2020-05-22 22:39:26 GMT from Germany)
@46 Totally agree, I love Claws, and wish I had of tried it years earlier (was a Thunderbird sheeple), Claws is old school, it's to the point, and total USER control (the configuration options are insane, in a good way), lots of add-ons, etc. If you want bare bones, you got it, if you want pretty and flashy (and snoopy), you can have that too. THAT is the way all software should be. I so miss the days of yore, when everything wasn't ran through super computer servers running anti terrorism keyword sieves, and face recognition algorithms. :(
60 • @ 57 (by OstroL on 2020-05-23 05:59:12 GMT from Poland)
"Bing is a great standby search engine for pirating stuff."
Interesting! Could you explain how Bing pirates?
61 • @60 Bing and pirating (by Romulus on 2020-05-23 07:34:27 GMT from United States)
It's not that Bing pirates. It's that you get more results for pirated stuff when you search. Try it yourself. Search: "free downloads movies" in both Bing and Google and look at the results.
62 • Waterfox sold to System 1 (by Morton on 2020-05-23 09:57:48 GMT from Germany)
Waterfox is only a Firefox Quantum with the telemetry and 3rd party components stripped down or modified for their needs.
As here there are some people, who use the Waterfox because they consider it a better alternative to the Firefox, these people may be interested in the fact that Waterfox has been sold to 'System 1' company had previously acquired the search engine 'Startpage'. More on that here https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/14/waterfox-web-browser-sold-to-system1/ .
63 • Waterfox and AI algorithm (by Wicky Wox on 2020-05-23 16:14:25 GMT from Canada)
Waterfox, which one is true or false?
1) Is water over the fox?
2) Is a fox over water?
3) Is water evoparated?
4) Is fox running into the wood from the water-bank?
How the latest AI algorithm will gonna solve this.
64 • Basic browsing needs (by barnabyh on 2020-05-23 16:45:32 GMT from Germany)
For simple browsing there's also still browsers like dillo, links2 and various text mode browsers. For privacy, they filter a lot of shit out. Try them one day when you don't want Youtube and bells and whistles. Almost like Firefox in reader mode.
65 • waterfox - firefox hardening (by exomoon on 2020-05-24 14:54:31 GMT from Hungary)
@62 Thanks for the Waterfox news! system1.com lists waterfox; curious about what will come.
@51 Thx! Firefox Hardening looks useful.
Other:
Haiku and filesystems: ufs2, xfs (+ timeline set for Beta 2) - Waiting :)
66 • Faster Fox (by Verndog on 2020-05-24 15:16:20 GMT from United States)
Here's a link to make Firefox faster. I tried all the hacks. I like that Ghostery extension the best. Tells me what page is slowest to load. Disconnect is another interesting addon:
https://www.boxaid.com/blog/make-firefox-faster-by-editing-the-config-file/
67 • Firefox Privacy Settings & Browsers (by M.Z. on 2020-05-24 16:05:07 GMT from United States)
I like poking through Firefox on occasion to optimize my privacy, especially when setting up a new Distro install.
They've done a great job of building in some powerful tools which you can get to here:
about:preferences#privacy
I also recommend duck duck go privacy essentials, privacy badger, and uBlock Origin. I don't see why turning off anonymous data that Mozilla improve their browser does much good for the real problems, but you could turn telemetry off if you wanted to. The only other browser I've got much respect for is Vivaldi, but I don't like the Chrome based browser mono-culture that is starting to develop so I don't use them too much.
68 • TrueOS shuts down??!! (by dave the slave on 2020-05-24 16:28:43 GMT from United States)
Imagine my surprise!! Another confused project down the toilet. I predicted this the day they rebranded. So many devs bite off more than they can chew and there was zero reason for bogging themselves down with a custom desktop environment. What-- you're too good to use any of the zillion choices already available?? Gtfo here.
Number of Comments: 68
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