I'm leaving Firefox, and this is the browser I picked...

Hey guys, this is Nick and today I have made up my mind. I'm going to switch web browsers. I've been a loyal Firefox user for the past five or six years. And while it did serve me well, it's starting to annoy me with a few small issues and the general vision of what a web browser should be that just doesn't float my boat. So let's see what options are available to me on Linux and the one I picked. Just like I picked today's sponsor, Linode. Linode is an amazing way to get your Linux server up and running. They've been voted top provider for infrastructure as a service by G2 and TrustRadius, and they offer tons of one-click deployable servers. For example, Owncast letting you run your own Twitch-like streaming server with video broadcast and chat capabilities or Apache Guacamole, which is the easiest way to get your own fully featured Linux desktop in the cloud, accessible from anywhere in the world. If you prefer gaming, you can also start your own Valheim server on Linode. And they also have one-click servers available for CSGO, Rust, Arc, or Minecraft among others. Now, on top of that, Linode is currently upgrading all their data centers with faster NVMe block storage, which means that every server that you currently have with them or that you plan to open with them will have access to that faster storage at no extra cost for you, which is pretty freaking amazing. Now I personally run my own Nextcloud instance and OnlyOffice document server, both on Linode, and I couldn't be more satisfied. I can only recommend them. So if you want to give them a shot and get started, click the link in the description below, and you will get a free $100 credit to start your own Linux server. So let's start with why I don't really want to use Firefox anymore as a web browser. First, Firefox is adding ads in the browser. You can disable them, but ethically, I'm not a fan of the idea. However, well, it might be implemented or done. My browser should not push ads to me, period. Firefox has telemetry enabled out of the box, and I have no problem with telemetry if it's opt-in or if I have at least an option to disable it at first thought. Firefox hides that telemetry in the settings and doesn't inform users about it, and I find that kind of distasteful. Firefox pushes other services I have no use for, like Pocket. I want my browser to be a browser, not a reading list, not an operating system. I want it to display web pages, and that's it. Firefox doesn't integrate all that well on Linux and doesn't really look like a native app, unless you use custom userchrome.css, which might be disabled in the future. I like the Proton redesign, but it still doesn't really look like a native application. And Firefox mobile app isn't great on Android. On iOS, it's just a Safari wrapper, but the interface isn't great either, in my opinion. And finally, Mozilla is trying to censor the web. Nah, that one is complete nonsense. It's a common misconception, but it is complete nonsense. Now just a brief tangent, but what they actually asked for is more transparency, like revealing who is paying for advertisements, more transparency of platform algorithms, lowering the priority of proven disinformation in algorithms and working with researchers to study the impacts of the big tech platforms on people. If anyone sees that as censorship, they have a twisted worldview. Basically what they said is deplatforming isn't the solution. The solution is to give people more insight into what's paid for, by whom it's paid for, and basically just tell them this is proven to be false. Don't believe it. That's it. I'm also not forgetting that Mozilla is completely dependent in terms of financial revenue from Google, which means that they are not an independent actor anymore. And that also means that I have basically no real faith left in Firefox and Mozilla as a web browser for the future. Now what exactly am I looking for in a web browser apart from just some nice companionship on this wonderful safe space that is the internet? First, I want something that looks at home on my desktop as much as possible. Something that looks like it's using GDK or Qt. I don't need thousands of features and extensions, an ad block, syncing with an account to keep my passwords in sync between devices or compatibility with a password manager. And that's it. I need a mobile client that has reasonable performance and a usable interface. And I need decent performance. So stuff flows relatively fast and doesn't stutter too much. Anything that performs in the same class as Firefox will work for me. RAM usage is irrelevant as I only use computers with 16 gigabytes of RAM or more. So my browsing never really poses a threat to that. I also want a browser that's private out of the box without opt-out telemetry, ads in the browser or data collection. And I'd like to avoid Chromium based browsers if possible, because Chromium is controlled by Google. However, open source it is. And that monopoly kind of scares me. Now, in the end, if I have to use a Chromium based browser and there is no other viable alternative, I will do it, but I won't be happy and no one will be happy. And that's about it. And I know there are going to be compromises that have to be made, which is why I'm going to score each option with a scoring system. Each feature is worth one point. That's it. Let's begin with the Firefox alternatives. And there are Firefox forks that kind of solve most of the issues I have with Firefox, namely Pale Moon and Waterfalls. Pale Moon is a no-go out of the box. It looks completely outdated visually and looks and feels like Firefox 3. I can't see myself using it for any period of time or spending the time to customize it. I mean, it might have hidden talents, but this is Windows XP territory here. And that's not a compliment. Waterfalls is more interesting. It does have access to Firefox sync. It looks modern with a compact to look and feel out of the box. And it has no telemetry ads or unnecessary services. It's basically Firefox without Mozilla, which is kind of what I'm looking for. It also has no extensions out of the box. So I can install the one or two I want to use and stop at that. Unfortunately, it doesn't pick up on my GTK theme at all. So it looks more out of place than Firefox ever did. It also has a little bit less performance on benchmarks than Firefox, but it's honestly not that much of a difference and not really noticeable in real life use for people who pay attention to this. Firefox is also now owned by system one, the same company that owns start page. They haven't done anything to break my trust in either of these companies, but it's still something to watch for in the future. So for waterfalls, we have one point for the feature set, one point for the privacy, one point for the performance, and one point for not being chromium based. I'll also add half a point for the compatibility with a Firefox mobile app. It's not fantastic, but it's okay. So we have four point five out of six here. Let's talk about Epiphany or Gnome Web. Don't laugh. Epiphany is quite a competent browser and it's based on WebKit, which is the same engine that powers Safari, which is also a competent browser. Now while WebKit isn't the best rendering engine out there, I have to attribute that to Blink, however much it pains me to do so, but it's still competent enough. And Epiphany has the nice touch of looking like a native application as it is using a native toolkit, namely GTK. It also has a built in ad blocker, although it's not very efficient. For example, ads on YouTube aren't blocked and there doesn't seem to be a way to install other extensions on it. Epiphany doesn't have its own sync capabilities, but it does work with Firefox sync, which means I can still use a mobile app with it. It does lack the ability to do a full page screenshot though, which is going to be annoying for my Linux news videos. Performance is unfortunately lower than the one I got on Firefox, especially in the graphics department, where it seems that WebGL support isn't really on par. But here again, it's not something I really noticed when loading regular websites on a day to day basis. So for Epiphany, we get one point for the privacy, one point for using GTK, one point for not being Chromium based and half a point for the sync capabilities with the mobile Firefox app. I'll also give it half a point for performance because it's close enough in the areas that matter to me, but that's a total of four out of six. And now we move on to the Chromium based browsers. First, there's Google Chrome. No, no, seriously, I'm not using that thing. I spent years trying to remove everything related to Google for my love, except from YouTube. I'm not about to use a web browser that's going to tell everything I do to Google instead. Now it might be a good browser or not. I don't know, but it's a no go for me. Performance is really fantastic though, beating anything else I tested, including all other Chromium based browsers. That thing is really, really fast. It does look pretty out of place on my desktop though, not even respecting my theme out of the box and it lacks a full webpage screenshot capability, although that could be added with an extension. Chrome gets one point for the feature set, one point for the performance, one point for the mobile app. That's three out of six, but even if it was six out of six, I still wouldn't use it. Now onto Chromium and this at least has the good taste of removing much of what calls home to Google. The issue is it doesn't have any sync capabilities for passwords, bookmarks and history, which means I could only use it with a third party bookmarks manager and password manager. Now that's doable. It doesn't look horrible, especially if I tell you to use the GTK plus style, but it's still not native looking by any means. The performance is top notch though, a bit lower than Chrome, but way higher than Firefox or Epiphany or Waterfox. You can add virtually any extension you'd want to Chromium. So getting a good ad block or the necessary password managers shouldn't be too much of an issue. Compatibility with websites is basically perfect as developers generally only test their websites with Blink, the lazy bastards. And I could use any mobile browser I'd want, seeing as the password manager would be separated from the browser itself through an extension. Now Chromium would be a good candidate for my use case paired with something like Bitwarden, for example. Of course, I'd rather avoid using anything Chromium based, so it will be kind of last resort. Now Chromium gets one point for the feature set, one point for the privacy, one point for the performance and one point for the mobile app seeing as I could use virtually anything I want with a password manager. That's four out of six. Now let's talk about Brave. Here's one that has been recommended over and over, and I already covered Brave and its search engine in a previous video. Check it out in the card up top. And while it's an excellent browser, it just has too many issues for me to consider it as my daily driver. First, it looks really out of place. Even using the GDK plus look, it adds orange highlights, the scroll bars, much like Chromium don't pick up on the native look of my desktop, and the settings even use different fonts and colors than what I use on other apps. It also has way too much stuff baked in, a crypto wallet, Brave rewards, and an enormous list of settings that I just can't wrap my head around, which is ironic because I use KDE as my daily driver on my desktop. Its performance is good, although weirdly in benchmarks, it doesn't perform as well as other Chromium-based browsers. It is the only one that can actually complete MotionMark though, as all other Chromium-based alternatives fail to complete this benchmark. Its mobile client is good, and it can sync without an account simply through a passphrase system or a QR code. It's handy to start syncing with a new device, less handy if all of your devices are lost or changed, I guess. Brave gets one point for the performance, one point for the mobile app, one point for the privacy, but it doesn't get any points for the feature set because it just has way too much baked in by default. That's three out of six. Now another one that's been heavily recommended to me as well, and I don't really understand why, is Vivaldi. And it's basically an operating system. It has multiple lines of tabs, multi-window and panel, an email client, tab thumbnails, a note-taking app, macros, mouse gestures, translation built-in, a context manager, themes, support for Razer Chroma RGB, a feed reader and a calendar manager. It's also not entirely open source. It's auditable as it's purely CSS, HTML and JavaScript, but it's not made available to reproduce, modify and reuse. The interface is completely alien to my system and it looks like a Windows app transplanted to my desktop. I really didn't enjoy how it felt out of the box in the looks department. Vivaldi has sync capabilities with an account as well and mobile apps that look quite good. The performance is on point, on par with Brave, more than enough for my needs. Now Vivaldi just doesn't cut it for me. It might be perfect for some, but for me, it's more than overkill. I need something that displays web pages, not the web browser equivalent to Emacs. And I would also prefer using something that is open source if there is a viable open source alternative. And in Vivaldi's case, there are plenty. Vivaldi gets one point for the performance, one point for the privacy and one point for the mobile app, but also doesn't get any points for the feature set because that's three out of six. Now Opera basically suffers from the same issues. It has a built-in VPN, integrated messaging apps, a crypto wallet, social networks in a sidebar, pinboards, a unit converter, plus a music and podcast player and a news feed. It also has sync capabilities with an Opera account. It's not at all what I'm looking for in a browser. I want a simple experience, not an avalanche of features that I already have apps to deal with. While the performance is good on par with Brave or Vivaldi and way higher than Firefox or Epiphany, it just doesn't look or feel right on my KD or Elementor US desktop. In short, Opera gets the same score as the previous two browsers. Three out of six. On to Microsoft Edge that just got a stable release on Linux. No, seriously, no, I'm not using that one either. I don't want to give my data to Microsoft any more than I want to give it to Google. Microsoft Edge has been found to use a unique hardware identifier and sends it to Microsoft to make a unique user profile. I do not want that. On Windows, you can purge that identifier, but I'm not using Windows, so nope. I left links to articles about this in the description. Apart from that, Edge doesn't look any worse than Firefox on Linux once you tell it to use the GDK theme. You can tell it's not using GDK or Qt really, but it's not atrocious. It's fast with one of the best performance scores out of all Chromium based browsers, and it doesn't overload you with a huge number of features. It also supports sync, although it's using a Microsoft account, which I would rather not use. Edge gets three out of six for the feature set, the performance, and the mobile app. And that basically concludes this little competition. Now, what will I use? Because I have to make compromises with every single one of these options. Now the highest score would be Waterfox. And if I was a rational human being, this is what I would use. Unfortunately Waterfox just doesn't adapt well to my system. And while it doesn't have ads or telemetry, it basically removes everything that Firefox has that annoys me. I would still feel like I haven't changed browsers at all. And I kind of want to change browsers. So next in line is Epiphany, but it has an incomplete ad block, no full page screenshot capability without the ability to add that. And its performance is slightly lower than what Firefox offers. The other solution would be to use Chromium and Bitwarden, but I don't really like using Chromium based browsers. All other Chromium alternatives are either full of data collection that can't really be turned off or full of features I don't want or need. And in the end, after a long deliberation, I decided to move from Firefox to Epiphany. The performance difference in real use didn't really seem too noticeable to me, but we'll have to assess that in real world use with this thing as my daily driver browser. I will still keep Firefox on the side, just in case there's something I just can't do with GNOME Web, with Epiphany, but basically I'm going to try to only use that thing. It doesn't have that screenshot for web pages thing, which I'm going to have to find something else because I use that for Linux news all the time and I kind of need it, but I'll try to find another alternative for this. So of course, while I'm using Epiphany, I will document everything that happens to me and I will let you know my findings in a video in December. So subscribe if you want to see how Epiphany holds up in the real world and if I decided to stick with it or not. So this video was made possible by Slimbook. And yes, you all know about Slimbook by now, I know, but for those who didn't watch the previous video of mine for the past like six months, well, Slimbook is a Linux hardware manufacturer. They sell Linux desktops and laptops. They basically cover all the needs with all the price points, all the keyboard layouts they ship worldwide. And I only use their stuff. I can only recommend them. If you need a new Linux device, check out the link in the description below. I thank you guys for watching the video. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, don't hesitate to like and subscribe. And if you didn't, you can dislike and tell me why in the comments. 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