a.x61.sh

Zen Browser | Privacy focused, open-source, Firefox Fork (zen-browser.app)
from Sunny@slrpnk.net to privacy@lemmy.ml on 26 Aug 16:53
https://slrpnk.net/post/12736887

Just stumbled upon this project, seems rather new as my DNS blocked its domain by default for being too new hehe… Anyone had a chance to try it yet? Its got some hefty promises, like having equally strong privacy features as Librewolf. I’ll be giving it ago at least, almost sounds a bit too good to be true…

#privacy

threaded - newest

governorkeagan@lemdro.id on 26 Aug 17:23 next collapse

This looks like it good be a great replacement for Floorp. Thanks for sharing!

RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works on 26 Aug 17:24 next collapse

Their privacy is better than regular Firefox due to disabling telemetry etc, but librewolf does way more to protect against fingerprinting. The browser itself is quite good, although it shows that it’s in early development. Also I disabled send a do not track signal as it is used for fingerprinting

Yambu@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 26 Aug 18:54 next collapse

cheers, was intrigued if this was an alternative for LibreWolf. Hope it’ll come around!

Nobilmantis@feddit.it on 26 Aug 20:47 next collapse

Also I disabled send a do not track signal as it is used for fingerprinting

Doesn’t this only make sense if it is off by default on that browser? I assume if it is on by default, most people will just keep it on, thus making users of that browser that turn it off stand out more. No?

RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works on 26 Aug 21:05 collapse

Firefox doesn’t enable it by default, so if you turn it of any chance of being perceived as just another Firefox user is gone. It may not be a measurable difference but as basically no site respects it and those that do aren’t a big problem in the first place it doesn’t matter all that much

apostrofail@lemmy.world on 27 Aug 07:00 collapse

Their* privacy

Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 26 Aug 17:24 next collapse

Idk much about the privacy features, but I’ve been using it for the past day and it’s way faster and better optimised then floorp.

breadsmasher@lemmy.world on 26 Aug 17:27 next collapse

Optimised for peak performance? Are there benchmarks to back this up?

Edit - their docs have benchmarks. They do not appear to have comparative benchmarks

edit - lol amazing

AbidanYre@lemmy.world on 27 Aug 03:24 next collapse

That whole chart seems pretty hand-wavey.

Mubelotix@jlai.lu on 27 Aug 09:27 collapse

I believe it’s just a build with all modern cpu features enabled. At the cost of undefined behavior when ran on older computers

Frozyre@kbin.melroy.org on 26 Aug 17:27 next collapse

I'll take anything to get off of Firefox. I'll give this browser a week long trial run.

You fanboys can go to hell. Defend this if you can: https://imgur.com/a/1Tr4ttb

sub_ubi@lemmy.ml on 26 Aug 18:43 next collapse

can you spot any differences in your browser comparison?

[deleted] on 27 Aug 06:10 collapse

MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 26 Aug 21:33 next collapse

Awfully rude just because you don’t like something that you have full control of deciding to use or not.

[deleted] on 27 Aug 06:09 collapse

ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world on 27 Aug 05:06 collapse

Try Floorp.

Also, maybe don’t compare clean chrome install to FF with a half dozen extensions installed. Extensions like Greasemonkey run literally any script you tell them to. An errant line of code and there goes your memory.

Try again, apples to apples dude.

Frozyre@kbin.melroy.org on 27 Aug 06:09 collapse

I think it's a fair comparison. You're just moving the field goals, is all.

ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world on 27 Aug 07:09 collapse

“Moving the goal posts” I fail to see how I’m changing the conditions. I’m explaining a clear and obvious issue in that image which is why it’s not a good comparison.

Okay, extensions require container processes, for each one. Each new extension add to the RAM usage. For both Firefox and Chrome.

So already the comparison is flawed because Firefox now requires more base memory to load those extensions out the gate.

But now, Firefox is clearly showing Tampermonkey in the toolbar, a userscript extension. Let’s just say I run a script that fetches competing price info from temu.com when you browse a site like amazon. Not uncommon.

Let’s say I set that to loop, so it’ll work on infinite scroll pages too.

Okay, now if you leave your browser alone for an hour and it’s refreshing these scripts, guess what happens to the memory?

Every test of current builds of FF vs Chrome has found extremely negligible performance differences when both are stock installs.

ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world on 27 Aug 07:18 collapse

digitaltrends.com/…/mozilla-firefox-chrome-review…

This is from 4 years ago,. Again, stock browser without a busted extension causing a memory leak, the browser runs solid.

cloudzy.com/…/which-browsers-use-the-least-memory…

Run a real world test and you’ll see what I mean. Their RAM consumption is pretty much on par, and varies between update cycles but not wildly.

youtu.be/YQcslo9OqtE?si=FvI-Hk7vk46H5U67

From 3 months ago, with graphs. Firefox and Chrome have had near identical performance for years.

sunzu2@thebrainbin.org on 26 Aug 17:31 next collapse

How does this one compare to the current OGs like Mullvad Browser and Librewolf?

otter@lemmy.ca on 26 Aug 18:13 collapse

Until something comes out saying otherwise, Mullvad browser seems to be the best privacy wise.

I believe Zen is better than default Firefox out of the box, but you can get the same effect in regular Firefox by toggling some options.

I liked Zen for the UI changes. It’s nice having the tabs on the side and a customizable sidebar

JustMarkov@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 05:26 collapse

Mullvad browser seems to be the best privacy wise.

Only makes sense if you use their VPN. Otherwise, there’s no real advantages over LibreWolf.

otter@lemmy.ca on 27 Aug 05:43 collapse

Ah good to know

Gemini24601@lemmy.world on 26 Aug 17:56 next collapse

I’ve checked it out, and it looks really good, sort of like arc browser. It’s very stylish, and since it’s Firefox-based, supports ublock origin. It’s obviously not finished yet though, so I’ll stay on Floorp until it reaches beta or stable. I’m totally switching once it gets there

otter@lemmy.ca on 26 Aug 18:10 next collapse

I like it so far. The weakness seems to be the size of the dev team and if the project has a future. Hopefully they are planning accordingly.

I went through a handful of threads and it seems mostly positive so far. One choice I wasn’t sure about was that they’re considering having a built in adblocker (based on something that’s not ublock origin). I would prefer if the browser just shipped with ublock origin instead.

www.privacyguides.org/en/browser-extensions/

As far as privacy focused browsers go, ~~Mull~~ Mullvad Browser seems to be the best still. I was exploring Zen for my day to day browser.

jay@mbin.zerojay.com on 26 Aug 19:14 next collapse

Appreciate the browser extensions link, thanks.

JustMarkov@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 05:30 collapse

www.privacyguides.org/en/browser-extensions/

Arkenfox provides a more in-depth extensions-related info: github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions

Mull

Mull is Android only: divestos.org/pages/our_apps#mull.

otter@lemmy.ca on 27 Aug 05:42 collapse

Thanks!

Mull is Android only

Oops, fixed the comment

TheJack@lemmy.world on 26 Aug 18:31 next collapse

Well, there is no native .deb package and “There is no plan for official .deb pkg”.

Source: https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/328

MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 26 Aug 21:32 collapse

That makes sense as packing for a bunch of distros is a lot of work vs just using Flatpak.

FalseDiamond@sh.itjust.works on 26 Aug 18:32 next collapse

Are they based on Firefox ESR? That made me quit Floorp, it was pretty disappointing to be on a legacy reskin of Firefox.

Virkkunen@fedia.io on 26 Aug 18:40 collapse

Probably not, as the image says Zen is based on the latest Firefox and Floorp isn't.

jay@mbin.zerojay.com on 26 Aug 19:13 next collapse

Tried it a bit yesterday on Windows. Opened a Github link in it and Windows Defender killed the app saying it was a threat. Definitely a false positive but seemed odd to see the entire app just die instantly, lol.

Jomn@jlai.lu on 26 Aug 21:09 next collapse

I’ve been using it for about a week, both at work and at home, and I must say that it is great. It is nearly everything that I wanted from a browser. Especially since it is based on Firefox.

I’ve been so happy with it, that I even donated to the project.

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 26 Aug 21:14 collapse

Happy to hear!

Noxious@fedia.io on 26 Aug 21:46 next collapse

Has anyone tried loading arkenfox user.js on there? That's the bare minimum for me to use a Firefox-based browser. I'm not using that without hardening.

demesisx@infosec.pub on 26 Aug 23:18 next collapse

nixpkgs has been working on adding it for a month now but it uses “surfer” for compilation. It’ll be interesting to see how they end up building it in the Nix style. Looks like it’ll have to involve pnpm.

OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml on 26 Aug 23:35 next collapse

I love Mulls new browser fork of Firefox but on Gos it weakens the security due to a sandbox implementation not being as strong vs Chromium. I hate big corpo who don’t. Brave seems to be the best mobile for now. Sucks but soon as sandboxing issue is fixed. Firefox FTW!

ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world on 27 Aug 05:03 next collapse

Floorp is literally running with tons of optimizations and is shifting to the standard FF release instead of long term support build in their next major release. The optimizations though are like front and center, and it has TONS of privacy toggles and features.

That comparison is… Self serving let’s say.

lazycat@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 07:47 next collapse

I was daily driving it but started crashing after an update. I’ll be getting back to it tho, I’m sure there has been like 4 updates in the last 24 hours…

box_ebony@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 08:10 next collapse

nobody uses iceweasel? For those who don’t know, it is the version of firefox cleaned up by non ‘libre’ code mainly from debian and then taken over by parabola linux. For me it is the best together with mullvad.

Allero@lemmy.today on 27 Aug 09:10 collapse

I was under the impression IceWeasel changed to IceCat.

And, honestly, from all I could remember, the default protections are so strong a good half of sites doesn’t even work properly lol

Typical GNU maximalism.

(But yeah - it really blocks all the bad stuff and doesn’t do anything you don’t ask it to do, not even call for updates by default)

box_ebony@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 09:57 collapse

icecat is based on the LTS version, iceweasel the rolling-release. I have been using iceweasel for almost a year and all the sites I have used work

Allero@lemmy.today on 27 Aug 11:30 collapse

I see - thanks for clarification!

Got confused because beforehand there was GNU IceWeasel (now GNU IceCat), which is now separate from IceWeasel. Quite a shitshow.

robigan@lemmy.world on 27 Aug 08:37 next collapse

Actually quite stoked about this as it boasts those librewolf privacy features while having a UI similar to Arc. Can’t wait for it to exit Alpha

geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 10:19 next collapse

How does this compate to Mullvad Browser?

foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 15:19 collapse

Think mullvad is better

neonred@lemmy.world on 27 Aug 12:06 next collapse

So, how about the Cachy Browser from CachyOS? (aur)

This repository benefits from the knowledge and research provided by arkenfox, their documentation was vital to this revamp, so special thanks to their project. We do not use arkenfox’s user.js but we try to keep up with it, and we also consider it a great resource for users who want to find their own setup.

We encourage users to find their own setup and to use our default configuration as something to build on top of. This is now easier thanks to the overrides, just place your own preferences in the proper location: -> ~/.cachy/cachy.overrides.cfg

Differences from LibreWolf:

Enhanced security & privacy.

Gentoo patches. Taken from Gentoo’s Firefox.

uBlock Origin added.

Moonlight theme added.

Preset for “Profile Sync Daemon” and Firejail/Firejail(hardened) available.

Custom Rules for uBlock Origin.

Custom branding.

Notes and thanks

Some of the older prefs in this project are taken from pyllyukko and many more were investigated on bugzilla.

Thanks to the whole LibreWolf community.

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 27 Aug 12:16 collapse

Definitely very interesting! Thanks for sharing. Was thinking about trying CachyOS too.

foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 15:19 collapse

This OS is good and I’ve used it for 6months but I want to switch because it packed all of these theming inside and you cannot really remove it

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 27 Aug 15:22 next collapse

Good to know - thanks. I, too, prefer to customize mine in my own way.

foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 15:25 collapse

Yeah, and it’s sad because I didn’t find a distro that is really welled tweaked without theming (speaking of CachyOS and Garuda mainly), they are great as their using all the best optimizations in terms of performance but they add this theming…

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 27 Aug 15:48 next collapse

Yeah, so far my favourite distro for this is Bazzite, still allowed a lot of customization and is well optimised for gaming.

foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 15:53 collapse

It’s a good distro, but seems to be too gaming focused, new techs for gaming that are not really useful

quarterlife@lemmy.sdf.org on 27 Aug 17:06 collapse

For that, check out Bluefin or Aurora. They’re all under the same umbrella as Bazzite, but with a user/developer focus instead of a gaming focus.

aStonedSanta@lemm.ee on 27 Aug 19:44 collapse

Can’t you just not select the themes during the install process of cschyOS?

foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml on 28 Aug 00:42 collapse

You can unselected testing etc… But cannot with all of the stuff like the fish shell, and so on. So you need to manually remove all this, and this is not good at all

aStonedSanta@lemm.ee on 28 Aug 01:20 collapse

For some reason I recall being able to choose that during install. I’ll fuck around with the installer later to check. But I agree I use don’t use fish either and had to figure out how to swap over to zsh. It was pretty painless though.

neonred@lemmy.world on 27 Aug 16:58 collapse

Yeah, the themeing is there. But you can easily uninstall it and other core CachyOS-packages, they’re just packages after all. (I’ve done it)

The other way would be to start with Arch and add CachyOS repositories, that way you can also profit from the v3/v4 packages.

foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 18:11 collapse

That’s cool but the CachyOS repo is not the most interesting thing, the pre-optimized desktop is really nice

curry@programming.dev on 28 Aug 14:31 next collapse

More fox the merrier. We have Icecat, Iceweasel, Palemoon, Librewolf, Tor Browser, Mullvad Browser… I’m sure I’m missing many more for desktop.

soyboy77@lemmy.ml on 29 Aug 10:25 next collapse

I love options but does anybody else wish devs would put their heads together and focus on improving ONE app rather than launch a millon similar forks?

Upstream7564@discuss.tchncs.de on 30 Aug 00:39 collapse

Its got some hefty promises, like having equally strong privacy features as Librewolf.

It doesn’t, check yourself.

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 30 Aug 08:37 collapse

it did…they have changed their website a lot these last few days.