Moving stuff: Part 1
So, after my last click-baity post, did you expect some meta post about what I changed? I hope not1.
You expected more book reviews? Not yet.
You expected a new year resolution, because new year? Well, I have to disappoint you.
Sorry, you'll have to hear about my software rant first.
Yes, it's about Firefox. I'm so tired of its bullshit I'm not waiting for the next weekend (when my time is likely sucked up by unexpected events) to write and publish this.
Decay of trust
Around almost a year ago, Firefox made some scandalous update. Promise, huh?
Firefox has been ignoring its users' voice for long. Without looking it up, just from the top of my head: implementing DRM, pushing for Pocket, setting Google as default search engine2 are the most often talked about. I bet there's more.
But I still fooled myself that I can keep up by tweaking the about:config page. Just disable this, enable that. Once I set it, I'm done, right? Apparently not. I also noticed that when I disable some stuff in the settings, in the configs, it's just taking no effect. Damn the placebo config, the illusion of choice.
Yes, the feature was the AI chat bullshit.
Since last year, Firefox, and Mozilla as a whole (and a significant part of open-source software crowd, but that's topic for another rant) chose the slop. They're dead-set on making the web browser an (warning: horrible generated imagery) “AI browser”, insisting this is the future of the web I'm not going to explain what's wrong with that now, as it's a dead horse that has been beaten over and over (but I might write an official stance on this issue later so I can link it elsewhere).
Last week (or so), they introduced AI controls. In a vacuum, this sounds like a decent feature: it allows users to have a choice to opt out of the bullshit. But given its history, I have no reason to trust that it won't revert my setting, or even apply it in the first place. Furthermore, this highlights how much “AI” is shoved in our face without our consent. No, you ask for consent first, not do it and then say, “you could opt out by go to this page and and that button.” This is the drop that overflows the water glass3.
Alternatives
But what alternatives to Firefox are there?
We have Chromium et al, which are made by Google and thus no better.
We have a barely ready Servo. We have Falkon. Several Webkit-based browsers, like GNOME Web aka Epiphany or my favorite go-to for non-JS, history-less browsing, BadWolf. We have text browsers.
But for my primary browser, it needs:
- to be able to handle JS — for fedi stuff
- to have uBlock Origin
- to have bookmarks and history
These criteria leaves only forks of Firefox. The most popular one being LibreWolf, which has all the stuff you don't like disabled by default. However, it also disables a lot of other things, such as cookies, which renders login ephemeral. Of course, it can be disabled, but apparently it also suffers the issues of overwriting settings on update Firefox has, as mentioned by David Revoy, who made the switch last year, then switched back. But this is a trade-off I'm willing to make. In the long run, I don't think this is viable, because it still depends on Firefox after all.
There is an independent Firefox fork called PaleMoon. However, the developers have some, let's say, troublesome past and they don't seem to show remorse about it, so I can't with my conscience endorse it. On the other hand, it's not packaged for most distros, including mine, and only supports a legacy version of uBlock Origin (which might work for most sites to be fair).
Future of software
It seems bleak. Firefox seems to be one of the most prominent example, but it seems to me all major open-source software projects suffer this FOMO and had to jump on this bandwagon. For example, KeepassXC is tainted. No, Bitwarden is not a safe alternative. Even the curl project lead developer, who was so frustrated with slop bug reports/PRs, ended up using GitHub Copilot to review PRs.