I use Brave to test whether my websites work on Chromium browsers, but their scummy actions lately make me want to find a new Chromium browser to test with. What's the best Chromium based browser?
I already use Firefox for browsing normally, but I have to test on a Chromium based browser too. One soft requirement is that it should be installable with Flatpak on Linux.
But not nearly as many tracking mechanisms as Chrome, because it lacks API keys for some services. By default, it will still send the URL of every page you visit to Google, though. At least that’s my understanding, reading their privacy policy.
But it also doesn’t update itself, doesn’t seem to have a working Mac build (the one on their website doesn’t launch), and doesn’t sync (which I can live without, but end-to-end encrypted sync is nice).
Yeah, this is a contender. No Windows build and no sync are the downsides, but neither is a deal breaker, since I’m only testing with it, and I code on Linux and Mac.
If you’re using Windows, Edge is an option. You already have the Microsoft telemetry watching you regardless of using Edge, so you might as well use it if you need chrome for testing or a specific website.
No, they report to Bing. It caused a stink when “discovered” by the media, but it is part of their licensing agreement with Microsoft to use Bing results.
Their search is fine, but don’t use their browser.
I don’t use Windows much, but Edge is available on Mac and Linux. I’m just not a fan of all the “features” they put in it. I’m looking for more of a clean browser experience, if you get what I mean.
I think you can’t go more clean than Chromium. Pretty sure all browsers based on Chromium has some extra features, since those are the only differences in them. Vivaldi, Brave, Maxthon etc…, the same engine in different car, with different extras.
this is why I usually recommend people to use Edge if they really want Chrome, since on Windows, it’s already there. But yeah, on Linux, I wouldn’t really tell anyone to apt install edge.
Unless something's changed recently, you can just install the Chromium browser itself. And it looks like it's available as a Flatpak. As a bonus this will eliminate anything extra added by browser manufacturers as a potential problem.
Yes. I’ve considered that, but does it still report back to Google? Even though that majority of what I visit will be “http://127.0.0.1:8080”, I’d still rather not be spied on by Google.
It does phone home, but with the right DNS settings you can block that. Heck, if you're just going to localhost you can disconnect the machine from the network entirely.
I mostly code on Linux, but I also code on Mac, since I have to test on Safari. I don’t really ever code on Windows. Windows exists on a separate disk in my computer just to boot into every 3 or 4 months when I release a new version of a desktop app and need to build for Windows.
So I want a browser that at least works on Linux and Mac. What I meant in my post was I wanted it installable through Flatpak rather than a snap or deb, since I use Fedora.
It is built on top of Qt, so I assume, theoretically, it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to do the port, but you need someone who regularly tests+fixes it under macOS. And well, it’s a non-commercial project, so you need someone who volunteers to do that…
Possible, yeah. Falkon was previously an independent project (QupZilla). I don’t know how much they’ve intermingled with the other KDE devs yet, but that’s certainly no insurmountable problem either.
I have it configured to put the tabs in a bar on the right side of the screen. That way you have full tab titles no matter how many you have open.
It’s also got a tiling window manager. So you can select two tabs and tell it to split screen them within the single window of Vivaldi. Or select 3, or 4, or whatever and put them in a grid. All sorts of options.
I’ve got big 4k monitors, so I’ve grouped up some pinned tabs to always be tiled (like my email and calendar)
It’s got lots of other nice tab features and just regular features, but those are the main selling ports for me personally.
I love Vivaldi, if only it were not Chromium based. But even then, if Firefox were to ever die (assuming Vivaldi is still alive and well) I am switching to Vivaldi
Yess! Came here to recommend Vivaldi too. I switched from Brave for same reason as OP, and looked at a few options… Vivaldi won. It’s been a couple months and I haven’t looked back.
I think there’s no good option. Your best bet is probably to run chrome in some sort of temporary vm so there’s nothing worth tracking. Maybe there’s a docker image with chrome ?
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