Seems like a good browser. The only issue is how maintained will it be. Also, librewolf has been released and maintained properly and is proven time and time again. Not sure how different it is from LW.
There’s a hype around floorp right now. Certainly because it’s new and it offers a high level of aesthetic customization.
Unfortunately it doesn’t work for me because:
it takes up too much RAM compared to others. Even though people don’t really care about that on modern machine it goes against my philosophy.
I’ve been tweaking Firefox for a long time to get the highest privacy possible but it was extremely painful and I don’t want to redo that with floorp.
my system look is extremely minimalist and I remove any visual effects in apps I use which would go against the point of floorp.
These are some reasons why I went with librewolf since it was released in 2020. It’s efficient, well maintained, kept up to date with the latest Firefox version, and most importantly to me: deeply respectful of your privacy. Their privacy approach is very well explained in the FAQ It passed all the EFF tests better than any browser I’ve tested after hours of tweaks.
This is only my personal experience and preference. Per the Floorp developer himself privacy is not given the utmost care and users should prefer librewolf in that regard. If you want to use normal privacy and excellent Firefox derivatives, with no doubts, floorp will fit your needs.
Have you seen the mercury fork? it looks more aligned to your philosophy. I’ve tried it, and it seems very interesting. I’m not using it just because they’re often a few versions behind mainline, but it’s on my watchlist.
Thanks for sharing. I’ve not been sold by the info on their website. Too many details are missing. At a glance, privacy concerns seem better addressed by librewolf. Also there have been some issues in update history cycles and some reviews (which I won’t cite here with respect to project) didn’t help in building confidence.
It’s an interesting attempt to replicate Vivaldi’s functionality in a Firefox fork. Unfortunately it retains the horrible printing experience of Firefox.
I just learned about it yesterday. Seems like Vivaldi but on gecko, which I always wanted to see.
Unfortunately it seems like it’s maintained by only one overworked dev. It needs more funding and more devs.
The most similar, not to say identical to floorp, is Midori. Other which try to recreate old Opera is Otter (Qt5, not Gecko), also nice, private, FOSS and blazing fast.
Midori seems pretty shady. I remember it as a super minimalistic browser, but now it seems like they are straight up taking someone elses work and just changing the name and sponsor links within. I tried it and it seems like 1:1 copy of floorp.
What I said, anyway try also Otter, even if it isn’t a Gecko browser (AFAIK it also admits in last versions the import of Chrome extensions (Qt5 is a fork of Blink), also userscripts without the need of Tamper, Greay or Violentmonkey). It will be also the fastest browser you ever have tested.
I did try Otter in the past when I was looking for the Opera replacement, never really liked it. It seems like it’s pretty dead…last update was 2 years ago. And speed was never really my priority for the browser anyways. I’m not really looking to replace my browser, I’m happy with Vivaldi, I just like to check what else is there. I was happy to see that there is a browser based on gecko that seems to be going in the similar direction as Vivaldi.
No, only some parts are not updated some years, but the last core update is from 10 hours ago, others from a month. It’s a very small community and logical that the developement isn’t so active as in the big ones. The last updates also includes the possibility to use extensions, before not prossible. But yes, it’s always better to use browsers in active developement and community. Which isn’t the case in indie and marginal browsers and forks, mostly 1-2 devs projects.
AFAIK it’s maintained by a group called Ablaze and I think I saw them mention they are university students and opensource enthusiasts in Github discussions.
There are blog posts on their site about changes to their team and leadership. Their blog is in Japanese but I just translate it with Firefox’s inbuilt translator. So I don’t think it’s a single dev.
Have you looked at KISS? Extremely lightweight and customizable. You can go from the most minimalist approach with text only and selection of apps to show to crash things like visual effects and icons for every single installed app.
It’s not user friendly at first and that’s certainly why it doesn’t get the love it deserved. But once you figure it out, you can build the launcher you want and never have to go back to the config anymore.
Like my USB mouse working with any computer, I used to be able to pick up a phone and text anyone on the planet without having to check which app they’re on. Sure there are the ‘de facto’ apps, but these vary by country and social group. The reason for the proliferation of the third party apps lies squarely on the proprietary, ckosed protocols by each of them and viral growth during the early days when the telcos were still figuring out data-based text and voice - players were playing up their features like ‘security’ and ‘privacy’ and creating the walled gardens as you mentioned. The current leaders grew due to rapid adoption and a person’s social clout. Just try dating nowadays in Asia, where multiple texting apps reside on a typical phone. Don’t kid yourself - the messages mentioned earlier serve only the marketing goals of each app and just lock you in with FOMO or the hassle of switching. The companies don’t give a shit about your privacy, as long as they can monetize your data, feed and activity.
RCS, to me, wants to take us back to industry standardization, so any provider can follow the standard and immediately be connected to everyone, instead of having to deal with different platforms, protocols. An iphone should be able to communicate with an Android and all the flavours without degradation or the color of the bubbles. Sure, the current implementation of RCS is google’s, but the standard is not. Hopefully, managed by a (neutral) standards body, the shortcomings people point out will be patched and adopted by the app developers. Desired featured will be folded into the standards and make their way into then apps. This, again to me, while slower, is preferable than being tied to the whims of a provider, e.g. Whatsapp, iMessage and telegram, does away with the market fragmentation (not competition) and gets rid off all the artificial bullshit like blue/ green bubbles, security lapses and image degredation between apps.
There’s not really much of a point using the RCS Test app, as it’s only a demo of very basic RCS features.
The thing with RCS is that whilst the “official” spec (ie the Universal Profile), as defined by the GSM Alliance, is open, it doesn’t implement or define many modern of the chat features found in modern apps, such as reactions, replies, end-to-end encryption etc. These features however, have been implemented by Google in their Messages app and their Jibe backed service. The problem is that these additions by Google are proprietary and only works via Google’s Messages app, so third-party messaging apps can’t get in on the fun.
I believe Samsung’s Messages app may also have access to some(?) of these features if the cellular carrier also uses Google’s Jibe servers for RCS routing, but don’t quote me on that.
As for Apple, I’m pretty sure that if they implement RCS (supposedly this year), it’ll either be the Universal Profile, or most likely the Universal Profile + some proprietary Apple magic sauce for added features. Not sure about E2E encryption though - they would have to work with Google for that to work (for interoperability with Messages), so we’ll have to see how that goes. If I were to guess, I’d say E2E on Apple would most likely be limited to Apple devices. But at least we can expect basic rich messaging features to work cross-platform, so that’s something I guess.
In any case, the main issue remains that Google hasn’t opened up the API/spec for their version of RCS - and the GSMA is seemingly doing nothing about it either, the Universal Profile hasn’t had any updates in the last four years. You can read about the spec in detail here, and if you do, you’ll see that there’s no mention of modern chat features such as end-to-end encryption…
So on one hand, it’s a good thing that Apple is getting RCS this year, but it’ll likely remain either the at the basic Universal Profile level, or some proprietary Apple stuff thrown in, both of which aren’t really ideal.
For the rest of us, none of this really matters unless Google opens up the spec, because why the heck would you settle for a somewhat insecure and limited protocol, when there are far better messaging apps out there, with a greater userbase and cross-platform interoperability?
So on one hand, it’s a good thing that Apple is getting RCS this year, but it’ll likely remain either the at the basic Universal Profile level, or some proprietary Apple stuff thrown in, both of which aren’t really ideal.
No, I would say the first is the best option. It would create incentive for actually improving the Universal Profile. The “bad ending” would be Apple adopting Google’s proprietary extensions.
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