Arkenfox will apparently be EOL at the next ESR build 153.
I have pinged @earthlng a couple of times in private in the last month for more diffs, but haven’t had a reply. I hope he’s alright
This is numbered as version 144 because that’s the diff versions we got up to. I have managed to spot a few more changes since FF144 but it really requires a full diff to diagnose and catch everything.
For the record, I consider this project to be near EOL and was leaning towards v153 (the next ESR version) as being the last release - so here’s hoping we get more diffs from earthlng - if not, then this is most likely it
It seems it’s because Mullvad browser is adding persistent mode.
That’s very sad to hear. In light of the recent controversies surrounding Mullvad I’d rather stay away from their browser. I really hope someone will pick up arkenfox if the maintainer decides to step down.
Has it even really even been necessary for Firefox at this point a while now? Like how drastic of an improvement has it even been making? I do recall the Mullvad statement that they made, but I also thought they said something similar like, it’s getting to the point where it’s not really even needed on Firefox anymore.
Firefox still has a lot of user hostile defaults, some of which are not configurable via the graphical settings e.g. turning off all telemtry requires about:config AFAIK.
I could be wrong but I don’t see them advertising the number of downloads. Even if they did, would that really be a deciding factor for users considering their VPN service?
If Mullvad Browser is going to be just as good as Arkenfox, I’d rather the contributors behind Arkenfox spend their time developing other useful tools instead. People who don’t want to promote Mullvad’s business can mention that they only recommend their browser but not their VPN.
TL:DR the co-founder of Mullvad donated 5 million swedish krona to the ethnonationalist Örebro party. I suggest you refrain from discussing this here though as it will likely be removed as off topic.
One thing that bothers me about the Mullvad browser is that it is typically distributed in binary form by Mullvad, and isn’t part of the main repos of Debian/Arch/etc. I’d rather stick to software that is built and distributed by a process I can reasonably trust.
No, Linux doesn’t typically work like that. Packages in the official repositories are normally built from source by the distribution. The main exception is firmware and some proprietary drivers.
That introduces some concerns though like trusting an additional party, slower updates and upstream getting bug reports for unsupported distro packages. F-Droid is plagued by this too.
It’s a shame, I was really starting to get attached to the Firefox UI. Would this presistent Mullvad browser support add ons for password managers? If not I think this will finally push me over to Brave Origin as a middle ground browser between privacy and ease of use for websites I regularly sign into.
