Recent discussions about Mullvad vs Tor browser made me wonder about a comparison between Mullvad browser and the SecureBlue’s in-bedded Trivalent browser. I do not know how they compare for security and privacy?
If I had to reduce the discussion to a direct and pragmatic comparison, assuming both browsers are used in the same way and with the same browsing habits, I’d say Trivalent can reasonably be considered more security-focused, while Mullvad Browser can reasonably be considered more privacy-focused.
Both are good browsers, but they approach the problem differently. Trivalent, particularly as part of SecureBlue, puts a strong emphasis on browser security, sandboxing, exploit mitigation, and system-level confinement. Mullvad Browser puts much more emphasis on privacy, especially anti-fingerprinting and making its users look as similar as possible to one another.
The trade-off I noticed with Mullvad Browser is that using it as my only browser introduced quite a bit of friction in everyday browsing, with frequent CAPTCHAs and some sites breaking or behaving poorly. That may vary considerably depending on the sites and services you use.
Of course, I wouldn’t take the opinion of a stranger on the internet as the final technical word on the matter. Your threat model and browsing habits are ultimately more important than a simple “A vs. B” ranking.
- Tor Browser should be used for browsing with Tor. This is a fork of FireFox, at which its well established Chromium security >> FireFox security.
- Mullvad Browser is a fork of Tor Browser, just without Tor. Privacy w/out Tor is the goal of this browser (specifically to “blend in” with other Mullvad Browser users), recommended to be paired with a VPN. Best for psuedo-anonymous browsing (without Tor is not truly anonymous), not logged into anything.
- Trivalent is a hardened Chromium browser, security is first priority.
Personally, I use Trivalent for my logged in activity, Mullvad Browser for my anonymous browsing, and LibreWolf when Trivalents security settings make it impossible to utilize some sites.
really good setup! I have to ask tho about how you got Mullvad Browser running on secureblue? I’m assuming you had to disable the hardened_malloc for it to run right?
been thinking about switching to Secureblue (my original plan was to just harden NixOS as close to SecureBlue as possible since I like the nixpkg but realized this would be too much effort for nothing) but having to disable the hardened_malloc even if only for a single app feels a bit “eh” to me (should be noted tho that NIxOS does have the hardened_malloc as a package, but I have no clue why but not only does it make you unable to set an wallpaper but it’s outdated by idk-how-long-by-now AND lots of apps don’t open, which atp I’m assuming is way more a thing of Mullvad/Tor Browser than of the hardened_malloc, I plan to e-mail the devs about it later) I guess I’m either gonna wait for nested namespaces so I can use it on flatpaks (if Mullvad Browser ever makes an official flatpak for it) or idk.
Personally, I just set…
ujust with-standard-malloc mullvad-browser
… as a keyboard shortcut and launch the browser with the keyboard shortcut.
- I installed MullvadBrowser via RPM and not use flatseal
- Pretty sure all browsers require disabling hardened malloc, even Trivalent
- Mullvad Browser is available as a flatpak, unsure if it’s the “official” one, but I didn’t go that route
- Don’t let sour grapes deter you. If your focus is security, then secure blue is reasonably secure by default (for Linux). I gave up trying to tweak a distro to be secure.
Hardened malloc just doesn’t work for some apps. That will be the case until hardened malloc is the primary memory allocator, period. If that’s a concern, don’t use that app.
I update the flatseal config and remove the hardened malloc variable so I can run it without a cli invocstion
If Firefox is built with --enable-replace-malloc, it should be able to run with hardened_malloc. It doesn’t work with SB, since it uses LD_PRELOAD and that causes issues when it tries to use it.
What do you mean by “SB”?
secureblue
If you’re on secureblue, then you really should be using Trivalent. Brave is a decent alternative if you need E2EE sync.
As for Tor Browser, I would only use it in a Whonix VM.
oh that’s interesting, this I didn’t knew!
it ain’t official, Tor Browse does has an official Flatpak but, as a post here from RoyalOughtness (secureblue’s lead dev I imagine) said, you shouldn’t be using browsers through flatpaks until nested namespaces so I was waiting for that (even tho it does seem the best course of action is to run Tor Browser on Whonix in a VM, I do like having it on my system tho)
yeah nearly at that point myself, would probably just need to buy another HDD to backup a few things since all the ones I Have are already full and then make the switch (I do hope that Spectrum actually becomes usable enough as a daily driver tho as a nixpkg enjoyer ngl, if they accepted XMR donations I’d have donated quite a while ago now too)
I guess only thing holding me back from secureblue (other than the entire hardened_malloc thingy not working 100% with all apps ig) is the fact that, I do have some applications I use that don’t have an official flatpak nor do they have an RPM, all they have is an AppImage (which I think you can’t install these on secureblue iirc) and some don’t have any replacement that could be used instead (it’s only my Switch and PS3 emulators tho)
Also at some point in my life I did tried using all flatpaks for everything on a Fedora install (which looking back it was not the brightest ideas, I guess some stuff really aren’t made to be used as a flatpak) and the entire system felt slow af, boot times took longer than Windows and applications would NEVER just open instantly like they currently do rn for me at NIxOS (keep in mind my computer is some 2019 entry level gaming laptop and while I do have a 512GB NVME most of my storage is HDD) so this definitely didn’t left a good impression on flatpaks ngl lol (even if I’m willing to give them a go again)