Thorium Browser, Thorium OS

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a new chromium fork and also a chrome os fork well maintained with some patches mainly ungoogled chrome os and chromium is the main offering here.

GitHub - Alex313031/Thorium-Win: Chromium fork for Windows named after radioactive element No. 90; Windows builds of https://github.com/Alex313031/Thorium (for windows)
also mercury which is a firefox fork
Mercury Browser
GitHub - Alex313031/Mercury: Firefox fork with compiler optimizations and patches from Librewolf, Waterfox, and GNU IceCat.

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Should this can be included in the browser recommendation.

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Absolutely not. It’s a good tweaked chomium/ChromiumOS, but it isn’t more privacy-friendly than the other options we have listed there. It’s still better than just your average spying web browser, but not by a whole lot.

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but can be mentioned

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Why?

Mercury doesn’t even deliver on its performance claims: Benchmarking Mercury As The "Fastest Firefox Fork" With AVX, AES, LTO + PGO - Phoronix

Thorium isn’t even up to date right now:

Mercury also changes things that it shouldn’t, like the User Agent which both breaks compatibility and introduces privacy concerns.

Librewolf and my Mull both have a far longer track record and set the bar high, yet aren’t mentioned.
So why should some random forks be mentioned?

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Why would it be?

Why?

  1. Are you the/a developer for the project?
  2. What is Thorium’s reason for being? What problems does it solve better than existing chromium based and non-chromium based browsers?
  3. Apart from wanting free advertisement, why do you believe it should be Privacy Guide’s short list? (specific reasons please)
  4. In your eyes, Why might someone choose Thorium over the existing Privacy Guides recommendations (Firefox, Brave, Mullvad Browser)?
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Thorium (and Mercury) browser came to my attention via a Youtube video on Chris Titus Tech:
(https://youtu.be/naDYUVFs1-8)
I downloaded both and am using them today to see how they are.
Certainly, they seem fast.
But speed is usually the enemy of security and thus privacy.
The default settings are the standard Chrome/Firefox settings, unlike Ungoogled Chromium/Librewolf.
The list of issues on the Github page seems sizable and Thorium is still on 117; UC is on 118.
I would not put much trust in these just yet, despite the glowing video.

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One week after I posted this, let’s check the state of things again…

wtYQxb5sBaZasifA

Ah, still 117 :cry:

Let’s not use this you guys, regardless of how much YouTubers like it. Marking as rejected

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I understand that you would like it to be on 118… all I needed to do was search the open issues and it appears to be resolved. Am I missing something?

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@gnu

that 117 they’re shipping still has 22 known security issues:

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Yes, I wasn’t saying the WebP vulnerability was the current issue, it was a past example of Thorium patching that issue weeks late by issuing 117 weeks late. Who knows what they’re weeks late behind on this time around?

(Well @SkewedZeppelin knows, 22 known issues so far lol)

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