Hiya,
So I have heard that the new CEO of Mozilla has said they will be incorporating more AI. I saw someone recommend “Waterfox” as a potential Firefox alternative to switch to, but I am concerned about updates. Does anyone here know how fast Waterfox gets the patches and updates from Firefox? Is it a good idea to switch?
Thanks
Tldr:
No
Waterfox is based on Firefox ESR which means it’ll probably receive less updates.
I’m not gonna tell you what to do, but I’d say weigh your options.
To be fair so is Mullvad Browser. 
There’s a ton of old threads on PG about this very question that I guess you didn’t look up. What’s so interesting about Waterfox? Librewolf seems like the better fork if that’s your vibe.
Yes, I didn’t look at other threads. Partially bc I didn’t have a ton of time when I wrote the post and just quickly typed it out, partially bc I don’t trust older threads to have current information.
I don’t know a lot about Firefox forks, I’m someone who cares about privacy but I don’t know a lot about it, I have other interests that take priority. Waterfox is just the fork I had heard mentioned in response to the comments from the CEO, I have no particular interest in it over another fork.
What are the benefits of using Librewolf rather than Waterfox?
If it matters I’m on Windows 11 right now, I haven’t gotten around to doing the work to switch to and learn Linux. Instead, for now, I’m running W11 with as much privacy as possible, local accounts, AI turned off, not connected to a Microsoft account, all that jazz.
Librewolf is more stripped down and generally regarded as the more privacy-friendly option on here. It arguably has its issue if you want to read the long Librewolf thread, but many think it should be officially recommended by PG. I recommend just looking at the main PG site recommendations and going with one of those. Personally I think Brave is the best easy-mode browser especially if you take the time to clean up its bloated features like AI, web3, etc… with group policies.
Yes, but their anti-fingerprinting feature hugely outweighs the issues of ESR. Waterfox doesn’t offer enough as an ESR build to use over Firefox.
I would recommend you look into Arkenfox so that you don’t have to be dependent on other developers to fork Firefox and you can de-Mozilla Firefox yourself. It is a technical set-up and for those who find Arkenfox too advanced, Firefox forks is the next best option.
It depends if you intend to use Firefox more for productivity or privacy. For productivity, Zen Browser is the best one I’ve used so far, but it’s in beta. For privacy Mullvad, is the best option. Librewolf is also widely recommended as a hardened browser that’s also great as a daily driver, so it seems like it’s a privacy/productivity-oriented browser. If Zen Browser being in beta is a deal breaker, I would choose Librewolf. And if none of these forks fit your use case, unless you want to use Brave Browser, that’s probably the only reason I would use Waterfox, but I haven’t tried it myself.
So for myself, there are at least five different browsers I would pick before Waterfox, but pick the best option for your use case. And it doesn’t matter if you’re on Windows since outside of privacy spaces, everyone uses Windows and they deserve privacy just as much. It’s just more difficult to achieve if you’re on Windows. Using a different browser other than Edge or Chrome on Windows is a great starting point for everyone.
Besides PWAs I 100% work in LibreWolf.
It’s more hardened than Brave, but not so much like Mullvad.
So it is a really good middle ground for daily use.
I cannot speak officially for LibreWolf since I am not part of the official maintainers. However, I have been fairly involved recently (most commits for the past two releases have been from me). If you don’t mind that some things are not optimal, you can use it. I have started discussions/pushed for getting PGO + LTO builds + changing to FPP instead of the current RFP, signing for macOS and Windows is being worked on, and most importantly I have started testing Release Candidates so updates get pushed out faster, so things should be improving in the near future.
From my experience the main reason people might be tempted by Waterfox over Librewolf is that Waterfox offers less friction than Librewolf’s defaults. This friction tends to be caused by RfP which is the bulk of the privacy offering Librewolf has. If you turn off RfP you lose much of that but you still have a browser that is more current, more minimal in presentation, still insulates from needing to play with user scripts and configuration to stave off undesirable Mozilla behavior, and in my experience has a stronger team and track record behind it than Waterfox.
To answer your questions:
Similar to Mullvad Browser and Tor, Waterfox is specifically based on the Firefox ESR branch. Firefox ESR is essentially an “LTS” branch of sorts for Firefox, so this means that feature upgrades and changes are less frequent compared to the main branch. However, Firefox ESR will still get security patches and fixes to cover security vulnerabilities as they arise, so you don’t need to worry about security compared to Firefox mainline. But, Firefox ESR typically gets a major upgrade to a specific snapshot-in-time version of mainline Firefox once a year. You can read a bit more on the Firefox ESR release schedule here, if you are interested in learning more. Translating to Waterfox, it seems to be getting updates around 2 to 3 times per month, as indicated on their release changelog. So, I can reasonably conclude that Waterfox is being kept relatively up-to-date with the Firefox ESR branch.
Is it a good idea to switch?
Whether or not you would like to switch is mostly up to your personal needs/want and what you prefer on whatever your ideal browser of choice is. However, here is my advice: If you want a Firefox fork that just strips out the Mozilla-specific branding and add-ons (like the ads, AI, “news” articles, Pocket, etc.) and doesn’t frequently introduce massive features and UI changes (inherited from Waterfox’s Firefox ESR base), but with an exclusive focus on usability and sane defaults, Waterfox is a very strong candidate. It does all of that without the hardening that Librewolf does in their Firefox build. So if that is what you are looking for, it is a very strong choice. This is one of the Firefox-based browsers that I am considering as well.
From what I can tell now, Waterfox and Vivaldi are the only two groups so far that have publically stated that they will not be adding any AI to their browsers. You can read Waterfox’s AI statement to Mozilla’s recent AI annoucement here. So, you can definitely be sure that there won’t be any AI in Waterfox anytime soon.
Notes for Transparency:
Just as a piece of awareness, Waterfox was temporarily owned by System1 at one point, which is a company that has roots in advertising technologies. However, I believe that it was a couple of years ago that Waterfox became independent and grassroots again, back under the control of the original creator of the Waterfox project, Alex Kontos. The ownership status currently is the same since then.
I hope that I was able to answer your questions and be of some help!