Firefox based browsers are my favorite for general usage, but the battery drain on laptops has been killing me. I also like some of the features attached to chromium, like OotB tab groups that are built into the GUI.
I was ok with Brave for a while, and will probably still use it lightly, but the recent VPN profile installations seem like writing on the wall for me.
I’m considering Thorium, but I’m interested in anything privacy respecting.
Note: I think vanilla Chromium is alright but I want something with hardware acceleration.
On Windows, Edge goes kinda hard (if you neuter the Bing shit); it has MDAG and Drumbrake with the latter being particularly interesting as a way to disable JIT for security but still have decent performance. I think MS have said they’ll contribute Drumbrake to upstream Chromium but we’ll see.
Why not use Chrome? It allows you to disable persistent Google login and safe browsing, which are the two main privacy concerns anyone would have using it. Google search would track your searches, but even that’s not the case if you use DDG or any other alternative.
Chrome/ium will still send plenty of telemetry to Google. If stock Chromium wasn’t a privacy risk then Ungoogled Chromium would have no reason to exist, would it?
It does send telemetry but it’s not clear that this is going to be a major impact for most people’s privacy. Most of it is probably related to downloading updates and other things that don’t involve personal info. If you’re really concerned, just check what’s being sent using mitmproxy. Ungoogled chromium is doomed to be outdated since it doesn’t have enough devs backing it. They won’t be able to keep up with the security updates in a timely manner.
so, dont use it on macOS and on Linux use flatpak. Its on the same patch level as Brave: Brave Release Notes | Brave
Also, saying that people woud “probably be ok”, or something to the effect, in using Chrome but then to obsess about patch levels isnt really coherent.
Let me flip the question: why use Google chrome over Brave? Brave is literally better in every single way. The developers keep up with updates timely, and there are significant improvements to chromium with regards to security and privacy. The VPN nag that appears like once is nothing compared to google’s shenanigans
Google has attempted to introduce multiple privacy invasive features into chrome including FLOC, topics, web integrity and more… don’t trust them
Fair enough, Brave has a good track record. I honestly stopped using it since you can’t remove the brave logo from each window (which no other browser makes you deal with).
are you talking about the brave shields logo on the taskbar? i understand not wanting the branding, but it does have critical functionality by letting you disable ad block for a certain site or toggle other settings
Vivaldi. But again, without using their adblock plus built-in adblocker and the right amount of configuration. I’m still a Firefox user at the core, but i was surprised by the few amount of representation of it as a chromium alternative to Brave.
