
I like Chromium, but not Chrome
As long as I can get Chromium without all the junk that Google inserts into it I'm happy.
It's quite OK for browsing, and WebRTC works well on it too.
Chrome developers are trying ease the browser's demands on CPU resources. A recent commit to the open-source code introduces a "Never-Slow Mode", described as an experimental browsing mode that restricts resource loading. However, the developers warned in a description of the flag that it "may silently break content!" The …
You want Iridium instead.
https://iridiumbrowser.de
They also have low-level hooks in place that report if data is being leaked to the non-ethical company.
With these hooks (and community), they have managed to remove a lot of the privacy issues still remaining in Chromium.
Wonderful tip, thanks. I found the Chromium builds themselves somewhat of a pain in the neck - this makes a Chromium-based rollout (read: without the Google bit) a lot easier.
Google's been caught having Chromium installations install closed-source modules without telling anyone. As long as the browser is maintained by them, you can all but guarantee they'll use it against you.
Block ads, and there is absolutely no problem with speed, browser freezing and resources anymore.
I never experienced slowdowns since I did: No long minutes "Waiting for Google Analytics" freezing everything, no slowdown as the CPU tries to run concurrently two dozen enormous scripts fighting for my attention and my data. The web is fast and fluid.
Actually even though Google chrome and Brave both use chromium, even without extensions Brave is much faster. I think we've moved past the "poorly written js" slowing us down phase of the Web to the "collection of metrics metrics" phase.. Btw Brave's version from the other day has sync in beta, completely independent from Google, I know we discussed alternatives here before and sync was a sticking point
On mobile?
My experience with Firefox on Android has been dreadful so far, it is borderline unusable! I'm stuck with a couple of obscure browsers on the phone because I refuse to use Chrome, and no big name browser seems to work adequately!
On desktop I also abandoned Firefox, in favor of Pale Moon, a long time ago. At least that is a decision I don't regret
firefox better? slightly.
However, the arrogant devs over at Mozilla have basically LOCKED US INTO the 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE FLATSO 'Australis' HAMBURGER MENU CRAPBAG UI "just like Chrome" and so I'm not willing to give them a whole lot o' credit for that...
I wish I had the time and funding to port Webkit over to MY X11 TOOLKIT (which is blisteringly fast if I ever get time to complete it), get it running cross-platform for Win32 [at least], and display my own window decorations and borders to ENFORCE the 3D SKEUOMORPHIC, with a *REAL* menu, and make it a competing browser, lightweight like Midori, plugins like Firefox, and built-in "NoJS" or "NoScript" and advanced cookie management and ad blocking without whitelists. And statically linked so it loads REALLY FAST without bloatware shared libs.
yeah, what people REALLY want!
[if you want to save CPU utilization, STOP! USING! BLOATWARE! SHARED! LIBS! and javascript on the client]
The future of the web is all JS websites. Seriously, and there is nothing you can do about it because the average user doesn't know the difference. If you're a dev today you either learn the technology or die like a dinosaur. If done properly it can be great, but let's face it, not all of it will be done properly.
>If you're a dev today you either learn the technology or die like a dinosaur.
There really is a lot more opportunities for programmers out there that don't involve trying to write UIs (or what are effectively Trojans) in Javascript. I realize that there's a lot of demand for JS programmers but I'd suggest that this it ultimately a road to nowhere. It encourages undisciplined programming, there's no overall vision for a design, its just 'code and go', get the stuff out as fast as possible with minimal testing. There's a place for this but its not software engineering as I know it.
If done properly it can be great, but let's face it, not all NONE of it will be done properly.
FTFY
This obsession of making all websites look alike and all using the same (or a limited set of) frameworks, along with the tracking that those frameworks incorporate, will forever slow down web browsing.
All this will do is break Chrome on certain websites. They will direct people to standards-compliant browsers instead. Most of these things are a problem with web applications that were written years ago and now there is too much technical debt to fix the problems in a cost-effective manner. Although I find Google's web applications tend to be really big offenders in this regard. It's the sort of monopolistic thing Microsoft was doing when they ruled the browser landscape. We've come full circle now, with Google as the tyrant.
If you open an old-fahsioned website, one that just has information and formatting on it and minimal to no scripting then you'll be amazed at just how fast the thing loads. The problem is, as it always has been, reams of crap Javascript churned out by legions of scripters that's designed to track you, categorize you and generally take over your computer in the service of advertising. Since JS is tolerant of coding errors and most people use pre-formed libraries for the heavy lifting there's a big disconnect between what the developers experience and what a typical user experiences, especially if the user isn't using the latest and greatest machine, network connection or whatever. It takes discipline and finesse to do this sort of code right and you can easily tell the difference between the sites that have the decent programmers (Amazon, for example) and the 'also rans'.
I just ignore sites that don't work properly. I don't need what they have to offer.