uBlock Origin dead for many as Google purges Manifest v2 extensions Google's purge of Manifest v2-based extensions from its Chrome browser is underway, as many users over the past few days may have noticed. Popular content-blocking add-on (v2-based) uBlock Origin is now automatically disabled for many in the ubiquitous browser as it continues the V3 rollout. For context, Google has given …
Which is awesome considering the not insignificant role the company played in rendering the modern internet almost entirely unusable, and increasingly unsustainable due to AI slop seeping into every crevice. But what are you going to do when you have a 60%+ market share, a captive audience in Edu via Chromebooks and a business incentive to maximize monetization of every single user interaction, their data profile and comprehensive behavior record?
It'd be naive to pretend it's not in the company's financial best interest to grind users into paste.
It could, but with respect : how? The only viable competitor is Firefox and they've been throwing money away on useless products, taking their eye off the browser, and by default pandering to advertisers. The main reason they're still surviving is Google are throwing them money in a currently successful attempt to prove they're not a monopoly.
Add to that some sites only work with Chrome, and users will go where the functionality is, even if it hurts their long term interests.
The only way I see things improving is an open source browser funded by a convenient multi millionaire, or crowd funded by subscription. Paying for a browser didn't work in the 90s, it's how IE came to prominence, and it won't work now either.
Actually, there is an option b. Firefox refuses Chrome's funding, they're declared a monopoly (good luck with *that* in the US' current political climate), the browser is spun off as a non profit entity not funded by Google either as a result of being broken up, or in an attempt to avoid being broken up and something that is 'not Google controlled Chrome' rises to prominence. Frankly I rate 'kindly multi millionaire' above that possibility.
Thinking about it, an even worse possibility is c) nation state funded browser. Your featureful Russian/Chinese browser is great, and definitely not spying on you comrade.
"they've been throwing money away on useless products, taking their eye off the browser"
They've been throwing money given by Google on useless junk and maybe just possibly it was suggested at the same time that the browser was not necessarily to be a priority.
Money talks, Mozilla's behaviour is evidence of that.
Just switch to FF and be done with it.
Firefox isn't the perfect world. Some of us ended up in a chromium based browser because Firefox has done this and worse in the past. Having used Firefox since it was Phoenix, it wasn't a light decision removing it from all my systems.
removing it from all my systems
but why ? I use regularly 4 or 5 browser for different tasks (browsing, secure browsing(*), banking, google docs, online shopping ...). Why do people believe in a "one size fits all " ? You have different pairs of shoes for different walking conditions, why don't you do the same with browsers ?
(*) yes I know, but it still blurs the lines
Because keeping software you don't use increases technical debt. Do I want apps I don't use automatically updating? If not, then do I have to worry about them having unfixed vulnerabilities. So many apps load things automatically without telling you. (quick start, updaters, adding scheduled tasks) If I do let them auto update, what happens when they overwrite something that affects other apps, or want a restart.
I have Vivaldi, Edge, and Opera (until I get all my passwords exported). I don't allow Chrome, and I won't be going back to Firefox. Vivaldi is my primary, Edge if I want to test if Vivaldi's internal AdBlock is causing problems. Since they are Chromium based they are close enough to standards compliance that any site that won't display is not one I need.
If a piece of software on your system wants to reboot to complete an update, and that piece of software is not concerned with something low-level such as a device driver or hardware interface, then you, my son, have been infected with malware.
Go and scrub yourself clean now.
I use regularly 4 or 5 browser for different tasks (browsing, secure browsing(*), banking, google docs, online shopping ...)
Likewise. I even sometimes have to use (whispers softly) Safari..
In my defense, some sites like Apple Business Manager refuse to work in other browsers, even if you set the browser ID string to Safari..
I completely agree, and have been doing just that for nearly a decade. FF being my main browser. But, I've often used FF Beta, and Nightly versions on the same device, created different profiles though. Have 5 browsers but, really only rotate through 3 on a daily basis. I also am strictly Android, so, I have universal or global ad blocking capabilities too. But, mainly, I use only apps that I've paid for to remove ads. I've been largely successful in this task.
To answer the comment on how long until Google rips out Manifest v2 from the Chromium codebase entirely: end of June, 2025, the end of enterprise support for Manifest v2.
Brave and other Chromium based browsers could try to keep Manifest v2 support alive, but it's going to be a significant effort. I don't think that as it stands, Brave (the company) has the necessary resources to do that.
Fortunately I have been using Firefox for nearly a decade, and I love it! A few years ago and for a while FF had issues keeping tens of tabs open simultaneously, now it's just a breeze! I will be a happy man once they finally add support for HDR in Youtube videos... :)
Google: "Do no evil". It wasn't by accident that they yanked that motto out lol. Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, nVidia, all those monopolistic companies have been going too far lately and need a serious kick in the butt.
This is at least the second article I have seen about this announcement that does *not* ask the obvious question of whether or not uBlock Origin still works on Microsoft Edge. So far, it does for me, but I'm assuming it could break at any time. But yes, on our Android smartphones at home, our default browser is Firefox with uBlock Origin installed.
Mine too, but I'm curious to see what happens to Vivaldi... I keep it around for the occasional site I need that won't work with Firefox (i.e. doesn't believe in standards)
Curiously, after using the Digikey website for donkey's years, today for the first time it crashed out on me complaining about advert blockers, even after disabling both ublock Origin and noscript...
My Vivaldi is showing "These extensions may soon no longer be supported
Remove or replace them with similar extensions from the Chrome Web Store" on the extensions page.
I assume a forthcoming release will include the changes to Chrome and break all my extensions.
WHY is a supplier website using advertising networks?
That seems to me to be grossly counterproductiuve at the very least. My response to intrusive adverts on company websites is to switch to using their phone systems or another supplier. Either way ends up costing them revenue
Yeah but that'd be a bit like that whole Bovair thing (the feed they're giving dairy cows to reduce methane) and talking about how the milk is affected. Someone comes in asking about the state of UHT milk, only for no one to answer it because like Edge there is no call for it, because it's shite.
Because it works better than FF, Vivaldi, Opera. Brave and Edge are the same s*it, different package. And I'm not logged in, everything is turned off, automatic clearing of browsing data enabled, there are no ads, no personalized recommendations, nothing unwanted (except occasional 'use precise location' prompt). I don't give a f... what it feeds to Google, that's useless info as long as they can't feed me something in return.
"Back in the day" Chrome took over because FF was suffering from severe browser bloat by comparison
People tend to stick with what works until something vastly better comes along (not just equivalent but better in ways that are noticeable and unignoreable)
> You don't think that the massive advertising campaign might have had something to do with it?
That, and the propensity a while ago of just about every software download, no matter how unrelated, to bundle a Chrome installation with it, or at least offer to install it in a would-you-like-to-not-decline-to-not-install-this-browser-now-or-later type dark pattern fashion of varying subtlety? For those that have forgotten, Chrome was, for a while, the Bonzi Buddy or Bing Toolbar of PUPs.
Firefox here, and happily so.
"Back in the day" Chrome took over because FF was suffering from severe browser bloat by comparison
I've been using FF since before Chrome existed, I must have looked away and missed this "severe browser bloat" you speak of. Maybe that was IE6 you were thinking of?
There was a short period right when Chrome came out that Firefox seems to have had some memory management issues where having lots of tabs open could eat a lot of memory. Chrome, when it started out, was a very stripped, sleek and effective browser. Firefox meanwhile has now massively improved in memory usage while Chrome has bloated and become a memory hog in it's own right. If I had to choose right now, I would choose Firefox as default browser (but I've been using it as my browser for donkeys years now because frig Google/alphabet. Just wish I had a good option to move away from Gmail (and Android) as I got trapped in that eco-system)
-faster: at what? Loading a page, rendering, what? I've never noticed those things to be limited by the choice of FF; loading a web page largely depends on the time it takes to download the component parts, and I've never noticed any UI lag in FF
- intuitive: this word is basically meaningless. What is "intuitive" to you is "counterintuitive" to another. intuition isn't a real thing now, is it? It's about as possible to pin down as "common sense".
- less confusing: I've never been confused by a browser. Are you sure you should be using the internet if it confuses you?
- better tab and memory management: Pretty vague here; I think there was a time when most browsers were poor at memory management, FF does it pretty well these days. I have no problem with the way tabs work in FF, is there some magic "killer feature" that Chrome has here that I'm unaware of?
- integration of some tools (translation, etc.): FF has the ability to use plugins. One man's "integration of tools" is another man's "browser bloat", the exact same thing FF was being accused of further up this thread. By the way, FF does actually have a "translate this page" function which you may have missed, but you are free to add any number of third-party plugins that direct you to google's offering instead.
- ...and extensions: Are you claiming that chrome has extensions and Firefox does not? if so, then I'm sorry to say you are simply wrong here.
- less hiccups: It's "fewer" hiccups actually. Pretty impressive stuff though, for a web browser to cure your hiccups, unless you meant to be more specific and actually not just add a meaningless point to your list here. Care to specify what you actually mean by "hiccups"? Nah, thought not.
Chrome's extensive use of threading meant that the UI stayed responsive even while tabs were struggling to load / render. This made it feel faster than Firefox, which would look like it was entirely frozen while it was waiting on enough CPU time to render a complex web page.
Took years, but Firefox has improved. Chrome remains a memory hog.
The old edge ( not sure if also the chromium-based one does it) was exfiltrating hardware id (= persistent even after format). Same as the Yandex browser.
I use vivaldi when i need a chromium based browser, FF is my daily on desktop.
For mobile, Vivaldi is the best i've found. adblocker works and i can use a 9 years old phone (well, with a clean rom with a more recent android and no google or 'value add' crap) with no issues.
Firefox has a reputation for being slow, but put a Firefox-based browser on an ancient PC alongside a Chromium-based browser and Firefox is the winner.
So another reason for switching to Firefox.
I've never found FF to be particularly slow. Once a month or so, I might need to restart it when it appears to hang (I've never worked out why, but closing it and restarting it with all my tabs intact takes about ten seconds). In tend to abuse it a fair amount as well, as I have several hundred old tabs open, due to poor habits.
I find the things that actually make websites slow are all the ads and scripts running which, in my case, more accurately aren't there and aren't running due to the fact that uBlock Origin and NoScript run perfectly fine on Firefox. Not allowing other people's devious shit onto my browser is much more important hygiene than closing old tabs IMHO.
> I've never found FF to be particularly slow.
FF has deep deep bugs and misoptimizations. Seems to be different for everybody, every system, even key system changes. My FF was taking a minute to load. Retired the rotating rust for a SSD (cloned, not re-installed) and BAM fast as a weasel.
Why keep Chrome on my machine? Apparently ONE reason. My state motor online vehicle registration site works great in FF, right up to the end, and then hangs forever when I give my CC# payment info. After several tries (re-re-re-entering all my numbers each go-round), I tried the other browser. Chrome slurps it up like a champ. Someone (here?) explained it to me: when the state site re-directs to a payment site, FF thinks it is fishy and Chrome don't care. There is a way to clarify it for FF, but State Of Maine doesn't care. It is my job to give them money and we can't direct impeach our Secretary of State for awkward web-work. And I have not usefully used Chrome since this time last annual re-registration.
WaterFox, a forked FireFox, is another fine tool. I use it when I do not want my porn history leaking into my regular FireFox.
My FF was taking a minute to load
Really? What are you trying to run it on? A 386?
Admittedly, this is on my work laptop, which has a fairly recent gen i7 in it, but I just closed FF, made sure the processes were dead and reopened it, and it was up-and-running with this tab reloaded in about 3 seconds. I've probably got a few hundred tabs open as well.
I just opened an instance of Chrome (which I have to have installed for compatibility testing), and it took 8 seconds for anything to appear, and that's with no open tabs. I couldn't actually close that, or even move the window, until I agreed to a couple of popups.
So yeah, you're talking bollocks, aren't you?
"I've probably got a few hundred tabs open as well."
Why? What good does that do you? How long does it take to navigate to any random one of those open tabs vs picking it out of a logically laid-out set of bookmarks with subdirectories? More to the point, how much of that clutter do you actually use day-in and day-out? Or even week to week? How much time does it save v.s just re-opening it, should you actually need it for five minutes today? I can honestly say that I've never had more than a couple dozen (maybe!) tabs open at once, and rarely as many as a dozen.
Not trying to take the mick, I'm curious as to what kind of work-flow would benefit from a few hundred tabs being open all the time. Is this common enough to warrant a new type of web browser (or setting in an existing browser) to make this smoother/faster/easier?
Well, on Android, Firefox would definitely be faster if I could turn off tab offloading. But that requires accessing the about: config parameters, an ability lost many versions ago. And it would also be better if I could run extensions I want (like LanguageTool or CookieAutoDelete) outside the ridiculously small set of approved ones.
Let's face it, all browsers (software generally) are crap. It's up to the user to decide which form of crapness suits them best, and/or they are willing to tolerate.
'Mine's better than yours' ismore often than not an entirely subjective and juvenile argument.
Firefox for the win, by the way.
Generally find FF faster on my machine (use multiple browsers as some sites misbehave with FF browser & OK on Chrome - though amazing how many sites decide to behave OK with FF if you spoof the user agent ..... lazy coding of name check instead of browser capability checks)
Though do not have huge number of tabs open or use video / music streaming sites, all low impact (especially with some scripts & ads blocked)
"Most people are afraid that if they do/use anything slightly unusual (eg run a different browser) that, somehow, the magic computer pixie dust will be disturbed and things will stop working."
And, sadly, they are so often right. Less so now, perhaps, than in olden days, but the pain of installing one application only to find that it's clobbered several others - particularly if they're things you don't use every day and you don't find out they're broken for a week or two, by which time you have no clue what broke them - is something that many long term Windows uses will remember and dread.
If it ain't broke don't fix it is a thing for a reason.
Then uBlock origin lite it is. Coupled at home with either pi-hole or an ad-blocking DNS.
is not as good as OG uBlock, but is decent.
or, you know, move to firefox (ESR) a browser with a market share > 1 and that still supports manifest v2
(and the ESR changes shit once a year, instead of every ~10 weeks, for some of us, that is also a plus)
I too used Opera years ago back when it had its own engine, before they dropped that in favour of just being another Chromium browser.
The thing that stops me giving Opera another go is that anything heavily pushed in YouTube videos as part of "A Word From Out Sponsor" segments instantly puts me off and has me asking what the scam is.
Stay on windows 7 (yeah I know)
But Chrome & Edge-Chrome (and to a lesser extend Firefox) have been whining for month that since one computer in my stable was still under Windows 7 they were not updating anymore.
(I have reasons to keep that computer on W7, so don't tell me it's a bad idea, I know, but it's not the most obsolete system in my stable... I have a SUN U45 with Solaris 10...)
"I have reasons to keep that computer on W7, so don't tell me it's a bad idea"
I'm not going to lecture anyone, but you know you can run programs in a pseudo W7 environment on W10 or in Wine. The question really becomes what are the downsides of doing so?
Just curious but what do you mean by "plug'n'play version"? Presumably a RaspPi in a case, pre-loaded with Pi-Hole, but any particular vendor/type?
I built my own by putting Pi-Hole x86 on my NAS/Jellyfin box, but I'm always open to new suggestions - especially for my less tech-savvy relatives, for whom "plug it in, turn it on" is about as complex as they can handle.
I used to have a first-gen R-Pi running headless as a controller for a bitcoin farm (back in the days where it was done with ASICs on USB sticks that cost a tenner each and drew a few watts) which I'd access through remote desktop, so yeah, that's doable. There's not a lot of point to using a 500 if you're only going to remote onto it though. Just a regular Pi without the keyboard and mouse would do the job just as well.
I have been running Pi-Hole for years.
When I first deployed, I was shocked at how much traffic was being generated by so-called "Smart" devices - TV's, Blu-ray players, Roku, Apple TV, etc. Literally 60% of my DNS lookups were from these devices. At all hours of the day, not just when they were in use.
Just who are they talking to? What is really in that EULA? The security guy in me got creeped out and I disconnected the devices.
Mac Mini's now run the show. Not perfect and more expensive than using the built-in garbage. Definitely a better UI than a hand-held remote control. All the TVs are on HDMI1, which is all they are permitted to do.
Sounds like perfect job for AI. Not only to detect and remove ads, but also reformat pages from silly mess to some uniform interface.
They could also highlight any propaganda and manipulation attempts in the text.
I think Google is shooting themselves in the foot as this will only fuel development of novel methods of ad blocking.
They could also highlight any propaganda and manipulation attempts in the text
You'd trust an AI to do that? Even if it were technically capable of such, if you used let's say Musk's xAI its detection of "propaganda" would be hopelessly one sided. Saying Nazis are good = OK, saying that the US president's power is properly limited by the legislative and executive branches = commie propaganda!
Every AI is only going to be limited on that front by the training data that humans selected for it, plus guardrails built into it. Given that AIs require billions in resources to create and maintain, they are going to reflect the values and principles of the billionaires and corporations who funded them, not regular people like you and me.
I switched to uBlock Lite and it's pretty good so far. Mostly what I've lost is the ability to block elements (mainly the useless crap that designers put at the top of the page which forces me to scroll to see the actual content). Surprisingly even YouTube ad blocking still seems to be working although as I don't use that very often it could just be that I haven't seen any videos with adverts switched on yet.
On Android, Fennec via FDroid is slightly hardened FF and IronFox continues the former Mull since its dev stopped. FF plugins work on them. For financial logins, etc.
Still use Vivaldi v1.x for unimportant logins like here and weather and misc chrome/blink reqs because it renders old Reddit better than 2.x for me.
> According to the company, Google's decision to shift to V3 is all in the name of improving its browser's security, privacy, and performance.
Actually to make sure you see more ads while clicking through their deliberately shitty search results. It's just ludicrously Musk level Orwellian that Google would even claim to care about giving one single f#$@ about your privacy.
Fire fox
And ublock
Youtube with no ads.. bliss.. imagine that.. listening to Holst the planets and no jeering crass 30 sec ads for some mobile crap game at a volume double the music you were listening to
Ok technically its a lot more than one word..... but with ublock commentard blocker most of what I've jibbered about would be blocked just like ublock and firefox does to the ad flingers
When I switched to using an old PC as my router running OPNsense, installed the Adguard plugin and some extra firewall rules, watch all my worries get blocked before it hit my internal network. Some consumer routers allow 3rd party plugins to do this too, if your an Asus user, checkout https://www.snbforums.com/forums/asuswrt-merlin.42/ and https://www.snbforums.com/threads/asuswrt-merlin-addon-software-catalog.82059/
I exclusively use a Linux OS, and Firefox is my favoured browser. Infrequently, I have need for another browser and I have installed the precompiled open-source version of Chromium. My understanding is that the code, under an agreement, shares a contribution from Google.
Are open-source versions of Chromium, and branches thereof, obliged by practicalities (not licences etc.) to follow Google's vision for development?
> And why a thumbs down for a question, not a statement, was given, too?
Another serious question: why are you even the slightest concerned about whether or not you get thumbs up or thumbs down (or neither)?
Does it make any difference to anything?
Chromium is a Google project, even if they obfuscate it a little. For sources, check either the privacy link on Chromium's website (that takes you to Google), or the Whois record for Chromium's website (Google LLC). So Chromium doesn't just share a contribution from Google, it's almost entirely Google maintained code. It's going to follow Google's vision for development.
Are open-source versions of Chromium, and branches thereof, obliged by practicalities (not licences etc.) to follow Google's vision for development?
Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I am, Chromium is the engine that Chrome, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, etc are built on. It is developed by Google. Chrome is Google's interface (browser) built on that engine. If the engine itself is changed by Google policies, all the downstream browsers will be affected as well unless they choose to stop updating Chromium. I see it uses a BSD license, but I don't know if that would allow anyone to fork the codebase if they wanted to exclude the changes that remove Manifest v2. And it would be a serious $$$ commitment if they did.
Unfortunately, Linux is not an OS, as an Operating System has that pesky requirement that it operates and well Linux doesn't unless you at least add systemd to make systemd/Linux; https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/init/main.c#n1513
As far as I can tell, most versions of chromium are not in fact completely source-available and therefore fail requirement 2 of the "open source definition"; "The program must include source code"; https://opensource.org/osd
The ungoogled-chromium project strips out a lot of binaries, some of which have the corresponding source code available and it seems some of them don't; https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/refs/heads/master/pruning.list
Chromium is such a large project that unless you have hundreds or thousands of developers, you could not hope to keep up with google's "vision for development" (any fork that does anything more than just apply patches to google's version, will eventually stop working on some sites (although that you don't want to visit anyway), due to lacking a new "web feature" that google added).
There's plenty of distro's out there that do not use SystemD. Devuan (Debian derivative) and Slackware come to mind.
A simple Google Search will show several sites to check, as well as Wikipedia having a page for listing them.
And your link to the kernel source is showing that it's looking for any standard init to start - not just SystemD init. The main problem is that "applications" are beginning to require SystemD to operate, so you have to find apps that don't hook into SystemD or find alternatives.
The main problem is that "applications" are beginning to require SystemD to operate, so you have to find apps that don't hook into SystemD or find alternatives.
This is becoming a concern. I have been running Artix (a descendant of Arch), and I run into apps needing SystemD libraries. Some you can get by with 'shim' libraries, because they aren't actually using any SystemD specific calls. But it's going to harder to do in the future. I need to take some time and look at AppImage and Flatpak. To be fair, I wouldn't be unhappy to see more static linked Linux apps. Diskspace and RAM are rarely a limitation for me these days, so not using shared libraries has fewer downsides.
"This is becoming a concern."
That's what some people claim, yes. However, I personally haven't run across any such problems. There might have been a couple programs I tried out half a dozen or more years ago that refused to run without a working systemd-cancer infection, but I honestly can't remember having that problem in over half a decade.
Maybe I'm just lucky.
Maybe I'm just lucky.
Could be. Or it could be the distro you run. For Artix, packages in the repository can be a bit limited, even without removing ones with systemd references. I tried Devuan early on, and it wasn't ready at that time. The last time I tried it wouldn't install on the server I was building. I used to run pure Debian. My core requirements now are KDE and no systemd. x11 would be nice too, since X2Go doesn't like Wayland. If you're pulling source and building it yourself you'll probably never run into a problem. I doubt that people running distros like Gentoo are too worried.
For me, building code and cleaning dependencies are billable items. I have other ways that I want to spend my time when I'm not getting paid. So I lean towards using distros with binary packages.
Current Devuan is fine now. I've been running it since Poettering decided to screw everyone with systemd. Early versions were a little glitchy, but current stable and oldstable are rock solid. But it does still need shims for some stuff, but if you avoid the bloatware like Gnome and KDE, you can avoid a lot of the need.
Aside from that Slackware is a reasonably good choice, minus the fact you have to handle upgrades manually and doing things even slightly wrong can break your install. Don't know if they changed the package management in the last four years to something that rivals apt and does dependencies for you, but back then it didn't.
As to Firefox vs Chromium, I use both. But Chromium has to be used for certain sites as Firefox won't render correctly on them or scripts don't run properly. Mostly banking and financial sites seem to hate Firefox. Also there is still a memory leak on FF if you run Youtube and have a few tabs open, where it just starts eating memory. Not so much an issue on a 32GB system, but I watched it eat up 8GB over 30 mins with 5 YT tabs open, with the memory not returned until the browser was closed.
I'd say a VPN and some sort of filtering will work fairly well against ads or at least that's what I do, or you can fiddle with Privoxy and use an adblock rule converter to generate the equivalent ruleset for Privoxy. But for now uBlock Origin and NoScript, still work on Chromium for me. I can live without uBlock as I use Chromium for exactly three sites and none of them have ads. I would probably add Privacy Badger though to deal with the trackers.
Less and less distros don't use systemd nowadays.
Even Gentoo comes with systemd as part of systemd-utils, requiring the without-systemd 3rd-party repository if you want to go systemd-free.
The systemd thing is a joke that is correct in most cases, with the exception being systemd-free GNU/Linux distros, while demonstrating clearly that Linux is only a kernel.
"Linux doesn't unless you at least add systemd"
I realize I'm feeding a troll, but perhaps pointing out its ignorance will keep others from replying to it and cut down some of the noise around here ...
During boot, one can change the init called by the kernel as PID1 to whatever one likes at the kernel command line, using init=/path/to/valid/program as a kernel boot parameter. Try using bash. The more adventurous among us might try EMACS or vi instead of bash. The systemd-cancer is not now, and never will be, a necessary part of a working Linux kernel based system.
Please note: Linux is already working just fine BEFORE the init is called.
Linux doesn't unless you at least add systemd [or another program to be the init]
>one can change the init called >Try using bash >might try EMACS
Yes, that makes bash/Linux or Emacs/Linux or if you can't be bothered typing that many letters; GNU/Linux
>Linux kernel based system
The base in Emacs/Linux-libre is the Emacs OS.
>Linux is already working just fine BEFORE the init is called.
Before the init is called it carries out hardware initialization etc, but if it cannot successfully call an init, it shuts down, so without an init, Linux does not work.
Still on Firefox here, even though it's getting harder, as we slowly encounter ever more sites that only work with Chrome engines. Anyway, regarding uBlock, it's another big potential boost for Pi-Hole, which fixes this problem at your network level. Buy a cheap RPi, spin it up, and off you go. The shiny new v6 has just been released, and is better than ever!
That's my understanding too. Whereas an in-browser blocker like UBO can block elements in a granular fashion, and rewrite the CSS/HTML to "close up" the gaps that would otherwise appear in a page, Pi-Hole can't do that because it's just a DNS-level blocker. Which isn't to detract at all from Pi-Hole; it's a great tool, but I think the likes of NoScript and UBO still have their place. I run both PH and UBO on my network & machines, and the belt-and-braces approach gives a remarkably clean internet. Although I did have some difficulties with the Slashdot site last month as their "war" with ad blockers escalated, but either they've backed down or UBO/PH have managed to figure out a set of rules that consistently work. At the end of the day though Slashdot is a site I could happily abandon, if rendered too unpleasant by unblockable ads; these days it just seems to be an aggregator for stories from here on the Register and elsewhere.
I can't recall ever coming across a site that didn't work on Firefox, but which did work on Chrome. Do you have some examples?
Back in the bad old days of IE6 there were some sites I was forced to use for work purposes that would only work under IE (due to a requirement to run third-party plug-ins in the browser). The fact that this is so woefully security-illiterate has thankfully put an end to most of that sort of thing.
Time to drop chrome for good? I'd say yes, but I have yet to find a perfect alternative that respects my privacy and still lets me browse all sites I want and use the internet without restrictions.
What follows is mostly my experience, and what has shaped my choices, YMMV. I have been doing my best to block ads, spyware, and other privacy invasions for some time now (since Canter and Siegel, but mostly since the middle of the last decade) , and this is what I've seen.
1 - PiHole is a must. I have PiHole and have had it setup for ages. It does block ads, quite well. Unfortunately, it doesn't block "adblock detectors", which is why I still need a browser with uBlock Origin or equivalent. Element blocking is a must or you're unable to access sites with "adblock detection".
2 - Firefox is a "telemetry" spyware monster. Most of it gets stopped by PiHole, most of it can be disabled by arcane about:config settings, but it still makes a lot of network noise trying to phone home. It is a (very much disguised) privacy nightmare.
2a - Firefox developers have pretty much an active anti-user stance. If they can make thinks simpler for themselves while effing up the end user, they'll do it. Case in point - the removal of ALSA sound in Linux. The bug and in particular the comments by Anthony Jones (yes, the DRM guy) are quite telling on how Firefox's devs look at end users, in particular those that want to keep their privacy and their systems working. This one (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345661#c122) with it's telling statement "Telemetry informs our decisions. Turning it off is not without disadvantage." gives all the position that Firefox devs have on user privacy - and it is the reason I stopped using firefox then.
3 - For now, Brave works, just ignore the crypto nonsense. Unfortunately, being chrome based, it risks becoming less effective in the privacy wars in the middle term.
4 - Anything by microsoft is useless. Phones home a lot more than FF ever does, and pushes crap as badly as google.
So what do I do now that chrome won't block ads and has a (more) enshitified API? I have PiHole, Firefox (thanks to pipewire has sound again), and Brave. On my mobile phones, proton VPN blocks even more ads and malware than PiHole.
And I keep hoping for a decent alternative to all these compromised browsers...
The main difference is that on Brave you can disable telemetry - in fact, it is a very visible opt-out checkbox in one of the first setup screens. On Firefox, you need to muck around with about:config, and it still keeps trying to phone home. telemetry.mozilla.org is often one of the top blocked domains on my pi-hole.
And that site seems terribly windows oriented - Brave can't and won't "update itself" on any linux I know of.
I use ff with ddg and a half dozen script blockers. it's the only way to still get any use out of the internet. That doesn't stop them from logging every click you make tho, it just stops the web from being useless.
Unluckily, ddg made an unforgivable decision to go AI enhanced search. I'm sure they will be bought out sooner or later. Notice ddg doesn't advertise no tracking anymore. All these tech companies need to go at this point. they are an enemy to the people.
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