Firefox 149 adds a free VPN and finally plays nice with Linux dialogs

Firefox 149 is here, and although we've already talked about one of the big new features on the way, the release version has some others that will be very welcome. We looked at the new split view function a few weeks ago, along with the info on how to enable it in versions of Firefox back to 146 from last December. That's …

[Barry Rueger]

Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Serious question. On my Linux laptop I'm finding that Firefox just doesn't behave, and often grinds everything to a halt until being restarted. I have the horrible feeling that I may wind up back on Chrome just to have things work without headaches.

Beyond that, in all seriousness, has ANYTHING been added to a browser in the last decade that REALLY made it significantly better? Sometimes less is more.

(I'm open to alternative browsers, but only if they can import all of my settings - especially passwords and the like - with one click.)

[DrewPH]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

I've found Waterfox to be more stable and predictable. And it's AI-free which for me at least is a huge positive. I think it can import your Firefox settings.

[blu3b3rry]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Been using Waterfox for a fair while here on both home and work computers and can only agree.

Stable, quick and doesn't seem to suffer breaking changes. The split tab view would be nice for work though....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Split tabs won't be useful until each split tab gets tabs I can split.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Cannot say I have had any problems with FF but it is the version shipped with AlmaLinux 8.9 which is probably a rebuilt older esr version with patches.

I were going to use Chrome I would try a de-googled version first.

I have an old version of Opera installed and pretty ancient version of Palemoon which I recall worked reasonably well.

A great fan of elinks, lynx and w3m of course.

I also had truly ancient versions of FF installed to talk to equally ancient networked kit which also needed an ancient version of java to launch a jws applet delivered from the hardware. (Four Yorkshiremen have just entered the building.;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

For a Google-based product with inferior adblocking capabilities?

I'd rather use Lynx.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

I don't see those sorts of problems generally, but on my laptop I run LibreWolf, which is a more privacy-focused fork of Firefox, and I quite like it.

[Dog11]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

LibreWolf is good, but it doesn't do passwords (not sure why they haven't removed passwords from the settings). I use an external password manager.

[OhForF']

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

>it doesn't do passwords<

I use LibreWolf on fedora fc42 installed from the repo at https://repo.librewolf.net/librewolf.repo and it happily stores passwords for the websites i tell it to.

An external password manager might be a good idea and better than store stuff in the browser but it works fine for me.

[wolfetone]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

I really do like LibreWolf when I'm on my mac.

But it runs like absolute arse on Debian. I can't understand it. The pages load so slowly, YouTube especially takes minutes to load. But I don't have these issues on the Mac.

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Curiously I have slowness issues on both LibreWolf and FF until I kick in my VPN to pretend to be in Iceland when all those delays disappear...hmmm

[Paul Herber]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

I find FF crashes (or goes extremely slowly) when I use Google Street View for too long (2secs to several minutes, it varies).

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Google Street View has sometimes crashed FireFox so hard that it was bent paperclip/reset button time.

[PRR]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

> slowly) when I use Google Street View for too long (2secs to several minutes, it varies).

Yes, G-Street really thrashes some kinda cache or history log. However I have spent long times moving in Street in FF on that old Win7 machine. About once a month it bogs. I have wondered if my constant 'movement' is thrashing the database, or if Google Maps is just overloaded, but who can know?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

If you decide to go back to a Chromium browser, I'd definitely go for one of the alternative ones - I don't use Linux on desktops much, but Vivaldi is available and the Windows version of that is pretty good.

[DS999]

I don't see that behavior at all

I run Linux and I haven't seen that happen for a LONG time. Not since pre covid when I was running it on a PC with only 16 GB of RAM. I'd have to restart Firefox every couple weeks or I'd risk some time when I opened a bunch of tabs at once that it would grind to a halt and the fastest recovery was to powercycle my PC. That was as much a Linux issue as a Firefox issue though - Linux has never behaved well when it runs out of RAM.

Are you running out of RAM on your laptop? Firefox will slowly increase memory usage over time - though not as bad as it used to as checking the Firefox session I'm posting this from which has been running for 59 days I see 2.8G resident and 15.5G virtual (around a dozen windows and nearly 100 tabs total) and my PC has 48 GB so it isn't restricted in how much RAM it can grab.

[PRR]

Re: I don't see that behavior at all

> I don't see that behavior at all

Me too. This Win7 PC with 8GB RAM has uptime of 178 days as of tonight.(*) Yes, I close FF almost every day because: why not? FF has bookmarks. And FF has memory leaks older than my dog. Shutting down overnite keeps total RAM in use below 8GB, at the moment below 5GB. This isn't hand-desk-checked assembly code, but years of hasty hacks. And who wants every slop-script-writer on the WWW chewing on your memory? The Web looks speedy and stable to me. uBlock Origin helps.

(*) Not in the class of Novell Netware 3.11, but shows Windows can run for more than 30 or 90 days.

[Guido Esperanto]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

I've been using Vivaldi for a bit, but recently started to try Brave..prior to that I was a longtime opera user.

Vivaldi is good, I just had a couple of frustrating issues:

- Typing a full url into the address bar would sometimes redirect that as an input to my preferred search engine. Seemed to be certain urls - even with .com tld's but only fix was to disable search on the address bar.

- the built in ad blocker was good, but full block broke some websites and partial allowed too much through.

With Opera and Braves default adblock mode they hit the right balance of blocking ads but maintaining functionality.

So far Brave is winning out.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

> So far Brave is winning out.

Read this.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/zorin_os_173/

Notably, paragraph 10. Follow both the links and read ALL OF THEM. Do not skim them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Mind blowing how many people who follow tech have bought into Brave's gimmicks.

Meanwhile, Firefox market share continues falling, and what do users of non-Big-Tech browsers do?

Fragment.

[Snake]

Re: ditch Brave

I will have to agree with this, I have Brave installed on Android and the embedded crypto, plus other things, makes me leave it alone and unused (plus data cleared and process killed) unless I really, really need it. Why does a browser try to auto-enroll you in so many things??!!

[Guido Esperanto]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Thank you. Very informative.

Time to revert back to vivaldi

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Almost the first thing I did installing a new distro is Dutch whatever snap/flatpak-based version ships with the distro and run on the host OS directly. FF hasn't caused me hassles running under those conditions.

[ecofeco]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Clear the cache. Regularly.

Websites load up a bunch of cruft. I do this no matter what browser I'm using.

I also use a lot of ad blockers.

Modern websites are created to absolutely fuck your browser. Always be on your guard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

I use FF on a W11 laptop and a Linux desktop and haven't experienced any issues.

Admittedly I'm a bit OCD about tabs and rarely have more than 2 or 3 open. Cache is dumped after every session as well.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

> On my Linux laptop I'm finding that Firefox just doesn't behave, and often grinds everything to a halt until being restarted

1. If the browser goes slow, close it. Hard close it: check the process is gone, if not kill it, and restart Firefox.

2. Install updates and reboot daily. Every damned day. Just do it. Get used to it: first task of the day, update, reboot. Don't forget to include Snaps and Flatpaks.

3. If it's still sluggish, start a new profile. Migrate your bookmarks and any essential addons.

All these are mandatory steps to do _before_ considering switching to a whole new browser.

[LBJsPNS]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Not sure what's wrong with your setup, but FF works well on every system in my home and business.

[volsano]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

> Serious question. On my Linux laptop I'm finding that Firefox just doesn't behave, and often grinds everything to a halt until being restarted.

I'm seeing that under Windows in the past few months.

The number of Firefox processes grows, even if I only have one or two tabs open at a time,

Eventually, I have to terminate FF from task manager to get my machine back.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Seeing it on Mac too. Haven't had to force kill the main process, but if I don't close and reopen every 3-7 days, Firefox just eats the system memory and hammers the swap. Killing Firefox's per-tab processes for resource-intensive tabs is a good stopgap. Just crash the tab through the process manager then reload it from the browser.

Mozilla needs to spend more time on core performance and less time chasing buzzy features until these issues are fixed.

Won't ditch Firefox no matter what. Just hope they fix it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Firefox is one of the few browsers that supports a proper adblock via its API.

So, no matter how much you struggle to use it, it wins by default for the majority of us.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Also, try turning off the AI "features" in Settings->Block AI Enhancements. That might solve the problem.

[chroot]

Re: Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Not at all. It's getting better and better with each version. I love it. I switched off all AI features and don't see the issues that people here mention now and then.

[Bebu sa Ware]

XKCD 538

I think in one of Bruce Schnier's early cryptography books this was referred to as "Lead Pipe Cryptoanalysis."

I am sure the Australian kiddywits will welcome Firefox's inclusion of a VPN for their visits to pronhub etc and to access their alternate social media accounts.

[doublelayer]

Re: XKCD 538

And like many other correct statements, it is often misused by people who assume it applies to everything, this author included, much like the cryptography fans it correctly mocks. There are a lot of people who are willing to surveil data who are either unable or unwilling to force users to disclose their keys. People who think their encryption which is computationally infeasible to break will protect them from the police are clueless. People who think that it's pointless to encrypt anything because someone can always force the key out of them are also clueless. There are a lot of people who think VPNs do things they don't, but that is not what XKCD 538 cautions against.

[DS999]

Re: XKCD 538

Who says Firefox's VPN won't exit in the same country you're using it from? Australia is big enough that they would likely have some endpoints there, and since it is designed for basic privacy not evading a country's laws etc. you may not have a choice about that. It is "free" after all.

[Anonymous Coward]

"adds a free VPN"

On top of the bloat it already has. As if Microslop was paying them to make it as shit as possible. Or Google.

[Dave K]

In the current world of Online Safety Act and other stupid bits of legislation which require you to hand over your ID and security to dodgy third party websites, a VPN is actually far more useful than you think - and I'm not talking about browsing porn!

At present I use two browsers: Vivaldi for normal browsing (where I want to be identified as a UK user for shopping, news and the likes), and Opera because it has built in VPN. I've lost count of how many websites I've visited that are either peppered with "Content not available in your region" overlays because of embedded Imgur pictures (such as Nexus Mods, various forums and the likes), or those that block copious amounts of content because I refuse to sacrifice my own online safety by uploading scans of passports to verify my age (ie, Reddit). Opera with VPN allows those sites to just work normally and in full for me whilst protecting my own "online safety".

Having a simple free VPN in Firefox makes it increasingly viable for those sort of sites as well and is a good thing IMO.

[myhandler]

There's a large artist supplies company in the U.S that rejects any UK access AND any VPN access

No warning message juat 'access denied'. Madness

https://www.michaels.com/

[Excused Boots]

Are you sure it isn’t just a broken website?

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertisers suck

> You don't need to "hide your IP" as many adverts proclaim: nobody cares.

Irony: the data harvesters do care and do consider it a relevant datapoint. Mostly for committing advertising. They have other means to target most people, but it's still useful enough to hoover up.

Anything which blurs client endpoints together makes an advertiser's job harder. Not as effective as other adblocking solutions, not by far, but it's better than nothing...and nothing is the most frequent user response. A checkbox VPN moves the ball forward. How many decades have users been begging Mozilla to ship adblocking by default?

[Tron]

Re: Advertisers suck

Different folk have different priorities. If you live in the UK or Australia, a free VPN saves you a few quid, if it works. They may just get threats from state-backed activists and then be blocked.

Folk on here seem insanely antagonistic to adverts. I don't bother blocking them. Most I no longer see from consistently ignoring them. The only ones that do annoy me are the ones that appear from the base of the screen as they block content. Ultimately, I'd choose globally free access to services over ad-free rules, as there are so many people who would lose access to content if you had to pay for absolutely everything, which is the alternative.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Advertisers suck

Data aharvester do hoard everything, just in case, but if you use a VPN while logged in Google, Facebook, etc. etc. your dynamic IP (or maybe a CG-NAT one) is your last worry.

The real reason to use a VPN is to protect traffic across an untrusted network - even if most traffic today is encrypted, an untrested network can still capture unencrypted one and play man in the middle tricks - I do routinley use VPNs while travelling just the other VPN endpoint is my network, once you use a VPN you have to fully trust the provider, since all your traffic is routed through it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Advertisers suck

> Data aharvester do hoard everything, just in case, but if you use a VPN while logged in Google, Facebook, etc. etc. your dynamic IP (or maybe a CG-NAT one) is your last worry.

Yep. Users need to ditch those persistent logins, too. Though honestly, mobile is the bigger problem, as it gives users far less ability to control adversarial actions. Desktop environments can be configured to avoid advertiser/harvester actions. Mobile platforms really can't, unless the user is willing to forego the smart features or use a niche platform like GrapheneOS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Advertisers suck

When the OS harvests data, there's little you can do. Or if the web browser does it as well - one reason to use Firefox instead of Chrome.

A VPN in such situations can't help you either - when data are tagged using the unique device ID.

You can tunnel the traffic through a network you control able to kill advertising, but keeping a VPN always on on a mobile phone could use more power.

[Luiz Abdala]

VPN is like the Warthog A10. It may look old but it works very well.

Youtube pumping ads to me in Dutch is hilarious. I actually enjoyed the world tour in ads.

The day it pumped me ads in Japanese I learned about 5 new animes that weren't even on Crunchyroll yet!

[Gene Cash]

Re: VPN is like the Warthog A10. It may look old but it works very well.

> The day it pumped me ads in Japanese I learned about 5 new animes that weren't even on Crunchyroll yet!

Ummmm, but isn't that the PURPOSE of advertising??

[Tron]

Re: VPN is like the Warthog A10. It may look old but it works very well.

Well, there's advertising and there's advertising. UK TV now runs endless ads asking for donations for charities supporting a range of hideous diseases that you may eventually die from, and abused animals, and tries to sell you CCTV as crooks are apparently queuing up to raid your house when you go to the shops. It's quite depressing.

Japanese adverts feature shouty characters, shooty robots, young women with balloons for boobs and endless panty flashes. They encourage you to watch animes with titles like 'Does It Count If You Lose Your Virginity to an Android?' and 'Hell Mode: The Hardcore Gamer Dominates in Another World with Garbage Balancing'. Japanese advertising rocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: VPN is like the Warthog A10. It may look old but it works very well.

Sure, it works "very well" for geolocation - until the geolocation database is updated. If you were logged into your Google account, Google still knows everything about you.

And that's like being in A-10 while a Borg cube approaches....

[Luiz Abdala]

Re: VPN is like the Warthog A10. It may look old but it works very well.

I never considered for a second that Google Ads would be thrown off by a VPN, - and they didn't - since I was advertising (ironic choice of words, eh?) my name and credentials, while fully logged in on Chrome.

Working as intended (or not advertised?).

[Tim Chuma]

VPN needs Mozilla account

You have to log in and also only have 50Gb per month on the VPN.

One of the main selling points for VPNs about being to use streaming services from other countries doesn't actually work as they block you if they detect it is on!

Also some websites will not let you access the site outside of the country it is for which is a pain with Apple's Private Relay on various Apple devices.

[ecofeco]

Re: VPN needs Mozilla account

I saw that as well.

VPN account only? Nope.

[Dan 55]

FF Android 149

You can't disable the horrible new menu any more.

It's a giant step back, as if it were inspired by the Windows 8.0 start screen or something.

All it has to be is a simple menu accessible in the bottom right with the most common options near the bottom and less common requiring a swipe. Now there's huge quit bar, less common options require a tap followed by a swipe, the page translate option is buried, you can't do two taps in the same place to get a new tab, and somehow I even miss refresh.

[ecofeco]

Re: FF Android 149

Today's UX designers are all wankers.

Tools, machines. software. All utter shite.

[Dan 55]

Re: FF Android 149

It's a shocking state of affairs. Nobody has a clue how to develop a user interface, either on desktop or mobile, any more. It's like it's a lost art.

I'm wrestling with this new FF menu after they finally took the old one out back and shot it. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? Next up to go will be the toolbar, the new one has a pointless short URL box that barely shows the address.

Insert old man yells at cloud GIF here.

[MJI]

Re: FF Android 149

I find it horrible, so much faffier to use.

And they removed the old menus, started yesterday, WTF. The return to sanity option was missing.

How much did google pay them to make it worse?

Now testing all the other browsers.

Waterfox, sausage UI and that new menu, install uninstall.

Brave, not great UI, gave up after 5 minutes.

Opera, did not gel.

Using DDG for now as it is quite simple and not too painfull.

[Anonymous Coward]

" as if it were inspired by the Windows 8.0"

Actually Windows 8 touch application (Windows and Phone), had the menu exactly at the bottom, with three dots in a circle to access other commands

[Dan 55]

Re: " as if it were inspired by the Windows 8.0"

So does Firefox with the toolbar set to the bottom. It's what happens when you press the menu dots that's the problem.

Refresh is not bottom-right aligned so you can tap the three dots to open the menu but tap again and miss Refresh. Likewise the New Tab button is floating away from the right but New Private Tab isn't, due to the length of the text inside the button. It's a clumsy mess, whereas the previous menu was boring but functional and perhaps the only problem it had was there was no option for a mirror-image left-hand version.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: " as if it were inspired by the Windows 8.0"

It's open source. go and fix it....

[Dan 55]

Re: " as if it were inspired by the Windows 8.0"

Sure, as soon as I get paid.

[J.G.Harston]

"Firefox now contains a free built-in VPN"

So.... soon to be labelled "illegal to use in the UK".

[Rob 15]

Crashfox

It's unusable for me now, it crashes quickly and repeatedly unless I disable Wayland. This started when Firefox did a Wayland optimisation. The bugzilla says it's not their problem. So, I'm forced to abandon.

[MrKrotos]

Menus

"Those three dots are a hamburger menu" nope, thats actually a "Kebab Menu".

Hamburger menu is ≡

[Liam Proven]

Re: Menus

> thats actually a "Kebab Menu".

I honestly can't tell if you're taking the mickey or not.

I like the name, though.

The UI-illiterates at GNOME are producing apps with what a year ago I called "two hamburger menus" now.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/11/ubuntu_2304_new_flavors/

Now I know better: it's a hamburger menu _and_ a kebab menu!

Thank you!

I am reminded of the counsel of a former lodger of mine, Peter. He liked his junky fast food, as do I. He had a guideline for choosing late-night street food: pick a place that only does one kind.

2AM curry or burger or kebab shop? Does it only do curry, or only do burgers, or _only_ do kebabs? Then it might be worth a go.

Does it do burgers _and_ kebabs _and_ pizza? Then avoid at all costs, because they will all be much lower quality. It's the same principle as "jack of all trades, master of none."

So now I know: there are burger menus and there are kebab menus. If your desktop offers both burgers AND kebabs, then it is probably a seriously inferior outlet, best avoided.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Menus

I just Googled this, because the alternative was doing some proper work... I am way too lazy to check if this is AI slop, clickbait or actual info though.

I have come across the hamburger menu, but also 4 others. So according to a couple of sites, the horizontal 3 dot ellipsis is actually a meatballs menu. It only becomes a kebab menu, when the three dots are vertical. 9 square dots, is a bento menu, and for some reason the hamburger menu where the three lines are in a triangle shape, getting shorter as you go down, are actually a doner menu.

Clearly this is why UI's are getting so universally bad. All the world's UI desginers are spending 99% of their time arguing about menu names, and then banging out something with no borders or visual cues of any description with light grey text on a blazing white background.

[notyetanotherid]

Re: Menus

... around here, we call the 9 square dots version the waffle button.

And apparently there is also a two horizontal lines version, known as alt-burger or veggie burger. Why have one menu button style when you can have six?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Menus

> And apparently there is also a two horizontal lines version, known as alt-burger or veggie burger. Why have one menu button style when you can have six?

Users deserve robust menu options.

That waffle button doesn't work for users who need a gluten-free web browser. Hopefully Mozilla's next priority initiative can make Firefox inclusive and accessible for users with all kinds of dietary restrictions.

[keithpeter]

Re: Menus

All these menus...

In about 5 years, someone will think of using various keywords that relate to the group of functions the menu leads to instead of icons for these menus. Then someone else will suggest having a list of the things in each functional group activated when you click on the keyword. Finally, another bright spark will suggest using a key chord related to a letter in each of the menus, say something like Alt-F-N for a new window.

And we will be back where we started.

[Excused Boots]

Re: Menus

Suddenly I feel hungry!

[Aleph0]

Re: Menus

If anything it should be called "dango menu" (DDG image search for dango), at least IMO.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Re: Menus

I'll have one Halal Snack Pack, please, chilli and garlic sauce.

[tiggity]

From the article

"A snag with a DNS-level ad-blocker, though, is that it's not easy to temporarily turn it off, for example, on sites that won't display unless you permit ads"

If a site will not display unless I permit ads then I find a different web site.

.. There's over a hundred million websites out there to pick from, obviously teh more niche you go tehn teh less choice is available.

.. Some of those permit ads problems can be avoided with overlay / element blocking functionality browser plugins / extensions (whatever name you want to use)

[myhandler]

Do any browsers apart from Opera allow you to save a thumbnail from a page when you save a bookmark?

It's incredibly useful if you're looking to buy a car or house and saving the contenders.

(Opera's free VPN is painfully slow)

[Excused Boots]

Just out of idle curiosity, does anyone know if Opera’s (or Firefox’s) ‘VPN’ feature is actually a VPN or a remote web proxy?

[Dan 55]

Both are proxies.