Why I'm Switching from Firefox to Ungoogled-Chromium

Short version: Chromium is significantly more secure, hardened, and sandboxed. Firefox is yet another method of google spying, seeing as how Mozilla is 95% funded by Google, all the telemetry/traffic that goes straight to Mozilla servers. For those that haven't noticed, Mozilla has become more concerned with social agendas than putting out a solid product. They consantly re-arrange, bury, and remove functionality that users want, while failing to implement important security upgrades.

The last straw really should've been when they let a key expire a couple years ago and murdered everyone's addons, but I let them continue to abuse me (despite trying to rely on Falkon as much as possible). But Falkon doesn't work for a number of sites, and I'm not sure how secure or hardened it really is. I just enjoyed that at least they didn't seem to have social agendas, and put out a simple, functional product.

I'm actually not sure why it took me this long to figure it out. For example, GrapheneOS has an article describing why Chromium is the most secure web browser available; this being why they forked it into Vandium - which is the degoogled and hardened browser included with GrapheneOS (another product I highly recommend for the security conscious, and one I highly trust).

There was a time where we couldn't be quite sure if ungoogled-chromium would survive or keep up, but over the years has continued putting out a quality product, and appears to use resources like Vandium to aid with their own releases.

So finally the last straw was last night, trying to integrate my USB microphone into a jailed browser. Falkon Browser was fine and without a hitch (like it tends to be, simple and reliable). But I couldn't tinker or find a way to get FF to recognize the mic. I tried anything I could find (yes I added oss to media.cubeb.backend - something you shouldn't have to do anyways). Ungoogled-chromium; however, sound and microphone functioned immediately with no extra inputs.

I'll leave you with an article discussing in detail all of the reasons why Chromium is a signifcantly more secure browser than Firefox, and it's not even close. https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
 
This should be in offtopic, I guess, or better yet in your personal blog.
No, it belongs right here. New people coming to FreeBSD come to this forum to read opinions, perspective, and discussion of various ports and packages. And for anyone running FreeBSD as a desktop, choosing a browser is an important decision.

If you have a difference of perspective or reasoning, then rather than being dismissive, you could share that perspective.
 
One of the best lines from the movie Roadhouse:
Opinions Vary.

The other?
Pain don't hurt.

Having looked at code for Chromium and other stuff, gets interesting trying to prove something is ungoogled.
 
It has absolutely nothing to do with "installation and maintenance of ports or packages", and only serves as a bait for heated discussion (or what shkhln said above ;)).
The analysis and decision of which internet browser port or pkg to install has nothing to do with the installation of ports or packages.

It's not uncommon for people to doublespeak and reverse the meaning of language, but you win this week's award.

If this was a discussion of just about any other comparable ports or pkg ; or if I was simply asking an open ended question of which browser to use, guarantee you wouldn't have said anything or thought it inappropriate.

EDIT: Should this have just been posted in the general forum? That, I could understand.
 
"Why I am doing this" or "Why I am not doing that" is the kind of title that implies a personal opinion you want to discuss about, the Off-topic section looks like more appropriate in this case IMO.
Do not involve newbies (myself included) in this, they didn't ask anything :)
 
"Why I am doing this" or "Why I am not doing that" is the kind of title that implies a personal opinion you want to discuss about, the Off-topic section looks like more appropriate in this case IMO.
Do not involve newbies (myself included) in this, they didn't ask anything :)
Then just move along and feel free not to say anything. I provided sources which discuss the technical reasons for my perspective. Looks like you're just parroting what others have said anyways.

ffs, literally only one or maybe two people here have contributed anything worthwhile to this discussion. The rest of you, for shame. Just go away. Seriously. If you have nothing useful to contribute, just stay silent.

Maybe if even a single one of you detractors could've helped me with THIS valid question/problem:


... maybe I wouldn't have posted this thread at all. So again, yes, this is about the usefulness of a particular pkg/port, and the technical problems with Firefox on FreeBSD, and why ungoogled-chromium might be a better choice for the "installation of a port or package."
 
So the linked article in the OP talks about all these things "Google has done to Chromium". Would not an "ungoogled chromium" imply removal some or all of these?

If one has not ever looked at source code for Chrome/Chromium, look before you say it's ungoogled.
 
So the linked article in the OP talks about all these things "Google has done to Chromium". Would not an "ungoogled chromium" imply removal some or all of these?

If one has not ever looked at source code for Chrome/Chromium, look before you say it's ungoogled.
I never said that Chrome or Chromium were ungoogled. Google was in fact the company that created them. They send data and telemetry back to google servers, among other privacy reducing features.

But since Chromium is open source, people have made a number of forks that remove these features (forks like: ungoogled-chromium, Vandium, and Iridium). You can verify that calls aren't made back to Google servers, with something like tcpdump or Wireshark.

Bit of an odd comment. Ironically, it seems like you're not even aware that parts of Chrome are closed source, so you couldn't examine them anyways.
 
Having audio issues with firefox might actually have to do with the way it's compiled and packaged. At least on my end, I believe it runs over pulseaudio whereas chromium works over sndio.

I do admit, there's some personal opinion mixed into all of this though, because my experience is having better audio with Firefox than with Chromium. Latter is causing me to turn into a "robot voice" in Teams meetings now and then, so YMMV.

(I swear, I'm not a robot.)
 
Wait. You allow a web browser unrestricted access the the web?!

Now there's some insight that raises my curiosity.

Apart from going over a proxy and white listing domains, how do you monitor your web browser traffic? I mean, it might be generally ok, to allow it to go to mozilla.org but at the same time this could open you up to send telemetry without your knowledge.

Anyone browsing over wireshark yet? :)

Jokes aside, curious whether anyone got something that covers this? Sorry, if this counts as hijacking the thread. I'm happy to get evicted into a separate thread if a moderator is not liking it.
 
This exactly what I thought when I read your post.
You do not know how to ask for help, so you are complaining about the consequences of your initial problem, what's you want is getting attention :
So finally the last straw was last night, trying to integrate my USB microphone into a jailed browser. Falkon Browser was fine and without a hitch (like it tends to be, simple and reliable). But I couldn't tinker or find a way to get FF to recognize the mic. I tried anything I could find (yes I added oss to media.cubeb.backend - something you shouldn't have to do anyways). Ungoogled-chromium; however, sound and microphone functioned immediately with no extra inputs.

ffs, literally only ONE person here has contributed anything worthwhile to this discussion, about compile times.

The rest of you, shame. Just go away.

Sorry if I can't contribute but even if I could I would not do it because of your childish attitude, you are complaining and ranting just because you can't make it work. Final touch you roast people who do not share your opinion, classic.
I am sure with a working mic this thread would not even exist, it's not about Firefox "being bad" it's about your mic not working in Firefox, that's a lot different.
 
Jokes aside, curious whether anyone got something that covers this?
Heh. Honestly with browsers these days; the only safe bet is to keep them offline. Even a strict proxy (SOCKS5h or HTTP) doesn't protect you from threats within the browser itself. Firefox and Chrome are just as scummy as one another.

Either running them in a jail or in a VM that resets often is probably the best bet to at least prevent the crooks involved from building a "profitable" profile of you.

Through wireshark, they both light up like a christmas tree. When restricted to a proxy, they are perhaps a little more bearable.
 
This exactly what I thought when I read your post.
You do not know how to ask for help, so you are complaining about the consequences of your initial problem, what's you want is getting attention :




Sorry if I can't contribute but even if I could I would not do it because of your childish attitude, you are complaining and ranting just because you can't make it work. Final touch you roast people who do not share your opinion, classic.
I am sure with a working mic this thread would not even exist, it's not about Firefox "being bad" it's about your mic not working in Firefox, that's a lot different.

Weirdos like yourself turn what should be a technical discussion ... (in which it's *OKAY* to have some kind of opinion and experience) ... you turn it into a pissing match. I asked for help last night, and although no one owes me help, it disproves your assertion that I don't know how to ask.

Furthermore, I'am actually pretty amicable guy. I wrote a guide on how to send your webcam and microphone to a jail for use by the browser. This guide has been referenced by others.

I wasn't here to ask for help today. I was here to put some small amount of information about my personal preference, and why I'm switching. It has been a long time coming, as Firefox has not been a great solution for a long time.

And yes, I wouldn't have switched yesterday if this one issue didn't re-ignite my search for an alternative solution. A couple years ago I passed on ungoogled-chromium because I was worried they might not keep up, and I didn't have enough info to really make an informed switch away from Firefox.

Well now I believe I do. I included sources in my reasoning from experts far smarter than yourself.

Last, I didn't "roast" anyone, except to criticize the people who came here to contribute absolutely nothing to a technical discussion, but just came to open their fat mouths. It's *OKAY* if you disagree with me. Just explain *WHY* you disagree, and if possible provide sources.

But no. Apparently you're exactly the kind of person looking to cause a problem, and only contributed to noise in what I hoped could be an interesting discussion.
 
Either running them in a jail or in a VM that resets often is probably the best bet to at least prevent the crooks involved from building a "profitable" profile of you.
That's what I do for daily/random browsing. I have a disposable jail which is zfs cloned from a template, and when the jail shuts down, the clone is destroyed and re-created. So a new FF profile is created every time.

Either that, or I use separate jails for separate activities. For example, TradingView gets its own jail, with almost no other websites loaded in that FF instance.
 
How much of the Chromium sandboxing is actually done in the FreeBSD port?

(of course you could also use Linux Chrome, which presumably has all of it)
 
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