Linux Web browser

I am currently using Arch Linux and have been hopping distributions for a while but have had settled on the base Linux that I wanted which was arch, this is due to the arch user repository and the availability of documentations to troubleshoot many common problems faced.

The desktop environment that i have settled on after changing for a while is KDE Plasma. I have had used Gnome and like it’s interface and tweak extensions for it but the main problem i faced with gnome was the constant breakage of the extensions and workflow with every major update. This requires me to spend time again to troubleshoot and work out the kinks every now and then on the contrary KDE Plasma is very stable and the extensions work as intended even though the release of new extensions are not comparable with gnome extension.

Through out the journey of exploring Linux I have experimented with many browsers but they all fall into the category of either gecko or chromium based browser for the majority part, as these two browser engines have the most compatibility when interacting with the web and chromium winning over gecko by a bit. But the advantage of website compatibility can mostly be just overcome by changing the user agent for the most part.

Firefox

Firefox is opensource but by default it isn’t very privacy friendly but with a few tweaks it is privacy respecting. The big plus of Firefox is that it isn’t owned by google.

Librewolf

Librewolf is modified version of firefox but it is heavily modified to respect privacy hence it might break some websites also for those using KDE Plasma and want to integrate librewolf with the KDE connect, tough luck this is because the librewolf is sandboxed by default and won’t let it interact with other applications in the system.

Firedragon

Firedragon is the best of Firefox and Librewolf , it aims to be be privacy respecting with good compatibility. Firedragon out of the box has best compatibility because it spoofs the user agent by making the websites think that it is a windows machine hence many DRM based websites like iqiyi, wetv which normally won’t work on linux will work. Firedragon is maintained by developers of Garuda linux and is shipped as a default browser in it.

Ungoogled-chromium

Ungoogled chromium is the privacy respecting versions of chromium which has many google components removed out of it. There is also a main problem with Ungoogled chromium which is the compiling of it takes a long time unless you obtain the binary version from the Arch user repository. The removal of google components also breaks some google websites as they don’t interact as expected due to the removal of google related code from the browser. The main website which i have noticed to break was the google sheets, docs and slides.

Brave

Many might be wondering as to why I left brave until the end, the main reason is while the brave browser doesn’t have many tracking related code it also makes me iffy to use the browser especially with also the crypto wallet and earning of crypto currencies while browsing the web. The brave search engine also needs to improve but the results are already far more relevant than when searching from Duckduckgo.

Vivaldi

Vivaldi browser tries to be the jack of all trade it has a built-in note taking tool and even a fully featured email client. While Vivaldi claims to be privacy respecting it also peddles some adware especially on its new tab page. The main reason I feel iffy using Vivaldi is that it is closed source. Other than that, Vivaldi is one of best fully featured browsers out there which works quite well on Linux.

My recommendation

After hopping browsers for a while i have settled on Firedragon as it has openSUSE KDE patches integrated in it hence works the best for plasma environment out of the box. It also has the best compatibility out of all the privacy respecting browsers i have used.

Browser owned by search engines

Google chrome : owned by google
Microsoft edge : owned by Microsoft hard to opt out of advertising, the browser has a advertising id attached to it making harder to make it privacy respecting.
Yandex browser: owned by Yandex and a user interface is a bit unwieldy to use
Whale browser: owned by Naver