1y ago

What chromium based browser do you recommend and why?

I use Firefox as my daily driver but sometimes sites just work better on a chromium based browser. I had been using Brave but it seems like they keep adding on more bloat (crypto, VPN, AI) and I'm over it.

What chromium based browser would you recommend and why?

44 comments

Put in another vote for Vivaldi. It's definitely lightweight. I've got an older server I keep around (for YAR HAR FIDDLE DEE-DEE purposes) and Vivaldi's the Chromium-based browser that works best on it.
That said, the default browser I use on that thing is Waterfox Classic. Vivaldi's lightweight, but it's not as light as that.
Another note: a few years ago I would've actually been able to recommend Edge because to my surprise it actually worked pretty damn well, especially if you were trying to get sites to get Windows-oriented web-apps to function correctly on Linux. Unfortunately they've since pushed several changes that have made it truly obnoxious. Big fat memory hog that tries to load "recommended" content in the background and won't stop sending to/receiving from sites even after you close the window/tab.
- I also have a server for Linux ISOs. You can never have too many ISOs.
  
  You can never have too many ISOs.
  Much like how you can never have too much cilantro.

If you want to torture yourself like any good Linux user, you get Ungoogled Chromium.
- I have been using ungoogled chromium for a while. I don't exactly get what you mean by torture.
  
  Adding plugins feels like you’re hacking the matrix’s mainframe

none. chromium is a google (-endorsed) product, who put their own little tracking tidbits into the chromium project. if you still want to use a chromium-based browser, i have two 'suggestions':
brave. renowned in the privacy community but has had a few suspicious moments, and honestly i just don't trust their whole big-tech thing they got going on.
ungoogled-chromium. basically just the chromium browser but without the google shit in it. no extra privacy-advancing features as far as i'm aware though, and extensions don't seem to work.
now if you really want a good browser, go for either of the following firefox-like browsers:
firefox with arkenfox user.js. firefox as you know and love it, with the arkenfox privacy tinkering. i haven't tested it and its apparently a bit difficult to install and configure, but i've heard its really helpful with privacy.
librewolf. a privacy-first firefox fork developed by an independent developer and contributors, no big-tech bullshit. my personal daily driver.
anyway, sorry for the rant, but there u go.

Which sites work better in Chrome? I'm forced to use the Google suite at work, and I do everything within Firefox. Even sites that insist they only work in Chrome have always worked for me merely by switching the user-agent header
- Yes I am very interested to know which websites don't work.
  
  I had issues with what my work use for online training with Firefox, not often, but occasionally a module will just break. I just use edge in those cases, given its basically chrome anyway.
  
  The website i work on has some pages that absolutely don’t work on Firefox. I know this because I often have to switch to chrome to see if the code is broke or the browser isn’t rendering correctly.

Honestly none of them. You can have my firefox when you pry it from my cold, dead, hands.
- Agreed, comrade. We shall defend firefox and Ublock Origin to the very fucking end.
- That's not what they asked though, they're already using Firefox and they don't intend to drop it
  
  Personally I'm fine with sites not working as well (OP's issue). If nothing else, I'm incredibly stubborn, so I'd even suffer slow loading and performance that resembles the early 90s if means I don't have to use anything chromium.
  
  Yeah, but they said some sites work with Chrome, but not Firefox? I'm sure there are some sites (that I presume are badly-coded), but I haven't encountered any notable examples.

Firefox

Arc (Mac-only for now) is pretty great and has been my daily driver for a while now. Lots of great quality-of-life improvements, a great approach to tab management, and new optional AI features that are useful instead of annoying.
- Not open source and last I checked you had to sign in to use it. Can’t imagine why people would use it.
  
  I carefully hid some of the reasons I use it in the parent comment

Thorium, because its fast, lightweight and open-source.
- Fast? I wonder which security features they cut out of it.

I switched from Firefox to Vivaldi last year and never regretted it. I like the ad blocking that it has as standard and the uBlock origin plugin makes it 99% perfect. It's pretty light weight and the tab stacks work good. No clue if those stacks are chromium or vivaldi, but they work.

I don't use one but I did watch a YouTube video yesterday praising one called thorium. I might give it a try myself out of curiosity.

I switched to Thorium browser, seems pretty good. There's also Tempest Browser which is still in Beta, but is a bit like Brave but without the Crypto and some other features. I recommend Thorium, tbh. Seems to work well and has a lot of performance patches added, as well as security. More here: https://youtu.be/naDYUVFs1-8?si=eC1CtA4q-oF1L8ix

For chromium, brave, though I'd just stick to Firefox it I were you

Just native Chromium, or if you don't want any Google stuff, Ungoogled Chromium. They both use the same UI as Google Chrome. I recommend these because they have no such bloat, and if you want a chromium-based browser for rare usage, it does it's thing.
On an unrelated note, I use GNOME Web on Linux and Safari on macOS (they are both based on WebKit). GNOME Web has some problems, but I can't give up the animation of two finger scrolling between pages and smooth scrolling on touchpad. I use Firefox as a fallback browser on Linux, because I have never really needed something that is specifically Chromium.

Vivaldi. Why? Highly cuztomizable.
Though slower than other chromium based browsers.
- Sounds unsuitable then
  It's just as a fallback in case a site isn't tested on firefox and uses some obscure & nonstandard API, so customisable doesn't matter.
  
  Ungoogled Chromium then.
- This, and maybe even opera?

chromium

I don't use chromium, did not test currently.
But I just saw a video about a chromium browser : Thorium.
It's chromium but with many hardware acceleration, speed, and compatibility enhancements coming from multiple sources and from the guy developing it on github, making it very fast and nicer to use than default chromium.
It has Google sync, so it's not ungoogled, but it has way less bload and more privacy than chrome.
https://youtu.be/naDYUVFs1-8?si=Rd6Un0OKANEQHktH
The link to the browser website : https://thorium.rocks/
- I’m gonna test this out for a couple of weeks. Thanks for letting me know about it!

I just use Chromium and go through all settings once to disable every function that isn't "show me the website behind the URL I just typed". Then I install ublock and switch the default search engine to Qwant.
- I do the same thing as well. I still can't determine the difference between unGoogled Chromium and Chromium, but my assumption is that chromium is closer to unGoogle Chromium than Chrome, and just require some of the default settings to be adjusted...
  
  I just tried out Ungoogled. It doesn't let you choose Google as search engine, doesn't come out of the box with the ability to install extensions (which depends on Google's Chrome Web Store), is missing some options that use Google's servers if activated, is stripped of all Google design elements (which gives it a very minimalistic look), and has very privacy-oriented defaults.
  Which makes it pretty jarring that there's still a "Google and me" tab in the settings that contains almost no options because everything Google-related was removed.

I'm in the same boat!

I use Chrome! It’s nice how it syncs with my Google profile.
If I need 2 browsers for some reason, I also use Edge.
- lmao

Just disable the crap and keep using Brave.

44 comments