this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Privacy
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I've seen a lot of advocating for Waterfox that I believe is a fork of FF without corporate shenanigans.
Don't they have a bunch of security issues gone untouched for over a decade now?
I can't find any source on this (although I didn't look to hard, on mobile)
See here, comment by jerm: https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/waterfox-popular-firefox-fork-but-never-discussed-here/18222/4
It has a list of security bugs.
This list is valid but applies to Firefox, not just Waterfox.
Yeah
Does Waterfox (or any of the other forks people are proposing) have apps for iPad OS and Android, and account syncing to enable bookmarks, extensions, and tabs to transfer between devices?
Firefox for iOS ist based on WebKit like Safari. Mozilla stopped porting Gecko over to iOS years ago as Apple's policy doesn't allow anything other that WebKit browsers. Even Google Chrome on iOS uses WebKit.
I don't actually care what backend engine is used (in fact, I have long argued that Mozilla would be better off maintaining a fork of Chromium, and concentrating their effort on keeping good security and privacy features, rather than duplicating work rendering components and implementing JavaScript methods). I care about how my data is used and about the convenience of the experience with features like syncing. If I use Firefox/Waterfox only on my computers, but Chrome on Android and Safari on iPadOS, I don't get synced tabs and bookmarks.
Independent browser engine developers have a say in how web standards evolve. their influence is limited of course, but they use it to keep web open. Google have long been trying to integrate more "advanced" advertisement and data collection technologies directly in web browsers (including imposing it on non-Chromium browser through "open" web standards).
The moment Google has full control of technologies involved they will do everything in their power to make ad blockers technically impossible (or at least extremely complicated and inefficient) and data collection mandatory, integrated directly in Chromium. And they will do so in such a way that most websites will simply not work on Chromium forks with these "features" disabled, so everyone will be forced to comply.
Waterfox and IronFox are both on Android. I'm not aware of any Firefox forks for iOS, but I've never really looked into it, either. All Firefox forks that I'm aware of are compatible with Firefox Sync. If you don't trust Mozilla's Firefox Sync service (and personally, I think it's fine: being end-to-end encrypted, Mozilla can't see what you have in Sync regardless), you can also self-host your own Firefox Sync server.
Ah thanks for this. That's really good to know. I was a little concerned that syncing your tabs in Firefox might be precisely one of those things that they're talking about with this new update.
Oh, that's really cool! Do they have a Docker image for that? (Or even better, a Synology package?)
Yep, a Docker image, instructions in the readme: https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs#running-via-docker
i just put ironfox on my android, and have librewolf for the desktop.
I don't know but I doubt it, considering they are privacy oriented and it would be counterproductive to have your data shared to some other third party.
Giving this a try now.