It's a private compnay, they don't have to follow shareholders so it explains it

"wants"

it's chromium, it uses ai. i think this guy wants to do marketing

• Microsoft enters the chat

I'm on librewolf just now having used vivaldi for about three years as my daily. Great browser, I just fancied swapping the chromium problems for gecko problems for a while :D

And for people like me with a problem closing tabs, the memory management is excellent, killing off anything that hasn't been used in a while.

It's my secondary browser. Pretty much just for HDR on YouTube. Firefox still can't do it.

Yeah, it's a good Chromium browser. I used it for a few years before switching to Firefox browsers. If you have to use Chromium, I'd recommend it. If you can though Firefox has been far more enjoyable (I'm using Zen currently).

Idk about not resource intensive but it does browser things happily.

It's good for work when a woork-related website won't accept a Gecko-based browser.

I hate the fact that it's so hard to buy an android phone without it coming with a load of proprietary apps that I can't remove. If I want their casino shit, their stupid health apps, whatever - I'll download it myself. Being unable to uninstall it really pisses me off. I'm pretty sure it's practically malware. And the AI shit is just as bad - phone I'm on now came with at least 3 different AI apps for whatever. I did actually manage to remove two, but they keep trying to reinstall, could be hiding behind my launcher. And I bought this phone 2 years ago, I can only imagine it's even harder to get away from these days.

Maybe I'm out of touch, but I think most people just want an operating system and the opportunity to install what they want on it.

If you really need Chromium ... just use Chromium?

I'm using it for stuff that doesn't work without Chromium (like a translation tool that doesn't break SPA forms) but yeah not being able to use my custom adblockers concerns me.

Waterfox is better, it’s open source, not based on chromium and has a split DNS resolution path through their own servers and cloudlfare. A few tweaks in about:config and it’s by far the best option out there.

Hell, I'd use it if it wasn't Chromium.

A traditional past time of the internet.

The UI layer is the only part that's closed source. Vivaldi's UI is also one of the main reasons people use it.

I, too, would use Vivaldi if it wasn't Vivaldi.

Isn't Vivaldi largely open source?

I was an Opera user for a decade. I think their designers left to start Vivaldi.

opera died for me when it abandoned it's own engine

I’m the inverse. The amount of customization and power user features are what makes it my daily driver, though I agree the reliance on Google isn’t good. Also having their sync data stored e2e encrypted with my own private key is a nice touch. Though if a heavily customizable fork of Firefox with features like that was available I’d likely switch. I don’t have the time to maintain a highly customized userchrome.css that could break with every update, unfortunately

just as "most users" don't want ai baked into their browser, "most users" probably don't use any addons, or use only one--an adblocker. ad blocking (with configurable filter lists) is built into vivaldi already, no separate addon needed. works well-enough.

that said, the chromium base and its dependency on google to provide the 'addon store' is vivaldi's main detractor, because google has been putting the screws to anything that threatens their business as a data harvesting advertising company.

vivaldi does have some features not found in other browsers or other chromium browsers (excepting some in common with opera). the one i appreciate the most is the configurable toolbars, both items and their positions.. similar to how you can configure firefox's main toolbar.

i do occasionally need a chromium browser for specific tasks. vivaldi is the one i use. usually as a 'portable' installation that is easiest to trash when i'm done. it's also the one i use for a couple streaming sites because it does use chrome addons (but also is not chrome, either).

They have improved the UI quite a lot recently imo.

Some of us are stuck with Firefox despite their interestingly bad choices and historical lack of fulfilling promises on their own behalf. There are still key advantages with Firefox than most browsers.

That's why I use Librewolf/Ironfox on my laptop/phone. All the benefits of Firefox and none of the half-baked promises or bad decisions!

I feel like I could have written this comment word for word. But luckily you already did so now I only have to write this short one.

got rid of it after i realised its more work to disable every new feature that just gets in the way.

That being, it relies on the Chrome Web Store to install extensions. If Google themselves decided not to have something on that store and you’re using it on Vivaldi, well you’re SOL.

Note you can sideload extensions essentially. Google's been fine afaik, but if they did suddenly go crazy it wouldn't be that hard for Vivaldi and other chromium browsers to run their own store.