first written: 19:29est <2025-07-29 Tue>
Browsers are a weird deal. As pieces of software, they're very vague. In time the scope of browsers has crept and crept until they have become their own little operating systems. In the sameway that Emacs isn't a text editor but a lisp interpreter, browsers have really become Javascript interpreters. A lot people use Javascript as a pejorative, and while I feel like there is a lot of valid derision cast its' way, it simply is the reality we live in. Because web browsers have become just that, in my opinion there really hasn't been a big distinction in which web browser you use. Whether its Chrome, OperaGX if you like the taste of crayons, Firefox, or Brave if you think the age of consent is too high.
I have been a life long Mozilla Firefox user. Not because I super love Mozilla (which I do) or really even a dedication to open source software. Like a lot of things in life I just use it because my dad told me to use it. Starting way back when he built me my first computer in 2005.
I had a brief rebellious phase where I used Vivaldi, it was fine. But it felt a little too cutesy and when I came across a problem with an extension I just came back home to Firefox.
Sane minds for tech news probably use [hacker new] for finding technology discussion and while its a great site, I spend more time on 4channel's /g/ board. Partially because of self loathing, but also because of an early habit who's comfort is too strongly ingrained to change. A frequent topic on /g/ are browsers and usually how much Mozilla sucks because woke or something. Because of this contrarianism there has bred a brood of canonical web browsers. They come in many flavors:
- Completely built from the ground up: cool but unusuable
- see Nyxt or QuteBrowser
- Chrome reskin.
- Webkit based browsers.
- I have never been able to compile one of these.
- Firefox but with some about:config flags changed.
- Palemoon users stay winning, I love you all.
This last category I despise more than any other. Because it lays bare what these complainers actually care about: which is to say basically nothing. [LibreWolf] is a project that has become modestly popular among software contrarians and is frequently the subject of virtue signalling on sites where you find those software contrarians home. LibreWolf is a fork of firefox with some minor tweaks that include but are not exclusive to:
- Removing google as a one of the built in search engines.
- Including the popular ad block add-on uBlock origin.
- Using Firefox's "strict" privacy mode.
It also claims to always be fast to update because it builds off of the latest Firefox stable. Which is earnestly a good policy, but I think shows some of the inherent laziness. There's not anything novel about compiling with some flags and shipping it as a brand new flavor of Firefox. I will say I do appreciate that on LibreWolf's website that they do call it "A custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom.". Because it isn't even really hiding that its just a few settings switched.
Also as anyone who's used the strict privacy mode can tell you it's not a great browsing experiance.
I just think distros of Firefox are a little silly. If you like the defaults it makes sense, but everyone should know that there isn't anything special about the ingredients of Librewolf. Its just arranged in a different way, which I think isn't conveyed in the way that it is discussed as Firefox but good. All the minute changes can be made in "about:config" or just the settings page. And I get it, if you don't want to set it up yourself thats fine, but I feel like it's natural that as people have used browsers all their lives that you will have already configured your browser incrementally through the years to have achieved your desired outcomes.
# So... Waterfox.
Waterfox has existed on my radar for a long time. It first grew a user base as a fork of Firefox for x64 architecture when that was cutting edge. To me it was just a clone of firefox, before there were like 90 of those. One of my close friends Maddie actually has used Waterfox for quite a while which was the main portal from which I heard about it beyond the little I knew from way back. I never was particularly interested in using it, all of the changes seemed minor...
But one day, I was really bored. I shouldn't have been, because I had a lot of stuff to do. But I was. So while scrolling /g/ I saw it mentioned in a thread. The post was as tedious as any post about browser is. Something about how it wasn't made by multiple minorities that this poster didn't care for. Which as I write this makes me feel guilty that this post reminding me of its' existence is what got me to try it. Prejudices existing or not aside I decided to give it a try.
## Getting
Installing on Debian was a bit of a hassle. I was a little shocked to find Waterfox absent from Debian's repositories, because I felt like it was up Debian's maintainers' alley. But it's understandable they don't want to maintain 20 frivolous flavors of the same package. Yet they still carry gnu-icecat which is a little bit silly I think (<--- gnu hater). But I am no stranger to compiling usually slightly older versions of software for Debian, so I went out to find the source. Reading the build instructions I found that it would be tedious as I would need to delete files to make space for the whole 40gbs specified in the requirements in the build instructions. I also got the hint by the system specs that my laptop was probably going to need a long while to actually build this thing. Man, browsers are big :O (who knew?)
Regardless to say that while it wasn't hard. But if you value using only software from the Debian repos for convenience and guarantee of reliable security updates, perhaps this venture isn't for you. Which is fair, to be honest if I hadn't already written up a lot for this experiment I wouldn't of bothered setting this up.
## So this isn't maintained by Mozilla?
Something to consider about Waterfox meta-contextually is that it is a firmly community driven project. Firefox is project closely maintained by a massive enterprise, that is questionably not profit driven. Which means Mozilla's reputation is heavily tied to Firefox, and without a standing reputation Mozilla's developers will be out of a job. Which is to say that Mozilla has a very closely tied incentive to making sure Firefox is on the up and up. This notion may sound offensive to anyone familiar with Mozilla's history of big ugly mistakes, but I think if you can not be such a hater this should intuitively feel true.
This point isn't meant to discredit Waterfox's developers either. Emilio, Rvandermulen, Glandium, and all of the other contributors have seemingly done great work. But the nature of being held together by a bunch of individuals with no finite incentive can be prone to malicious actors. Again nothing about this makes Firefox invincible or even great at this job. But it is something a major enterprise is a little better equipped to deal with. Not just because legally binding incentives/punative abilities but also they have the scale to more closely monitor commits. I mean they have so much staff apparently that they can waste time fingering the TOS so that morons like Bryan Lunduke can freak the fuck out for no reason and him and his ilk can spam 300 videos that are factually wrong.
Getting back to the point. I just wanted to highlight the contrast in the two structures present in the projects. There are different virtues inherent to trust, and which ever you value should make your preference between the two pretty clear.
# About Waterfox.
As this text grows longer I felt like it would be kind to write a briefer take away; TL;DR for the piece right here. So here is the:
## THE BOTTOM LINE:
Waterfox is pretty sensible... and I will use it for the foreseeable future.
I give it 3.8 Monjar's out of 5.
Importing cookies, bookmarks, and history from Firefox to Waterfox seems a bit sketchy, I have forgone it. Partially because I didn't want to finagle with the process, but I thought that the act of setting this stuff up manually is a valuable experience to detail. It is a little humorous though, because I think the group most likely to try Waterfox are people moving from Firefox. This blind spot is courtesy of borrowing the setup wizard of Firefox which naturally doesn't offer importing data from itself.
If you want to do it yourself, you need to find your profile folder and move it to Waterfox. Make sure to make a back up of your first profile because from reading it seems like there some expected breakage.
## "Security"
Security is such a nebulous thing, especially pertaining to browser. Mostly because most security is in the hands of the person holding this metaphorical hammer. But despite its hard to pin down nature I think to those concerned about their data Waterfox is a fine venue to place it. Waterfox doesn't have any telemetry to turn off. Waterfox also uses oblivious DNS, which is a means of obfuscating traffic from your ISP that isn't already covered by HTTPS. It's a strange feature because it does so little, but also if you use 1.1.1.1 as your DNS like some already have you should already have this feature naturally.
## Workflow
I make ample use of two firefox features: its snapshot feature and picture in picture, both work out of the box. Which is a relief because I had actually tried Waterfox once before and Picture in Picture was not yet brought into Waterfox's stable branch. Picture in Picture is killer for me as I only use one monitor. Which I should maybe write about later, because I think it is the way to go. As far as I can tell Waterfox is at feature parity with Firefox now.
### Add-ons
I had no problems with the Add-ons; they all worked perfectly on this platform. Add-ons are seemingly the main way that people customize their browsers and comfortably none of my extensions fell into any compability issues. which makes sense because its largely the same codebase. But it should be said that there are some Add-ons that I saw while scrolling Mozilla's Add-ons page that were not compatible. You may wish to check that out first if you try Waterfox out.
I usually don't like using Add-ons in general. So Itry to not use more than 3 for Firefox. At the point of doing this trial I actually did use 4.
- uBlock Origin
- Dark Reader
- h264ify
- Bitwarden
Also as a note I have been using Firefox Extended Support Release. So I may have missed some bleeding edge ff features that Waterfox isn't yet at parity.
# Peter... the Cloudflare is here.
Isn't there someone you're forgetting to ask?
Perhaps if you've used a browser that isn't FF or Chrome you've come across this problem before. But Cloudflare doesn't like it when you use something that isn't those main two. Pretty early into this experiment I found a big roadblock when visiting some sites I regularly check: I landed on a page telling me I was blocked.
I couldn't access:
- moxfield.com
- mobygames.com
- apnews.com
- bbc.com
This wasn't a complete shock, I actually have been blocked by Cloudflare before. I thought it would be as simple as changing my user agent, but Waterfox doesn't actually have a unique user agent. I am not quite sure how I was flagged and as I write this I have actually been un-filtered and can use those sites. Frustratingly it seems like its something dependent on the fickle wim of Cloudflare as if you look up this issue you will find countless accounts of this happening through the years.
While this isn't the fault of Waterfox or its' maintainers it is something you should know that you will have to face if you want to switch and there isn't a solution for it. It's just whenever Cloudflare arbitrarily decides to let you back in ): .
# Conclusion
I dont think there's a particular reason to swtich from Firefox. Waterfox boasts some performance increases, but there either illusory or so minor that I didn't notice. The main reason I am sticking with it is that it's made for me. While it will inherit some baby things from Firefox, I enjoy that the settings page is full of little tweaks about stuff I care about.
This trial started because I was bored. If you're bored try it.
But Firefox is fine. No matter
how many times people freak the fuck out over a misinterpretation of
some sort of Mozilla TOS, Firefox is fine and probably won't die.
