I use it because I love how the Gecko engine renders web pages. For some reason, Gecko renders fonts way better than the Chromium engine, that is literally bashing my eyes. There’s something terribly wrong with the Chromium rendering… and I don’t know what it is 😅

That’s awesome! I wish more OS-es follow, especially Debian. Having support for an OS that can cover the whole perceived lifecycle of the hardware is something that was once (in the 2000s) the standard. This is something crucial for businesses, but it’s also great for home users.

Actually… this is the only internet privacy company that I trust. I just hope that they start to deliver new products and apps faster… especially on Android, so that we can de-Google our lives as much as possible.

I recommend Brave when you need a Chromium-based browser. In the Chromium world you will not find anything better than Brave.

Of course, I do not recommend to use Brave as a primary browser… just for these cases when something doesn’t work in hardened Firefox ESR. I stress on hardened, because regular out of the box Firefox is simply not enough. And I stress on the ESR version of Firefox, since it’s an enterprise-grade browser which (once hardened) will serve you well for at least 9 months.

TBH, I am sad that Brave didn’t go without its own controversies and bloat. Still, it remains the only Chromium-based browser that de-Googles soooooo much cr#p in the Chromium code so that you can browse with peace of mind.

Vivaldi is definitely a no-go for me, since it’s not open source. Period. Whatever their marketing department says, being closed source is a red flag. Why? Because they can inject shady stuff even in the UI! “We are not fully open source because someone will steal our work”… hilarious. I bet that’s exactly the same reason why Chome is not open source! Somebody is going to steal Google’s work (irony & laughter).

Probably indeed Vivaldi is safe to use with some settings disabled, but if such a critical piece of software like a browser is not open source, then nobody can verify if some UI elements (like settings) really do anything or not. This problem is especially true for Android (iPhone is waaaay worse) where Google Firebase is lurking everywhere, even when you “disable” some settings in a given app. The only way to be safe there is to use something like Proton VPN or some DNS-based blocklists (they carry their own privacy risk with them tho…) to nuke Firebase on a device level.

Ublock Origin Dark Reader Proton Pass Zotero Betterfox UserJS

I had the same dilemma and I’ve made the switch for one particular reason - my eyes! Chromium font rendering adds some awful blur around each letter and this literally burns my eyes. There might be a way to turn the blur off… IDK.

That said, Brave is an awesome browser. From the Chromium world this is the only thing you can use with peace of mind. Don’t feel guilty or ashamed, or whatever, if you stick with Brave.

Cookies are not evil per se… but data mining companies made them like that.

I’m administrating an online store and cookies are responsible for the customer’s cart, plus their user session / logged in state.

As an admin I adhere to the “golden rule”, thus there are no creepy trackers on store. I don’t like them and I don’t want customers to face the same thing on websites that I manage.

That said, cookies are needed for user session & fraud protection. Instead of nuking cookies we shall kick the trackers out.