France is a fallen democracy. It became law after law more authoritarian in an Orban/Poland style. The last move of the government give some ints if the politics are still in power or if it become a police state. For those who aren’t aware of this last move in the country, after nearly killing someone, a cop was preventively put in jail according to the law. Nothing wrong here. But, the police unions voiced this was not acceptable and made proposal so cops could not jailed preventively. The gov just said “we are going to look at the proposal” without rejecting them even if these proposal are against the rule of law and Principe of democracy.
Both of the things you complain about are in discussion, not coded into law. Obviously, we want to oppose such proposals, more dangerous though is the “Child Sexual Abuse Regulation” (Chatkontrolle), a proposed EU law that would bring filters to all of Europe.
Why target the browser for fraud prevention? How about targeting banks? They are the middle man for almost all the online fraud that is happening and would have an relatively easy time to shut it off. Make them liable for all the money that leaves the bank account without the users expressed consent and it wouldn’t take long until they introduce security measures that actually work.
Because France is so authoritarian they can get away with using such a flimsy excuse. The President pushed through the pension age change without letting Parliament vote on it, and nothing happened with that - why should anything happen with this? And even if something does happen, they’re starting a few steps below “think of the children!!” excuse so they’ve pre-emptively low-balled the negotiation.
I have to disagree here. Disclaimer: I work for a bank but not super into the core financial stuff. Firstly, banks are already super heavily regulated; anti money laundering, terrorism financing, know your customer, etc. The reason crypto takes minutes for international transfers and banks can take days isn’t because of technology, it’s all of those checks on fraud happening. All the money leaving a bank account is, barring very advanced fraud, with the user’s consent, but in fraud cases this is often done via social engineering (calling someone to get their codes from their bank card reader, or pretending to be a family member in need).
If you can sideload anything you want, why would that be the case? I don’t think there’s a technical limitation, they just don’t allow it on the app store if it doesn’t use safari.
Oh that’s true, I always thought iOS just didn’t have that capability at all but that makes sense that it would just be blocked at the App Store level.
They can still prevent the JIT from working because the resulting native code would not be signed. That would result in worse JavaScript performance in such browsers, but considering today’s hardware and software optimizations, it may not matter that much in practice.
Yes, but the point of the law is that apps that you install that are not from the official store actually have to work. It even has clauses so that installing stuff from different sources than Apple can’t intentionally be a worse experience than the official app IIRC. That might be just for messaging though.
Well, it's a carry over from its early days in how it used to work. You needed to install things via USB debugger. Generally that's all sideloading ever meant, transferring information from one device to another using a generally "local" method (SD card, USB, etc). Now sideloading, on Android at least (as it retains its original meaning elsewhere), just means not from the official repository.
I just activated Windows 10 on a laptop I bought from ebay, and I was reminded that Microsoft too wants people to view its official store as the default way to obtain software.
One of my goals for this weekend is to set up a dual boot for Linux Mint, which I’ve never done before. I’m fully aware of its limitations, but I’m getting so tired of all this crap.
Yeah, I'm not sure what Microsoft is attempting with S mode. Its just such a half baked concept to me. I'd rather a simplified group policy interface or something if they wanted simplified restrictions.
But yeah, dual booting is a great way to transition. You can also do Windows in a VM, but not sure how licensing works or if you can use an OEM license in there.
It just seems much better for me to set up a dual boot. I know it’s more work, but it’s not like it’s irreversible, and I think it would give me a better experience overall.
There are a few Linux distros I can recommend as someone who started doing this as a little tinker project when I was younger.
Pop_OS! Is a really great basic setup to help usher you into Linux. I installed the KDE desktop environment onto my install because I really like and enjoy the KDE experience. You have plenty of other Ubuntu “flavors” to choose from. I’d recommend giving them all a whirl or look and decide which one you think is the best fit for you.
ElementaryOS is great if you want a semi-MacOS experience but I feel it is perfect for someone who doesn’t want to tinker around too much or for family members to use on their 10 year old laptops/desktops.
I also recommend not fully setting your Linux side up (email, saving documents, etc.) until you get done with your testing different distros out. You’ll be thankful you didn’t go through the full setup process if you decide to try a new distro out. Have fun, and remember it’s all a learning experience. Don’t be afraid to ask for question or look anything up. If you finally find a distro you want to make permanent and remember me, I’d love to hear what you settled on. Have a wonderful rest of your day. And enjoy your newfound freedom! 😌
I finally got Linux Mint set up and joined the forums. First I tried it as a dual boot, but my old laptop never played well with Windows anyway, so I went ahead and did a full install. It’s got a HDD so I don’t feel to concerned about using this as a test machine and overwriting multiple times.
After I use this for a while, I want to try some of your recommendations. Then once I find exactly what I want, I’ll consider what I want to do with my main rig. Some people have warned against dual booting, but it worked just fine for the short time I had it set up like that.
Anyway, I still have your comment saved for reference, so thanks!
I dual boot Pop with KDE and Windows 11 on my laptop while trying to use the Pop side more. I need the Windows side for playing games when traveling so I can’t fully integrate into Linux just yet. No problem at all, and I hope you’ll be able to sudo apt yourself into the perfect distro just for you!
I actually think I’m going to enjoy trying out different versions. The official Linux Mint forums pretty much say no dual boot, go all in, but shhhhh don’t tell them that dual booting actually works just fine lol
I have had some problem with some Distros not appreciating Windows being installed first, and some distros require more hoops to be jumped through to get it working than others, but dual booting is worth it in my use case and therefore is a requirement to even have Linux on the laptop to begin with. I love it to bits, but I bought the laptop to game!
I’ve had people try talking me into using my main rig as a full Linux system, but I think I’d never do anything except dual boot because I appreciate the performance I get for games that don’t support native Linux way too much for that.
If it weren’t for gaming, I’d gladly take the plunge.
I have an old laptop that I’m planning to use to test different versions of Linux so I can get a feel for it. I will let you know if I have questions. I appreciate the kind offer!
Very sad that Firefox does not provide an .ipa file of firefox without webkit. Jailbroken, trollstore and altstore users could benefit of extensions before apple allows sideloading.
now that’s just rose-tinted glasses speaking. I remember how absolutely abysmal old Firefox’ scrolling was, and how they’ve claimed multiple times that they’ve improved it but it was still horribly sluggish compared to Chromium browsers. I’ve been using Firefox Preview (and then Nightly after enough performance improvements have landed on it) for about a year just to have acceptable experience on mobile.
Honestly the one thing I don’t like is how pages constantly refresh when you alt tab (or w/e the equivalent is on Android - swipe tab I guess?). I know it’s a small thing but it just gets at me. I also like the old UI as it was more Firefox-y; the new one is too white and plain.
I do miss the tab bar, it would be great to have it on the tablet. I can’t comment on how differently the browser behaves now regarding storing loaded pages in memory though, because most of the time I’d have an underpowered phone that would kick out everything out of memory when switching apps anyway.
Not an expert but as I've understood it it's pretty similar to Fennec, less tracking and more private than your regular Firefox. I don't know anything about either ones development team size or activity either so I can't recommend one over the other. Hopefully someone with more knowledge can chime in.
It also works on the Fennec branch for people who want a fully stable build that has full addon support, but yeah this is going to open it up to a lot more people, so hopefully more people will use Firefox
That’s just regular Firefox with the addon restrictions and trademarks removed,. That doesn’t just magically spawn API support. I thought you meant the 68.x branch which actually had broad extension support and received one additional update over Firefox 68 because the ESR branch was further updated for a bit: apkmirror.com/…/fennec-f-droid-68-12-0-release/
I was a bit hung up on the term ‘branch’ because in my understanding Fennec F-Droid falls more under patch set. Mozilla used Fennec as code name for Firefox Mobile before the GeckoView migration and I had hoped the old Fennec branch would live on in some shape or form.
Yeah I’m aware of that name’s origins. People use “branch” to describe Waterfox and Mull as well. If you ask about “Fennec branch” in current year, it’s what I’ve linked. Nearly anyone who talks about it is referring to that. Just a heads up.
Its current poor extension support is the reason I’ve been using Kiwi Browser, which is a basic Chromium build with full extension support, including loading from local storage.
Same here. I use custom collections on Fennec F-Droid but the inability to properly sideload keeps me on the auto rebased builds of Kiwi Browser. That and support for the black OLED theme and night mode website retheming built in.
Very glad to see this come to Firefox though! Hopefully they can also get those other bits added in.
At least when using Kiwi in desktop mode (via Samsung DeX), Kiwi doesn’t fill out passwords for me. There also is no interest in supporting Firefox Sync.
but people don’t care about tests, they care only about what’s fast and comfortable for their device. maybe firefox might be a better option for users in the latter once the browser plug-ins come to play.
On my 3 year old budget model android phone, things run fast 99% of the time. I have considered myself a power user for years. Having said all of that, I’ve recently switched from chrome to Firefox on android and it definitely feels not noticeably slower. I don’t doubt you, it’s just that phone hardware has gotten so good that decent software rarely (feels like at least) pushes it to the limit for more than fractions of a second at a time.
it’s just that phone hardware has gotten so good that decent software rarely (feels like at least) pushes it to the limit for more than fractions of a second at a time.
I second this, processing time and network speeds have been getting better over the years. The difference in speed in Chrome and Firefox is a “little” noticeable but that’s why I don’t care and use Fennec as my go to browser everyday. I mean, it’s better than the days where it will take more than 20 seconds to load a page.
Technology has gotten better, all kinds of people have access to the internet these days and use it to learn something, or watch something they like. But it’s kinda sad that big tech companies have started to be greedy and try to either milk them for money or become a monopoly themselves.
Feels exactly the same to me (if not slightly faster due to adblocking). You might just be mistaking familiarity with Chrome for it being tangibly better.
Ive been exclusively using firefox mobile for more than a year but just installed bromite because I had some issues with firefox. Its mostly that scrolling feels smoother, which might just be animation trickery
Hm yeah weird. I tried chrome just to test and the scrolling is definitely slightly different but I don’t think it’s smoother. Just kinda tweaked differently I guess. Haven’t tried bromite tho.
In general what chromium browsers have out of the box in firefox you have to install addons to have that functionality and still it’s worse experience. For example pwa support. Worst thing is that websites and now software only supports chromium.
Literally was just telling my partner how much better browsing is since switching to Firefox on android. The ability to install extensions period is a huge upgrade, but also there are several available that are fantastic and not features available on chrome. Not sure what you mean about needing extensions to match chrome features. In fact, none of the extensions I’ve installed are features present in chrome. Plus I can block ads and trackers, activate dark mode everywhere, and use YouTube for audio with my screen off. I am kicking myself for being lazy. On top of giving Google personal data for no reason, I’ve had a worse browsing experience for years.
If it’s not that feature, it’s likely either memory tuning or battery optimization stuff. Some phone manufacturers set those values to levels that are more aggressive than they really need to be, leading to processes being terminated in the background when they ideally shouldn’t.
It’s funny how some people are willing to use weird android mods that can’t run half of the apps to protect their privacy while others can’t even wait 0.01s longer for a page to load.
Personnaly I do realize that 99.99% of people run stock android/iOS but sometimes forget and am surprised that the same people don’t have any ad blocker.
Which I think is kinda weird decision since they could've just hidden a setting that unlocks all addons in the options. But maybe they were so incompatible at the time that it wasn't worth the headache.
Because there were enough incompatibilities to make it a hassle. But when they were sorting out the Web Manifest v3, they designed it with desktop and mobile in mind, so new extensions won’t have problems.
It makes less sense since extensions actually ran on Android, e.g. via Nightly and creating your own list of exceptions. Also if you downgrade and install in an old Fennec version, extension will continue to function if you then update to the latest.
I think the move was an attempt to create a walled garden. But for whatever reason, they have now decided against it. Thank goodness.
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