Nice report on FF mods and forks.
To me things like Librewolf and Zen are FF mods, whereas Pale Moon and Basilisk are forks. Mods track the mainstream project, incorporating its updates. Forks say “Goodbye” and go on their own merry way. My 2 centavos.
Got a bunch of these on my computer (FF, mods: Firedragon, Floorp, Librewolf, Zen, ¿Agregore?; fork: Pale Moon) and Zen has been my mainstay since last autumn.
Also tried out a handful of non-FF-related browsers (Dillo, Falkon, Kristall, NetSurf, Servo). Falkon (using it now) seems to be the only one I can really use for proper web browsing. Servo is getting there. Netsurf and DIllo just don’t seem usable with the modern web.
I think I’ll keep Zen as my main web browser, and Pale Moon or Falkon as a lightweight backup or for special purposes (e.g. web radio). And keep an eye on Servo.
if firefox fails, that’s the end of the fork I may or may not use. so I dont use a fork
Firefox started as a fork of the Mozilla browser that was really good in its own right, got rid of bundled stuff people didn’t want from the previous project, gathered user and developer support, and caught on. Why shouldn’t a good fork of Firefox be able to do the same?
my attitude has been that firefox is bad, chrome is worse. our best bets right now are servo and a firefox fork. so i use a fork. i use a fork because i need a daily browser and servo isn’t at all ready. the hope would be that firefox volunteers start working on the fork as they get fed up, and that the current maintainers of the fork continue gaining experience building a good browser as mozilla commits assisted suicide
There is also Ladybird browser that IIRC already has a more complete web standards implementation than Servo despite being a much younger project. Though it’s still far from being ready and performance is really bad. But so far it seems that it’s going to outpace Servo.
So far so good though Shopify being a major sponsor makes me doubt their long term direction.
Iirc the developer proved to be untrustworthy unless things have changed