Comment by VerdisQuo5678
5 days ago
I dont understand the needed distinction between "chromium" and "non-chromium" browsers, thyre just web engines and ultimately technical details. Although chromium having significantly more compatibility (or chrome features that websites use) the average consumer will be using websites that keep strict accordance with webstandards to support safari. For technical users its another story but for the average user the web engine of your browser doesnt matter, just the shell around it, so I find it quite silly the notion we need X browser and also an X chromium browser
Some people think it’s important to support more browser diversity by not using chromium-based browsers. Some people also think that it’s bad to use pretty much anything produced by Google. Plenty of reasons to want non-chromium browsers
For me personally, it comes down to diversity. If all other browser engines "go under" and we are only left with Chromium, websites can only be built for 1 browser. Although Chromium is a great engine (evidenced by how many browsers are built on top of it and how widely the underlying Chromium engine has been embraced), it's not without quirks, bugs, flaws, and vulnerabilities.
Firefox is built from the ground up in a different way from Chromium, with its own set of bugs, quirks, flaws, and vulnerabilities. There may be some overlap, but having entirely different architectures means we keep pushing the compatibility envelope, we get "copycat" features, where one engine does something great and the other implements it in a way that works with their own engine, etc.
It's just better to have more than 1 browser engine around. I wish it wasn't so difficult to start a new engine from scratch today, the sheer amount of features a web browser must have to get people to even consider reading your About page, and the overwhelming complexity of modern webstacks, mean you basically have to be grandfathered in as a browser that's been around for decades and has a huge amount of community support.
I am aware of alternative browsers, Arc and the like. I'm very happy to see someone seriously go after an entirely new browser engine that's not Gecko or Chromium, and the traction they're gaining while not being "fully featured" sort of sums up the sentiment of my message (I hope). Having alternatives is good.
And there’s the other side of the coin: some websites break in Firefox (and other non-Chromium brewsers, perhaps). I’m keeping Ungoogled Chromium just in case (and for testing my own websites, of course).
(Remember to complain politely, but loudly, if something works in Chromium only.)
I only started really using Firefox as a daily driver probably two or three years ago so I’ve been lucky to have my compatibility be like… 99.9%. Little snitch and my VPN break far more sites than Firefox does. But I keep brave on hand just in case.
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