Maintaining Konform Browser and some other bits and bobs.
Yes! In fact while the browser otherwise has its own branding, it does recognize override config as librewolf.overrides.cfg so you can literally just drop your existing LibreWolf overrides file into ~/.konform and it should pick it up. Figured this would make it smoother for people migrating from LW or switching between the two.
Not personally daily-driving or actively recommending it but I’ve had to look closely at Brave as part of browser security work.
Most of the posts, articles and videos I’ve seen that don’t apply approximately equally to the other big names are mostly backed by arguments like “I don’t approve of BE behavior and BE made Brave therefore Brave bad”, “crypto scammers bad therefore crypto bad and Brave uses crypto therefore Brave bad” or “it’s being promoted by bad people and therefore bad”. I think such arguments are in themselves without merit, should be dismissed and are not sufficient to tell others they shouldn’t use it. Tribalism isn’t healthy. An opinion being widely shared doesn’t make it true. Your trusted influencer being upset doesn’t mean you need to be.
Valid criticisms of Brave and valid reasons for not using the browser exist but that’s rare to see written out but buried deep under the bulk of FUD, groupthink and uninformed meme-takes we find all over the stuff shared on socials. On the privacy and security sides it’s very much a mixed bag. Scrolling through Brave flags I note more than one thing I think we can take inspiration from. For people locked into corpware and limited to what’s on the major app stores, you can certainly do worse. Yet I see little concern-blogging over Copilot 365 .NET Live Edge or Samsung Internet Browser, for example.
Of course I’d personally love if you used Konform Browser (or any other non-chromium browser) instead but I mostly see people bashing Brave for completely confused reasons. Yes there’s bloat and ads and telemetry and problematic trust and outbound networking going on out of the box. Yes they inject their own monetization into the user experience if you blindly click “Next, Next, I agree, Next” and run with defaults. All just like for Firefox these days. And just like Firefox, user configuration exists to improve on much of that while the software license and open source code afford fixing the rest for the willing. The differences I’ve seen when it comes to the browsers are mostly in degrees, not fundamental. Maybe we should have a Brave fork too.
I hope I’m not canceling myself, here…
IronFox: Exists. Currently mostly due to hard thankless work of one or two individuals.
somerandomperson: OK they got this; everyone else stop trying and go home now
I don’t think dismissing the issue so quickly is fair to either the IronFox maintainer, the state of Android web security, or browser diversity. It is also discouraging for anyone else considering exploring this and sharing their work in public. We need more people working on an open and free mobile browser ecosystem, not less.
I mean technically Android is still somehow Linux so ^^. But it does feel funny when the first (and only?) follow-up comment on the Linux community of this Linux software is about needing an Android version instead :p
The more interested people we have checking it out and poking at the code, the higher chance we can ship Android builds Soontm. Feel free to swing by and stay tuned ;)
deleted by creator
Grumpy ken thinks “Just use Foo” meming is promoting mindless use and I think should therefore be discouraged. Even in jest I think this affects us subconsciously to feel more comfortable with not thinking deeper for ourselves. Even if X is the right one. “Use Foo already!” is nicer~!
If I may illustrate:
Use Konform Browser1 already!
1: Disclosures: Am dev; is LibreWolf fork
Konform Browser is more recent Firefox (actually LibreWolf) fork which goes even further in debloating, removing “AI” functionality and disabling remote connections. It’s based on Firefox ESR (like GNUZilla IceCat).
If you have concerns about the telemetry and browser metadata privacy parts of AI integrations, I think Konform, IceCat, Waterfox and Mullvad Browser are a lot more relevant than Zen…
Low-effort snark.