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Appreciation post about Cromite (and PrivacyBrowser) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

After debloat my android (i dont have a custom ROM for my oneplus) I started use Cromite and Mull. I used duckduckgo app during a few months, but sometimes I feel it a bit clunky. Overall is a good app but I decided try another browsers and forget about DDG. Mull has a good UI and has a nice tools like Ublock and others , but the connection .... Is VERY slow. Take a bunch of time to enter on any site, and I did this with and without uBlock.

Otherwise, we need to talk about Cromite... Fellas, Im speechless! What a browser. So responsive, fast and privacy friendly. Have a sandbox integrated too. I know Cromite has some bugs, i know, but for an open source app, is amazing, imo.

Im trying today PrivacyBrowser and looks very good too. I need more days to get a final conclusion, but feels very promissing for my point of view. Seems a little complicated to the beginning, but with more days i guess i will understand more

Give these apps (Cromite and PrivacyBrowser) a try. They deserve and I guess they dont let you down.

(Yeah, my english is pretty bad, sorry :/ )

all 12 comments

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[–] xoggy 11 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I use Fennec/Firefox with the ublock plugin. How does that compare with cromite?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Overall, about the same in my experience. Where you'll notice a difference is older devices. Lag shows up on Firefox forks then. But usually you can throw klar/focus on and do fine.

Ublock is way better at ad blocking, across the board. Not much gets through cromite, but you will get the oddball one sneaking by now and then. Plus, ublock is easier to tweak.

Now, I will say that cromite looks better on most of my devices. It makes better use of the screen in subtle ways like tabs on a tablet. Just little things I like better visually, which is subjective as fuck, but I've used both cromite and fennec in specific recently enough it might be of interest since you're asking a general question.

Now, I run mull most of the time, but I check out fennec every now and then just for poo and giggles. There's never any surface level differences between the two.

I think it fair to say that on tablets, bromite is my preference for opening links from other things. It does so faster, and the tabs make switching between things easier for me. But on a phone, they're essentially equal. Since firefox and its forks are a better choice for the health of the internet, I use it almost exclusively on phones; and it's maybe 50/50 on tablets.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

EDIT: Looks like I'm wrong, Fennec is still maintained. Seems the difference is that Mull is more strict about privacy, which means more sites may not work.

Original comment:

I forget what it was, but I think Mull is the "better" Firefox flavor right now. Maybe Fennec is no longer maintained? Idk. Maybe it'll come up if you search it.

Cromite is different. It's based on chromium instead of Firefox. Mull (and maybe Fennec?) probably has better privacy overall. There's a comparison page somewhere out there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Fennec IS maintained and receives regular updates.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I use Mull as well. I think it's a bit more heavy-handed than Fennec as far as I understand, so I think it comes down to how much convenience you're willing to give up for privacy/security. Both are a step in the right direction, though.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

Much better, as Cromite still uses the Chromium engine, which is again Google.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

PrivacyBrowser ia great, except for all these shitty websites that dont load images (or anything at all) without JavaScript or other non-html fuckery

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Please do not use any Chromium forks if you care about privacy and an open web. Cromite uses the Chromium engine, which is by Google.

"But Chromium is open source, so that means good, no?": Not always. Developing a browser is very hard and requires a lot of time and resources. Therefore, even when you can fork Chromium in theory, maintaining this separate fork becomes incredibly difficult. Google of course does not allow any privacy centric code to be pushed to the Chromium codebase. It in fact, does the opposite. Look at the ManifestV3 drama for instance. The solution to all of this is using Firefox mobile or forks of it.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There are some security considerations to using a Firefox-based browser on Android. In my experience, performance and stability has not been as good on Firefox Android as Chromium Android.

https://divestos.org/pages/browsers

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What security considerations are you mentioning? The only slight drawbacks that I see in the listed source are privacy ones. Those too can be mitigated by extensions. In my experience, Fdroid Fennec has been very stable and decently fast.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

per-site process isolation, as mentioned here: https://divestos.org/pages/browsers#processIsolation

My experience with several firefox-based browsers on Android was not usable, with constant freezes, crashes, and performance issues.