Librewolf, Waterfox or something else? Hi folks - with all the news about Firefox again recently, I want to make sure I am using the right web browser on my linux desktop for my purposes. I’ve got both Waterfox and Librewolf installed right now. I believe they’re both forks of Mozilla’s Firefox. And I think I understand that Librewolf takes privacy the most seriously, with everything it can locked down or disabled, whereas Waterfox is more locked down than Firefox but not to the same extreme as Librewolf. Do I have that right? If so, are there any better browsers for a linux desktop user, not necessarily based on FF? What are your favorites? My criteria for a desktop browser are: well maintained (it doesn’t have to get updates all the time, but routinely is good enough) privacy focused (more than FF or certainly more than anything based on Chrome) uses an engine other than Chromium FOSS Thanks for any ideas!

I’ve used both and while Waterfox is pretty good, Librewolf is superior. It’s more aggressive in its privacy settings by default, you can either tone that down or learn to work with it (I recommend the latter, which takes some effort and is a different way of doing things, treating privacy as something you have to actively opt-out of on a case by case basis, which will benefit you in the long run). Unlike Waterfox, Librewolf has also never had a problem where it “accidentally” sold itself to an advertising company and then changed its mind, but even despite Waterfox’s strange and concerning escapades with System1, I still think Librewolf is simply better on its own merits, nevermind its moral purity.

Is there a way to have one installation of “locked down” librewolf for private browsing, and then a second one with compatibility settings for web-apps where you are logged in, etc? Coexisting on the same system?

The most compartmentalized setup would be to run librewolf --ProfileManager as a command to start the profile manager, you can set up multiple profiles, and it will either prompt you at startup, or you can create shortcuts for each profile with librewolf -P . Each one is basically a completely different instance, with different settings, different history, and different addons. Personally, I think that’s overkill, but it may suit you. The approach I’d recommend, is to leave the default settings on, and once you spend enough time setting up your exceptions and umatrix configuration for the sites you do want to be logged in at or buy stuff with, you can get the best of both worlds in one profile, but admittedly that takes a little more know-how and work, and it sometimes feels like it never ends, but it does get much better once you’ve got 95% of your typical stuff sorted out.