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Zen Browser | Privacy focused, open-source, Firefox Fork (zen-browser.app)
submitted 4 months ago by Sunny@slrpnk.net to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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Just stumbled upon this project, seems rather new as my DNS blocked its domain by default for being too new hehe.. Anyone had a chance to try it yet? Its got some hefty promises, like having equally strong privacy features as Librewolf. I'll be giving it ago at least, almost sounds a bit too good to be true...

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[-] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 78 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Optimised for peak performance? Are there benchmarks to back this up?

Edit - their docs have benchmarks. They do not appear to have comparative benchmarks

edit - lol amazing

[-] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 17 points 4 months ago

That whole chart seems pretty hand-wavey.

[-] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 6 points 4 months ago

I believe it's just a build with all modern cpu features enabled. At the cost of undefined behavior when ran on older computers

[-] RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works 37 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Their privacy is better than regular Firefox due to disabling telemetry etc, but librewolf does way more to protect against fingerprinting. The browser itself is quite good, although it shows that it’s in early development. Also I disabled send a do not track signal as it is used for fingerprinting

[-] Nobilmantis@feddit.it 9 points 4 months ago

Also I disabled send a do not track signal as it is used for fingerprinting

Doesn't this only make sense if it is off by default on that browser? I assume if it is on by default, most people will just keep it on, thus making users of that browser that turn it off stand out more. No?

[-] RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 months ago

Firefox doesn’t enable it by default, so if you turn it of any chance of being perceived as just another Firefox user is gone. It may not be a measurable difference but as basically no site respects it and those that do aren’t a big problem in the first place it doesn’t matter all that much

[-] Yambu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

cheers, was intrigued if this was an alternative for LibreWolf. Hope it'll come around!

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[-] otter@lemmy.ca 27 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I like it so far. The weakness seems to be the size of the dev team and if the project has a future. Hopefully they are planning accordingly.

I went through a handful of threads and it seems mostly positive so far. One choice I wasn't sure about was that they're considering having a built in adblocker (based on something that's not ublock origin). I would prefer if the browser just shipped with ublock origin instead.

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/browser-extensions/

As far as privacy focused browsers go, ~~Mull~~ Mullvad Browser seems to be the best still. I was exploring Zen for my day to day browser.

[-] jay@mbin.zerojay.com 5 points 4 months ago

Appreciate the browser extensions link, thanks.

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[-] Jomn@jlai.lu 25 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I've been using it for about a week, both at work and at home, and I must say that it is great. It is nearly everything that I wanted from a browser. Especially since it is based on Firefox.

I've been so happy with it, that I even donated to the project.

[-] Sunny@slrpnk.net 5 points 4 months ago

Happy to hear!

[-] ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 17 points 4 months ago

Floorp is literally running with tons of optimizations and is shifting to the standard FF release instead of long term support build in their next major release. The optimizations though are like front and center, and it has TONS of privacy toggles and features.

That comparison is... Self serving let's say.

[-] governorkeagan@lemdro.id 14 points 4 months ago

This looks like it good be a great replacement for Floorp. Thanks for sharing!

[-] demesisx@infosec.pub 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

nixpkgs has been working on adding it for a month now but it uses “surfer” for compilation. It’ll be interesting to see how they end up building it in the Nix style. Looks like it’ll have to involve pnpm.

[-] box_ebony@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 months ago

nobody uses iceweasel? For those who don't know, it is the version of firefox cleaned up by non ‘libre’ code mainly from debian and then taken over by parabola linux. For me it is the best together with mullvad.

[-] Allero@lemmy.today 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I was under the impression IceWeasel changed to IceCat.

And, honestly, from all I could remember, the default protections are so strong a good half of sites doesn't even work properly lol

Typical GNU maximalism.

(But yeah - it really blocks all the bad stuff and doesn't do anything you don't ask it to do, not even call for updates by default)

[-] box_ebony@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 months ago

icecat is based on the LTS version, iceweasel the rolling-release. I have been using iceweasel for almost a year and all the sites I have used work

[-] Allero@lemmy.today 3 points 4 months ago

I see - thanks for clarification!

Got confused because beforehand there was GNU IceWeasel (now GNU IceCat), which is now separate from IceWeasel. Quite a shitshow.

[-] Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 4 months ago

Idk much about the privacy features, but I've been using it for the past day and it's way faster and better optimised then floorp.

[-] jay@mbin.zerojay.com 11 points 4 months ago

Tried it a bit yesterday on Windows. Opened a Github link in it and Windows Defender killed the app saying it was a threat. Definitely a false positive but seemed odd to see the entire app just die instantly, lol.

[-] Gemini24601@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago

I’ve checked it out, and it looks really good, sort of like arc browser. It’s very stylish, and since it’s Firefox-based, supports ublock origin. It’s obviously not finished yet though, so I’ll stay on Floorp until it reaches beta or stable. I’m totally switching once it gets there

[-] neonred@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

So, how about the Cachy Browser from CachyOS? (aur)

This repository benefits from the knowledge and research provided by arkenfox, their documentation was vital to this revamp, so special thanks to their project. We do not use arkenfox's user.js but we try to keep up with it, and we also consider it a great resource for users who want to find their own setup.

We encourage users to find their own setup and to use our default configuration as something to build on top of. This is now easier thanks to the overrides, just place your own preferences in the proper location: -> ~/.cachy/cachy.overrides.cfg

Differences from LibreWolf:

  • Enhanced security & privacy.
  • Gentoo patches. Taken from Gentoo's Firefox.
  • uBlock Origin added.
  • Moonlight theme added.
  • Preset for "Profile Sync Daemon" and Firejail/Firejail(hardened) available.
  • Custom Rules for uBlock Origin.
  • Custom branding.

Notes and thanks

Some of the older prefs in this project are taken from pyllyukko and many more were investigated on bugzilla.

Thanks to the whole LibreWolf community.

[-] Sunny@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 months ago

Definitely very interesting! Thanks for sharing. Was thinking about trying CachyOS too.

[-] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

This OS is good and I've used it for 6months but I want to switch because it packed all of these theming inside and you cannot really remove it

[-] Sunny@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 months ago

Good to know - thanks. I, too, prefer to customize mine in my own way.

[-] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago

Yeah, and it's sad because I didn't find a distro that is really welled tweaked without theming (speaking of CachyOS and Garuda mainly), they are great as their using all the best optimizations in terms of performance but they add this theming...

[-] Sunny@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 months ago

Yeah, so far my favourite distro for this is Bazzite, still allowed a lot of customization and is well optimised for gaming.

[-] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago

It's a good distro, but seems to be too gaming focused, new techs for gaming that are not really useful

[-] quarterlife@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 months ago

For that, check out Bluefin or Aurora. They're all under the same umbrella as Bazzite, but with a user/developer focus instead of a gaming focus.

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[-] neonred@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yeah, the themeing is there. But you can easily uninstall it and other core CachyOS-packages, they're just packages after all. (I've done it)

The other way would be to start with Arch and add CachyOS repositories, that way you can also profit from the v3/v4 packages.

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[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 6 points 4 months ago

How does this one compare to the current OGs like Mullvad Browser and Librewolf?

[-] otter@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Until something comes out saying otherwise, Mullvad browser seems to be the best privacy wise.

I believe Zen is better than default Firefox out of the box, but you can get the same effect in regular Firefox by toggling some options.

I liked Zen for the UI changes. It's nice having the tabs on the side and a customizable sidebar

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[-] robigan@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

Actually quite stoked about this as it boasts those librewolf privacy features while having a UI similar to Arc. Can’t wait for it to exit Alpha

[-] curry@programming.dev 4 points 4 months ago

More fox the merrier. We have Icecat, Iceweasel, Palemoon, Librewolf, Tor Browser, Mullvad Browser... I'm sure I'm missing many more for desktop.

[-] lazycat@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 months ago

I was daily driving it but started crashing after an update. I'll be getting back to it tho, I'm sure there has been like 4 updates in the last 24 hours...

[-] TheJack@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Well, there is no native .deb package and "There is no plan for official .deb pkg".

Source: https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/328

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 4 months ago

That makes sense as packing for a bunch of distros is a lot of work vs just using Flatpak.

[-] soyboy77@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago

I love options but does anybody else wish devs would put their heads together and focus on improving ONE app rather than launch a millon similar forks?

[-] Noxious@fedia.io 2 points 4 months ago

Has anyone tried loading arkenfox user.js on there? That's the bare minimum for me to use a Firefox-based browser. I'm not using that without hardening.

[-] FalseDiamond@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

Are they based on Firefox ESR? That made me quit Floorp, it was pretty disappointing to be on a legacy reskin of Firefox.

[-] Virkkunen@fedia.io 5 points 4 months ago

Probably not, as the image says Zen is based on the latest Firefox and Floorp isn't.

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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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