Finally the Chrome-usage is going to drop significantly. 
Does using adblocker also reduce battery consumption?
Ads waste processing power. If you google “ad blocker battery life” you’ll see test results showing less CPU use and saying that it should equate to better battery life. Most of the search results are talking about mobile phones, though.
But regardless, ad blockers are necessary now for security. Since ad scripts have become one of the main vectors for malware.
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I must say that I use Firefox. I don’t want to give Google any more dominance over the web. This article gives a bit of an insight as to why this is an issue.
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I just stick to the version of Firefox ESR that Debian comes with. It’s stable, it has all the features one could ask for, it doesn’t play into Chrome’s monopoly (to the same extent that most browsers do), and Debian removes / splits out the non-free bits.
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Recently fully moved myself over to Vivaldi, have to say it’s one of the best choices I’ve ever made. Battery life is not particularly awesome with it, but just the sheer customizability is amazing.
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There are some interesting articles the Vivaldi team has written about its underlying Chromium base.
I just want to link them here in case somebody is interested:
General introduction to modifications of the Chromium core is here. There is also a forum post with Wireshark logs and explanation why Google servers are contacted here
They also use the same, modified core on Android instead of wrapping the integrated webview engine.
Btw, in my opinion one significant difference between the Chromium engine and the Trident engine of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is that Chromium is open source, can be reviewed independently and also be modified, as the Vivaldi team does it.
Firefox. I’m not quite a fan, but it works well for me. Everybody else has spelled out the reasons why, somehow, without profane angry ranting.
Guck Foogle.
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Firefox is my go-to, but I have had issues with power usage. In my testing on Windows, Firefox prevents the processor from entering C6 and C8 power states. Battery is definitely better on Chromium browsers (I switch between Edge and Brave), but they lack all the features I have become accustomed to over the years.
Firefox. It’s not perfect by any means, but there’s no real alternative IMO.
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Also #TeamFirefox here. I’ve got a bunch of add-ons installed, but the most recommended are uBlock Origin and NoScript.
I’m using Sauron to make websites darker and TWP (translate web pages) for quick translations of whole websites or short texts, as well as some other to modify Firefox to my likings, like Tab Mix and FVD Speed Dial.
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I use Thorium on my main machine (my framework 13) after 6 years of Opera usage on various machines, I’ve decided to migrate from Opera to Thorium for the lightness and simplicity of the browser, and also because some latest Opera’s update broke the whole browser and even if I rolled back, the problem was still there.
For me it’s forever Firefox
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Always been firefox and will be as long as it exists. I really enjoy my setup and it just works really well for me. Also, for idealogical reasons, I don’t want the biggest open source browser engine to die out.
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Firefox, but you have to modify it. Unfortunately, Firefox defaults are increasingly becoming worse and worse, requiring more tweaks to about:config to fix them. Add search bar back to top, remove the stupid search ability from the address bar (this fixes being able to actually browse to local sites without needing the fqdn), fix file open defaults so they work properly again, etc.
Also, you should add privacy focused addons:
-ublock origin
-skip redirect
-sponsorblock
One great advantage to Firefox that I find myself using a lot is the ability to have it sync tabs across systems. So my desktop, laptop, and phone can all see the tabs I have open on each and I can easily open them on the current device. It also can sync passwords but I find myself not using that feature anymore now that I have switched over to bitwarden/vaultwarden self hosted.
Also have chromium installed for those rare times you suspect a Firefox incompatibility to test.
Currently Firefox, not forever. Firefox despite being FOSS, has some anti-features. If you are on Windows the downloaded “installer” from the official website is just a script with ZERO customization like install location and such. You have to manually select the OS and the version on the official website to download a 60MB-ish installer that has “x86_64” in it instead off 300KB-ish script. Install without internet, then immediately go to settings and disable telemetry, so your device information and where you did the download installer won’t be uploaded.
It even has some shady measures like using “dark pattern” to lure users like this.
Note the decline options are gray on one but blue on the other? Good way to confuse the user and drain their already sacred attention span in the world of rat race.
Despite all of these, Firefox is still my preferable (not really trusted) browser as Edge as non-FOSS AI built-in, Chrome has a malware called “software-reporter-tool” that chews your CPU and disk from time to time, Brave has Brave VPN protocol installed in your system even if you never use it and it probably auto-startup background draining your battery also please have a look at your “Task Scheduler”.
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I’m running Firefox as well even though it lacks in features compared to alternatives like Vivaldi.
The great thing about Firefox is that it works so much better than anything else on Linux that using something chromium based just sucks. I mean I have yet to get hardware acceleration working on anything Chromium based, while on Firefox is just a matter of having the right drivers installed and it just works.
And also another thing is that I can still apply custom CSS and modify Firefox to work better for my workflow which is amazing.
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