how do you like waterfox?
Waterfox is amazing. I have been using it for about 3 years now, even before the official Firefox 64-bit version was released. At first I was a bit skeptical, but the performance is really good. Dare I say it blows Firefox out of the water? (pun intended). Yes indeed, the performance is miles ahead, and of course you get the added bonuses like no Pocket or other tracking nonsense.
Here is a list of its features
- Disabled Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)
- Disabled Web Runtime (deprecated as of 2015)
- Removed Pocket
- Removed Telemetry
- Removed data collection
- Removed startup profiling
- Allow running of all 64-Bit NPAPI plugins
- Allow running of unsigned extensions
- Removal of Sponsored Tiles on New Tab Page
- Addition of Duplicate Tab option
- Locale selector in about
references > General
Here's a backstory on why I chose Waterfox and why it has been awesome.
I jumped ship from Mozilla Firefox to Waterfox, after the former announced plans to enforce add-on signing. The developer Alex Kontos (yes it is maintained by a one man army) is active on the r/waterfox sub-reddit and listens to feedback from users. He promised that he would never end support for add-ons like Mozilla.
Recently he said this: "Addon support will carry on. I'll be setting up a addon repo as well".
His future plans say that he will have an Extended Support Release channel for WF, a Rapid Release version, and a new browser forked from Firefox. More on this at
r/Waterfox.
Somehow WaterFox launches faster than Firefox too, on my not-so-speedy laptop that is. And this was the only computer I had at the time I began using Firefox. Plus I love the syncing features which uses Firefox's API.
In my list of add-ons mentioned above in the config, only one is not available from Mozilla's AMO, and that is Enhanced Steam. It is available on the Chrome store, but as a die-hard Firefox user, I have never liked Google's browser. There is not even a built-in speed-dial (or an ad-free extension) even in 2017. Vivaldi (based on Chromium) is much much better than Chrome and comes with a built-in speed dial.
Back to Enhanced Steam and Firefox, I have been using this add-on for a good 3 years or so and it is crucial at times both as a gamer and a blogger. IT allows instant access to Steamdb where I can compare regional prices for writing an article about a good sale or something. The dev of ES, refused to comply with Mozilla's Add-ons policy because of the delay it causes to update the add-ons. But with Waterfox, I side-loaded the add-on, and it gets auto updates from time to time.
This might seem trivial to most people, but let me cite a more serious example. You might be aware of security issues reported in LastPass a month or two back, right? I have been using LastPass for around 6 or 7 years now, and still use it on my computers and my smartphones.
Well, LastPass could not update the add-on in time on Mozilla's Add-on reppository. So while version 4 of their add-on was available to download from the official LastPass website almost immediately, the version on AMO was outdated, aka the insecure version 3.x. There was no way for them to warn users to not use that add-on. It had to go through Mozilla's ridiculous add-on signing process, meanwhile leaving users of the old add-on vulnerable. Even the check for updates wouldn't work, because it pings AMO for version updates.
I criticized this on
Twitter, and got a rather obscure reply from Mozilla. So I fired them back a sarcastic reply
With Waterfox I was able to update to the latest LastPass add-on, which is not possible with Firefox.
TL;DR version
Waterfox is faster, offers options to install unsigned add-ons, and is more privacy centric than Firefox.
