You can tinker for the most part, it’s just done differently. In the Universal Blue world, that would be creating your own OCI container using their image template or blue build.

The nice thing is that it makes the OS much more reproducible than imperative commands and scripts.

I wouldn’t consider using IronFox since, from what I hear, Firefox’s security is worst on Android. Even Linux has better sandboxing than it. While I’m sure IronFox is better, I’m not sure how much better it can be.

As for Librewolf, I’m considering it. I’ve actually had it installed for maybe two years at this point but never really used it. It’s nice that it removes the annoying popups from Firefox and lacks the crypto of Brave. And it should be more secure due to the hardening and disabling of features. And while the security and sandboxing isn’t as strong as it is on Windows/MacOS or Chromium’s, at least it should be better than standard Firefox.

I don’t like Brave’s leadership or crypto, but the problem for me is that Brave ticks the most boxes

• Adblocking
• Privacy
• Security
• Multiplatform
• Web Apps

There are browsers that do stuff better, like Vanadium and Trivalent, but those are locked to specific platforms, have poor built in ad blockers, and encourage you to never install extensions for security reasons.

And if I want to avoid the Chromium monopoly, there’s Webkit which still manages to have good security and privacy, but there’s no Webkit browser on Android and on Linux, Gnome Web feels slow to use and doesn’t have a good adblocker.

That being said, I’m still on Firefox right now. Chromium has some weird quirks on the desktop that annoys me so much.

Not a security issue, copyright/license issues.

In my experience, many Gnome apps make doing complex tasks pretty easy compared to third party apps. However, it is at the cost of customization and questions like “why can’t I do this???”

But in general, Gnome’s simple design works for me, most things feel clean and polished. I don’t need the vast majority of features offered.

In the cases where Gnome’s default aren’t powerful enough, often times the KDE equivalent isn’t good enough for me either despite offering more features and customization.

As an example, Gnome Text Editor vs Kwrite and Kate. GTS has the basics I need like line numbers (Apple’s text editor does not have this…) and that fits 80% of my needs. But what about more advanced things? Well, no markdown support but I don’t think Kate has that either. What about coding? I’d rather use a dedicated IDE than Kate or GTS.

The bar is meant to be very minimal and not distracting.

It takes up space, sure, but it’s close to the minimal height while still having easily readable time up top

You can purchase used electric cars too.

That’s valid.

That’s also part of the reason I like Webkit. It’s in a nice spot between Firefox and Chromium when it comes to security and performance. And importantly, is not from an ad company and often passes on browser specs that would be harmful to privacy and security.

I forget what the site is called, but I saw one that nicely layed out different browser specs and gives the explanation why one of the engine developers decided against supporting or implementing it.

I just wish there was a good Webkit browser on Linux. Unfortunately, Gnome Web just feels slow and unresponsive despite good benchmarks.

The truth is that Chromium is really good. It has the best security and performance.

Vanadium takes that and makes changes to make it more secure and private.