Firefox the free and open source browser that unlike many and I really mean many other browsers doesn't run on chromium with Google intensively pushing their manifest V3 which makes developing ad blockers and some extensions a lot harder or as of right now even near impossible Firefox is often considered as one of the best Alternatives as they run completely independently if need be but this isn't actually the reason on why I personally switch to Firefox since many Chrome based browsers pledged your extended support for manifest V2 anyway no no no Firefox on Linux is something else and in today's video we are going to talk about some of the advantages it has over chromium based browsers the problems it solves and some features that you may not know about and without any further Ado let's get straight into it you know when you install Linux on your PC then you're very often Creed with Firefox being the default browser but why is that chromium the base of Google Chrome Microsoft Edge and many others is open source nonetheless so why not ship it instead well part of the reason is Google's involvement in chromium's development which is massive by the way it technically follows the General open source conventions but if you want to implement a feature that doesn't directly benefit Google Chrome then Google almost immediately shoots it down and the same also applies if many don't want to implement a feature that Google wants since due to their sheer number of maintainers it gets pushed through anyway Firefox on the other hand is completely independent from chromium as it runs on their own so-called Quantum browser engine it has also been around for a very long time meaning it also has great support for extensions and web pages then we get on that a bit later I personally always wanted to try out Firefox as my main browser since I thought to myself if it were to suck then why would they even include it but then I never really did as you always is here of some problems with some web pages I'm already familiar with chromium based browsers some schools universities and workplaces recommend Chrome or Edge or you just find something else with inbuilt ad blocking like brave but little did I know what Firefox is actually capable of especially on Linux one example of this better Wayland support now Wayland is a display protocol that is much newer than the previously used X11 sometimes old referred to as xorg and comes with many advantages like being able to talk to each monitor separately and being more secure by Design but since we're currently in this transition phase not everything has been ported over yet which is why many apps including chromium still use X11 as the default this all works through a compatibility layer called xwayland which sometimes introduces some annoying problems one of the most reported ones that I experienced personally and also see in online forums is drag and drop support or more accurately it's Dragon lose defile support after the release of gnome 46 and KD plasma 6 or maybe even before that I'm not entirely sure drag and dropping to a browser became basically impossible for me since every time I try to do it it says no attachments or that the direct item is empty now you can of course work around this issue by just opening the file via the file picker but it is for once annoying and very inconvenient especially for newcomers that are just switching over to Linux on Firefox however none of this happens since they already have a native Wayland session that works beautifully everything is Snappy and smooth dragging Taps around somehow feels more natural and scaling settings also work better one thing that I never quite understood why it got removed from essentially all browsers was the home button now in chromium and its base of browsers you typically enable it in the settings but on Firefox I just couldn't find it there all right kind of an odd feature to remove I thought but they actually found a way better method how to enable it on the right side under more tools you'll find a section called customize toolbar and this is in my opinion the way how it should be done not only do you have the typical stuff like the home button which you can place anywhere you like but you also have access to spacers place a button for quickly opening new or private tabs you get a website screen screenshot tool which I previously needed an extension for and much much more almost the entire toolbar is customizable and I just didn't notice before now many did switch to Linux also discovered that with most browsers you cannot use the scroll wheel middle click to dynamically scroll through a website it's a feature that you don't really think about much until you realize hold on something's missing there now typically the middle click on Linux is being used to quickly paste selected or copy text which is nice but introduces a new workflow if you're not used to it now for chromium based browsers I have seen many solutions reaching from setting some browser Flags to installing custom extensions or to set custom launch options in the shortcuts so kind of difficult really on Firefox however it's as simple as taking this checkbox for Autos scrolling in the settings and boom there it is you know the only time I used Microsoft Edge on Windows was when I needed to edit a PDF f as in you can actually draw on them with something like a Microsoft Surface pen add text images or just Mark some stuff but it wasn't until last year that I discovered that you can do it the same with Firefox and if all you need is a notetaking app for PDFs or you want to sign a document by hand or with an image then this is all you need all right so let's move on to a more privacy oriented side and I can already tell you that much that from a sheer first party perspective then Firefox isn't really much better than chromium based browsers as some data collection is always going to be opt out however from an overall experience as in how much data your browser exposes to the web in terms of cookies to third party websites then it's a heck of a different story there is a neat little extension called disconnect which can visualize how many sites are able to track you at the moment now on ebay.com for example with all the accepted cookies and the default browser settings there is quite a drastic difference between chromium and Firefox whereas chromium essentially allows everything while Firefox is like yeah I know that you accepted all of them but let me still assist you to keep some privacy like before I did this test I did not expect it to be still so drastically different after all this time but yet here we are not this reason alone would have already been enough for me to switch to Firefox way sooner but to this day I still cannot say goodbye to chromium for good now you didn't really think that I would just pra Firefox as the god of browsers now did you let's start off with the main thing on why I still keep chromium around and I mean actually chromium itself Progressive web apps have you recognized these icons that you see on a lot of websites where it asks you to install a site these are essentially all web apps some of them are just links which are launched in a window others are being utilized more properly properly and can even work without internet in some cases now I really like web apps since for something like YouTube music which I only really have because I have premium it's really nice to be able to quickly access it from your desktop and Firefox unfortunately dropped support for them because not all that many use them given its smaller market share and these apps heavily promoting chromium anyway it's not really a surprise now there are extensions that allow pvas on Firefox as well but then you need to give them more permissions on your system and all that so you're essentially just working in the opposite direction of what Firefox wants and the second thing is of course compatibility now I personally haven't experienced or heard of any real website issues for quite a long time now however there are websites like GeForce now that demand a certain browser to run it like funny enough even some chromium based browsers are not allowed this is however a comparable tiny issue into grand scheme of F and as I only use chromium for PVA anyway it's not really noticeable on my system Firefox has really impressed me and it's kind of unfortunate that not more people use it nowadays essentially all of its quirks can be solved with more adaption as many websites are just optimized for chromium and it's actually this optimization that breaks it I personally now prefer Firefox over chromium and its derivatives but maybe there is something that I missed please let me know what process you use and most importantly why do you still use Chrome out of convenience or is there a certain feature that just works better in it please let us know in the comment section below 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