Firefox is a powerful and efficient browser. especially in Linux. It is the only browser we have other than Chromium-based browsers. As a Linux user, I know in Wayland-based desktop environments Firefox is the only hope for a working, efficient browser to use, as Chromium-based browsers didn’t truly migrate to Wayland that much. It is a golden browser that works almost perfectly for me. Even when it comes to installing add-ons, Firefox has fewer extensions compared to the Chromium Web Store, but Firefox holds the most powerful ones.
Even though things are like this, I noticed that recently Mozilla, the company, is hardly trying to make Firefox the go-to browser, a bloatware, an open-source bloatware browser, by adding too much stuff that really isn’t asked for by anyone. By this move they will force the browser to consume more resources and RAM by default. Because all these settings never came on, they made it turned on for everyone. I always wake and open Firefox just to see a new widget, sponsored shortcut, or sports banner on the homepage.
So by this blog post I am trying to break down features that I found to be bloat and unnecessary.
The Homepage.
Once the home page was really minimal and useful. I only consider Firefoxc to use and recommend it to many just because of this minimal approach. But nowadays Mozilla Firefox’s homepage is one of the most annoying homepage sections I have ever faced. Even we can now compare it to Opera’s or Edge’s home page.
The Firefox homepage seems to be very busy with
shortcuts (I wish they had speed dial instead)
support Firefox (sponsored shortcuts)
recent activity
Brand logo
widgets
Just look how Firefox has kept its homepage very busy and annoying by default. The highlight is that every single option is on by default. They removed the very useful features like speed dials for this distractions? But why?. Now users have to depend upon third-party extensions just for basic features like speed dial on homescreen. By the way, news seems to be missing, and I think it is on the way.
Designing.
Firefox developers are destroying the browser by redesinging it constantly. With the first design, which is the unique one, they managed to stand out from major chromium-based browsers. But now my doubt is whether I am using Opera or Vivaldi. This also makes the browser too complex and hard to use for aged users. Seriously, those design updates were unnecessary.
Settings.
Instead of giving more control over the browser, Mozilla created new problems like AI enhancements directly into the browser. Is it about privacy? Is it about security? The only thing I know is AI is used by big corporations to destroy the web. It consumes a massive amount of water and electricity. Nobody asked and nobody needed it at all in a browser like firefox. Then they gave a switch to turn it off only when it became a controversy in the community (a solution for the issue they created on their own). Because of ‘AI’ implementation, many users switched from Firefox to its more privacy-focused forks.
Inside the permission and data section, they have various options to collect data (turned on by default). Some collection methods and options sound creepy, like allow Firefox to run feature studies! If they want to run studies on a stable branch, then why do the beta and alpha stages of Firefox exist?
Search engines.
Many users say the contract with Google has ended. For making money and thriving, Firefox has to do some promotions and tracking. But if you look at the search engine, you can see the default search engine is still Google. If Google didn’t pay, then why did Firefox still keep them as their default? The other options available are Bing and Perplexity, which are also creepy. Wikipedia is not a normal search engine. The only private and decent option is DuckDuckGo. no start page, no searching, no kagi, etc…. Also, if users don’t want to use them, they can’t remove/delete search engines but only disable them. good.
Basic privacy and security settings.
When it comes to basic privacy and security features, they protect users without any issues on their daily browsing. Firefox is turned on the tracking protection standard mode by default, which is good. But still many trackers aren’t blocked by the standard blocking. Understandable. Every user is not a power user, so turning on strict mode by default may affect their browsing experience.
DoH is disabled by default. I don’t think enabling any Doh provider by default will cause any troubles; instead, it will make the browsing more secure by default if the users haven’t set up a system-wide DNS yet.
HTTPS-only mode is also disabled by default.
about:config. Tweaks.
Firefox hardcore users know there are various user scripts (BetterFox, ArkenFox, and Phoenix) available for Firefox, which are used to improve the overall experience of using Firefox in performance-wise and security- and privacy-wise. All these scripts do is just tweak some about:config settings. If tweaking some about:config options improves the user experience and makes the browser more secure, then why did Firefox never release the browser by enabling all those configs? (Just a doubt).
Conclusion.
Even though Firefox has been going in a wrong path and made many unsatisfying decisions in the past, we still have to support Firefox. Also, this is not a reason for supporting every unacceptable move of Firefox as a nonprofit open-source browser. Firefox can be better, and it deserves more attention than its forks, which are actually doing better than Firefox.
Apart from these disadvantages, as a Linux daily driver, I found many advantages for Firefox over Chromium-based browsers, specifically on Linux.
Better hardware acceleration support.
faster and less RAM consuming.
Better integrity with Wayland.
can be tweaked for extreme security and privacy.
still support MV2.
powerful add-ons.
This is not a post intended to discourage the use of Firefox, but it says what I really felt disappointed as a hardcore Firefox user from the beginning. Anybody who uses Firefox from the beginning knows how bad the experience is currently. Even though there are many forks (Waterfox, Mullvad, Librewolf, Zen, etc.) that exist for such users, Firefox deserves more attention.
I believe many issues will be fixed in the future updates.
Thank you for reading.