> In an ideal world, the major stakeholders of the Linux desktop – KDE, GNOME, the various major distributions – would get together and seriously consider a plan of action. The best possible solution, in my view, would be to fork one of the major browser engines (or pick one and significantly invest in it), and modify this engine and tailor it specifically for the Linux desktop.<p>Is it really the best solution to create a fork?<p>Why not invest in people to directly work on Firefox?<p>The author even mentions a few paragraphs before that sentence that maintaining a browser is hard:<p>> The problem here is that making a capable browser is actually incredibly hard, as the browser has become a hugely capable platform all of its own. Undertaking the mammoth task of building a browser from scratch is not something a lot of people are interested in [...]<p>And who guarantees that the fork will further exist without weird funding?<p>EDIT: sorry, after reading my comment again, I think it sounds a bit snarky. English is not my native language, and I don't know how to phrase these questions better, so they don't sound that way.
What problem? I've been using Linux with Firefox for at least 15 years, and I've never thought this to be a problem.<p>Linux is not an operating system for the unwashed masses, it's a specialist operating system for more technical oriented folks. It's less polished in many areas and requires some jumping through hoops at times as we all know. In return, you get a vastly better user experience <i>if you're the right kind of user</i>.<p>Whenever I am placed in front of a standard Windows install, I'm shaking my head in astonishment and wonder how people put up with that. Yet, if I were a standard Windows user placed in front of a linux machine, I'd probably do the same.<p>We're just a different species of users. If linux users cared as much about browser specifities as they did about other things, I'm sure they would already be fixed. But the truth is: as a long-time linux user I can state that Firefox is just fine. Really, it is. For me. And probably for many other happy linux users too.<p>Does that mean if couldn't be improved? Of course not. But show me the software for which you couldn't say the same. Okay, maybe Emacs. Just kidding.
> The love the Linux world has for Firefox is not reciprocated by Mozilla in the same way, and this shows in various places where issues fixed and addressed on the Windows side are ignored on the Linux side for years or longer.<p>> The best and most visible example of that is hardware video acceleration.<p>That's not "Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem", that's "Desktop Linux has a problem". hardware acceleration was always a pain to get working in linux, as a subset of the larger problem of linux video drivers having varying levels of support for the plethora of features that video cards need to do these days.<p>Things like this ultimately led me to my current Linux usage: Windows host, linux vm, fullscreened on its own virtual desktop.<p>If I need to do something that linux wasn't going to do efficiently, I do it in the windows host. Otherwise, I do it in the linux vm.<p>Anyway, I wonder if any of the problems this person is pointing out are going to be made better or worse by wayland
Together, Linux + ChromeOS (much closer to standard GNU+Linux than Android) have something between 6% and 7% of the desktop. I don't remember people saying the same about MacOS when it was around that mark.<p>Of course, we must be realistic. Linux around 6% is very different from MacOS at 6%. In that case, they already had support from items people complain to this day about Linux not having; main examĺes are msoffice and photoshop.<p>Nevertheless, Linux on the desktop has never been so good. Flatpak (or even AppImages and snaps) allow me to have a "stable core" with recently updated software. Support for most hardware is much better now (looks like most vendors make sure the hardware supports Linux, even though they themselves don't announce it). Pipewire and Wayland matured to the point where you can finally stream your desktop on Wayland using Pipewire. GNOME is snappier today then it was and cleaner and more elegant; of course we still need some consistency but windows suffers from that too; and, look, it even has thumbnails on the file picker! The kernel evolved to a point where desktop is just another well supported system: MGLRU and other improvements made latency on the desktop even under memory pressure just ideal.<p>The environment around it also evolved a lot. Many FLOSS software are on a quality level today that mostly only professional on almost niche areas can't use Linux on the desktop. Consider Blender, Godot, Audacity, Inkscape, Firefox, OBS... these things are refined, stable, elegant and don't try to steal your attention, require periodic payments or throw ads on your face. Actually a Linux desktop user feels very sorry when they see a "standard" windows user. And I'm not even talking about proton or areas where Linux leads or is well established.<p>So yes, it improved. Nevertheless, I'd love to, but I don't think I'll see Linux on the desktop beat windows or MacOS. But, know one thing: I don't care. Linux on the desktop has been good enough for me for a very long time and it will only get better. I just hope someday its market share will be big enough for it to no longer be ignored by so many vendors. Watching current growth, I don't think that is too far anymore now.
Mozilla has a revenue problem, sort of like Netscape. It's main product is free and doesn't directly generate revenue except through Google ads. Using Firefox to get the people who use Firefox to use Mozilla's revenue generators - Pocket or VPN through ads in the browser won't work.<p>Google pays it to select it as the default browser, but Firefox' tiny declining market probably makes Google want to not to continue this except perhaps as a way to avoid monopoly stuff.
As a long-time Firefox user (or rather, LibreWolf and Mull now) the biggest problem as I see it is websites that no longer support it. Compatibility is constantly getting worse as Chrome/Blink monopolises web dev and testing.<p>I'm considering writing letters to some of the sites that have the biggest issues and raising it as an issue.<p>Otherwise, Firefox is mostly fine. I have a few gripes with it and Moz are mismanaging their projects, but desktop Linux is hardly their #1 issue.
Having never developed a browser engine, my naive question is why is it so hard to develop a new one? We have decent free and/or open-source software in other areas, why is it hard to reproduce this experience with the browsers?<p>Or, is the problem in the complexity of the modern web browsing experience, and the walled garden created around it by current major browser developers (new standards, etc.)?
To be fair, its still got plenty of warts on OS X too. After all this time, putting Firefox in full screen mode results in seriously wonky & intolerable behavior. Its the only app I have that shifts all its chrome (toolbars, tabs) when you bang the top of the screen. Compare this to Safari (only the menu shifts). No, hiding all of it is not the solution.
They should fire most of the overhead personnel and sock their salaries into income producing investments, so when big G closes the tap, R&D can continue indefinitely.<p>Hopefully then they’ll stop reinventing tabs, ruining privacy, and focus on the aforementioned bugs.
Acknowledging the problem(s) is the first step to creating a solution. Those who choose to ignore Firefox's problems, are there to only continue its slow death. Here are the most obvious problems:<p><i>'Defining' Linux support:</i><p>>> Firefox is first and foremost a Windows browser, followed by macOS second, and Linux third. The love the Linux world has for Firefox is not reciprocated by Mozilla in the same way, and this shows in various places where issues fixed and addressed on the Windows side are ignored on the Linux side for years or longer.<p><i>80% of all revenue is from Google:</i><p>>> The giant sword of Damocles dangling above Firefox’ head are Mozilla’s really odd and lopsided revenue sources. As most of us are probably aware, Mozilla makes most of its money from a search deal with Google. Roughly 80% of Mozilla’s revenue comes from Google, who pays the browser maker to set Google Search as the default search engine.<p><i>Firefox declining usage and anti-trust risks with Google.</i><p>>> How long will this deal continue? Will it be renewed indefinitely, regardless of how much farther Firefox slides into irrelevance? Will the size of the deal drop, or will it end altogether? When will Google decide that spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year in what is essentially charity for a competitor is no longer worth it, or needed?<p>>> Google’s similar search deal with Apple is already facing legal scrutiny; will that scrutiny have consequences for the deal with Mozilla, too?<p>Solution:<p>>> <i>"Linux needs a browser engine that is independent of Google (and Apple), and takes Linux seriously as a platform."</i><p>Mozilla could have done that by being a Rust consultancy which can fund the development of both Rust and Firefox without being heavily dependant on Google. That opportunity has been lost.<p>Realistically the likely outcome is to just break up Chrome from Google and use the Chrome engine as the standard browser engine, just like the Linux kernel is the standard kernel for all distros.<p>Case solved.
Maybe it’s a Linux success. Ironically though, given Chrome came from WebKit (Safari), which came from KHTML (Konqueror).<p>The Linux browser escaped out to conquer (konquer?) the world.<p>Konqueror was a nice browser, my fav back in the day, and it was exciting when Apple picked it to defeat IE with Safari.
Can someone knowledgeable comment on the possibility of VivLdi becoming the de facto standard browser for Linux? I played with it a little, thought it worked well, and most notably, it worked well for websites that gave Firefox trouble.
That's obviously infeasible (either it would be bad or it would cost too much time/money).<p>However, maintaining a variant of Ungoogled Chromium or Vanadium targeted at desktop Linux would be feasible.
> I’m genuinely worried about the state of browsers on Linux, and the future of Firefox on Linux in particular. I think it’s highly irresponsible of the various prominent players in the desktop Linux community, from GNOME to KDE, from Ubuntu to Fedora, to seemingly have absolutely zero contingency plans for when Firefox enshittifies or dies, despite everything we know about the current state of the browser market, the state of Mozilla’s finances, and the future prospects of both.<p>So what are you proposing then? It seems so irresponsible to complain about new-buzzword-shittification of something thousands of people contribute to and offer no contribution in return.
People here have talked about Mozilla's financial issues, but so far nobody has posted the donation link. If you use Firefox or Thunderbird and wish to continue doing so, here's the link: <a href="https://donate.mozilla.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://donate.mozilla.org/</a>