I have used Pale Moon for a long time. It can be easily installed from MXPI. It's the most customisable and privacy respecting browser with Mozilla telemetry being inactive and the code being stripped out bit by bit. It's a hard fork from Firefox 52 and no more forks can be made because the XUL tech that makes up the Pale Moon UI has been deleted from newer Firefox versions.
I was a big Firefox fan during the Firefox 3 era (2008-2010), but since then basically everything went downhill for the Fox except Web compatibility. Web compatibility is the weakness of Pale Moon. It does cover 95 % of my needs or more, but I have used Chrome when I didn't feel like taking chances (banking, online payments etc.).
I didn't feel good about proprietary Chrome so I looked for something else. I needed something for Android as well. I had Firefox installed on MX and and on Android. Mozilla laying off 25 % of their work force in 2020 while still getting their $400 million per year from Google was the last straw for me.
Is there another open source browser with decent Web compatibility? There is, Brave. I was initially sceptical, because Brave was caught hijacking affiliate links not that long ago. I don't fully trust Brave, but I trust it more than Chrome and Firefox.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283 ... eo-apology
Brave also scored highest from a privacy perspective in a recent study (Pale Moon and other smaller browsers weren't part of the study):
https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs ... rivacy.pdf
Firefox on the desktop can still be tamed by user.js, but that possibility isn't available for the Android version. I feel Firefox is so close to a Chromium based browser that the only things separating it are the rendering engine and that it is possible to have a menu bar, which is still lacking from all Chromium based browsers.
So I will use Pale Moon 90 % and Brave 10 %. If Pale Moon fades away then I could use Brave more, but ultimately all Chromium based browsers lack a decent UI in my opinion. I don't think I will go back to Firefox unless there is a major reorganisation of Mozilla.
Opera 12 with the Presto engine and customisable Qt UI was cool. RIP. It's a weakness that "everything" is based on Chromium these days and Mozilla is getting all their money from the Chromium maker. Doesn't inspire confidence in the Web as a public resource.
There likely won't be any new Web browsers:
https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reck ... scope.html
Note to self and others: SysVinit is a good option. However if you run into problems try with systemd first. This applies to AppImages, Flatpaks, GitHub packages and even some Debian packages.
