MX Linux Forum

For us less informed (never heard of Palemoon), if you would be so kind please add link(s), a description, company background, how to install on MX, and/or anything else that you think someone who's never heard of it before could use...

Here's one, so I'm not being hypocritical

Vivaldi
https://vivaldi.com/

Repository Installations:
https://help.vivaldi.com/article/manual ... ositories/
Note: Do not use their download page, https://vivaldi.com/download/

About: https://vivaldi.com/company/
Vivaldi is owned by its employees. And we plan to keep it that way. Having no external investors gives us the freedom to listen to our users and, together with them, build the browser they deserve.

From Wikipedia:
Vivaldi is a freeware, cross-platform web browser developed by Vivaldi Technologies, a company founded by Opera Software co-founder and former CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Tatsuki Tomita. It was officially launched on April 6, 2016.

Although intended for general users, it is first and foremost targeted towards technically-inclined users as well as former Opera users disgruntled by its transition from the Presto layout engine to a Chromium-based browser that resulted in the loss of many of its iconic features. Despite also being Chromium-based, Vivaldi aims to revive the features of the Presto-based Opera with its own proprietary modifications.

As of April 2020, Vivaldi has 1.5 million active monthly users.

Vivaldi released a mobile (Android) beta version on September 6, 2019 and a regular release on April 22, 2020.

Michael-IDA wrote: Tue Aug 18, 2020 3:13 pm For us less informed (never heard of Palemoon), if you would be so kind please add link(s), a description, company background, how to install on MX...

All of these - Vivaldi, Palemoon, Opera, Firefox, Brave, Chrome, etc - are installed by using the MX Package Installer, Popular Applications Tab, under the "Browsers" section.

Michael-IDA wrote: Tue Aug 18, 2020 3:13 pm For us less informed (never heard of Palemoon), if you would be so kind please add link(s), a description, company background, how to install on MX, and/or anything else that you think someone who's never heard of it before could use...

Our very own Stevo is like THE packager for Palemoon. Link to the palemoon site is right here, so is the status, and yep.. MXPI kinda makes installing it a no brainer. viewtopic.php?f=140&t=52722&hilit=palemoon Its an amazing browser, takes a bit to get used to imho, but solid piece of tech.

Cool, see that's why it's good to provide info for us newbs

Wrong place for this, but installing Palemoon though the MXPI threw some errors (warnings?). Runs okay though...

Michael-IDA wrote: Tue Aug 18, 2020 5:20 pm Cool, see that's why it's good to provide info for us newbs

Wrong place for this, but installing Palemoon though the MXPI threw some errors (warnings?). Runs okay though...

Code: Select all

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  palemoon
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 41.0 MB of archives.
After this operation, 114 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://mirrors.rit.edu/mxlinux/mx-packages/mx/repo buster/main amd64 palemoon amd64 28.12.0-1mx19+1 [41.0 MB]
Can't exec "debconf-kde-helper": No such file or directory at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/FrontEnd/Kde.pm line 43, <> line 1.
Unable to execute debconf-kde-helper - is debconf-kde-helper installed?debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Kde
debconf: (debconf-kde-helper did not respond to ping in 15 seconds)
debconf: falling back to frontend: Qt
debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Qt
debconf: (Can't locate Debconf/FrontEnd/Qt.pm in @INC (you may need to install the Debconf::FrontEnd::Qt module) (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.28.1 /usr/local/share/perl/5.28.1 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl5/5.28 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.28 /usr/share/perl/5.28 /usr/local/lib/site_perl /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl-base) at (eval 22) line 2.)
debconf: falling back to frontend: Dialog
dpkg-preconfigure: unable to re-open stdin: No such file or directory

Stevo should look at this. I wonder if debconf-kde-helper needs to be a dependency of Palemoon? Anyway, as you say it should work fine.

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

It won't surprise me if web browsers eventually become giant virtual machines running distributed apps of sorts, a la Java VM. Even that would be more simpler than the current mess of "innovative technologies" that are wrecking the usability of the web.