What is Vivaldi?
Vivaldi is a Chromium-based browser that appears to support privacy, full customization, performance, and productivity. It is a browser that is commonly used as a privacy alternative to Chrome (and it is far superior to Chrome).
However, in this post, I'll explain why I don't recommend Vivaldi as a truly privacy-friendly browser and why I personally think it's kind of suspicious. Let's talk about it!
Vivaldi claims to be a privacy-friendly browser, and some of its features sound promising! It has tracking & ad protection and some privacy protections turned on by default. It's also one of the most customizable browsers I've ever used, with a smooth, stable, and feature-rich interface. I appreciate the concept of Vivaldi, and in terms of stability, the Vivaldi developers have done an excellent job with it.
However, there are some drawbacks to Vivaldi. You see, Vivaldi is only officially "partially" open source; things like the UI and specific features of Vivaldi are not open source, and I believe that for it to claim to be a privacy browser, it should be completely open source. Vivaldi states that the reason they aren't fully open source is because they are afraid of "forks" and that their brand would be overwhelmed by forks of their product.
Personally, I don't think Vivaldi would be overshadowed at all, given that it's very popular, and browsers like Firefox and Chromium are open source, with plenty of forks revolving around the two. Some of these are well-known, such as Librewolf, Floorp (which will be discussed later during this post), and Waterfox, but they do not completely overshadow Mozilla. Vivaldi when it comes to Privacy is kind of fishy and don't get me wrong their privacy policy and some of the privacy features they offer by default are great but because of it not being completely open source, I just simply wouldn't recommend it as a privacy respecting browser and I can't trust something that isn't fully open source.
If you wouldn't recommend Vivaldi, what would you recommend?
Floorp
I know this project has a strange name, but let me explain what it is first lmao. Floorp is a well-known Firefox fork that is very customizable and closely resembles Vivaldi. It has many similar features to Vivaldi, including customizable design, a flexible layout, and much more. Because it uses Firefox, it is completely open source, so you won't have to worry about anything and you can easily check it's source code. It comes with several security features activated by default, such as strong tracking protection, and it is regularly updated.
I would honestly recommend this over Vivaldi because it is completely open source, has many privacy features enabled by default, is just as customizable, and allows you to do so much more with it.
Vivaldi is honestly mediocre in terms of privacy, and if you want something similar, you should probably go with Floorp. If you just want a simple privacy browser, you should go with Librewolf. Mozilla has been doing some strange things lately, but that is a discussion for another day.
If you have any questions or if I have stated any incorrect information, please let me know, and I will gladly change it.
Regardless of anything else, you just shouldn’t use any Chromium based browser. I don’t care how “de-googled” it is or whatever, it still just contributes to Google’s stranglehold on the browser market.
There are some things that straight up will not work on Firefox or its forks, especially on mobile, so having a backup Chromium browser is near mandatory these days IMO
There are some things that straight up will not work on Firefox or its forks
Do you have an example? I don't usually run into any issues.
LinkedIn verification via CLEAR took a couple tries until I downloaded a chromium browser at which point it worked
Quick plug for WebCompat. It's always worth reporting issues to them.
Vivaldi states that the reason they aren't totally open source is because they are afraid of "forks" and that their brand would be overwhelmed by forks of their product.
Bold of a Chromium fork to say this. Totally not a cynically hypocritical move done by executives and techbro-brained engineers to avoid having to publish their source code to actually be scrutinized.
Most people are fine using Firefox/Librewolf. I wouldn't recommend Floorp since it looks like a small single maintainer project that makes a lot of changes to base Firefox. I'd really recommend installing vanilla Firefox and then use ffprofile.com to set sane defaults (like turning off their new privacy setting that they just added).
Given how vanilla Firefox is currently handled right now, I don't really bother hardening it anymore. I suppose you could use ffprofile, but at that point, you should simply use Librewolf.
Floorp makes adjustments to base Firefox was created primarily to increase its customization, and from what I've seen, it appears to be well-maintained and constantly updated? Maybe that's just me, but you do you!
I thought you were talking smack about the composer. Never mind, carry on with whatever all that tech stuff means.
Will I ever learn to check the comm first? No!
All the important parts of vivaldi are source available not open source. You're welcome to read through them.
The UI isn't an important part of Vivaldi? Also this still prevents anyone from compiling Vivaldi on their own (not that Vivaldi themselves would make it easy for you to do so). Many distributions like Debian and Fedora require free licenses to be included. It isn't just a matter of being "source available" but of freedom. As it stands, no one but the Vivaldi team can make meaningful changes to their own Vivaldi program.
Brave Browser, which is also built off of Chromium, still licenses all their modifications under the MPL2.0 license. Brave is also a large company just like Vivaldi with brand deals to make and a userbase to maintain.
Really it's just very sus hypocrisy all the way down.
It's deliberate, not "sus", I used "source available" as does the vivaldi team, precisely because it is different from open source. You can look at it, you can't modify or redistribute it.
The Ui isn't important in terms of your privacy. If they're collecting your data, they're doing to do it regardless of whether their buttons are blue or black.
Still can't compile Vivaldi from source though which is something that matters more than whether or not they collect data on their users. I think it is sus because it shows that the Vivaldi team are either detached from reality (I have never seen downstream forks overtake upstream unless upstream is literally abandonware) or have something they need to hide so they restrict their users from having full freedom.
Privacy is just a buzzword, whether the software respects your four freedoms is more important, because without freedom you cannot negotiate your privacy.
Thank you for telling me! To be honest, this makes Vivaldi increasingly more suspicious
I was coming in here ready to start arguing about Baroque music until I saw the actual content of the post.
garuda uses a floorp fork with a few more privacy improvements and adds kde integration from opensuse firefox, but haven’t found a simple method to use it on other distros
There's a Flatpak of FireDragon. Found it while looking for Floorp, actually.
oh, thank you!
wasn’t around a few months ago and forgot the name, but as you say there’s a flat pack to try now
