tungsten [he/him]

Haven't had a chance to install on real hardware yet, but I have a USB drive flashed with the Manjaro installer ready to go.

I could never get into the third person Zelda games.

My favorite Zelda games are the top-down ones: Minish Cap, Link Between Worlds, the remastered Link's Awakening.

I'm still not a fan of the button-like tabs and the general increase in UI size.

Unfortunately, it seems like the UI is pretty much finalized.

I had an Android phone (with a locked bootloader) as my last phone, and the lack of security updates (or any updates at all) was what pushed me to iOS. I've already used F-Droid and using custom firmware sounds pretty intriguing. I can't really change phones any time soon, but I'll definitely keep it in mind for next time.

Thank you for your help. I'll create another post if I have any more questions.

A leftist org?

No, sorry. Maybe organization was the wrong term. They're GSuite accounts for college/university.

Are you an Android or iOS user?

iOS

What are some of these programs and games?

An important program is Multisim. I also play various multiplayer games with anti-cheat that I don't think work in Linux under wine/proton. That being said, it does seem like most of the singleplayer games I play work well under proton. My last experience with Linux was on a hybrid Intel+Nvidia GPU laptop years ago and didn't go well. I suppose now that I mainly use a single-GPU desktop, the experience might be better.

Is it practical to use a VM for programs that don't work in Linux otherwise? And is there a particular distro you would recommend? I had my best luck with Manjaro last time.

The fact that CBZ files are just zip files is such an elegant design. I made my own "eBooks" by ripping JPEGs from a site after I figured that out.

YACReader is pretty nice comic reader too.

Other than a couple GSuite accounts I have to use for organization email, I'm fairly independent of Google.

Microsoft is my bigger problem, unfortunately. I'm tied to their OS for certain 3rd-party software and games. I should really separate myself from their services, but my Microsoft account is tied to so many accounts that makes it seem like a daunting process.

I suppose I could, but I still have a feeling of uncertainty about such a situation.

I haven't heard of Cryptext. That looks pretty interesting too.

ProtonMail is interesting to me, but I wish they still sold lifetime accounts.

I currently have over 1GB of stored email, so I worry that if I switch to ProtonMail, I'll be screwed if I can't keep paying in the future.

I bet they're planning to sell it to brands as ad space.

From the replies on the GitHub issue, the FLoC code seems to contact a Google domain to check whether to enable it, but ungoogled chromium has domain substitution which would prevent that anyway. Removing the code entirely is more of a piece of mind thing for me.

I've been using Firefox for a while now and I haven't noticed any memory problems. Give it a try!

I can definitely understand that perspective. The transparency of open source software is pretty important for something like a browser.

I don't like seeing Brave recommendations either...

Brave was originally my preference for a Chromium-based browser, but what put me off is all of its crypto bullshit and its controversies. Being open source didn't stop them from rewriting URLs or effectively stealing donations.

I also disagree with their stance on ads. This comment from the linked reddit thread sums up my opinion on that. Brave supporters will say that ads are opt-in, but it's still clear that ads are a main focus to the company, something I'm fundamentally opposed to.

Basically, if you care about privacy at all (you should), don’t use Chrome or Edge. The best option is to use Firefox with uBlock Origin.

I find the complaints about default search engine and new tab bookmarks strange. Firefox does the same thing, and like Firefox, it's likely a significant (if not the main) source of revenue.

Edit: I don't think Vivladi's tracking is worse than edge if it's a per-profile ID. Edge uses a hardware ID that will be used to track you across profiles. The list of transmitted information also seems pretty reasonable.

The fact the browser is not completely open source is more concerning to me than the other points. Everything else doesn't seem much different than what Firefox does by default.

Firefox is still a better option simply by not contributing to the Google monopoly, but Vivaldi still has features going for it. Firefox is sometimes praised for customization, but Vivaldi has many more UI options and wasn't considering removing a compact mode like Mozilla was. Like Firefox, it supports custom CSS and even has a community for it on its official forums.

If I had to choose between Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Vivaldi, I would go with Vivaldi because it isn't an advertising company like the other three, and it's clear that their main focus is on creating a useful browser for power users.

Luckily, I don't have to choose because I will be sticking to my Firefox+uBlock Origin combo for as long as I can.

I do think Edge has better UX than many browsers, but you should be aware that Microsoft holds the same stance as Google on Manifest V3:

We're replacing Web Request API with Declarative Net Request API ... We believe this change will have positive impact on extensions that use feature-rich declarative capabilities. As more extensions transition to the DNR APIs, this change will improve user privacy, which contributes to enhancing trust in the use of extensions.

(from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-chromium/developer-guide/migrate-your-extension-from-manifest-v2-to-v3#web-request-api)

uBlock Origin is already inferior on Chromium browsers, and this change will make it even worse. They claim "privacy", but a change that makes uBlock Origin perform worse will never be beneficial for privacy. And they're even keeping observational parts of the web request API, so malicious extensions will still be able to track you.

Microsoft Edge uses unique hardware IDs to track you:

From a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge and Yandex are much more worrisome than the other browsers studied. Both send identifiers that are linked to the device hardware and so persist across fresh browser installs and can also be used to link different apps running on the same device. Edge sends the hardware UUID of the device to Microsoft, a strong and enduring identifier than cannot be easily changed or deleted. Similarly, Yandex transmits a hash of the hardware serial number and MAC address to back end servers. As far as we can tell this behaviour cannot be disabled by users. In addition to the search autocomplete functionality that shares details of web pages visited, both transmit web page information to servers that appear unrelated to search autocomplete.

(from https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf, conclusion)

Microsoft haven't made a statement on whether they support Google's FLoC to my knowledge.

I wouldn't use Vivaldi, but at the very least they have made statements in support of ad blocking and will not include FLoC code from Chromium.

Do not trust Microsoft. Do not trust Google.

No.

Like everything else from Google, you shouldn't trust it without significant changes. Chromium communicates with Google and includes FLoC code (even if it's not enabled).

Your best bet (after Firefox, of course) is ungoogled chromium. Though they haven't removed the FLoC code yet: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/issues/1474