After I install Linux Mint (which is the distro I have settled on), I replace:
- Thunderbird with Betterbird
- Firefox with Librewolf (I also install Brave for web services that need a chromium browser).
- Celluloid / Rythmbox with VLC player
- Default Libreoffice with latest Libreoffice from source.
- ClipIt/Parcellite with xfce4-clipman
I find this to be my optimal setup and these software give me the extra quality of life that make my workflows easier.
What software do you replace and install on your distro of choice?
Edit: I forgot to say I replace sudo with doas. That’s something my friend told me to do although I personally don’t find any immediate working advantage with it.
I leave Firefox installed, but I download and use Chrome. Chrome is much faster than Firefox in many websites I use (not only youtube where Google might be using a secret sauce, but also Photopea and other js-heavy websites). Also, Chrome is using way less RAM than Firefox. I have a bunch of older laptops with 4 GB of RAM, so these “small” differences in speed between the two browsers is VERY evident on these older computers (not so easily seen on very fast PCs). Many people don’t like me writing all that, and often downvote me for having written that in the past, but it’s god’s honest truth. I looked into installing a totally degoogled chromium, but it’s not updated asap for security updates, so it’s a no-go for me.
I also prefer VLC for videos, and OnlyOffice instead of LibreOffice (better MS compatibility). Also, because it’s Linux Mint and comes preinstalled with warpinator, I prefer LocalSend instead of Warpinator. Easier to use.
Edit: just as predicted, downvotes. People seem to prefer a live in a lie. Do your own tests guys before you press the trigger!
Yeah, I used Chrome up until extremely recently because genuinely no browser Just Works to the extent Chrome does.
Fast, good media codec support, Web API support for hardware access for PWAs, doesn’t lock up w/ a lot of tabs (post-quantum FF is better about this, but not quite there), excellent DevTools, and just generally snappier and more polished than even chromium.
I switched to firefox recently exclusively for better home-manager support, and other than the ability to use home-manager more easily, it’s just a slightly slower and jankier experience at all times whether it’s requiring transcode for Jellyfin, laggy WebGL performance, janky DevTools, or missing WebAPIs.
I doubt you’re getting downvoted for saying that chrome is faster than firefox, but for the irony of using Linux with a Chromium based browser, while being on lemmy.
Chromium, while open source, is controlled by Google and a lot of browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Samsung Android, Vivaldi) are built on it, giving it a market share of around 75%.
Electron apps are frameworks based on Chromium (ie VSCode).
Google is evil and with Manifest V3, Adblockers like uBlock Origin, will eventually stop working for all derivatives (even for Vivaldi).
The future: Because Chromium got the de facto monopoly there is no need for Firefox support anymore and the big corpos (ie Microsoft is a sucker for Chromium/Electron) can turn what’s left of the “old” Internet into apps without the ability to block ads or tracking.
No “?”, just Profit.
I’m aware of all these things, and I agree with you. But the FACT remains: Chrome works on a 2 or 4 GB old laptop much faster and with less ram than Firefox. The one thing you don’t want in your desktop experience is to be hitting the swap constantly, because your hdd or ssd will be killed very fast, and the experience will just be slow. The whole point of removing Windows from these laptops is to find efficient software that will bring a new life to them, instead of ending up in a landfill. And that means the following:
But in both cases, Chrome/ium is the best case, because it’s, a. Faster, b. Uses less ram.
What do you want me to do about it? Change the status quo? Stop using it and go with firefox regardless, even if it ends up in an abysmal desktop experience and dead ssds? Why should I do that? The people I install Linux for them on their old laptops want a good desktop experience to replace their now slow Windows, they don’t care if it’s Linux or Gnu/linux. Now tell me, it’s still my fault for people dowvoting?
There is no irony. Like, at all. Ironically Firefox is de facto controlled by the evil Google, the very evil Google which pays a huge share of Mozilla’s bills. Also, MV3 is a non-issue for in-built adblockers, as these are not extensions. You people often (and conveniently) seem to forget this detail.
What about regular Chromium? Pretty much exactly like Chrome but open source and with less google (still a bunch, otherwise ungoogled chromium wouldn’t exist). Also one question to the RAM part, is the amount of available RAM actually slowing down other applications? Because Firefox reserves a proportionally larger part of RAM than Chromium so the amount of available RAM shown in the taskmanager is larger, but a larger part of RAM can be freed if required. Also in benchmarks (and my experience) Brave is faster and lighter than Chrome and updates within 24h of Chromuim security fixes, also open source and more privacy friendly, so why not use that?
Chromium is ok in my opinion, but it’s also a few days away from getting updated in the repo for security updates. I don’t like Brave because of its crypto ties.
As for RAM, on low RAM machines Firefox is hitting the swap way earlier than Chrome/ium does. It really is a problem on low end PCs. It’s definitely not as optimized. And it’s not juset the RAM, as I explained, it’s just slower. I use Photopea to edit photos, and there’s an order of magnitude difference in speed on a PC with about 4000 passmark cpu points (and some of my laptops have only 500 points!!). Probably not noticeable on fast machines (machines with over 10k passmark points). Also, where Firefox could do 480p without dropping frames on youtube, Chrome can do 720p on the same video. So for slow machines, I’ll always suggest chrome/ium. For fast PCs, I guess it doesn’t really matter what you choose.
Just disable votes on your profile. People sometimes can’t accept someone not being part of the herd. Which is something really funny, as Linux is (or should be) freedom of choice first of all.
Which is really funny, since I use Linux since 1998. It’s just that I don’t follow cults.
Same. I use what works better for me. That’s all.