Hello all! I’ve been making the switch from American to European tech, and was wondering your thoughts on Vivaldi browser and Qwant search engine.

Vivaldi is based on Chromium and iirc not fully open source, but is still suggested in European tech spaces, and has a pretty good privacy policy.

Qwant is not open source, though claims to not to sell personal data or store searches.

What are your thoughts and perhaps suggestions for alternatives?

  • North@lemmy.org
    1·
    5 hours ago

    My thoughts on Vivaldi:

    It’s a decent browser however I’d recommend avoiding Chromium wherever if possible. But the biggest downside of Vivaldi for me is that it’s not fully open-source. I would almost always prefer open-source software rather than closed-source even if the parent company or developer is trusted. I would not recommend Vivaldi because of this reason.

    My thoughts on Qwant:

    Again, the same thing here, it is trusted but it’s still not open-source so it’s a no from me.

    What I’d suggest:

    • Firefox-based browsers:

    All of these suggestions will contain ONLY free and open source softwares.

    I would suggest you to use one of these or other Firefox forks instead of chromium browsers but, ultimately, it’s upto you what you choose.

    All of these Firefox forks remove the telemetry that you’ll find in the original Firefox browser.

    1. IronFox: Privacy-wise, it’s pretty strong. The only counterpoint I’ve noticed is that the sites may break sometimes because of its aggressive anti-fingerprinting and stuff. This is available for Android.

    2. Fennec: This is the one I use and I’ve found it pretty nice. I’ve been using it for about 4-5 months now. This is available for Android.

    3. LibreWolf: This is what I think is the best for desktop. It is very good for privacy. This is available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

    4. Zen Browser: This browser has a nice balance between privacy and convenience. Pretty customizable, plus I like the UI of it. This is available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

    Note: I haven’t tried these but they’re reputed and famous in similar private-focused communities.

    1. Mullvad Browser: The privacy is strong but it is not very customizable. This is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

    2. Waterfox: This is a famous and reputed browser too. This is available for Android, Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

    • Search Engine:

    All these suggestions are also FOSS and can be self-hosted.

    1. SearXNG. It’s the most popular right now and it’s completely FOSS.

    Note: I haven’t tried the following these, as well, but they’re also pretty famous and respected in privacy-related spaces.

    1. Apache Solr

    2. YaCy

    3. Typesense

    I’ve presented my suggestions but you should choice the one that suits you the best while also providing you with sufficient privacy and always avoid closed-source softwares even if the parent company or developer is trusted.