Currently a university student, and somewhat frequently, I see Firefox installed on people’s laptops but they also have Chrome installed and are using Chrome, or Edge, or Safari. Rarely do I see Firefox actually being used but I see it installed frequently. Does anyone have a clue as to why they have it installed?
Yea I know Chromium monopoly and open source browser and whatnot but the average Andy does not know what any of that is.
to surf the web?
Yeah, and why would a normie use FF over the default (chromium-based) browser, if the goal is to surf the web? You didn’t get the point of OP’s question.
obviously… my question is what is their reason of having it installed when they don’t bother using it? They just keep using Chrome or Edge despite having Firefox installed. What is the reason/use case for Firefox then for someone who just uses Chrome?
Privacy or open source or non chromium based do not count as reasons because none of those are a thing that a tech illiterate chrome user would be aware of.
Tech illiterate here: I used to keep it as a backup for when my two hundred tabs of chrome would freeze (tech. illiterate.), but switched after a while because it was faster. I do kinda care about privacy, but not enough to sacrifice much convenience (I’d never get Alexa, but I play Pokémon go, if that is helpful), so Firefox being faster than chrome is perfect.
It’s software used to browse the Internet.
It has a cooler logo than Chrome or IE.
a browser that won’t cripple your machine. It used to be the opposite case, but the tables have turned.
Also, you can also use firefox on android and have all extensions (adblockers etc) available on your phone too!
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@DangerousInternet @vrighter not with manifest v3 rolling out though. I can still block every ad and block ad blocker blockers meanwhile my chromium friends seem to be crippled in this regard.
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Those “normal browsers” almost always get their extensions from the Chrome web store still. Supporting v2 won’t mean much of those extensions are unavailable.
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The timeline has been pushed back, but hiding and later removing them is already the plan.
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@DangerousInternet what browsers are you referring to, the only chromium based browser that I know blocks ads without an extension is brave. apart from the rest need extensions and the major ones (chrome, edge etc) plan to end manifest v2 support
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@DangerousInternet vivaldi is closed source though, brave I’ve found in my expirrence to be slow however do use their mobile browser. Fact is though V3 will become more prevalent as support for v2 drops from google it turns into a ticking time bomb. Overall relying on chromium is a ticking time bomb with all of googles web DRM bulshit.
Idk i just find chromium browsers to be slower and fear the all chrome future
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that’s… the exact opposite of what i said
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your comment started with “i agree”. It could not have been the point
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man i’d like some of that stuff you’re smoking
Normies tend to absorb what’s trendy among specialists, regardless of area, without necessarily absorbing why. They hear positive bits about firefox and negative bits about chrome, and add firefox.
It is wild how many people here are offended by me asking a simple question and down voting me. Privacy, open source, customization like CSS, extensions, etc those are all gibberish to non tech savvy users.
I’m trying to see a reason to use Firefox from the perspective of a person who has the mentality of “I got nothing to hide” and “computers are difficult” and love the Google services that come integrated into Chrome.
It’s important to note that you must be willing to learn what things are when interacting with technology.
People want to help, but they don’t want to help someone who might ignore their advice because “it’s too hard!”
Firefox is much faster than Chrome, it uses less memory and it works with everything; unless the website operator has some vendetta against Firefox and intentionally codes their website to work slowly on Firefox. (Google is notorious for this, you should ignore Firefox performance issues on Google owned sites)
With the right plugins you can even defuse the bad code and it is never an issue. uBlock Origin for example is a good plugin.
Ok, I’d say it’s biggest selling point is not being owned by Google - the company with the business model of violating privacy. But if you don’t care about that, think about how short is the battery life on your phone. It doesn’t have to be that way. That’s because of Googles and Facebooks of the world that convert your money that you spend on charging your phone to make money on the data they collect.
It’s tough to answer with anything nontechnical… Best I can cook up off the top of my head is that we all expect the internet to work the same, whether we’re visiting YouTube, or a blog, or… Whatever.
How are those pages coded? Like any human language, we all agreed on what certain mouth sounds mean and do, and don’t agree with just one person getting to define how the language works.
Similarly, why does only Google/chrome get to define how a website’s code works? I don’t know how old you are, but there was a time where sites were just broken based on if you’d used Internet explorer 6, or literally anything else.
Lot of background, but that’s why we care about which browser engine to use. Firefox uses less ram, follows the web’s standards better, and actually gives you control in a way Mozilla can’t undo.
Normie here. I used Firefox with uBlock origin, then used Chrome on the same website.
Now I only use chrome when the website breaks in Firefox. Oh, and for Google services (mail, maps, calendar, docs)
Firefox has been my daily driver for five or six years now, and I think the only reason people still use chrome is habit. Getting people to change is hard, simply because habits have inertia.
Switching to Firefox was super easy for me. Just import all my bookmarks, passwords, etc and I was done. Completely set up in probably 5 minutes, including the installer.
I work in a university. Our web based services bork surprisingly frequently after Chrome updates and the IT Helpline’s go-to response is ‘have you tried
turning it off and on againFirefox?’.Privacy, Customization, better for Adblock. Or just to have a alternative if you’re main browser fails
They only know Edge because MS shills it hard and Chrome due to years of using it with OEM installs on Android, familiarity with Google services.
Since ads can be really terrible on mobile, then FF + uBO can be suggested to them.
If you know them, just ask. If you don’t know them, don’t assume people are tech illiterate just because they’ve made different software/hardware decisions from yourself.
Everybody except Richard Stallman is a normie. It’s a stupid word and even dumber concept.
I’ve gotten most of my friends to switch to it by showing them cool customization features
Normies/tech illiterate people are lazy to uninstall software, they have no reason for that. Just look at their taskbar or desktop icons: a lot of useless crap. It was probably preinstalled, or they installed it for one reason, then just forgot about it.
you just called out every Mac user in the world
edit: typo
english please
meant to say call out
oh alright
I have Firefox, Chrome, and Brave installed but use Firefox most of the time. I have Brave for websites that need chromium. I have chrome because I’m too lazy to uninstall it. I think you’re probably looking too far into this. It’s easy to install something. Disk space isn’t really at a premium. They easily could’ve installed it in a whim.
Why not ask them directly if you’re curious?
