Pale Moon forum

As an end user, I think they are identical.

I'm waiting for GNU IceCat to use "free" version of Firefox Quantum but it still stucks at ESR.

zcyzcy88 wrote:As an end user, I think they are identical.

No they aren't. Waterfox is better than Basilik (tried both). E.g. some addons are not working in Basilisk (e.g UnMHT).

That is probably because Waterfox is essentially FF 56.0 with telemetry off and Basilisk is based on a modified FF 52.0 ESR. Obviously, Waterfox would have less "compatibility" problems due to the smaller number of changes from the actual FF builds.

The two browsers are far from identical. They are developed by different teams with different goals and contain different feature sets. This will become more noticeable over time.

I have not tried Waterfox so I cannot compare specifics.

Who is looking for full Webextensions compatibility ... should be prepared to deliver patches on their own or find someone who is able to do so.

Basilisk is a testing application on UXP - UXP is meant to empower Pale Moon in the future and theoretical other applications which want to be still XUL based - the powerful technology Mozilla is abandoning for being able to support limited Google crap (Web-extensions) - and for being attractive for simple users (Chrome users only).

So, there may be a certain experimental support for Web-extensions inside Basilisk - but completing that support and enhancing it to be on the same level with Mozilla's Web-extension-standard in latest Firefox versions - this is for sure not the goal of Basilisk.

And who wants to have exactly that... Deliver patches to Moonchild - either your own or the one's of someone who does that for you


And the difference between the 2 browsers:

Basilisk is a fork, Waterfox is an as close-as-possible rebrand of Firefox with only minimalistic changes and without the goal to put tons of work and effort inside.

Do not get me wrong, Waterfox developer said, he tries to keep XUL add-ons as long as possible around as long it is more or less easy to do so, but at some certain point in time this will be discarded.

Once UXP is ported over to Pale Moon, XUL add-on support is not going to be lost at all.

Sajadi's post is a good summary of the differences of the projects.

As for the current state of the browsers, I briefly used both 2 weeks ago to test my uBO fork. I agree from an end-user perspective they're very similar. But I didn't try any extensions except my own, which thankfully works well in both.

Macca wrote:That is probably because Waterfox is essentially FF 56.0 with telemetry off and Basilisk is based on a modified FF 52.0 ESR. Obviously, Waterfox would have less "compatibility" problems due to the smaller number of changes from the actual FF builds.

No, Basilisk is a fork of Fx 55. I am using several WE extensions on it (along with older, favorite XUL ones). I also have Fx 52.6 ESR. It cannot do WE extensions.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101 Goanna/4.0 Firefox/55.0 Basilisk/20180202

Basilisk in its current form started life as vaguely Firefox (and gecko) 53 but got backports from 54 to current Mozilla for select things and forward ports from Tycho for select things.. However, that codebase has serious architectural flaws due to a Mozilla post-esr refactor storm that negates just about anything BUT Basilisk (or Firefox) from really using it without severe compromises in the long run. The Classical Mozilla-ness was compromised rather bad with Modern Mozilla-ness.

As a result, we are not going to proceed forward with that codebase. Instead we have forked ESR52 and are in the process of evolving it back up to where Basilisk is now. As noted in the announcement that was made, this will take some time.. But we know what we have done and know the areas we have to target.

Of course the moment we got our hands on it it ceased being ESR52 and by the time we are done with it it will be as far from ESR52 as Tycho/Pale Moon 27 is from ESR38 and was far as Pale Moon 26 was from ESR24.

Despite this setback in the time table we are all QUITE optimistic that we are on the right path now.

Rest assured, we shall prevail!

Also, internally, Basilisk calls its self version 55.0.YYYY.MM.DD for historical reasons because when we are done feature wise from a Firefox perspective that will be the closest equivalent of course we slice the 55.0 off visually because it only matters to Mozilla-y things not as a sign of progress and is perma-locked at that 55 number.

Latitude wrote:I'm waiting for GNU IceCat to use "free" version of Firefox Quantum but it still stucks at ESR.

I fail to see the purpose of GNU/ICECAT as it is just a debian rebranded ESR.Why not just use the ESR and be done with it.

I used Waterfox quite a lot and even during some time I thought that is was a more stable version than Basilisk. Also logos and look seems very professional.

However, IMHO Waterfox is great but crashes more than Basilisk.
About extensions, Basilisk is compatible with all my XUL extensions whereas I had problems with Waterfox and Foxyproxy.

Waterfox is my android choice and Basilisk my windows one.

wiesl wrote:

zcyzcy88 wrote:As an end user, I think they are identical.

No they aren't. Waterfox is better than Basilik (tried both). E.g. some addons are not working in Basilisk (e.g UnMHT).

Moonraker wrote:

Latitude wrote:I'm waiting for GNU IceCat to use "free" version of Firefox Quantum but it still stucks at ESR.

I fail to see the purpose of GNU/ICECAT as it is just a debian rebranded ESR.Why not just use the ESR and be done with it.

No, it's more than a rebranded ESR. There are many settings set, that are different from Firefox ESR. The focus by GNU/ICECAT is freedom and privacy (e.g no telemetry, disabled EME ...). You found the differences between Firefox and GNU/ICECAT on these sites:
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/IceCat
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzi ... ettings.js

mseliger wrote:

Moonraker wrote:

Latitude wrote:I'm waiting for GNU IceCat to use "free" version of Firefox Quantum but it still stucks at ESR.

I fail to see the purpose of GNU/ICECAT as it is just a debian rebranded ESR.Why not just use the ESR and be done with it.

No, it's more than a rebranded ESR. There are many settings set, that are different from Firefox ESR. The focus by GNU/ICECAT is freedom and privacy (e.g no telemetry, disabled EME ...). You found the differences between Firefox and GNU/ICECAT on these sites:
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/IceCat
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzi ... ettings.js

Thank you for the clarification.

One big difference to me is that Amazon Prime videos will play in Waterfox and not in Basilisk.

This is the only one Amazon Prime Video that i know :
https://www.amazon.de/gp/video/detail/B ... ay=trailer

It works for me with Basilisk and Win7.

Amazon still not playing after updating to the new Basilisk version on Win 10.

New Tobin Paradigm wrote:Despite this setback in the time table we are all QUITE optimistic that we are on the right path now.

Rest assured, we shall prevail!

I am curious, seeing as 52ESR will be the last version you will be able to "fork" from due to the changes in the newer code.
What will the long term plan be for PM? I know it may be a bit of future thinking but I can't help wonder what the plans and
direction the PM team is thinking about when we reach this place again in a few years. Will UXP be the final code base from that
point on since anything newer is all ghacked. Will it free you from all things Mozilla at that point, as in security updates?
Or will you still need "security" related things from Mozilla to make PM secure.
At what point does Mozilla's newest code start to make it impossible to even pick and choose little things security code wise?

Or to break it down, will PM be able to be completely severed from anything Mozilla at this point or are we looking
at another potential fork in the future knowing now, that we are at the end of the road as far as "fork" points go.

There is no where to go. We just have to work at each thing as it comes up. No more quick shortcuts.. No more safe havens.. We are on our own. But this is the point.. The undeniable point where we and Mozilla part ways and cut those few remaining threads left. It's over and yet.. We have really only begun!

Thank you for the uplifting reply. I'm glad to see that there is a future for PM outside of FF and that the PM team
is preparing for that.

I have a little older hardware that I do my day to day stuff on like checking email, some YouTube, test compiling, etc. I have found that Waterfox runs just as bad as Firefox does on this hardware. Pale Moon is incredibly fast and 100x faster than Firefox or Waterfox. I recently found Basilisk and it is just as fast, if not faster than Pale Moon.

I'm not interested in the inner workings, I don't care about what was forked from where, I just appreciate that the Pale Moon team is working on projects like Basilisk that the rest of the end users seem to appreciate as well. The more things that Mozilla decides that their users "need" (like "reader") the more things I end up having to turn off via about:config. Tweaking Pale Moon to my liking (and hopefully Basilisk) has been a breeze. Not only that, I do not like the new look (and advertising) in Firefox. Especially in the about:newtab page.

So recently I have ditched Waterfox, I use Pale Moon (3+ years now) as my locked down day to day browser and using Basilisk for visiting places where security add-ons like NoScript break.

Maybe I'm biased, because I also maintain the Slackware binary repackaging SlackBuilds for both Pale Moon and Basilisk.
I also maintain one for Slimjet (Chrome clone) but I can't stand Chrome or the clones.

Keep up the good work guys!