Choosing a browser of last resort

[Mæstro]

Sometime years ago, which could probably be discerned from the version I am using, I chose OpenSUSE’s package of Ungoogled Chromium as a browser of last resort. Separate to this, I have kept Epiphany installed on this computer, despite its general unsuitability as a primary or backup browser, for LibreOffice required one of Konqueror, Firefox (release or ESR), (not Ungoogled) Chromium or it as a dependency, and I have always liked how the German version uses Reiter for tab (Konqueror uses Unterfenster). At the time, I used an old Firefox icon on my system to represent Pale Moon, a practise I have since abandoned. On my spare computer, which I had got early last year and also runs LMDE 4, Firefox ESR is installed. Because I only use that computer when outside home, I have not bothered to install any of my usual software there.

Discord, including the capacity for voice chat or viewing others’ shared screens, is my only regular use case for a browser of last resort. (Elsewhere, I have rejected the ‘desktop version’. Ripcord failed to install for unknown reasons when I attempted it.) The one time I tried Discord VC on the other computer, it was unworkable, but I was in an hotel lounge, not my usual network, and cannot consider this representative. Entailed by my Discord usage, I sometimes keeps windows open with pictures friends on Discord have linked to me. Beside this, I use the browser of last resort sometimes for sites which disagree with my Pale Moon browser as I have got it configured, where I could use my side profile for PM instead (with just a simple content blocker), but do not feel like messing with the profile launcher or (if possible) Internet Archive mirroring. YouGov and DDG’s image search are two frequent examples.

I am caught between leaving well enough alone, and the slight improvement in tidiness I would gain by getting rid of an obsolete package repository and application, as part of a general push to organise my digital home better. Part of me thinks I ought to switch if only I could be assured Discord would work the way I need it. Friends and I meet for irregular voice chats every few days; our last one was yesterday. Should I switch to Firefox, I plan to configure it with µBlock and cookie refresher, ie so all cookies but Discord’s are deleted after each session. Should I stay as things are, indefinitely presumably means until Discord fails or it otherwise proves unworkable as a last resort; I have not got any financial or other sensitive business with it. Because I have been considering this question for a few days without coming to an answer myself, I think asking here for advice is sound. I am open to any comments you might offer.

※Poll corrected and body text revised in separate edits to account for the fact that LibreOffice no longer depends on a browser shortlist. Epiphany has therefore been removed and no longer enters as a concern for this question. Thanks, Moonchild!

※I have deleted the poll to prevent confusion, now that it appears more bother than it is worth.

[Moonchild]

I picked "other" because neither is a good option IMHO. Chromium 108 is decidedly unsafe to use because of the large attack surface it has with plenty known issues. Firefox instead would not give you the guarantee you seek. And I hate to say it but Mozilla has become just as much a data broker as other big players. Don't let their marketing fool you.

And then there's the elephant in the room: you seem to be desperately searching for a browser to make it a single-purpose client for Discord... Isn't that just trying to justify your need for a single-service application you have already rejected elsewhere?... Why not use the official client, then? Giving you the guarsntees you seek. Saving you a ton of effort, manual updating, potential headaches for not being Blink if you use Firefox... All to achieve the same result of a single service client...

So, yeah.. Other.

[Mæstro]

I am open to other choices. Before posting this, I actually tried Basilisk (before finding Discord renders rather sluggish in it, entirely Discord’s fault), and I have had Otter in mind as another possible candidate. Other browsers could also possibly suit, now that LibreOffice has dropped its complaints.

With all due respect, refusing to use the official Discord ‘desktop version’ is a red line for me which I do not wish to debate. I should only say that, while Discord is the primary purpose for a browser of last resort, the only regular use, it would not be the only one.

※Out of curiosity, I checked again how to override dependencies to remove LibreOffice’s shortlist of approved browsers, and it turns out LibreOffice no longer demands one of five browsers as a dependency. Hence, I have uninstalled Epiphany thanks to Moonchild’s information. The poll has been updated accordingly.

[Moonchild]

Fully respect your red line and I understand it would have other uses even if not as common. I was just wondering about the whole "reject one thing then manually construct something extremely similar"

No real suggestion otherwise other than using something Blink based that is keeping up to date with sec.

[Mæstro]

Thank you for understanding and respecting my wishes. Crazy as it sounds, I am willing (and would even prefer) to use Ripcord or Pidgin’s Discord plug-in if I can achieve what I need without loss of function, and have begun investigating why Ripcord was failing. I might end up commenting further here if I advance on that front, simply because it would mean one less demand of a last browser if I break through.

Your arguments about security are sound. I discovered that Ungoogled Chromium 104 is, in fact, my current Buster repository’s version of Chromium, not a leftover from Opensuse’s, which has long since been removed from my system. Hence, the choice is now between a current Chromium version, for which I already know a thread or two in this board providing choices, or Firefox ESR. (That side PM profile I use for debugging would also be a good backup browser, just not one for last resort.) By now, I should leave the poll as is to avoid confusion, but you have made a good case for a newer Blink browser.

Off-topic:
I have got the bad habit of editing my posts fairly often after making them. This happens if I am exploring a subject, post to report my findings thus far about it, return to exploring and soon discover enough again about it that I should revise or add to my statement.

[Night Wing]

@ Mæstro

I have not voted in this poll because of your technical requirements you seem to want and they seem to be above my knowledge level. To be honest, I got "lost".

Instead of Firefox ESR, have you tried taking the Floorp browser, "Standard" tarball, for a "test drive"? And as an added bonus, Floorp can use all of Firefox's extensions and themes.

https://floorp.app/download

[Mæstro]

I have not yet downloaded it to test, but Floorp seems to be a suitable Firefox ESR substitute for my purposes! I will keep it in mind. I have deleted the poll as obsolete. At this time, I would say my last resort browsers, in descending order of desirability, will be Otter, Falkon, Helium, Floorp and Firefox ESR. Because Otter uses Blink, receives regular updates and has a prettier UI, I would rather use it if possible. (Falkon, judging by the homepage pictures, can also be made to look agreeable.) My original question in this thread has been answered.

Indeed, at the time of writing, I installed Otter from Sourceforge, running from the Appimage, but despite ticking the boxes in Tools > Settings > Advanced > Updates, searching for updates (under Help) does not detect any of the incoming updates. Next, I tried following the readme’s directions about building from source to see what happens. At cmake../, I had got the following error:

Code: Select all

maestro@ayaka:~/Herunterladen/otter-browser-master/build$ cmake ../
-- The C compiler identification is GNU 8.3.0
-- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 8.3.0
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc -- works
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting C compile features
-- Detecting C compile features - done
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++ -- works
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting CXX compile features
-- Detecting CXX compile features - done
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:78 (find_package):
  By not providing "FindQt5.cmake" in CMAKE_MODULE_PATH this project has
  asked CMake to find a package configuration file provided by "Qt5", but
  CMake did not find one.

  Could not find a package configuration file provided by "Qt5" (requested
  version 5.15.0) with any of the following names:

    Qt5Config.cmake
    qt5-config.cmake

  Add the installation prefix of "Qt5" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set "Qt5_DIR"
  to a directory containing one of the above files.  If "Qt5" provides a
  separate development package or SDK, be sure it has been installed.


-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also "/home/maestro/Herunterladen/otter-browser-master/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log".
maestro@ayaka:~/Herunterladen/otter-browser-master/build$ 

As for Falkon, because I dislike Flathub, I tried to follow its instructions, but it needs a later version of Cmake. Although that is available for Debian 10, it is too late in the night for me to mess with it now. My mission now simply to decide which of the choices I have ranked I shall be able to use, which will probably depend on the technical assistance I can receive. I am not sure whether here is the right place to ask for that.
Perhaps I should join the IRC chat for Otter tomorrow and ask there for support. The lead developer is Polish, so time zones should not be too much headache.

[Mæstro]

I feel drained, although stopping to eat and shower has been somewhat soothing. I spent two hours in a series of losing battles:

• SeaMonkey. I thought to try this also, for I would prefer it to any other browser I listed above. Discord somehow fails to detect JavaScript in it.
• Falkon. Because my repository has only got v3, I thought to try the instructions to build it from source. My repository carries Cmake 3·15, but 3·18+ is required. A tutorial on installing it (the Archive carries the actual version desired) ran aground at Step 5.
• Helium. The AppImage downloaded, but did not run when executed after checking permissions. I have never got an Appimage to run properly: Otter is the only one that has ever run for me at all, and beside the above, its SSL libraries are missing.
• Floorp. The tarball version fails to run after extraction when trying to execute floorp. The .deb package popped up a window briefly and closed instantly when I tried to open it. (Virtualbox 6 installed from a .deb package a few weeks ago smoothly.) The official instructions failed when I encountered a flurry of dependencies:

  Code: Select all

  maestro@ayaka:~$ sudo apt install floorp
  Paketlisten werden gelesen... Fertig
  Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut.       
  Statusinformationen werden eingelesen.... Fertig
  Einige Pakete konnten nicht installiert werden. Das kann bedeuten, dass
  Sie eine unmögliche Situation angefordert haben oder, wenn Sie die
  Unstable-Distribution verwenden, dass einige erforderliche Pakete noch
  nicht erstellt wurden oder Incoming noch nicht verlassen haben.
  Die folgenden Informationen helfen Ihnen vielleicht, die Situation zu lösen:
  
  Die folgenden Pakete haben unerfüllte Abhängigkeiten:
   floorp : Hängt ab von: libc6 (>= 2.34) aber 2.28-10+deb10u5 soll installiert werden
            Hängt ab von: libgcc-s1 (>= 4.2) ist aber nicht installierbar
            Hängt ab von: libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0) ist aber nicht installierbar
            Hängt ab von: libnss3 (>= 2:3.94) aber 2:3.42.1-1+deb10u9 soll installiert werden
            Hängt ab von: libstdc++6 (>= 12) aber 8.3.0-6 soll installiert werden
            Hängt ab von: libx11-xcb1 (>= 2:1.7.5) aber 2:1.6.7-1+deb10u4 soll installiert werden
            Hängt ab von: libxcomposite1 (>= 1:0.4.5) aber 1:0.4.4-2 soll installiert werden
  E: Probleme können nicht korrigiert werden, Sie haben zurückgehaltene defekte Pakete.
  maestro@ayaka:~$ 

• Discord as a .deb. I actually thought to test it out. It installs, but after ‘installing [six] updates’, it just renders a blank, grey window.

Dealing with this has proven corrosive for my emotional health. Repeated, unexpected failures like this, despite following good practise for technical problems, just promotes learnt helplessness and the belief that I should never attempt to change anything on my computer. It is probably for the best to lock this thread, for it would annoy everybody, including myself, just to discuss the original, unpalatable (as much to me as to you) options further. Thank you for trying. Nobody on this board is at fault.

[Moonchild]

I'll lock the thread as requested.

Off-topic:
As an aside, this kind of unprovoked, repeated failures is what has actually soured my entire Linux as a desktop experience, because it is exactly that kind of thing when attempting to use its freedom that got in my way over and over again. As such it may not necessarily be the fault of each of the individual applications that it caused issues, but rather some interoperability issue withyour flavour of Linux or even just the way your particular installation of it is configured.