Suggestion for a fallback browser

[Lucio Chiappetti]

I might open a diiferent thread on it (i.e. fallback altenrate browser).

Something similar was raised occasionally in past threads but not systematically.
My question is for a suggestion about what to do for sites which do not work with Pale Moon, with the idea of using one alternate browser., with the minimum "damage" i.e. difference from the "safe" behaviour of Pale Moon.

1. First of all, am I correct in thinking that the best way is just to use directly chrome (in my case the .deb of google-chrome-stable under Linux) instead of any other variation (ungoogled-chromium or whatever), With the idea chrome will work in 100% of the cases not working with Pale Moon, other variations might fail in a few cases. Am I correct ? Or is there a viable alternative ?
2. Said that, I'd like a step-by-step guide to configure chrome (or the viable alternative) in a way as close as possible to the way I use Pale Moon (if anybody with the Pale Moon mindset has already gone through the chrome learning curve), namely:
3. In Pale Moon I delete cookies at session exit; or even more often via cookies exterminator
4. In Pale Moon I delete history at session exit
5. In Pale Moon I have virtually no cache
6. In Pale Moon I have uBO
7. I'd like to minimize the number of passwords stored in the alternate browser (I would be agreeable to copy them on the spot each time from Pale Moon Saved Logins)
8. In particular I do not want to store any credit card or banking PIN in the alternate browser (even if it is an OTP)
9. I would like to know if chrome Incognito window is functionally equivalent to Pale Moon "private window" (I use private window in Pale Moon to navigate my bank site in order not to leave any track)

[moonbat]

Been using ungoogled-chromium without any problems. If you're looking at a Blink based browser - Brave is the way to go. If you're looking at Firefox, then Floorp does a good job of removing its tracking features as well as adding a few UI enhancements of its own.

[Night Wing]

@ Lucio Chiappetti

I use two linux distros and they are MX Linux and Debian. In these two distros I use three browsers for each distro and they are in order of preference: Pale Moon, Waterfox, Firefox.

Waterfox is my backup browser to Pale Moon. I have been using Waterfox for at least 10 years now. The nice thing about Waterfox is, it can use the exact same extensions as Firefox uses.

The first extension I install in Waterfox is uBlock Origin adblocker and I get UBO for Waterfox at the link below.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ck-origin/

So when websites do not work with Pale Moon, they work for me using Waterfox.

[Mæstro]

I second Waterfox as fallback browser. If a site fails in my main Pale Moon profile, with µBlock in advanced mode, I try the side profile, for which I now keep a separate icon to launch. If that fails, I post here about compatibility and try in Waterfox, which has always served my needs. My rotting Ungoogled Chromium installation retains just one purpose: playing Mynoise at night, for I have discovered it runs cooler overnight than Waterfox on the same site. Now that I am free from Discord (the grace period to revive my account lapsed two hours ago, so my account has been permanently deleted), Waterfox is only occasionally needed.
I use Waterfox with µBlock (with default settings), SponsorBlock (formerly, some Invidious instances only worked in Waterfox), Discrub (obsolete now that my Discord logs have been exported and account deleted) and Forget Me Not (to avoid cookie accumulation without ). My Discord accounts and my old university’s accounts were the only ones I chose to save in that browser; neither is still needed. I have copied my credit union and PayPal account’s passwords into Waterfox when needed without saving them. It sounds ideal for your usage habits.

[ajgelado]

Nowadays I use Firefox for the (rare) cases when a site does not work with Pale Moon, and for accessing Google's services. In the past, I used Ungoogled Chromium, but as I'm on Windows, I had to manually update it, which was a pain. And if i were to meet a site that didn't work on Firefox, I would always have the option (God forbid!) of using MS Edge, which itself is Chrome-based.

[billmcct]

I suggest r3dfox. Modern FF tweaked to run on Win 7 up.

https://github.com/Eclipse-Community/r3dfox

[Octopuss]

Waterfox.
Although I would love to know whether there is an extension that would automatically backup and restore sessions. because by default when the thing crashes badly, it creates a blank profile for whatever reason and I have to edit the stupid config file to point it to the correct one.

[Michaell]

I've been using Waterfox lately for two social media sites (one of those needed a Chromium browser (Vivaldi for me) to setup account but not for routine use). Today I tried a government site that gave a Cloudflare error in PM and also in Waterfox and I gave up. I needed to get something from an insurance site for which I had to disable most extensions in Waterfox. It seems there is no simple alternative that allows some blocking and still allows access.

tldr: the modern web sucks

[BenFenner]

On my main machine I would use LibreWolf as my sidekick, but it dropped support for Windows 7 a LONG time ago.
So, I use Waterfox's last version to support Windows 7.

On my media center machines I use Firefox as a sidekick (almost exclusively for Netflix streaming).

After a few decades, I've finally ran into a site or two that I absolutely must interact with, but would not work with either Pale Moon or a Firefox derivative, so I've got ungoogled-chromium on my Linux machine as a complete fall-back. It was so awful to set up. Even after finishing all the customization I could do, I can not fathom experiencing the Internet through that browser. It. Is. So. Awful.

[Mæstro]

It is easy to find bad things to say about Ungoogled Chromium, all flaws inherited from its father. Some, such as the poorly designed settings menu which encourages using a search engine(!) to navigate it, have infected other browsers also as they chase current fashions. The worst aspect of Ungoogled Chromium I have yet noticed is not strictly the browser’s own fault, but again, traces to Google proper. If the browser version is too old, it becomes impossible to install extensions from official sources, as I discovered when I first wanted to use Discrub before switching to Waterfox as secondary browser. Possibly, this could be circumnavigated, but I would not know how, and my use case of UC, now my tertiary browser, is so narrow there is no need to bother about it. The future of purportedly extensible, Blink-based browsers years into the Manifest 3 era remains to be seen. One also wonders, as I write this, about the future of web design. Whither is there left to go once almost all sites are the same giant text floating in a JavaScript-generated void? The nicest thing I can say about UC is that it apparently requires less processing power (measured through CPU temperature) than Waterfox for certain JavaScript-based tasks, notably the Mynoise site I recently submitted for diagnosis. Why is this?

[dinosaur]

I'm using Waterfox as backup browser.

Once tweaked (about:config settings, some extensions, and some userChrome.css tweaks), I find it acceptable, even if not as nice as PM (ugly GTK3 instead of GTK2, for a start, and not as customizable an UI), and still lacking extensions (Custom Buttons for example, which I use a lot with PM).

[Gemmaugr]

I don't use a fallback browser. I don't count using Basilisk for gaming wikis and maps, etc.

I'd rather do anything else rather than that. Proxy/frontend site like https://gitdab.com/cadence/breezewiki or archived versions or greasemonkey scripts.
I don't have many must use sites, but if one were to be mandate a non-Pale Moon browser... I'm not actually sure. Maybe Brave browser perhaps.

[RedRamGT]

I have Windows 7 on my primary computer, and use Firefox ESR 115 Portable as an alternative browser. The ESR 115 is still supported on Windows 7, although it does have the end of support sometime soon. On my Linux Mint system, I use Waterfox as the alternative browser.

[Mæstro]

Firefox 115 ESR is installed on my secondary computer, which I have never bothered to outfit with software beyond the usual repository. It runs Debian 10 also, in compliance with my needs two years ago when I had bought it, although it could now be replaced with current Debian. It is adequate while in the hotel or for those rare occasions when I needed to use a computer outside my home, like for exams or displaying digital tickets on German railways, or now i I need to access the computer but cannot clean myself to enter my bed and use my regular one. The only palpable limitation, compared to Waterfox on my main computer, I have felt is not the browser’s fault; I have never bothered to install a VPN on the other computer, which restricts the range of sites I may visit.

[THX-1139]

I have 3 Browsers installed; Pale moon (my main) Basilisk (secondary) and Vivaldi (chromium copy) And I use Vivaldi for maybe 2 websites that are problematic using PM or Basilisk: the main thing I use Vivaldi for is paying my ISP (Spectrum) and some .Gov stuff I haven't needed to visit in many years.(Vivaldi seemed to me at the time, to be the easiest to use of the chromies)
So yeah, I use PM almost exclusively for All general browsing

[UCyborg]

If the browser version is too old, it becomes impossible to install extensions from official sources, as I discovered when I first wanted to use Discrub before switching to Waterfox as secondary browser.

I explicitly prefer https://www.crx4chrome.com/ over Chrome Store.

As for fallback, so far, it was either Edge (sometimes Thorium) or Firefox.

[Kand_in_Sky]

r3dfox + Supermium,
which both works on Win7

[jarsealer]

My question is for a suggestion about what to do for sites which do not work with Pale Moon, with the idea of using one alternate browser., with the minimum "damage" i.e. difference from the "safe" behaviour of Pale Moon.

Cromite (https://github.com/uazo/cromite) has everything you're asking for, with a built-in content blocker. The latest version is 145, which is 2 major versions behind. Although it looks like on their GitHub they're working on it.

[geraldh]

I'm using Waterfox on Linux Mint as my backup browser with Ublock Origin. I much prefer the Palemoon GTk2 interface, but by adding the "pearl aqua 2.0" theme and turning off the disappearing scrollbars it looks reasonably consistent with my Mint Aqua theme.

[frapox]

I might open a diiferent thread on it (i.e. fallback altenrate browser).

Something similar was raised occasionally in past threads but not systematically.
My question is for a suggestion about what to do for sites which do not work with Pale Moon, with the idea of using one alternate browser., with the minimum "damage" i.e. difference from the "safe" behaviour of Pale Moon.
[cut]

I went back on using Firefox as my main browser after a while of using just Chrome, and I find it very productive. Performance are almost the same, at least on my main machine (AMD 9700X CPU, 1TB Nvme Gen5, GPU AMD 9070, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM); probably, difference gap is more noticeable on a i5-4th gen, a spare PC that was given to me, that I use as secondary machine.

I guess the extensions you turned on also play a role either on the performance side or in the compatibility one.

I don't think Firefox is the best choice when it comes to videoconferencing using a service WebRTC-based (with i.e. Meet, a Chromium based like... Chromium or Chrome is just a better solution indeed), but for all the rest I honestly guess there is not a particular task where Firefox is far behind Chrome.

A big "pro" of Firefox over Chrome is customizability: a lot more, in almost every side (not only the interface), as well as Pale Moon.

Speaking of you specific requests, Firefox has probably all satisfied: cookies, cache and history can be deleted on exit, via "normal" settings (not fiddling with the advanced ones) without leaning on any particular extensions. Also, disk cache can be moved to RAM if you have enough, so that also performance is improved and SSD wearing reduced.

There's a very nice web page on the Arch wiki which summarize many tweaks to maximize performance and stability, especially if you're on Linux (as I am).

The password storage, or the storage of other kind of personal data (credit card, home address) can be disabled from Settings > privacy and security (and so I do, since I use a thir-party service extension).

Chrome's "Incognito" should be the equivalent of Palemoon's private windows or Firefox's private windows: all of these create a temporary session that doesn't store cookie, history or other data on your disk.

At the end, Firefox should be the best choice if you are looking for a browser with minimal differences from Pale Moon. In my opinion.