I know we aren’t allowed to use Chrome.

Who says? Use whatever you want, if you want to use Chrome then use it, nobody is stopping you.

As for Vivaldi, I personally think it's the best Chromium browser out there, highly customizable with all the good stuff from old Opera without none of the garbage from current Opera, plus it seems to be reasonably respectful of your privacy. Their only mistake was building it on Chromium.

We’ve decided you’re only allowed to use Lynx from now on.

You can use any browser you want, just be aware of what the downsides are when you do.

The issue with Chrome and Chromium based broswers is the power that Google exerts over the internet via the Blink engine. Although other companies use the same technology, Google controls it and shapes it for it's own commerical gains.

The other big alternative is also proprietary with Apple's Sarfari and WebKit ecosystem.

Vivaldi is a nice browser but it is still run by a private company and it still monetises you to an extent. In vivaldi's case it is currently fairly inocuous - they have referral deals with search engines for the default search, and deals with companies for default bookmarks. But it seems to be currently a more trustworthy browser. Ultimately though, it is part of the Blink ecosystem and supports Google's increasing domination of the browser engine space.

Mozilla and Firefox remains the only truly independent browser, run in a not-for-profit and fully open source way, on the Gecko engine. It's existance helps maintain the neutral aspects of the Web - instead of sites being designed for one browser, it encourages web site and services to be truly standards compliant. Firefox monetise users in a similar way to Vivaldi but that money is used to actually maintain and develop Gecko and other Mozilla technologies, while Vivaldi use that money to maintain Vivaldi the company - they don't need to fund most of Blink as it's made available by Google.

But no one is obliged to support Firefox or open technologies. It's a personal choice what browser you use and there are many valid reasons beyond open standards to chose a browser. I use Firefox for multiple reasons; I genuinely like it and am used to it, but I actually also use Vivaldi and even Chrome on occasions (sometimes to view crapily designed ad heavy or tracking sites without having to disable lots of privacy extensions etc in firefox to make it work; I use Chrome as a bog standard sandbox when I want to dump crap sites out of my main browser but still want to quickly view it for whatever reason).

Pick a browser you like and don't feel guilty if that happens to be chrome based.

Use whatever you want?

Firefox is the only good choice since everything else is built on chromium.

It's chromium but has a special place in my heart because it's made by the og Opera people, when Opera used its own engine. I still use Firefox but if I ever switched it would probably be to Vivaldi.

It's all Chromium, the same browser.

Use whatever you want. But do consider if you want to contribute to Google's monopoly, and if you want to use an open-source browser.

• Vivaldi Browser is not open source. Better use Brave than that…
• If you still really hate Firefox, Ungoogled Chromium which is basically Chrome with all the Google stuff removed.
• All of the above do still contribute to Google's monopoly, so I would really encourage Firefox or a fork.
• Barring that, you could also get away with a WebKit browser (like GNOME web, Nyxt). Although WebKit is developed by Apple, it's still open source and doesn't look particularly bad. If you're on a Mac, Safari is an option, but it's closed source.

When I started looking for a different browser, I almost chose Vivaldi. Then I discovered it was based on chromium os in the end I opted for Firefox

It’s top on my list of Chromium browsers

I daily drive Vivaldi.

The Android version is good too.

GNU Lynx is the only acceptable browser

• sent from Firefox on Android

Vivaldi is now my main browser. Sync works great. The sidebar is awesome.

I would say Vivaldi is my favorite Chromium browser, carrying forward the values of OG Opera from when I was a teenager. A browser for people who love to customize and want everything but the kitchen sink in one suite. Sadly, unlike Opera, which ran its own Presto browser engine, Vivaldi is somewhat leashed by Google, due to it running on Chromium. So I mostly use Firefox

Stay away from vivaldi , people recommending vivaldi has no idea

https://privacytests.org/

Vivaldi is fairly nice, but it's another Chromium. Similar to Brave, they've said they won't be including the Topics API, so it doesn't quite feed into the monoculture. (Disappointingly, they seem like they won't be disabling WEI, Google's latest land grab. Admittedly, for understandable reasons that mirror the original DRM for the web a decade ago, the blunt fact is that they seem like they'll go along with it anyway.) Considering the team is (supposedly) largely shared from some people that used to develop their own engine (Presto, before Opera switched to Chromium), I could also believe they could (possibly would) hard fork Chromium if they felt it necessary. If this is enough for you, then I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time with it, and I've enjoyed it well enough when I've tried it. Personally, I don't daily it.

Ignore the fanbois here. Vivaldi is solid. I will ditch it like an old sock if they end up having to adopt the new standards Google is pushing though. I'm confident Vivaldi will fight doing so until bitter end. I hope they are even willing to switch engines if needbe.

I think vivaldi is respectful of the users privacy, and they are very transparent. If privacy is important to you, they have a number of settings which can be toggled to make it more private and secure: https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/privacy/privacy-settings/

The rendering engine is chromium, and that's a deal breaker for some people. If you don't care about that, then I think it probably ranks right up there with Firefox.

You can use whatever you want, tbh, you'll just be judged. What browser is best really depends on what's important for you.

In terms of features and functionality, Vivaldi is on a league of it's own. No other mainstream browser can compete. Edge from Microsoft takes the second place (no, really). Everything else is far behind on third place. (I don't know about opera though, haven't seen it in a decade)

In terms of privacy, the picture is very different. Also depends on what you consider to be an invasion of privacy (is phoning-home bad? Is telemetry bad? Is allowing cookies bad?) some browsers do one, others do others. If everything is bad, then Firefox is the king here.

If you don't care about any of that and wants something that just works, maybe safari I guess?

Any recommendation you get here will usually take in account what the recommenders' think is important but your opinion might be different.

Ps: Chromium bases browsers don't necessarily pack in everything that Google does. Most of them are actually forks that still get to have a say in what they do or don't.

I used it for a while and there I had to quit. It's just too buggy and instead of fixing the bugs in the updates they change your speed dial to include ads. It's fucking annoying and shows the devs are out of touch. The most egregious thing is when it just straight up deleted all my workspaces.

It's the best Chromium browser. Company seems like it's run by decent people who listen to their users.

I use Vivaldi and it works fine for me. You can block ads and trackers and it's fast.

That's all I need.

Vivaldi has proprietary components that the developers will not disclose due to chronic fears of "corporate espionage"

Thus Vivaldi cannot be planted in a build farm nor be compiled yourself, so you have to take their precompiled binary and deal with it.

Stop being scared and use Librewolf and keep ungoogled chromium in the back for compatibility (and terrible nonfree "webapps").

Nonfree browsers are a waste of everyones time.

I personally love Vivaldi. It's really been the only browser for me that's met everything I wanted. Customizable, looks good. And has a whole synchronization suite as well.

I honestly just don't want to use Firefox at this point because I'm sick of Mozilla and their bad financial records (in 2021, the CEO gave themselves a 5 million bonus. And a good majority of their money still comes from Google), and the fact that they've kind of shifted their priorities away from Firefox in favor of more political activism activities. Which is annoying because Firefox is still the only other browser that has everything I need.

Yeah I do wish Vivaldi was fully open source but they've already mentioned that a lot of their stuff is besides their UI (which they're keeping private for branding reasons). I think Its kind of ridiculous, but it's not that big of a deal I guess since right now Vivaldi is just Chromium with an extra coat of paint.

Wait what's wrong with Brave? Is there drama?!

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I was using Brave but have been getting a bunch of people saying I shouldn't be (mainly referencing the founder). Currently giving Vivaldi a go, so far so good.

It's about the rendering engines, not the browser, really. More is better.

Fuck it, I use Brave, crypto shit isn't mandatory and all related features can be turned off, blockchain based sync is nice, because you don't need an email based account like other ones, built-in ad blocker is nice and they say they won't implement WEI (Google's website DRM) and I'm kinda reluctant to give a fuck about political values it's founder holds even if different from mine, certainly I'm not changing my habits because of that

Firefox is fine. Chromium will be fine as well. If in doubt, pihole.

Vivaldi is pretty good. Henry from Techlore seems to like it. Also, while it is proprietary, the source code is available to view, audit, and compile.

I've been using it for a while because I like the forward and back arrows at the bottom and Firefox on Android was doing some weird stuff (freezing up and whatnot) at one point.