Web browsers

A Web browser is a type of Web client that enables a user to select, retrieve, and perceive resources on the Web. In particular, Web browsers provide a way for a user to view hypertext documents and follow the hyperlinks that connect them, typically by moving the cursor over a link and depressing the mouse button.

What does /g/ use?

• Ungoogled Chromium - Chromium with less botnet. Not fully audited
• Firefox and it's forks:
  • Pale Moon - Legacy Firefox being maintained by infamous furry known as Moonchild. Dubbed "Pale Meme" by some users, due to some controversies regarding automatic updates and add-ons as there is a blacklist set by default and classic add-ons do not work as of 29.3.0.
  • Librewolf - Firefox fork designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, removing all telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM. Comes with uBlock Origin by default.

Free web browsers

Firefox based

Good ole' Firefox

The Best Firefox fork ^{[Citation needed]}

Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Netscape Communicator. It is known for its championing of the open web during Internet Explorer's reign of terror and its extensive customisation capabilities via add-ons and settings. Nowadays, Mozilla spends more effort on chasing industry trends and squandering donations than maintaining the browser.

Numerous forks and spin-offs of Firefox exist and are a common sight on /g/ and /tech/ given Firefox's perceived transition into a Chrome-imitating memory whore, for example Pale Moon, its sibling Basilisk, and advertiser-sold Waterfox. The most "free" fork would be GNU Icecat, a fully free, libre, open-source (FLOSS) fork of Firefox without its built-in DRM support and Firefox Hello. IceCat comes with LibreJS, an add-on which blocks out any non-free JavaScript on webpages.

Chromium based

Google, de-botneted (a lie)

Chromium is a free and open-source web browser botnet known for its extremely fast JavaScript execution and multiprocess security model. Upon release, Chromium was ahead of the competition by leaps and bounds in terms of raw performance. In the years that followed though, Firefox and Opera largely equalled and in some cases surpassed its performance advantage, although Chromium still tends to maintain a slight edge in UI responsiveness and JavaScript execution. While usually recommended for use, many users stay away from this browser as it has not been audited as much as Firefox has, and in protest of its (easy to disable) tracking features.

If you're thinking of switching to Chromium (Google's open source version of Chrome) instead, think again. For some time, Chromium snuck in a binary blob for voice recognition whenever you started it up. This has been removed by the project maintainers, but it should raise some concern over what else could be lurking in the code.

If you want a completely botnet-free and telemetry-free browsing experience, this is what you do:

1. Get Ungoogled-Chromium from your package manager.
2. Go to chrome://flags and change the setting "Handling of Extension MIME Type Requests" to "Always prompt for install".
3. Install chromium-web-store
4. Install our recommended extensions
5. ???
6. PROFIT!!!

Non-free web browsers

Superior waifu browser not available on Freedom™ systems

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a botnet proprietary fork of the free and open source Chromium project. While effectively offering the same browsing experience as Chromium, it integrates Google's DRM and controversial user-tracking capabilities. If you value your privacy or reputation on /g/ and /tech/, it's best to avoid this one.

Vivaldi

Vivaldi is made by the developers of Opera, who were apparently as frustrated with its change in direction as /g/ and /tech/, and attempts to bring back the feel and features of Opera 12.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge is the default web browser in Microsoft's Windows operating systems. It is another proprietary Chromium fork but instead of Google botnet, you get Microsoft botnet. Can be uninstalled from Windows with a shell script.

Safari

Safari is the default web browser in Apple's macOS. It is based on Apple's WebKit layout engine, a distant KHTML fork. Compared to Chromium and Firefox, Safari has a slower development cycle and smaller extension base, but offers a simple browsing experience out of the box.

Obscure hipster browsers

The chance that all websites will work with these browsers is low. Its just the way things are now.

Gecko

• K-Meleon is a free and open-source Firefox-like browser for Windows. It uses the Gecko rendering engine just like Firefox, but sports a native Windows UI and is absurdly configurable. It also runs very, very well on Pentium M era hardware and below.

• LibreWolf A hardened security-focused fork of Firefox with uBlock Origin preinstalled.

• SeaMonkey is a continuation of the Mozilla suite and descendant of Netscape Navigator. Unlike most modern web browsers, it is an Internet suite, completely bundled with an email client, newsreader, IRC, and web designer. Has old internet written all over it. It's the only functional choice on early to mid 2000's computers, as many Chromium based browsers won't work at all due to requiring an specific instruction set that older CPUs don't have. Could be worth considering on any extremely resource-deprived system, more-so than browsers like Pale Moon.

WebKit

• GNOME Web is the GNOME Project's default browser.

• Sleipnir is a proprietary Japanese weeaboo Chromium fork with a superior, proprietary font rendering engine. However, it is only available on OS X and Windows.

• Falkon (formerly QupZilla) is similar to rekonq by being lightweight and using Qt except it has more features.

• Otter Browser is a project that aims to recreate and improve upon the features of classic Opera using the Qt5 toolkit. It is in development at the time of writing, and is thus unsuited for general use.

• Luakit, Uzbl and qutebrowser are all minimalistic browsers with a keyboard-driven, Vim-inspired interface. Most are based on archaic versions of WebKit, although qutebrowser uses QtWebEngine in more recent builds.

• Surf is a browser developed according to the Suckless philosophy, which means it's effectively a WebKit frontend.

• Dooble is a web browser focused on security and privacy with many integrated features like support for advanced options and cookie management, Gopher support, a FTP browser, a file manager, a download manager, and many others.

KHTML

• Konqueror is a Web browser and file manager that was once a core component of the K desktop environment. Webkit and Blink are both descendants of its KHTML layout engine.

Terminal

• Links is a text-based browser that can display images.

• w3m is another text-based browser that can display images.

• ELinks is a text-based based web browser that runs from the terminal.

• Lynx is the oldest web browser still under active development. It strips pages of images, doesn't use javascript, and is great for just reading what is needed, like an article. It also utilizes other system programs, should you need to open an image file, for instance.

Other

• NetSurf is a fast, lightweight browser running on GTK and using its own rendering engine with no JavaScript support.
• Dillo is an even faster, more lightweight browser running on FLTK using its own rendering engine with limited (but improving) CSS support and no JavaScript support.

Recommended User Scripts

4chanX

• loadletter's 4chan X is a maintained version of MayhemYDG's v2. It lacks the controversial changes made by MayhemYDG in v3. It is a shorter script, and the only maintained fork that supports Opera 12.
• ccd0's 4chan X is the continuation of Spittie's/Seaweed's 4chan X.
• OneeChan is a script for customizing the look and feel of 4chan. Originally by Seaweedchan, its maintenance was continued by Spittie, then Nebukazar and now KevinParnell.

Other

• 4Chan Linkify changes plain-text links on 4chan into hyper-links. It is redundant if either 4chan X or the official extension are used.
• uBlock Origin is an adblocker that is very efficient on system resources. This is the original source, and works on Firefox.
• ClearURLs Removes tracking ids in URL while surfing the web.
• Decentraleyes Improves the privacy of Content Delivery Networks.
• SponsorBlock is an extension for both major web browsers, as well as kodi, mpv, youtube-dl, chromecast, android, etc. that blocks sponsored segments in videos (works on invidous as well).