LibreWolf, just a privacy focused Firefox without additional bloat. If you want something similar to Vivaldi but on Firefox engine - Floorp.

uBO is more functional on Firefox

uBO is just dead on Chromium, except Brave. They maintain compatibility for 3 major extentions: uBO, NoScript and Adblock.

AFAIK it still inherits many shortcomings, things like inability to copy profile between machines

Vivaldi can be completely portable, it's an option in the installer.

They're all pretty much the same, it just depends on what bugs you are willing to live with.

You would be better off asking google for a list of the top 10 common web browsers and try and use each one until you find one that works for you rather than ask what they like.
All you will get is a list of little known browsers that have little in the way of support of any kind from people who want to show there hip.

Windows 10? I'm using currentFirefox, probably because I'm used to it. Just turn off the AI stuff.

Latest Edge and Chrome are also installed on this 15-year-old machine (HP 6000), but I barely use them.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-06-06, 06:06:

LibreWolf, just a privacy focused Firefox without additional bloat. If you want something similar to Vivaldi but on Firefox engine - Floorp.

I know about Floorp, but unless something changed recently, it needs SSE 4.1 at least. I came across FireDragon, which is based on Floorp and launches on my Phenom II. For some reason, turning off smooth scrolling doesn't do anything, haven't checked if this is inherited from Firefox... By default, default config is a bit too much LibreWolfied for my liking out-of-box, but fortunately, can be tweaked. It even forces intl.accept_languages on to en-US... I mean, c'mon...

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-06-06, 06:06:

Vivaldi can be completely portable, it's an option in the installer.

Are you referring to this? They explicitly mention encryption which causes extensions to not survive migration, cookies too last time I checked.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-06-06, 06:25:

They're all pretty much the same, it just depends on what bugs you are willing to live with.

That's my general impression as well. Honestly, I'm not even sure anything will come out of this. Even though I'm really tired from sluggishness of Pale Moon (and additional issues that cropped up with time), any time I tried to switch, I figured it was better for me to just suffer with Pale Moon.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-06-06, 06:25:

You would be better off asking google for a list of the top 10 common web browsers and try and use each one until you find one that works for you rather than ask what they like.

Yeah, it seems hardly anyone relates to what I want in a browser. And I didn't even mention the theme that inherits operating system's underlying theme! I have Aero like theme on my Win10 + DWMBlurGlass and GlassMyFox extension in Pale Moon. So menus, dialogs and controls in the browser get appearance as if I was still on Windows Vista / 7. Plus the transparency that extends from title bar to the toolbars and status bar.

Modern browsers are so lame and soulless.

I still use Chrome on this Win7 machine - it does say it will not get updates - but so far it's continued to work fine!

Chromium tends to take longer before compatibility issues arise. Might have something to do with them pushing draft standards into use at early stage.

People getting upset quickly on the internet seems to be common. When I wrote this post here, I thought my recent post on PM forum was deleted, but it was merely moved. Still, easy to trip someone over there, saw from my own posting a while back and from other people too.

In any case, there doesn't seem to be any choice if you don't want to have to bother with switching browsers as much other than use one of the big ones.

I figured FireDragon's firedragon.cfg is responsible for enforced smooth scrolling. I commented out a whole bunch of other things there, just prefer closer to stock settings.

Why is preserving timestamp of downloaded files such a challenge? Download with Wget is buggy, doesn't seem to initialize properly, have to disable / re-enable integration with its button before it starts working. And even then, the way it works is ugly, it interrupts built-in download manager in a way that leaves .part file behind. And when I tried to download something when logged into NextCloud instance, wget complained that authentication failed. An odd case where probably timestamp preservation wouldn't work, at least the one I was in seems to not send the real one, but, it still breaks seamless integration.

I've been using FireDragon more at home, but, I don't know. There just aren't any normal web browsers left.

My "solution" to the whole auto-update, change how things you're used to work every few weeks - I got a Chromebook (and yes,I know it constantly updates - but it in one system I don't use for anything else.

I haven't yet had to switch to it "always" - but I know it's coming... and it can talk to my desktop for file access, and can read/write a USB stick - so I will still be able to UL/DL stuff as I need.

They are super cheap too!

The thing with modern web is, you need a browser with an engine that can stomach all the JavaScript and CSS sites throw at it. And unless you only do phpBB forums, Pale Moon is too damn slow at best and some sites break at worst.

I'm not quite done with Pale Moon yet, but I'm probably getting there as well so I understand the frustration. Part of why I'm obstinately sticking with PM is that I feel it's exactly the kind of project that's worth supporting. Most alternatives aren't even trying to make better browsers, because they're too busy coming up with new ways of being even more like over-the-top cartoon supervillains (short of eating actual babies, I guess).

But yes, its current status is not promising. PaleFill used to be a big help at one point, but it doesn't seem very actively maintained anymore. Browsing the PM forums now (your thread included), people seem to be recommending an ever growing range of yet more extensions and hacks just to keep up with web compatibility for a few more weeks. I completely get the devs' stance there, and recognize that such a tiny team can't simply wave a magic wand and make up for web developers being lazy. But when it becomes a full-time job to just keep my browser from barfing at ~30% of the sites I visit, my good will can only take me so far. I'm too old for this shit.

As for alternatives, I guess Brave seems the "least worst" so far (and that's not saying much). But I'm yet to try Vivaldi.

Have you (or has anyone) looked into Ladybird? That too seems promising in some ways... but I doubt it's going to aim very hard at targets that aren't the modern 'average user', i.e. put the same emphasis on customizability and flexibility that Pale Moon has inherited. So far, can't really tell though.

Can you elaborate a bit on the ClearType issue? I've noticed annoying font rendering hiccups in Blink-based browsers, but they didn't seem to be down to ClearType support- I still get subpixel anti-aliased rendering which seems to respect customized settings, but maybe I just don't follow what exactly you're pointing at. Blink *can* utterly fail at ClearType in specific situations (overzealous rendering optimizations spawning new layers with new rendering contexts, which for some reason disables sub-pixel rendering completely), but I haven't encountered it that often in practice.

Ungoogled chromium still has manifest v2, and so ublock origin is still going on that. I can't say I care for any chrome browser still. But at least it works and is compatible. Brave would also work, but I find that one a bit weird.

I have not heard that LibreWolf has accomplished anything useful other than what you could have done by customizing firefox yourself.

I think ladybird proves that a web browser can be written from scratch by a small team. But it's not clear that they get it, especially in terms of being lightweight if they start adopting things like rust and vibe coding, they are then pretty much like the other two engines.

I'm only using browsers which allow me to have all their data inside a directory that I can copy and use between computers. Firefox is the one that is known to work without problems but you ask for Chromium based browsers:

- Brave - for me it's a top pick with real uBlock Origin still working but it's harder so set it up. Brave have a lot of bloat with some cryptocurrency wallets, AI assistant and their own inferior adblocker. It will take time to disable all the crap they are throwing at us but at the same time maybe you will find their adblocker is enough for your use case. For me it wasn't.
- Chromium port by Hibbiki from https://chromium.woolyss.com/ - this is virtually just like Chrome.

Both are reliable and they don't lag with updates like other projects. These two I'm certain because I use(d) them.

I'm almost sure that Ungoogled Chrome is another one as they were the ones who made patches needed to make it portable.

Now you need to know it's not as easy as downloading these browsers. You need to run them with options which turn off all Google crap which ties your profile to the machine and user. I have my own batch file for it and I have to use it every single time I run Chromium based browser. You can find some options needed on this page: https://portapps.io/app/brave-portable/

Keep in ming that one thing is to run a browser by double clicking an icon on your desktop, but you might need a special way to run it when you click a link in other application. You need to make sure it will use these additional portable option then.

I did try Thorium but I don't trust their portability. It was supposed to work but it ruined my profile after update so I abandoned it. I think there are also some projects on Github which can make Vivaldi and regular Chrome portable but I never tested them, and even if their way works today it can stop working tomorrow and you can end up with a broken profile after browser update.