If only… What does fox say?

There is a longer discussion to be had about both what RFP does, how effective it is, and the relative impact on entropy of this particular feature.

For now I will just say that this: Providing configuration for this serves the projects goal of user control and freedom. It should be up to the user to make that call. Us as developer shouldn’t unilaterally decide on behalf of everyone. We can’t think of everything and we don’t always know best. Of course we can still provide guidance and put what we believe is sensible as defaults. I find it odd to criticize empowering users in this way, in particular considering the status quo.

Were it up to me, everyone should have Letterboxing on by default, probably with similar reasoning. I don’t see why you wouldn’t use it. Everyone enabling it would make us all (ever so little) less fingerprintable. Arguably more meaningful impact than dark/light-theme. And less of an accessibility issue. Even so, we still leave this configurable in the same way as the dynamic theming.

You can also see this way of thinking reflected in allowing loading of your own add-ons from file and allowing userChrome customization. Probably niche power-user features with risks involved and sharp edges exposed but we are developers and maintainers of software, not your sysadmins¹ or caretakers².

If you fundamentally disagree, well, not all software has to be for everyone. Probably there is already something else (like Tor Browser) that serves your needs and aligns with your philosophy better?

¹: …xcept… you want us to be your sysadmin? 👉👈 Call me when you close that seed round bb 😘

²: Nope.

Just, uh, don’t turn on dark mode then?

I’m so glad you want to try!

The problem with both that and Flathub is that I can’t seem to pass Githubs signup CAPTCHA whatever I tried (and yes I tried other browsers too lol). Besides, having my old account there arbitrarily blocked on phone number verification in the past, not feeling super keen on having users rely on them for updates, even putting aside whatever I feel about Microsofts and GitHubs role in the ecosystem in general…

However, if anyone would be up for the literal push-part of pushing it up and wouldn’t mind collaborating a bit in the process, would be happy to make that happen together (or use your privilege if you’re motivated; it’s free software yo, just heed the license ;)). There is an Issue thread for coordinating if this is you.

I don’t think it should be too involved as the source repo and source tarballs are built in pretty much the same way as LW, which already has a derivation in nixpkgs. Didn’t look closer at that derivation but hopefully shouldn’t be much more than copying pkgs/applications/networking/browsers/librewolf and replacing some strings.

Can I ask why you decided to fork Librewolf?

I wrote a bit of the "why"s already in the OP. Could expand further for you but what do you have in mind? “Why did you choose librewolf as upstream”, “why fork and not another approach”, “why bother with any of this at all”, …?

Flatpak

Flatpak is something we want and have been looking at already. See here for what’s holding that back. There is already an (untested) repo for it.

Appimage.

While AppImages can be very convenient, we are ambivalent on some their security aspects among other things. Currently not prioritizing it until we have what we consider generally more solid options covered but will consider outside contributions if anyone feels motivated and puts in the effort to makes it happen.

Issue thread for new distribution targets where interested Codeberg users can follow up: https://codeberg.org/konform-browser/source/issues/9

for us atomic users

I see why users prefer flatpaks or appimages but just for consideration some ways I can think of one could run it on an atomic distro today:

• toolbx style running the browser in a rootless podman container ¹
  • Haven’t tried straight up installing it in an actual toolbox container so not sure how well that works but maybe it’s worth a try if that’s something you already use?
• For the Fedora family, should be straightforward to install an .rpm in your overlay
• Run the app from the binary tarball directly on the host, installing it on a user mount somewhere ²
• Use the source, Luke. Build it. ³

¹: Would anyone actually use it if there was a Containerfile for it? We currently don’t have a public one but I can attest this works fine in general and if people indicate interest for it I think it’s a neat idea that Konform Browser could provide that as an option.

²: I think this is fine for testing and short-lived installations but unless you are technical enough to reason about the trust involved and automate for verified updates (or at least getting notifications for them), I wouldn’t recommend it for long-term (>= months) installations so that you don’t get stuck on unpatched versions without thinking about it. This is the least secure way to run it. Not generally recommended for non-technical users.

³: Something I recommend becoming more familiar with in general if one has the time, resources, and patience. The catch with updates applies here too if this is for production use.