Manjaro Cinnamon 21.1.2 shipping Vivaldi browser

I honestly don’t get some of the excitement and almost hysteria on the topic.
The selection of software on an ISO is nothing more than a suggestion.
Everybody can remove and install whatever they want.
We even offer a dedicated tool manjaro-application-utility to do just that first thing when you install your system.
We also offer minimal ISOs for every single edition, with almost nothing but the desktop pre-installed. Well in the case of the browser you will still get midori on most (including the Cinnamon edition), since a live environment without any browser at all can be kind of difficult. You can of course remove that one, too.

I happened to like vivaldi when I recently gave it a thorough try and I thought hey, it’s a pity that it isn’t much more known and I also find it nice to vary a bit in what I use myself - I also do that with other applications if there are alternatives available. I really don’t see any harm in promoting something I find interesting or valuable as long as nobody is forced to use it.
It’s not like we are removing firefox from our repos :wink:

To answer those inquiries: If you actually read the announcement, I wrote exactly what I find cool about vivaldi with screenshots and all, so there you have it :slight_smile:

I agree that something like the office-chooser module included in calamares is a very nice idea and it can be great for a lot of people - especially new users - to be presented with a selection of alternatives for several categories - on the other hand I am a huge fan of keeping the installation process quick and crisp and to the point and I would not want to have to click through a whole list of options during installation …

21 Likes

I decided to give vivaldi a try when Google pulled their sync from chromium. Like you I’ve been really impressed with it and can’t understand why it’s not more popular. I get the "open source " bit on linux but vivaldi runs on all platforms and really deserves more credit than it gets

1 Like

People crying about defaults would have been understandable if we had only one browser in repo and it was changed to vivaldi.

2 Likes

Indeed, I guess most people, like me, instantly close Manjaro-Hello and never see it again… “documentation, support, project, ok close that”… It is not very clear in my opinion, this application button is hidden by the rest of the buttons in the window. Maybe automatically ‘click’ on it at first boot would be a good idea.

I’m all for (and have already multiple time suggested it in various posts) a lot more options in the installer, the more we can select during the installation for important things the better (browser, mail client, in particular, but also other programs like UFW, office suite, or other software that could be interesting for the users). I’m not talking about Cinnamon, but globally on all ISO.

4 Likes

Than add an optional step/button where you get your application chooser. Now you can ship it by default with what ever version you want and everybody can change it or keep it during installation. The problem with the after installation manjaro-application tool is you need to actively look for it. I’m saying that as somebody who setup Manjaro a couple of weeks ago and only found it because I was confused why there was no application selection during installation.

I would like to chime in about why Firefox is important for open internet which is not controlled by Google( one of largest ad organization on planet).

I will answer for ‘Why not any chromium based browsers ?’

See here https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/iledbw/why_the_chromiumbased_browser_hate_personal/

the day that blink (chromium) becomes the mono-engine (and we’re damn close to it. support Mozilla people!) is the day that chromium, dominated by google, dictates web standards. they can build more and more restrictive and user-unfriendly functions into the browser. they can implement intentionally not universally compatible features that further entrench chromium over other browser engines. we’ve been through this before. don’t repeat history. don’t let Chrome become the new IE.

Firefox can be configured to be more private than Chrom* can be configured to be, but that’s not the main concern IMO.

I don’t even agree with many of the choices Moz has made for FF, but think about what happens if we make all browsers into Chrome based browsers. Right now we have FF which is losing market share, and aside from single-vendor closed browsers like Safari, that’s it. Every other one is a reskin of either Chrome or FF, … mostly Chrome!

Once we hand Google the ultimate authority over the web, because they de-facto rule it by controlling the last browser left, we have given away all control. They can arbitrarily do what they want…and what we DON’T want. Things like breaking all ad-blocking extensions. Like breaking all privacy-related extensions. Not even the “open” Chromium will have the cloud to stop that, and Google can make changes Chromium will have to take or be increasingly isolated and irrelevant.

Choice matters, and we are at the point of losing all choice in browsers. If we don’t defend that choice, then all is lost, including privacy. It becomes an ad-company controlled web.

Although Chromium is Open Source, it’s still a browser engine - so it’s complex. As you’re aware, Google write the Chromium source code while baking in lots of connections to Google services (such as their geolocation service, and absolutely loads more). Other Chromium based browsers, like Brave, Ungoogled Chromium, Iridium, etc., do put a lot of effort into removing the Google specific service use from Chromium, but they pretty much all say that they can’t guarantee that they’ve removed it all. So there still might be bits in there that allows Google to capture some of your data (unlikely, but possible).

Another important aspect to consider is that privacy enthusiasts generally want to support browser alternatives. If Firefox were to disappear for example, then all the main browsers in the world would be Chromium based, with their core code controlled by Google. That would be bad.

Another factor against Chromium-based browsers is that they’re simply not as configuravle as Firefox. There are options that Firefox exposes for users to change that are impossible to change in any Chromium-based browser without altering the source code (at least as far as I’m aware - there may be some odd exception out there). Because Firefox in particular is so configurable, it can be made much better than any alternative for privacy.

And here is another comment from u/randomDarkPrincess

Have you been alive before Firefox v1 came to life? If yes, that’s why.

If not I would recommend you to read through this. Before Firefox1 came to life and literally SAVED the web, we had to use InternetExplorer6. The biggest piece of shit browser that ever existed. And Microsoft didn’t care to improve it in anyway, because there was no competitor worth caring about. (Edit: This link says “By 2000, IE had a 95% market share; it was the de facto industry standard”)
Why do people recommend Brave? A Chromium based browser? The same base Google uses with Chrome, which is on the way to be the new InternetExplorer6? …I don’t understand why history always needs to repeat itself because humans are too ignorant and stupid to learn from the past. I mean, think about it. The only “broadly known” browsers that aren’t Chromium based are Firefox (Gecko) and Safari (Webkit). Which means 80%+ are Chromium. How can’t you see any issue here?

If you go back to 2009, which is the oldest data the website of the link in the previous paragraph can provide, you can see that there only have been Internet Explorer and Firefox. And Internet Explorer was at 70%+ before 2009. Do you understand it now? Why you should use Firefox? Why Firefox is “the savior”?

While Chromium is open source & it can be forked, in practice google is clever enough to make it incredibly difficult to gain any traction with a fully standalone fork. Just look at android. Yes there are alternatives, but if you were to fork it, you’d have to basically put the same sort of resourcing behind further development as google does. If not, then you rely on their maintenance while trying to police what they do. Have you ever used AOSP apps? you don’t have proper apps by today’s standards that are shipped with AOSP. These apps looks like 2010’s so you have to use google’s proprietary apps.

So yes, you could use any browser you want, but remember that we need open internet for freedom. Recent changes to chromium about Manifest V3 reducing ad blocking capabilities (gorhill, dev of ublock origin, himself said that UBO will have to work with very much reduced power in chromium due to these changes and suggests switching to firefox for full adblocking capabilities) should be enough for anyone to notice what power google has over internet.

And just for reference, the source size of chromium/ firefox > source size of linux kernel (based on Source LOC). So modifying source to remove non-standard/ tracking elements will be huge unless there is a big corp (bigger than Mozilla) has funds and steps in. Look at Microsoft, even they abandoned their own browser engine. That should tell you much about the complexity of these. If a corporation like MS can’t afford them, it would be near impossible for volunteers to maintain a community fork.

@oberon I think you should also consider above points. Make firefox the default and add option for other browsers like feren OS does. If linux ditches FF, it would be very bad for its share and open internet. An average user doesn’t care about and probably will never use those features of vivaldi. If they want those, they will install it. But here we need to support Firefox

14 Likes

Cinnamon is a community edition not an official so the maintainer is going to add the packages they want to add like all community editions. Personally I don’t see it as a big deal full stop vivaldi being default but it’s still firefox on all the official releases so why is everyone so worked up?

1 Like

You have a tons of answers to this question above. I do not know exactly who is involved in Cinnamon community edition but as far as i know, this is @oberon who decided to put Vivaldi in Manjaro Cinnamon.
With all due respect i have to @oberon, he’s also one of both managing board members of Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG. And this is not really a community, according to me, all other team members are unpaid.

What annoyed me with the announce yesterday are four things, beside what has already been said :

  1. Pretend indirectly with this new release of a community edition that this choice is community based (de facto).
    → Well, to me, it’s not a community move, it’s like involving me by force.

  2. Make official-like announcements of this new spin, on Manjaro and Vivaldi side, making people think Vivaldi could become the official browser. I know this is not the case, no doubt, but it could be taken like that somehow.

  3. This:

→ Come on, really, you don’t understand ? Go on social medias or on other forums, please.

  1. And this :

→ What is the next step ? Promoting Google ? Having a partnership with them ? etc…

All those 4 issues have to be taken together, not individually. I think, this is a defensible approach.

7 Likes
  1. Sometimes community editions are made by a Manjaro team member, but not always and this can change

  2. so, here it’s only people who can’t read (not you :wink: ) and only watch videos; not Manjaro’s responsibility

  3. Promoting Google ? No, but we all use it!
    in my plasma install, I have the Google library (javascript, html renderer,…), I use apps compiled with google lang (yay, fzf…) and in the Linux kernel we have Google code :wink:

3 Likes

I never tried Vivaldi but to be honest I don’t really care what the default browser is. As long as the one I want to use (Brave for me) is in the Repos everything’s fine.

One of the beauties of linux is the ability to make it what you want. though some distros are more community involved than others, in the end the choices as to what goes into them is up to the people who develop them, as it should be. everyone has their opinion about what should be in them, what they should look like and how some things should be done. That is why there are so many distros. This is a good thing as we have choice. The problem is too many people don’t want to think for themselves, they want someone to do it for them but must give them what they want. don’t forget, we are getting a free OS meaning no cost to us, developed by people who mostly donate their time and work, the few who do get payed don’t get paid that well. And yet some of you want to complain about what software they include When you could simply change it to suit yourself in minutes. I have used linux for quite awhile now, like many, I was using windows before that. for awhile I struggled until I took the time to read for myself and get a better understanding of how GNU/linux works. I came away appreciating the ability to make it how I wanted it understanding that it would require some effort on my part. I quite like manjaro cinnamon, and don’t really care what software is included with it or not. I do not expect it to be built to suit me, that is up to me as a user.

1 Like

The community editions are something any spin can become. That’s what makes them community editions, anyone can make them and they meet the basic guide lines, they can be promoted to be community editions. I agree that term may be misleading, because practically all the long term community edition maintainers have eventually become Manjaro team members. But still: @oberon started out as community developer, and has been maintaining Cinnamon edition even before Manjaro GmbH & Co existed. Him changing jobs doesn’t make Cinnamon official, maintaining is not what he is getting paid for. This part of Manjaro is a hobby for him, like it is for most of us.

You are of course entitled to your opinions and views. Many your points are also valid, and we all know that keeping Firefox alive is vital to the internet. That’s the main reason it is being promoted as the default browser in all our official editions (honesty, Firefox has not always been the best browser available. I think it currently might be despite its performance issues, but that has not always been the case). But sometimes it’s fun to try something else too, and I think that’s okay. For example, Oberon has been serving Palemoon as the default browser in i3 edition for a long time. In community editions, this kind of experimentation is possible.

6 Likes

" In community editions, this kind of experimentation is possible." And should be encouraged.

3 Likes

i choose firefox. has my default browser after 5 years.

For me, distributions can be shipped without web browser at all. The default browser for downloading browser of choice, isn’t necessary because of repository. Firefox’s users use it because - reasons. I’m curious how tiny is the group using FF because it’s already installed, and how much of them swap into “Which Browser should I use”. Google Chrome group of users on Linux isn’t tiny as well, I guess. Vivaldi looks fancy and fits to Cinnamon DE. Still better to hook users with Vivaldi than they install Chrome after installation.

If someone doesn’t care about privacy and health of web in general, even Electroconvulsive therapy with high voltage doesn’t help.

btw I use Firefox

2 Likes

What would also be interesting is to know how many people use Linux for privacy reasons and how many use it just because they don’t like windows. I know when I made the switch to linux it was because mint (distro I switched to) was more stable and faster than Windows. Privacy wasn’t something I was thinking about at the time I just found my pc ran better on linux. It’s only the last 18 months or so I’ve taken my online privacy more seriously

1 Like

At least we can be sure that this group is loud :grinning: It’s interesting also how many of them back to windows because “my games don’t work on linux”.

1 Like

If the dev would have experimented with other fully open-source browsers this kind of reaction would have not happened. It would still have been an inferior choice to Firefox but still calming for us privacy minded folks.

TL;DR

I switched to Linux because I didn’t want to pay >100€ to get an English version of Windows.

The long version:

I deleted Windows in 2012 because I was given a new laptop in lieu of payment for a project and Windows 7 came pre-installed in 2 languages I didn’t want so I called Microsoft that I wanted an :uk: version instead of the 2 languages that were pre-installed. (1 license key instead of 2 license keys)

Microsoft wanted >100€ for the privilege, so I Googled “Linux Support” and the first hit back then was Ubuntu, so I downloaded that on another computer, burnt it to DVD and installed that.

In 2018 I was sick and tired of snap installs slowing my boot times and DDGed “Linux without snap” and Arch came up as the first hit and something called “Manjaro” came up as second and the rest is history

:crazy_face:

However the first *nix I ever used was something called Xenix and I’ve used AIX, RHL (before is was called RHEL), HP-UX, Tru-64, as a professional *nix admin long before 2012…

4 Likes

I’ve championed Vivaldi before to use with systems which can handle use of a Chromium browser, with such a functional browser skin. But my question is why only for Cinnamon?

What’s the logic of introducing disparity in supplied browser between desktops?

2 Likes