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Ever since the dawn of the internet, there has been ways to get around and surf. From the humble text-based browsers, to the ones we use today - browsers have always been the most important part experiencing the internet. After all, the browser is the user's gateway to the web.
Websites have gotten huge, and web standards have evolved so much over time. We give a lot of information to websites, and more importantly, to our web browser itself, every single day. Have you ever thought about how much you trust your browser? I hope you trust your browser, because it is one of your most important tools, and one that holds many secrets - for example, your browsing history, stored passwords, searches, etc.
With this need to trust our browsers in mind, one of my prerequisites before I will run any browser is to make sure that it is free software. Thankfully, there are no shortages of FOSS browsers out there, and I want to show you some of my favorites. Hopefully, if you're in the market for a new browser, one of these will catch your eye.
Chromium has become the de-facto standard over years, powering a number of some of the most popular browsers in the world, both FOSS and proprietary. It is powered by the speedy Blink engine, and it has a number of contributors working on it from all over the world, and from many different companies. Mostly funded by Google, also with contributions from Microsoft, Brave, Samsung, Yandex, and more, plus volunteer contributors from the community.
The breadth of software powered by Chromium in some form or another is massive, as well. It powers the underlying technology of numerous browsers, both desktop and mobile, including the most popular browser in the world, Google Chrome, with billions of users. It also serves as the foundation for Electron, a cross-platform desktop application framework that powers some of the biggest apps on desktop right now, including VScode, Element, Discord, Slack, Spotify, and a bunch more.
~FOSS browsers based on Chromium
Firefox, powered by Gecko, currently serves as the last bastion of independence. Built by Mozilla, Firefox and its family of forks are the main competition to the Chromium hegemony.
Where Chromium is built mostly by Google employees and corporate contributors from many different companies along with some community contributions, Firefox is built by a nonprofit (Mozilla) with help from the community. It is seen as the last independent browser, and to make things even better, Firefox is one of the biggest free software projects out there. Firefox proper and its forks focus on privacy, security, blocking trackers, and of course, all have access to the huge library of Firefox Add-ons to enhance your browsing experience.
~FOSS browsers based on Firefox
.onion domains.privacy.resistFingerprinting enabled by default.There is a project I am really rooting for that is in development right now, an independent browser project that was spun off from the SerenityOS project. This new browser project is being built entirely from scratch by Andreas Kling, founder of the SerenityOS project, and contributors.
This new browser is called Ladybird, and I encourage you to learn a bit about it. It is able to be built on GNU/Linux systems, though it is important to note that it is in very early shape, and a good number of sites won't work, or might break in interesting ways. While Ladybird is still early on in its development in comparison to the more established browsers, I am happy to see something that isn't just a fork of something else being built, and I cheer on the Ladybird team as they build this important project, and I also aim to contribute some code as well in the future when more time allows.
You can watch development updates on Ladybird here. Andreas himself as well as community members often give detailed new updates on what has been new in the project through videos on their Youtube channel.
Browser extensions (aka "add-ons") are small little programs that run inside your browser. They should be installed with caution, as they can be very powerful tools. There are a few (all FOSS, of course) that can be very handy to enhance your day-to-day browsing, so I'd recommend checking them out. Please note that I will be focusing on Firefox extensions as that is what I use the most, but you can find the same extensions (or Manifest v3-compliant alternatives) in Chromium extensions, as well.
There are more browser options today than ever before, but there is depressingly little real competition. We have Blink in one corner, powering Chromium with a bunch of browsers built on top of it - everything from Brave and Thorium, to Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi. We have Gecko in the other corner, powering Firefox and its forks such as LibreWolf, Waterfox, and Tor Browser. We also have WebKit powering (mostly) Apple's Safari, but Safari is locked down to Apple devices only, so that one's kinda moot on browsers you can run on a free operating system, like GNU/Linux.
At the end of the day, no matter which browser you end up going with, remember that your browser is your "user agent", meaning that it is the agent that represents you - the user - in the digital world. It's important to pick the right user agent, and you want to be able to know you can trust it. By choosing a FOSS browser, you're already taking an important step in that direction. Just test out a few of the ones above and see if you like them, and if so, set one to your default browser on your machine.
Ladybird source code repositories