So I don’t use Chrome but I have Ungoogled Chromium (https://codeberg.org/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium) as certain things only work under Chrom(ium) and I only just realised Google requires a Google account to install extensions.
Wow.
Hint: You can bypass this restriction using this the Ungoogled Extension Installer: https://github.com/UnnoTed/Ungoogled-Chromium-Extension-Installer
The lengths we have to go to in order to protect our privacy from basic everyday things is ridiculous. We need fundamental change. Surveillance capitalism needs to die.
@paulrbr Not off the top of my head but I do run into them from time to time (needless to say, they don’t end up being things I keep using). Why I’m using it right now though is because Firefox cannot screen share only one of your screens and I need that for my tech setup for the stream tonight.
@Mr_Teatime @joerg @aral as said in previous tweets I really have no troubles using FF for visio conferences from 2 to 10 people on BBB (on instances from https://www.org.meet.coop/)
@jpfox I just had to ssh into a server to try out their clients. I’m not entirely sure they’re aiming for everyday people to use this as an everyday thing :)
@cage Thanks, will check it out. Appreciate your time.
@aral They are like the borg you get assimilated by google, MS, Facebook
I wonder if the people who designed the bill gates / locutus graphic for sourceforge (or one of the websites) back in the 90's somehow fortold the future where these big tech companies just grab you and make it harder to let go.
@aral Brave could help
@kubernetux @aral brave is an adtech company, and they haven’t had the cleanest track record. also cryptocurrency is akin to a ponzi scheme — i wouldn’t want my browser having anything to do with that.
@kubernetux @aral i quite like this article on the subject: https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html
>I only just realised Google requires a Google account to install extensions
where do you see that? i can just hit "install" in the "store"
fully agree on the last paragraph!
@aral are there any benefits of ungoogled chromium over firefox ?
@aral yeah — I’ve gone with Firefox as my main browser, and ungoogled as my “alternate” if it doesn’t work under Firefox. Along with a couple of extensions and the ghack user.js, it works reasonably well.
@aral : "The lengths we have to go to in order to protect our privacy from basic everyday things is ridiculous. We need fundamental change. Surveillance capitalism needs to die."
Hear! Hear!
@aral it pains me to watch people putting themselves through these contortions when Firefox is right over there.
@aral Not to put too fine a point on this, but everyone who's doing all this performative work to get something chrome-like to respect their privacy and agency instead of switching browsers is actively making the ecosystem worse by showing the webdev community that it's fine to ignore all those other browsers.
@mhoye I know. And to think people use Firefox (by a company that gets half a billion dollars a year from Google) when Epiphany is right there (oh, damn, by an organisation that has Google on its advisory board)… umm… Lynx FTW! :)
@aral
This is happening more often now. Companies don't want to spend the time/money to make sure they're compatible with the real world.
There's an extension I need for work purposes. I couldn't get it to run under Ungoogled Chromium. Turns out they rely on some Google spyware for some functionality. I had to install Chrome just for that.
It's just like the old days when they assumed that the world ran on Internet Explorer and used the Microsoft-only extensions to HTML.
@vegos_f05 if you would like to off on a tangent, Alvy Ray Smith's memo might be a good read:
A Pixel is not a little square
http://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Microsoft/6_pixel.pdf
Maybe it's not related to that 901 pixel "width" image, but it's a nice piece of work IMO.
@aral
I was trying same thing few days ago. Yes, installing extensions is quite tricky.
I am using FF as main browser but for work I need to use GoToMeeting which is not working with FF. So I am using brave just for that.
Testing ungoogled chromium now if it is OK and looks promising
@aral do you have examples that work only on chrome(ium)? I use exclusively Firefox and I haven't had any issues for some times.