Right now is the best period of time yet for Firefox-based browser, especially when most alternative browsers are Chrome-based.

While there are a bunch of forks like Librewolf and Palemoon, they provide features mainly for power users like hardened privacy and tweaked user-prefs. A year ago the only fork I knew of, based on recent stable versions of Firefox and added productivity features on top was Floorp. I was very surprised at the hype and sudden popularity of Zen Browser in the past few months and have been curious why it grew so much faster than Floorp which has been around for much longer, look at the Github star graph: https://star-history.com/#zen-browser/desktop&Date. Zen Browser currently has 19.3K stars while Floorp has 6.1K.

Reasons I can think of are the following: heavy promotion of the browser by the devs and community on places like Reddit along with emphasizing its ‘zen’ philosophy, really fast development (it now has way more features than Floorp), and the Zen mods store, where you can install CSS mods.

What are your thoughts and reasons for Zen Browser becoming so popular so fast? (while its not mainstream, it did grow fast in among Firefox and power users)

  • pastermil@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    22 days ago

    Let’s face it: People aren’t gonna take something named ‘Floorp’ seriously.

    If you do, especially to the point you’re downvoting this, maybe it’s time to ask yourselves why people are not taking you seriously.

    • canadaduane@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      22 days ago

      There is a certain strain of open source development that is nearly anti-marketing, as far as I can tell. They choose names like “gimp”, “git”, “frotz”, “borg”, “pooch”, “butt”, “slurm”, “mutt”, “snort”, and “floorp”.

  • not_amm@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    22 days ago

    I ended up liking it a lot. I don’t know why or how, but it (as Flatpak) uses less RAM and CPU than native (RPM) Firefox, so I’ve been enjoying testing it as daily driver for basic navigation. I still use Firefox as my main browser, but Zen works fine, has good proposals and is still improving and hearing the community. Well done and well deserved

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
      1·
      18 days ago

      Yeah because Flatpak firefox is damn insecure!

      Please dont use it. Firefox devs dont care. Flatpak restricts browsers from spawning “user namespace” sandboxes for filesystem isolation.

      Chromium uses a fork server (zygote) and breaks when it cannot spawn these sandboxes. So developers created zypak, which allows to isolate processes using bubblewrap, the Flatpak sandbox.

      Firefox just runs without a sandbox, and doesnt have a fork server, so nobody cares.

      Without process isolation, you have less duplicated content. This saves space but IT IS INSECURE.

      Please use a non-Flatpak Firefox version.

      There is no reason why a “Zen Browser” should use less RAM than Firefox.

  • Litanys@lem.cochrun.xyzEnglish
    1·
    23 days ago

    No clue why except i think people are mostly just really fed up with Mozilla making a non profit about everything but their browser. I could see a lot of people prefer the name and the willingness to try new stuff compared to floorp.

    But really i think most of it is it’s very different from Firefox and people are tired of Firefox… But still hate chromium.

  • toastal@lemmy.ml
    1·
    22 days ago

    Reminder: Microsoft GitHub social media likes is not an accurate barometer of much. Starhacking is a thing & it tells you nothing of the code quality, but just that more authenticated Microsoft accounts, real or fake, have pressed a button—where the more popular/normie/maintstream languages/frameworks get the most signal. You can also read anecdotes thah some folks use this as a bookmark to look at later rather than actually using or enjoying a project.

    Free software doesn’t need to rely on a dubious value signal on a proprietary social media platform like MS Github.

  • devfuuu@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    22 days ago

    I’ll start believing or caring about any alternative browsers when I see a big influx of money comming to a browser project. Just grabbing a codebase and changing some settings and releasing it with a new name is not really creating or maintaining a browser. People keep thinking that it’s easy to maintain a huge project like a browser by just praying and volunteers.

    • nyan@sh.itjust.works
      01·
      22 days ago

      Money isn’t important. Some complex software is, in fact, maintained by unpaid volunteers who feel strongly about the project. That doesn’t mean it’s easy (in fact it’s quite difficult to keep the lights on and the code up-to-date), but it is A Thing That Happens despite being difficult.

      What is important is the size of the codebase (in the case of a fork, that’s the code either written for the fork or code that the fork preserves and maintains that isn’t in the original anymore), the length of time it’s been actively worked on, and the bus factor. Some would-be browser forks are indeed trivial and ephemeral one-man shows. Others have years of active commit history, carry tens or even hundreds of thousands of lines of novel or preserved code, and have many people working on them.

  • www-gem@lemmy.ml
    0·
    22 days ago

    While I’ve tried both, I am not sensitive to any of these trends. I’m just glad to see some alternatives that can fit anyone needs. That’s the power of the open-source.

    Although I understand the reasoning beyond the language used in this post, I’m sad to read that hardened privacy is considered a power user thing.

    • TheTwelveYearOld@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      01·
      22 days ago

      Although I understand the reasoning beyond the language used in this post, I’m sad to read that hardened privacy is considered a power user thing.

      What’s really sad is the fact you need to make a bunch of convenience tradeoffs and go well out of your way for improved privacy, and on a browser that already has a lot of built-in features for privacy. And a downside of using a Firefox fork is not getting the latest Firefox updates ASAP, you have to wait for the fork to update. It goes to show how privacy-invasive the web is.

  • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    22 days ago

    Maybe because Floorp (Additionally which is most likely a fork from a browser named midori), Uses a outdated version of firefox.

  • Mac@federation.redEnglish
    0·
    21 days ago

    Floorp causes me a ton of issues on DRM based streaming sites. F1TV being the worst

  • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world
    0·
    22 days ago

    I’m sticking with Floorp for now. Faster development doesn’t mean it will be sustainable, but we’ll see. Or necessarily that all feayures may be good. More iant better. Brave and Opera GX have a bunch of features too.

    But I’m using Firefox and Floorp as a variant because I want something that gets fundamentals right. And if Zen becomes huge, great.