Replacements for Firefox and Thunderbird?

[Kaj Haulrich]

Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, I'm looking for alternative browsers and an e-mail clients to run on my (K)Ubuntu workstation. Kmail and Evolution both both want to pull in a lot of dependencies, and I will not touch Gmail (or anything Google) in any way, manner, shape or form. Can anyone recommend a lean e-mail client and a browser that does not 'phone home'?
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[Tibor Attila ANCA-3]

Hello,

Am 13.01.21 um 19:37 schrieb Kaj Haulrich:
> Can anyone recommend a lean e-mail client and a browser that does not 'phone home'?

Did you already try Geary?

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[R C]

what do you mean?

I mean, firefox is 'just' a browser, thunderbird 'just' an email client,
and both are used and setup to work in isolated/disconnected networks
even. There is no way for them to control content reliably, nor
practically. Also, they are both open source, if something were "built
in" to check/control content, it'd be ripped out, disabled etc. by users
etc before you know it? The *nix world has always (well for as long as I
have been around) been more 'independent' than other groups when it
comes to freedom of speech, anonymity etc.

Ron

On 1/13/21 11:37 AM, Kaj Haulrich wrote:
> Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, I'm looking for alternative browsers and an e-mail clients to run on my (K)Ubuntu workstation. Kmail and Evolution both both want to pull in a lot of dependencies, and I will not touch Gmail (or anything Google) in any way, manner, shape or form. Can anyone recommend a lean e-mail client and a browser that does not 'phone home'?

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[Kaj Haulrich]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 19:40:43 +0100
Tibor Attila ANCA <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Am 13.01.21 um 19:37 schrieb Kaj Haulrich:
> > Can anyone recommend a lean e-mail client and a browser that does not 'phone home'?
>
> Did you already try Geary?

No, but it wants to install a truckload of Evolution-related dependencies. Doesn't look especially lightweigt...
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[Chris Green]

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 07:37:11PM +0100, Kaj Haulrich wrote:
> Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join Google,
> Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, I'm looking for alternative browsers and
> an e-mail clients to run on my (K)Ubuntu workstation. Kmail and Evolution
> both both want to pull in a lot of dependencies, and I will not touch Gmail
> (or anything Google) in any way, manner, shape or form. Can anyone recommend
> a lean e-mail client and a browser that does not 'phone home'?

For an E-Mail client how about mutt?

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[Kaj Haulrich]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 18:56:37 +0000
Chris Green <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 07:37:11PM +0100, Kaj Haulrich wrote:
> > Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join Google,
> > Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, I'm looking for alternative browsers and
> > an e-mail clients to run on my (K)Ubuntu workstation. Kmail and Evolution
> > both both want to pull in a lot of dependencies, and I will not touch Gmail
> > (or anything Google) in any way, manner, shape or form. Can anyone recommend
> > a lean e-mail client and a browser that does not 'phone home'?
>
> For an E-Mail client how about mutt?
>

Of course! - But being CLI only it will be my last resort. ;-)
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[ubuntu-users mailing list]

13 January 2021  at 19:37, Kaj Haulrich wrote:
Replacements for Firefox and Thunde (at least in part)

>Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join Google,
>Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, I'm looking for alternative browsers and an
>e-mail clients to run on my (K)Ubuntu workstation. Kmail and Evolution both
>both want to pull in a lot of dependencies, and I will not touch Gmail (or
>anything Google) in any way, manner, shape or form. Can anyone recommend a
>lean e-mail client and a browser that does not 'phone home'?

Tor for the Browser

Email I have no idea, I use Wine & Pegasus (Winpmail)

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[walt]

I have had good results using Pale Moon.  I still use TBird however.

   walt


On 1/13/21 10:37 AM, Kaj Haulrich wrote:
> Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, I'm looking for alternative browsers and an e-mail clients to run on my (K)Ubuntu workstation. Kmail and Evolution both both want to pull in a lot of dependencies, and I will not touch Gmail (or anything Google) in any way, manner, shape or form. Can anyone recommend a lean e-mail client and a browser that does not 'phone home'?
>


   walt, W7PRB

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[ubuntu-users mailing list]

Hi,

it depends. What do you need? Claws is a nice MUA, with less
dependencies, but lacks comfortable HTML, outgoing message filters and
several other features. On some machines Claws GTK2 branch suffers from
a serious issue, so you might need to build the GTK3 branch, which
fortunately isn't hard to do.

Regarding a browser I would recommend against Pale Moon, TOR and Co, if
you really want to get rid of Firefox. The only Firefox clone that would
probably fit your wish might be IceCat, but raw formulated "IceCat is
not compatible with the Internet". An alternative might be Falkon.
Again, it depends on what you want to do with the browser. If you
dislike the new Firefox poolicy, it's hard to recommend other browsers.
I liked Opera, but upstream did a step into the wrong direction, too.
Vivaldi?

I'm using different browsers for different purposes, even
Google-Chrome, which unlikely will run on my Intel GPU on Ubuntu, with
the dropped "intel" driver and only the "modesetting" driver available.
I didn't test it on Ubuntu yet, but finished a test on Arch Linux today,
so I'm back with kernels <5 and the "intel" driver. It's a shame that
Intel support is broken and that there's no recovery in sight. Yes,
yes, several users will now claim that their Intel PCs run without
issues ... mine did, too ;), it still does with 4.19, still supported
longterm kernels. How long will yours run without issues? Kernel
updates will follow.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Debian-Abandon-Intel-DDX
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=370022
https://www.kernel.org/

Btw. on my machine Firefox suffers from hangs, too, when using the
"modesetting" driver.

IOW if you chose a new mailer and/or browser, do also some research
about Linux hardware support and interaction with the software.

Regards,
Ralf

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[rikona]

> Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join
> Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, I'm looking for alternative
> browsers and an e-mail clients to run on my (K)Ubuntu workstation.
> Kmail and Evolution both both want to pull in a lot of dependencies,
> and I will not touch Gmail (or anything Google) in any way, manner,
> shape or form. Can anyone recommend a lean e-mail client and a
> browser that does not 'phone home'?

I like Claws mail; running quite well on Ubuntu 16.4 updated. Can
specifically set it to not respond to some tracking/response stuff, no
self tracking at all. Not sure if it will run well on newest Kubuntu
though [That's what I'm thinking of upgrading to]. Anyone know if Claws
will run well on the newest Kubuntu?

Browsers are a problem. I use several with varying features and
problems, but mostly Tbird and Pale Moon. Usually have ~50 tabs open in
all.

Rik

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[rikona]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 11:41:51 -0800
Walt <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I have had good results using Pale Moon.  I still use TBird however.
>
>    walt, W7PRB

I use both also, but have not figured out how to easily/reliably update
Pale Moon [says is untrusted source and won't update]. How do you do
that?

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[Colin Law]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 at 18:38, Kaj Haulrich <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, ...

I must have missed something.  For the uninitiated amongst us can you
point us to information relating to that please?

Colin

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[rikona]

> it depends. What do you need? Claws is a nice MUA, with less
> dependencies, but lacks comfortable HTML, outgoing message filters and
> several other features. On some machines Claws GTK2 branch suffers
> from a serious issue, so you might need to build the GTK3 branch,
> which fortunately isn't hard to do.

Does this imply that Claws may/will not work in the latest Kubuntu?

> Regarding a browser I would recommend against Pale Moon, TOR and Co,
> if you really want to get rid of Firefox.

Building a new browser if a huge job. The 'base' for many browsers is
thus FF or Chrome, modified, with more or less of the obnoxious stuff
removed. AIUI one can't remove all of it and still have it run.

> The only Firefox clone that
> would probably fit your wish might be IceCat, but raw formulated
> "IceCat is not compatible with the Internet". An alternative might be
> Falkon.

Falkon didn't run well, but I forget the details - that was a while ago.

> Again, it depends on what you want to do with the browser. If
> you dislike the new Firefox poolicy, it's hard to recommend other
> browsers.

> I liked Opera, but upstream did a step into the wrong
> direction, too.

So did I - used it for a long time, ran well. But, the Chrome and China
connections made it a bad choice for me. Hated to see the old one go
though...

> Vivaldi?

Runs OK, has some stuff removed to make it more attractive.

I rather like Brave, but it is a run disaster. It eats up ALL memory in
the box and causes several problems, bad enough that I've stopped
using it. If they'd fix that memory hog issue, I'd put that near the
top of my list.

> I'm using different browsers for different purposes, even
> Google-Chrome, which unlikely will run on my Intel GPU on Ubuntu, with
> the dropped "intel" driver and only the "modesetting" driver
> available. I didn't test it on Ubuntu yet, but finished a test on
> Arch Linux today, so I'm back with kernels <5 and the "intel" driver.
> It's a shame that Intel support is broken and that there's no
> recovery in sight. Yes, yes, several users will now claim that their
> Intel PCs run without issues ... mine did, too ;), it still does with
> 4.19, still supported longterm kernels. How long will yours run
> without issues? Kernel updates will follow.
>
> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Debian-Abandon-Intel-DDX
> https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=370022
> https://www.kernel.org/
>
> Btw. on my machine Firefox suffers from hangs, too, when using the
> "modesetting" driver.
>
> IOW if you chose a new mailer and/or browser, do also some research
> about Linux hardware support and interaction with the software.
>
> Regards,
> Ralf
>

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[ubuntu-users mailing list]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 21:37:45 +0000, Colin Law wrote:
>On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 at 18:38, Kaj Haulrich <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to
>> join Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, ...  
>
>I must have missed something.  For the uninitiated amongst us can you
>point us to information relating to that please?

When I opened Firefox for the first time running a Xubuntu 20.04.1
live session, all those where provided as links when opening a new tab
and the Amazon link was actually pinned. IIRC each time upgrading
Firefox on what ever distro, all this Google safe browsing spying is
renewed, see about:config. I'm one of those humans, that don't order
anything from Amazon and I already get pustules when removing the link.
I do understand that the OP dislikes this. However, I'm using Firefox
for some purposes. There's no replacement for the letter "a", there are
still letters from "b" to "z", but none does replace "a". FWIW I never
used and never ever will use Twitter or Facebook, neither do I need a
replacement for Twitter and Facebook, for my needs it's easy to order
from way better dealers, than Amazone, but even while I dislike Google,
it's the search engine I'm using most of the times, since I'm not aware
of a reliable "replacement" and I need to survive in the nowadays
world, too.

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[J. Paul Bissonnette-2]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 19:37:11 +0100
Kaj Haulrich <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join
> Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, I'm looking for alternative
> browsers and an e-mail clients to run on my (K)Ubuntu workstation.
> Kmail and Evolution both both want to pull in a lot of dependencies,
> and I will not touch Gmail (or anything Google) in any way, manner,
> shape or form. Can anyone recommend a lean e-mail client and a
> browser that does not 'phone home'?

I have been using Claws Mail for close to 20 Years, Using Vivaldi for a
browser. Vivaldi use the Chrome engine so I am not sure if it is Google
spyware or not.

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[ubuntu-users mailing list]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 13:53:26 -0800, rikona wrote:
>> it depends. What do you need? Claws is a nice MUA, with less
>> dependencies, but lacks comfortable HTML, outgoing message filters
>> and several other features. On some machines Claws GTK2 branch
>> suffers from a serious issue, so you might need to build the GTK3
>> branch, which fortunately isn't hard to do.  
>
>Does this imply that Claws may/will not work in the latest Kubuntu?

I don't know? Not all users experience this issue. Using Ubuntu 16.04
the GTK2 branch does work in openbox. Using Arch Linux the GTK2 branch
worked in openbox, too, but one day it started sufferring from crashes.
I always build the latest Claws GTK2 version of Claws using the same
flags on Ubuntu 16.04 and Arch Linux (a rolling release). A while back
I migrated to the GTK3 branch for Arch Linux, it doesn't build on
Ubuntu 16.04, fortunately the GTK2 branch is still stable on Ubuntu
16.04. However, a Lubuntu developer noticed the same issue for several
GTK2 apps with Ubuntu flavour releases > 16.04. I wonder if it's
related to Intel GPUs. IIRC it is some X thread whatsoever related
issue.

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[J. Paul Bissonnette-2]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 13:53:26 -0800
rikona <[hidden email]> wrote:


>
> Does this imply that Claws may/will not work in the latest Kubuntu?

Works on Ubuntustudio 20.04 LTS. There were a few minor issues, can't
remember exactly which.

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[ubuntu-users mailing list]

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 18:14:13 -0400, J. Paul Bissonnette wrote:
>Vivaldi use the Chrome engine so I am not sure if it is Google
>spyware or not.

Getting rid of Google is hard to do. The best browser on my iPad is
Edge, Microsoft software based upon Chrome, twice the evil, but on
the iPad, at least in my experiences better than Firefox, Safari, Opera
and even better than Chrome itself. At least Edge comes with a less
blatantly visual design, than Chrome does. OTOH the IMO less good
browsers sometimes do a better job in some niches.

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[Kaj Haulrich]

On 13.01.2021 22.37, Colin Law wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 at 18:38, Kaj Haulrich <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, ...
>
> I must have missed something.  For the uninitiated amongst us can you
> point us to information relating to that please?
>
> Colin
>
Thanks for all your responses. Yes, my concerns about Mozilla are
described well here:

https://tinyurl.com/yysew7g2
https://tinyurl.com/y277rmw3
https://tinyurl.com/yyzmo4vw
and lots of other places.

So now I've tried Vivaldi, Opera, Chromium and Brave. All work well, but
I've decided to use Dissenter (a Brave fork without some annoying stuff).

For e-mail I'm trying Sylpheed, Claws and a few more, but haven't
decided yet...

Anyway, thanks a lot for all your advice!

Kaj.
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[Chris Green]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 05:54:48AM +0100, Kaj Haulrich wrote:

> On 13.01.2021 22.37, Colin Law wrote:
> > On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 at 18:38, Kaj Haulrich <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > >
> > > Now, since Mozilla has jumped on the thought police bandwagon to join
> Google, Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, ...
> >
> > I must have missed something.  For the uninitiated amongst us can you
> > point us to information relating to that please?
> >
> > Colin
> >
> Thanks for all your responses. Yes, my concerns about Mozilla are described
> well here:
>
> https://tinyurl.com/yysew7g2

No content there, just waffle.

> https://tinyurl.com/y277rmw3
Just some comments about 'something' that isn't shown

> https://tinyurl.com/yyzmo4vw
Very similat to the first one, no actual facts about what Mozilla is
or isn't doing.  Plus it has this gem:-

    Deplatforming is not enough, according to the Mozilla Foundation, the
    creator of the Firefox browser. It asserted that the January 6 riots
    would have happened if more was done to tackle disinformation online.

I assume it's a typo!  However it's indicative of the quality of the
whole piece IMHO.

Having looked at all these I'm none the wiser about what Mozilla have
actually done or said.

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