10.21.22

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Mozilla Changes Firefox Settings/Themes Without Asking

Posted in Free/Libre Software at 3:50 am by Guest Editorial Team

Reprinted with permission from Ryan

Firefox adds more problems with version 106. Profile Guided Optimization doesn’t work with GCC.

This is the second time they’ve done this. The first time, they used it as an excuse to spout anti-GCC propaganda and start building with Clang.

Fedora’s fesco tried to pass “Firefox builds with Clang” before they could find out what was in it, and ended up having to reverse themselves.

At the time, the reasoning was given, primarily, that Clang doesn’t make good debuginfos, and it claims to support GCC security hardening features so that the build keeps going, but then quietly disables them without informing the user.

So imagine my (not) surprise this morning when I looked on Fedora Koji and found that Firefox 106 is built, but they had to turn off Profile Guided Optimization again, because Mozilla broke it and doesn’t care because they’re happy shipping buggy official binaries that do not have sufficient security hardening done at compile time.

However, the only way to get security vulnerability patches on the rapid release branch (Fedora doesn’t package the Enterprise Support Release, sadly) is to bump to the latest version, so I brought 106 in anyway.

Honestly, I can’t tell the difference anyway between PGO and Non-PGO builds. I’ve heard accusation in the past that what most browser vendors optimize for is synthetic benchmarks anyway.

(Rather like proprietary graphics drivers cheating by changing settings in the background that they know certain games don’t get along with instead of fixing the driver to run better in general.)

Also, I had Firefox’s “welcome” screen pop up again and change my theme without asking. Also, they added a “special” pinned tab called “Firefox View” for all of their in-browser SPAM that you now have to disable to free up clutter.

Each new version, they just make themselves right at home and piss all over your settings any way they want to. Even Vivaldi doesn’t do this.

I’ve said for some time that Firefox behaves worse than most proprietary programs with its in-your-face attitude about your settings and preferences, and the actual malware that’s built-in and running by default (ads, keyloggers, etc.).

Maybe that’s why I’m not using it much these days. Maybe that’s why I’m more upset that I have to go “deal” with things over a tertiary Web browser. █

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Mozilla Keeps Changing Users’ Settings to Blast Misinformation (or Present Dishonest Ads) at Them in New Tabs

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