My Top 3 Browsers

📆 30 Dec 2025 23:30 UTC +00:00 📕 1542 words ⏳ 12 min.
🏷️#Browsers#Vivaldi#Chromium#Firefox

One of the most important parts of any computing device nowadays is the web browser. With the majority of applications and processes involving the internet, they are used to do pretty much everything. I have jumped around between different browsers, nearly as much as I have hopped Linux distros and Fediverse instances. Today I’m going to go through my top 3 and explain what I like about each of them.

Now, fair warning, I prefer Chromium based browsers, sorry about that. They just work best for me and my workflows.

Numero 1 - Vivaldi

My go to and all time favourite browser is Vivaldi, a Norwegian and Icelandic based browser company built by some of the same folks that made Opera. Vivaldi is jam packed with features, many of which I don’t use, but a lot of people do make use of them; things such as the mail client, feed reader and notepad.

The browser itself is based on Chromium (the open source base of the Google Chrome browser), with a custom proprietary user interface, which I quite like the look of.

The features that I use frequently (which I plan on writing a longer blost about in the New Year) are:

• Sync
• Reading List
• Bookmarks (as standard across all browsers - well at least most if not all browsers)
• Desktop and mobile apps (for both Linux and Windows; iOS and Android - also available for MacOS and Android Auto as well, but I don’t use these).
• Speed dial/homepage customisation - great to have quick links to sites I frequently use in the new tab page
• Tab management tools

Of course there are a couple of downsides but that’s the same with all apps, there will never be an app that is 100% great for every single user.

My biggest problems with Vivaldi are:

• Chromium based - not really a problem but it is true that Google has a monopoly on browser engines with Chromium/Blink and this is something that needs to change, but I have got to say most alternatives don’t have as nice a UI as Chromium based browsers.
• Proprietary UI - I understand the reasoning and completely respect that, but it would be nice to have an open source UI that the community can help add features or fix bugs, etc.
• Another thing is the lack of public bug tracker - there is a bug tracker but internal only, some community members have access to the tracker as part of a voluntary role but that is all. It would be useful to have one that is public and people can search for existing issues, to avoid reporting the same issue multiple times. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy like Git issues where you can have a discussion. It could be as simple as a this issue has been reported on this date, with a button for people to say they’re affected by the issue, adding a number to it (kinda like up voting or down voting but whether users are affected by an issue). You don’t need to be able to create new issues through this tracker, that can remain as is but it would be helpful to reduce duplicates and allow people to see if something has been reported before.

That’s all the downsides. I might normally say that things like email clients and RSS readers are a downside to a browser, but that is not the case with Vivaldi, you can easily disable and hide these from the UI (both during initial launch and setup and in the settings later on down the line, should you wish to change your mind). Personally I have these disabled but I do see the appeal to keep everything in one place.

Another thing with Vivaldi that I like is the community. I have been part of the community for a year now and it was also a year ago that I volunteered as a Vivaldi ambassador. This basically means that I promote and say what I think of Vivaldi to help push more people to try it out. I have not been influenced by this role for this blost, I genuinely love using Vivaldi and have done long before I volunteered. I have been around the community quite a bit in the year and I have seen so many kind people, always willing to help others figure out their problems, always polite and welcoming to new users and it’s a nice slice of the internet to hang out sometimes.

Vivaldi has strong views on privacy and AI. The stances of which align with my own views. They promise to never add AI into the browser and are very privacy focused as a core value, which I highly respect.

The UI for Vivaldi is extremely configurable, you can have vertical tabs, (on left or right), horizontal tabs (top or bottom), URL bar at top or bottom, as well as a lot more. As well as a healthy theme store. Where you can find user created themes in the thousands (don’t quote me on that number, but there’s a lot). There’s even one created by me on there that seems quite popular, with 1.29k downloads. There are plenty of themes to install and use to colour your browsers’ UI. Extensions are provided through the Chrome Webstore as the browser is Chromium based.

All this added together makes Vivaldi my #1 browser choice and has been since they released the Beta for iOS, when I started using the browser.

Numero 2 - Chromium

Now, I guess Chromium is technically a browser engine or development build, but its essence is a stripped down version of Google Chrome. I have used this extensively over the years and is my secondary browser on my Linux and Android devices. I do like the UI of Chromium, there’s just something about it, it flows.

I haven’t got much to say really about it, except it is a great choice. There are a couple of downsides, one being to download it on Windows and Android, it is very hidden away, you have to have the exact link or know where you’re looking on the website to be able to find the download page. The download page is still not user friendly, it’s full of technical jargon and code snippets that any regular user won’t care about, nor understand. Luckily on Linux it’s as simple as sudo pacman -Syu chromium (replace with your distro’s package manager) and you’ve got it installed. Not a big deal, once it is installed, you shouldn’t need to look at the download page again as updates are managed within the browser.

The other thing is that it is owned by Google. Yes it’s open source, but it’s still Google owned and has Google account stuff on it, which is not great when you’re trying to avoid big tech (that’s where Vivaldi is great wink wink nudge nudge. Who knows what Google are gathering from my Chromium usage.

Overall I think Chromium is well deserved of the #2 spot.

Number 3 - Firefox and Forks

I have (especially in recent years) been more into using free and open source software. Trying to escape big tech companies like Google. Firefox is a great choice for a browser that is fully open source. Unfortunately, the company behind the browser is doing some terrible things with AI and the browser direction, turning it into an AI browser which goes all against what I want from a browser, so I cannot recommend base Firefox anymore. Of course, being open source, anyone can create a fork of the software and make any changes they want, which has happened quite a few times with Firefox.

Some of my more favourable forks of Firefox are:

• Librewolf - privacy focused, removes all Mozilla tracking, accounts stuff and is stricter on the security of things
• Floorp - Firefox but better, nice UI, nice feature set that could maybe move to the #2 spot on this list in the future, if it keeps its current course.
• Zen - Zen is basically Firefox but with (what I find as) a MacOS inspired UI. It’s very bubbly and floaty, with vertical tabs by default (I can’t remember if you can have your regular horizontal tabs) and a pretty cool selection of colour themes out the box.

Conclusion

And with that, I think that concludes my top 3 browser list. Vivaldi is a clear winner and as you can see by what I have written about it, I have a lot of love for the browser and the community. Maybe give Vivaldi a try if you aren’t already using it, it takes a couple of minutes to get setup and there’s a really helpful community who are happy to help should you struggle with something.

I would just like to say that what has been said in this blost are my own opinions and are not endorsed by any organisation mentioned.

And that brings this blost to a close. I hope you’ve enjoyed, maybe ping me an email and let me know your favourite web browsers; and I’ll catch you in the next one. BYEEE!!!