Waterfox is an open-source 64-bit web browser, with an aim to be speedy, ethical, and maintain support for legacy extensions dropped by Firefox, from which it is forked on 27 March 2011.
Waterfox differs from Firefox in a number of ways by:
Disabling Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)
Disabling Web Runtime
Removing Adobe DRM
Removing Pocket
Removing Telemetry
Removing data collection
Removing startup profiling
Allowing running of all 64-bit NPAPI plugins
Allowing running of unsigned extensions
Removing of Sponsored Tiles on New Tab Page
Addition of locale selector in about:preferences > General
Defaulting to Bing as the search engine instead of Ecosia, Google or Yahoo![7]
IMHO it should default to DuckDuckGo search instead of Bing.
I am okay with Bing default if it funds Waterfox development. I can easily change the default search engine myself, but maintaining those features require real resource.
OP: Do you know the history of this project? First I’ve heard of it.
From the Wikipedia …
Waterfox is an open-source 64-bit web browser, with an aim to be speedy, ethical, and maintain support for legacy extensions dropped by Firefox, from which it is forked on 27 March 2011.
Waterfox differs from Firefox in a number of ways by:
IMHO it should default to DuckDuckGo search instead of Bing.
I am okay with Bing default if it funds Waterfox development. I can easily change the default search engine myself, but maintaining those features require real resource.
Wow, I had no idea! Thanks for the detailed response!
Welcome ;)
how does waterfox differ from pale moon?
Waterfox is based on Firefox ESR, whereas Pale Moon is more of a true fork and is based on older code.
I believe Waterfox intends to rebase on top of the next Firefox ESR release when that comes out. There’s some discussion about project direction here
That was some time ago. Current Waterfox is based on Firefox 56, which is not ESR. Firefox 57+ does not support XUL extensions.
My understanding is that current Pale Moon is based on Firefox ESR 38.
The tab sharing is a killer feature for me depending on how private the implementation is.
Small security update with 56.2.1 release.
https://blog.waterfoxproject.org/waterfox-56.2.1-release-download