I’ve been using a combination of Linux on my computers and iOS on my cell phone for a few months now. Previously, when I used the macOS operating system on my computers and iOS on my cell phone, it was a pretty easy choice. I used Safari and lived my life.
However, when I started using Linux on my computers, a new demand appeared: I needed a web browser that would synchronize tabs between the two systems and that wouldn’t compromise my computers’ RAM.
Remembering that I migrated to Linux on computers because my equipment is older (a 2012 MacMini and a 2015 MacBook Air) and the Apple system I used on them was no longer supported (specifically for the Mac Mini).
After installing Linux Mint (Debian Edition) on my computers, I noticed that the system was much more responsive and adapted well to older hardware. Right off the bat, I got to keep the default browser (Firefox) and it was doing fine. I used Firefox a lot on my Mint (Debian based version). The multi-account-container plugin is excellent.
However, a few things caused it to flash a red light in my use with Firefox:
– Firefox’s RAM memory consumption seemed high to me and the computer’s performance was below expectations.
– Firefox’s support for MS Teams (which I use for work) is below par. Joining a meeting or teaching a class with Teams in Firefox is impractical.
– Firefox doesn’t support PWAs and I really like using some websites as apps. As examples, I mention Simplenote, WhatsApp and MS Teams itself. I prefer to use these services as PWAs. I know that there is a Teams application, for example, for Linux, the performance is very bad.
Therefore, after much consideration, I decided to switch to a Chromium-based browser, as they would meet my demands (tab synchronization, performance and PWA support). My automatic choice was Vivaldi. It has everything I need (especially since the trial version for iOS was recently released). I started using this browser.
After a period of using Vivaldi, which is very good, by the way, I found myself a little frustrated with the fact that, precisely because it is still in an experimental period on iOS, I cannot set it as the default browser on the system , which always gave me some headaches because it doesn’t open links from other apps natively (because it’s not the default browser).
In that sense, I ended up migrating to Brave.
Both (Vivaldi and Brave) are very good. Brave did better because the way they implement support for PWAs seemed more interesting to me. In addition, it has the ability to be set as the default browser on the cell phone (with iOS).
This way, my usage was optimized with Brave on all devices and a series of services / websites running with PWAs. One thing to strongly consider is that there is no Chrome extension that comes close to the Firefox plugin for multiple accounts in containers.
This was something I had to balance and I decided to go with Brave.
Brave has that crypto-related issue, but just remove all mentions of crypto stuff from Brave via settings and life goes on. Also it has really nice support for using TOR and an included .torrent client (the latter doesn’t work 100% well, I must say).
Still on Brave, I must register that I know about the controversial issues about Brendan Eich’s attitude towards the LGBTQIA+ community, but I needed to prioritize using a browser that has good support for my demands (being the default on iOS and Linux), who could run MS Teams and who had a good way of dealing with PWAs. It’s quite possible that when Vivaldi becomes available outside of Testflight and can be set as the default browser on iOS, I’ll end up revising my choice.
Anyway. Although choosing apps is something very personal and subjective, here’s my story. I hope it helps someone who is with similar demands.