- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.world
I would like to invite all of you Linux users to check out the latest release of Konform Browser.
Konform Browser is a free/libre and open-source (FLOSS) fork of Firefox with the primary goals of security, privacy, and user freedom. Hoping to be an example of how these three goals don’t have to be at odds but support each other and work in harmony. Would love to hear your feedback on if it’s in the right direction and what can be improved.
Been posting on and off the lemmies about the project during 2026. Below are major highlights since 140.8.0-103 update from a week and a half back:
- Bundling and enforcing use of bundled fonts. Konform Browser now carries the same font-loading patches and bundled fonts as Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser. While this does increase download- and installation sizes, it has two clear benefits:
- Significantly improved resistance against font fingerprinting used by tracking scripts. Konform Browser should now be more robust against this attack by having shared global font fingerprint.
- All languages and scripts should render as expected regardless of what fonts you have installed on system.
- Also bundled is now Multi-Account Containers Lite addon. It’s a debloated1 fork of Firefox Multi-Account Containers so you can utilize Container Tabs and set per-container proxies without installing addon for it.
- While “AI chatbot” feature was already disabled and hidden by default, it was previously still possible to trigger activation of proprietary networked centralized cloudbots by setting pref
browser.ml.chat.enabled=true. These have now been fully removed and replaced by a single provider utilizing locally running llamafile instance. - Ported a bunch of security fixes and improvement on fingerprinting protection from FF Rapid Release and Tor Browser which didn’t make it into upstream FF ESR.
For details and references see linked release notes. For even more details I hope the commit log is digestible.
Packages available for most Linux distributions.
Konform Browser is also on Mastodon where followers make me happy: https://techhub.social/@konform
1: Similarly as rest of Konform Browser: Removal and disabling of telemetry, analytics, ads, touting, nags (“call-to-actions”), and integrations with centralized proprietary service (Mozilla VPN in this case).
Cross-post. Original Thread @ https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/56107349
Oh, thanks for bringing that up - that’s out of date and no longer true so I guess the readme does need an update1. While you are correct, the offline translations feature wouldn’t actually work when blocking its access to RemoteSettings server. There was also a bug (still present in LW) which prevented locally cached results from being used. As Konform Browser does have a strict policy of not initiating connections to “trusted” servers on its own by default and without explicit user consent, it made more sense to remove it than leaving UI for a completely broken feature until it could be done properly.
Since that was written:
Purely Private 🔒️) allow translations feature and 2 (✳️Basic Functionalityand🦊Just Make It Work) makes it default and enable the automatic downloads of models from Mozilla server like in FF.about:translationsunhidden and can be used for direct translations of direct inputSo in reality I would say offline local translations actually work better in Konform than in FF and other forks.
In the future hoping to improve this further by redistributing the models as packages for separate installation on system. Then you can use them without needing the browser itself to download anything at all. Similarly to how it’s already done for spelling dictionaries and uBlock Origin.
1: EDIT: Readme has been updated to be less out of date more closely resembling current state of differences.
Nice, thanks.
It would certainly be nice to be able to pre-download language pair models without selecting to and from and then actually initiating a translation using the model i don’t have yet.
re: getting uBlock externally, i also see the attraction of that approach but unfortunately Debian’s package was last updated in October (from 1.62 to 1.67) while AMO has a release from January (1.69) :/
imo it would be better to bundle UBO and ship its updates along with browser updates.
are there plans to distribute Konform via flathub?
Agreed that would be nice. Closest you get conveniently from inside browser today is to switch temporarily to “Basic Features” preset for model downloads (then maybe restart for good measure) and switch back to “Core Security” preset for actual use.
I don’t think it will be directly bundled due to the list updates and some users will not want it so it should remain optional. That being said, will already be looking at packaging for NoScript so when that happens I think should be reasonable to do the same with up-to-date uBO.
Answered this here.
Officially can’t/won’t due to Github being both unreasonable and a supply-chain risk. Anyone is free to do so independently, however. If done in responsible and reasonable way (don’t introduce breaking patches or leave users hanging weeks without security updates plz) could be supportive of such initiative whether done indepently or via Konform Codeberg.