Edit: I may have given too much weight the the Arkenfox dev’s assessment. Upon more research and consideration, I think Librewolf could still be a better option compared to straight Firefox, though hopefully the Librewolf team receive more help/contributors in the future to ensure its success long term.
I’ve been a user of Librewolf for a about a year now, and it’s always served me pretty well as a nice easy way to get a hardened Arkenfox Firefox.
However, recently I was curious why Librewolf wasn’t recommended on PrivacyGuides, and took a look through their reasoning on their forum. That thread spans multiple years, and for the most part I thought their reasons for not including it were a bit unfair, especially after Librewolf started offering automatic updates.
But towards the end of that thread in October, a Privacy guide team member posted a link to the Arkenfox github issue tracker, where a Librewolf team member reveals how the project appeared to have lost steam after a critical member left, and they are struggling to keep it up to date with the latest Arkenfox updates, despite putting out new releases.
I’m not sure if those problems have been resolved since that time. One of the maintainers did mention they’re still short staffed in this topic on taking over maintaining Mull.
After considering the arguments for and against in the PrivacyGuides thread, I think their conclusion for not recommending does have some merit. Using Librewolf adds an additional layer of trust, not only to not be malicious (which I don’t suspect they are) but to also be able to adequately fulfill what they set out to do reliably.
Another big part of them not recommending it was the existence of the Mullvad Browser, which I didn’t realize was in fact a very well hardened version of Firefox (essentially the Tor browser without the Tor part), and is far more effective for private browsing compared to Librewolf or an Arkenfox’d firefox.
Ultimately you’ll have to come to your own conclusion, but personally I’ll be switching back to Firefox as my convenient daily browser full of addons, alongside the mullvad browser for (more) private browsing.
Keyword is Arkenfox user.js. Which is not Firefox updates.
If the LibreWolf maintainers are overwhelmed at the frequency of commits of a project that tweaks Firefox preferences (which amounts to “sesame street numbers” according to Arkenfox developers) because they are short on time and resources, so what?
I’m coming around to this conclusion, and updated the post to reflect that. For something as important as a browser, it’s a little concerning the Librewolf dev team is so short staffed, but they do seem to be holding their own. I hope they’re able to stick around long term.
I do like that you signal-boosted Mullvad Browser. I think it’s a great option. And I hope somebody sees this post and gives the team a hand.
Projects like LibreWolf and Mullvad Browser are important because user settings being roughly the same across a userbase helps you to blend in. Even extensions you install can be used to fingerprint you.