Suggestion: Ship AnduinOS without firefox

[badwahaha]

Hi,

First of all, I want to say that I love this lightweight clean and windows like distribution very much! Thank you for the great work.

Firefox is not my favorite browser. Is it possible to ship the OS without pre-installed firefox? Sure I can remove it after installation. But I just want a clean system from very begining.

[Anduin2017]

Firefox might be the only browser works out of box, license free, and has clean deb builds with apt source.

Removing it is easy.

It might be confusing for some users that a new OS doesn't has a browser.

[Anduin2017]

Maybe..

sudo apt install epiphany-browser

[p134c0d3]

Is Brave Browser possible? Not sure on the licensing, it's just usually the first thing I install before removing firefox. If Brave is checked, Brave repo could be added to apt-sources, and Brave installed instead of Firefox (or in addition to if both selected). I know Garuda has a script for this in their welcome script though it occurs post-install (they're Arch based but logic could be used).

[Anduin2017]

Regarding the suggestion of Brave Browser, I’ve looked into it, and there are a few reasons why it isn't currently a candidate for pre-installation:

While Brave's core is open-source (MPL 2.0), it includes tightly coupled commercial components like BAT (Basic Attention Token), crypto-wallets, and VPN services. The way Brave replaces web ads with its own system is also seen by many in the Debian/Ubuntu upstream community as "adware-like" or overly commercial, which clashes with the "clean and pure" philosophy of many Linux users.

Brave is not in the official Ubuntu/Debian repositories. Shipping it would require adding third-party APT sources and GPG keys by default, which increases the maintenance burden and potential security surface for the OS.

If I were to switch the default to Brave, I am certain we would immediately see new issues asking: "Why not Firefox?" Firefox remains the "Greatest Common Divisor" for several reasons:

It is the only major browser not built on the Chromium engine, preventing a total Google monopoly on web standards. It is managed by a non-profit (Mozilla) and follows a "pure" open-source ethos without integrated crypto-schemes or aggressive commercial upsells. It is available in the official repos, has excellent hardware acceleration support on Linux, and just works out-of-the-box for 99% of users.

This is a classic case of "impossible to please everyone." If I ship without a browser, new users will be confused; if I ship with Brave, the "purists" will complain.

Firefox is the safest, most neutral baseline. If you prefer Brave, Chrome, or any other browser, I encourage you to install it manually—that is the beauty of Linux. For now, AnduinOS will stick with Firefox as the standard, but I will keep looking for ways to make the system even lighter like making it optional.

[badwahaha]

Fully agree with the case "impossible to please everyone". It would be already perfect for me to make firefox (and transmission if I may add) optional during installation.

[p134c0d3]

Completely understand, I'm curious if some Firefox forks like Zen or Floorp (both have many many enhanced features over stock Firefox) would be interesting to look at. Thanks for taking the time to reply back @Anduin2017

[badwahaha]

Would it be possible to have an option during installation to install firefox or not?

[Anduin2017]

Yep. Maybe a check box: "Install Firefox" and checked by default.

If the user unchecked, it will install first and then uninstall the firefox..

[badwahaha]

Has this option been available with the latest version 1.4.2?

[Anduin2017]

Nope. 1.4 only receives bug fix. New features will only be available in new versions.

[badwahaha]

Thanks again for the quick response.

[badwahaha]

BTW: I found transmission is pre-installed as well. It would be nice to set for it also a check box during installation.

[rainbow211793]

How about trying zen? Its firefox based but much more adapted to modern web standards than firefox and like arc [used to be quite good on macs].

[hackintosh651]

gnome made there own browser called web 14mb in size might be a good option preinstalled.