Great work as always, a native Firefox sounds amazing!
Regarding the telemetry: At least on other platforms, Firefox sends data on first launch even before there is a chance to turn telemetry off in settings. For anyone who whishes to prevent this, I recommend this sequence:
Install Firefox, but don’t launch it
Disable the internet connection (unplug Ethernet, turn off WiFi)
Launch Firefox for the first time and do all your privacy settings (telemetry off, all suggestions off, third party cookies off, tracking prevention to strict in all tabs, default search engine etc.)
Relaunch Firefox
Reconnect system to internet and install any privacy addons (uBlock Origin, LocalCDN, ClearURLs or whatever you prefer)
Now that we have semi-commercial open source software (Firefox, Thunderbird, MuseScore, Audacity), Wine, Mono, Java etc., maybe we are at a point where we need a firewall solution akin to Little Snitch on Mac or NetLimiter on Windows where we can monitor and block outgoing connections from the system.
Why not just use LibreWolf instead of trying so hard to prevent tracking in Firefox,only to find out there’s another tracking antifeature in the next update?
It’s exactly the same browser,but with telemetry disabled and privacy addons preinstalled.
It’s also available in HaikuDepot.
Anyway,yes,a system-wide firewall solution like Little Snitch would be very nice to have.
I prefer to just not install spyware,but better have protection available in case you need it.
LibreWolf is also not “perfect”. For example I found it very difficult to use as it made using a dark mode/forced dark mode quite hard to turn on, and then sais this is for privacy. What good is it for me if it is “more private” but I cannot use it?
The big question here is whether LibreWolf and the Thunderbird forks will also get the new native platform layer.
Also keep in mind that other programs, such as recent versions of MuseScore and Audacity (which we don’t have ports of yet), have no privacy focussed forks that I am aware of which are being kept up to date to the extent that LibreWolf is.
Little Snitch for Linux is based on eBPF. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds like it would be difficult to port to the Haiku kernel. And as @spoon correctly points out, parts of the source are missing. From a very quick browse through the OpenSnitch code, it seems to mess with eBPF as well, and it sets some iptables firewall rules, which we don’t have either. Best solution for now is probably a PiHole/AdGuard Home on the network, though that only works on a DNS level of course.
My problem with Audacity on Haiku was not a security issue, but more simpler – its usability and stability.
It crashed for me, when I probed, and in that hardware the HD Audio input part (Dell Precision laptop’ 3rd Gen Intel CPU’s HD Audio chip) had not worked at all in Haiku.
It was Haiku 64 bit R1B4/partly R1B5, as meanwhile R1B5 I had to switch to the next generation Dell Precision laptop with 4th Gen Intel Core i7 environment.
I had non-problematic HD audio experience first in every aspects in this machine – if I would refrain from issue with first attempt to add HDMI audio support to Haiku, when that kicked off the original HD Audio chip and its higher bitrate immediately - then I tried the built-in mics of this laptop, and also attached a Sony headset, that had a combined jack input, not a separated one like my laptop, and unfortunately I just have the opposite converter, that not unify the jack, but also splits to 2 RCAs, so I have a bit hard to use as a proper mic …
Anyway, the record was so noisy and got the working noise as well on the record, so I checked the Audacity version, I saw it is an alpha version .. so I stopped using.
Meanwhile Sound recorder is too simple, it can be use to recording, but has no settings to gain or noise reduction, or to set sample rate or anything else you would like to set in case a digital recording. It was enough in the past to do the recording - now it’s cute and last thing to turn to but not convenient and less it can offer regarding an Audacity equivalent -
The most recent version of Audacity has a new audio engine and a new Qt-based GUI, so chances are that it might work better one day, but there is currently no port. Likely it would need an implementation of the part that interfaces with the system audio APIs to be written to connect it with Haiku’s MediaKit.
Tenacity is still based on the old version as far as I could tell from their website.
I’d say let Firefox collect the user data so they know that Haiku is an important operating system with users who take it seriously. Be loud and be recognized.
I’m not suggesting people do or do not block telemetry. My post was just intended as a heads up for those people who don’t want any data to be sent, to amend the statement in the other thread that telemetry can be disabled in settings.
I think it’s important that an informed choice can be made by the user at all times to ensure the trust in open source software is not undermined. Things like sending telemetry data without prior permission or using dark patterns like the new Audacity welcome wizard to trick people into enabling things they may not want undermines this.
One of the things I love about Haiku is that it is always my OS, not a thing on my computer that actually works for someone else. If it sends data somewhere, it is doing so with my blessing. I find that rather beautiful.
IIRC what @3dEyes said, FF has telemetry enabled but, Iceweasel has not. So, I think that it is easier to use Iceweasel than trying to work around the problem.
You’re right that the missing dark mode setting is quite an antifeature,but I think it can be solved by disabling the “Resist Fingerprinting” feature.
It would be nice to have more granular control over that,so I can enable dark mode but keep all other protection features enabled as they don’t have such negative side-effects.
I never said LibreWolf is perfect,but having to enable dark mode (disable resist fingerprinting) afterwards doesn’t hurt as much as sending data at first launch without consent if you forgot to cut your internet connection.
Alternatively,Waterfox and Mullvad Browser have similar goals as LibreWolf (and the same Firefox codebase,of course) but their fingerprint protection defaults aren’t as strict.
I wasn’t proposing to port Little Snitch or some other existing tool from another operating system,only that having a functionality of that sort would be useful.
Haikus APIs for accessing the network stack are quite different than Linux,and I’m not sure if such a functionality can even work without additions to the Haiku codebase,so it would be better to write a Haiku-native application that replicates that functionality from scratch.
Maybe it could even become a functionality of Haiku directly,that would be really unique OS feature that confirms once again that Haiku is there for its users,not for advertising and tracking companies.
LibreWolf (and also Waterfox and Mullvad Browser) share the same codebase as Firefox,so it will be trivial to use the same native GUI backend for them.
Thunderbird and Firefox forks that diverged more from the original,like Floorp or Zen Browser,might be more difficult to port to the native GUI,but I still think it should be doable in a reasonable timeframe after the major work of creating a native GUI for Firefox is done.
