It's funny how many people have a surfing and definitive purpose browser. I use Opera for all my personal stuff and Edge for work.
What Is Your Preferred Web Browser?
Firefox
Firefox but I've recently discovered Pale Moon which is an interesting project. I use Pale Moon with nMatrix, HTTPS Always and uBlock Origin(legacy). In Firefox I have uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere & NoScript. On top of that I've tweaked about:config to the teeth.
Brucehankins Don't know why I was drawn in the notion of separation but my gut told me to do it. Also there was something about browser containers I cannot wrap my head around. Either way, it feels right.
i use Opera on my computer
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It doesn't make sense to me to use three or four different browsers. That means three or four installations (at a minimum, if all goes right), three or four configurations, and three or four sets of processes eating up RAM.
Many browsers allow you to start multiple instances. For example, I install and configure just one browser on my computers, but I run as many as three instances of that one browser, with each instance in its own workspace (and I could run more, but three are actually all I need, so far).
Vivaldi, for instance, presents this context menu on a right-click to any Vivaldi icon in the Task Manager:
By then clicking on the New Window button, I can put a new instance of Vivaldi in the empty workspace I've previously selected. In all I have three workspaces where an instance of Vivaldi runs on my laptop... one for financial matters, one for the Solus forum and related sites, and one for miscellaneous browsing, such as online shopping.
The same extension (LastPass) is used by each instance, as are all the same settings, and I've needed to do only one installation and configuration. And I needed to learn well only one browser's secrets and idiosyncrasies.
I'm using Opera on Solus and Opera Touch on Android. Great pair. Extensions: translator (in sidebar) and bitwardern
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WetGeek That's interesting. Please tell me more when it's convenient.
One browser (instances of) in multiple workspaces?
How truly isolated are the work spaces from each other? Are workspace cookies separated like containers? Besides the giveaway that is LastPass, any canvassing would see multiple profiles or a different configured browser for each work space?
If one tab (for ex.) was banking, another work, another news, etc----then these workspaces are not cross-tracked being in the same browser? Workspaces function as browser containers, in theory? edit: sp
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I wish I could give you better answers, but I don't even understand some of the questions or terms like cross-tracked. I can only say that from one workspace that contains a Vivaldi instance to another that contains a different Vivaldi instance, I've never seen any interference from one to the other.
I do believe that the settings are common, but I've never researched that. I do know the extension is common, which is the way I want it. I have about 300 passwords stored in LastPass, and I wouldn't want to manage multiple versions of that. So I suspect that if you needed them configured entirely differently, you'd need different browsers, each with its own collection of settings and extensions.
I've never investigated the idea any farther, though, because what I described in my previous message works exactly the way I need it to work.
WetGeek that's ok. I have a hard time asking precisely sometimes--too wrapped up in conceptual I guess. was talking about cookies and what isolation/separate actually means when it comes to workspaces. Containers is a feature many users use on their browsers. Sorry to confuse you, I was not clear. Thanks for your answer.
brent Are workspace cookies separated like containers?
I think the cookies are all one common collection (which is what I would prefer). Looking at the number of saved cookies in each of the three Vivaldi instances, I find there are 312 of them from 94 domains. Actually 313 from one of them, but 312 from each of the other two. I suspect that the 313th cookie is something newer than in the others.
Since I block ads and trackers, I believe most of the saved cookies are ones that identify me to my stock broker, my bank, stores where I shop, and publications I subscribe to, so I'd want those to be available regardless of which instance I happen to be using. Looking at the list of saved cookies in one of the instances, there appear to be cookies saved by the other instances.
One thing that bothered me was a cookie I noticed from twitter.com, where I don't have an account. I'm going to need to give that list a more serious examination soon. Although I did have a Twitter account at one time, much more recently I deleted all my cookies while debugging a problem that I thought could have been cookie-related. So whatever is there now has been added long after I left Twitter.
If each of my browser instance had its own independent cookie collection, I'd need to be very careful not to ever use one instance for domains delegated to another instance. I wouldn't find that very useful.
WetGeek I use DDG and it puts a bing cookie in my browser because Bing is DDG's search engine....we will never escape big tech!!
WetGeek If each of my browser instance had its own independent cookie collection, I'd need to be very careful not to ever use one instance for domains delegated to another instance. I wouldn't find that very useful.
This is kind of where I was at with my question. But I think at it's most basic, instead of me trying to complicate it...why do you prefer browsing in different workspaces and what advantage to browsing in one workspace, banking in the other, etc?
That's what I think I was asking in the first place: why workspaces for browsing?
brent why do you prefer browsing in different workspaces
It's simply a means of organization. I could put all the applications that I use daily on a single desktop, piled on top of one another. While checking what's happening with my stocks, t would be very tedious to find the browser with the Windows VM, to take a look through my Ring doorbell to see who's coming when it alerts me to movement near the front door. But in my case, I can click on the 7th workspace and be instantly there.
To get to a terminal to check whether updates have been released, for instance, I simply click on the last workspace, and I'm there. If I hear a sound that means activity in my email, I just click on the first workspace from wherever I happen to be working.
So the 10 workspaces that I typically use on my daily-use laptop essentially represent tasks that I deal with every day. In the image in my first message above, from left to right they represent email, finances, Spider solitaire, Shisen-sho, Mahjongg, Windows 10 VM, utility browser (e.g., shopping, exploring), miscellaneous system utilities, and finally a terminal emulator.
From any one of those and its activity to any other one and it's activity takes a single mouse click. For the most part, no application ever covers up anther one. (Although multiple applications can be run in any workspace.
If you haven't already done so, I'd recommend that you add a workspace switcher to your panel, add a few workspaces to it, and experiment with them. I think you'd quickly find ways to improve your organization. If you ever wonder about it, I can even tell you how to add workspaces to a Windows 10 installation.
In my 7th Solus workspace, the one that has a Windows 10 VM in it, that VM has 5 Windows workspaces available. The first one contains my Nook e-book reader, and the second one my Ring Doorbell application. (Those are the two apps I use that aren't available in Linux.)
And if I'm reading a Lindsay Buroker adventure on Nook in Windows, and hear a notification that I've gotten an email, one mouse click is all it takes to switch to Thunderbird in Solus and check the email. When done, another mouse click takes me back to Nook in Windows, to the book I was reading. That's the joy of workspaces.
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WetGeek Brilliant--it was in the asking. That is exactly what I wanted to know. Anytime I get food for thought, as it were, it's a good thing. Solus has many layers. Thanks for explaining your preference/method.
@JoshStrobl apologies for veering this thread.
edit: added word
Opera is owned by a Chinese consortium now and, at least for me, makes that browser and their "free" VPN no longer a valid option for surfing of any kind.
Vivaldi is made by the man who founded Opera.
#TheMoreYouKnow.
Justin By then clicking on the New Window button, I can put a new instance of Vivaldi in the empty workspace I've previously selected. In all I have three workspaces where an instance of Vivaldi runs on my laptop... one for financial matters, one for the Solus forum and related sites, and one for miscellaneous browsing, such as online shopping.
You make completely valid points here. There is no reason anyone has to run multiple instances of anything. The reason I do it is mostly to avoid the desire to click on my web panels or bookmarks "just to check" on something that will lead me down a rabbit hole.
So separation is one reason for running multiple browsers. Another is that I do want to support Firefox as much as possible. Their Gecko browser engine is the only other option outside of Chromium-based Blink and Apple's WebKit. I love Vivaldi but I feel that we should support Mozilla Firefox in whatever little way we are able to in order to promote competition.
The same extension (LastPass) is used by each instance, as are all the same settings, and I've needed to do only one installation and configuration. And I needed to learn well only one browser's secrets and idiosyncrasies.
You should absolutely NOT be using Lastpass. They have a long, long history of security breaches. There were breaches in 2015, 2019, 2020, and just this year.
They are the worst of the worst when it comes to securing your passwords.
I used to pay money for Dashlane but they refused to create a Linux app and so I left them. Dashlane is a great service and I would have loved to give them my money but they were holding me back from migrating to Linux so I ditched them.
Right now I use Bitwarden. I could not be happier. Their 2020 Audit had a few issues that needed to be addressed but they have not suffered any data breaches (that I am aware of) and they are an open source project.
Bitwarden is available on every single Browser and Operating system.. as a Flatpak, Snap, on most Linux distros, macOS, Android, and Windows, and there is a dedicated browser extension for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and iOS.
It is vastly superior to Lastpass. It functions quite similarly but the autofill is disabled by default. That autofill that makes Lastpass seem so great is one of their biggest security flaws. If you want it on Bitwarden and you are willing to take the risks you can turn it on though.
I REALLY suggest you make the switch to Bitwarden. It is easy to export your passwords from Latspass.
Since I have been using Bitwarden I have not had any issues at all with keeping my passwords up to date. They have a password generator that I use quite often, and a password history so you can view the changes you have made to your passwords over time. I pay for the Premium version to support them. With Premium you can use Bitwarden not only as password manager, but as a TOTP Authenticator like Authy. And instead of having to look at your Authy for the two-step codes you can have Bitwarden handle it all.
I haven't gotten around to doing this yet but I have so many freaking passwords and accounts with two step. However.. After making the switch from Authy to Bitwarden TOTP it would make my life tremendously easier.
I wish I could give you better answers, but I don't even understand some of the questions or terms like cross-tracked. I can only say that from one workspace that contains a Vivaldi instance to another that contains a different Vivaldi instance, I've never seen any interference from one to the other.
I do believe that the settings are common, but I've never researched that.
To the best of my knowledge any Browser shares cookies regardless of whether you have one instance or multiple instances of it open.
brent if you wanted to use Vivaldi to have different sets of Cookies you could do that. You would use their Profile Management options to create a new User Profile. This functions very much like Chrome's multi-user profiles but from what I know Vivaldi developed their profiles and sync separately from Chrom/ium. They have a strong privacy stance and I would think this would be the way to go.
jrsilvey hey have a long, long history of security breaches.
As the Forbes article points out, "One security expert told Ars Technica that he’s so confident in LastPass’ hashing that he doesn’t even feel compelled to change his master password." Neither do I.
These "security breaches" sound more like attempts, not successful attacks.
jrsilvey yes, Opera was split and the consumer facing side was bought by a Chinese consortium, but the company is still located in Norway. As such, it has to comply with Norwegian laws which are quite strict.
If you're on the internet, someone somewhere is scraping your data and using it for profit or nefarious reasons. It's all about how much you're personally comfortable with giving up.
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lumi yeah palemoon is a good browser,but sadly
it is not very well recieved among todays users. some days ago my younger brother saw me using palemoon and he asked me why i use such an "outdated browser"
i told him it was the latest version but he just went away laughing.