To get it out of the way; Obviously, yes this chromium and most of us agree that anything Firefox-like is the way to go. This post is not a "Vivaldi is better than xyz", this is a, "give it a try" type of post. So, hear me out fellow privacists.
Edit; Yes Vivaldi is not open source, but it is source available. This topic is talked about in the interview and I encourage anyone who is discouraged to at least hear the CEO out when during the talk he had with Techlore.
- "We don’t track you. Nothing, zero, zilch."
- Incredible customization and flexibility
- Hands down the best tab management out there.
- Equally great on mobile (also check the high reviews)
I recently downloaded this Vivaldi Browser based on this rather good and open interview between Techlore and Vivaldi CEO.
So this is a browser developed in Norway, and to my surprise this was a super pleasant experience! The browser is very very fast, its super customizable and has hands down the best tab management I've ever tried (seriously wish Firefox had this). It also has some really a neat shortcut system for quick access to different actions. Furthermore they seem to care about all linux distros, with support also for ARM.
I've only used the browser for a few days, but the experience is so fluent I just had to share a post about it. The team seem really genuine and open. There are also no third party investors involved with Vivaldi. It is owned by all the employees.
So if you need or want to try a fresh browser I highly highly suggest to give Vivaldi a try: https://vivaldi.com/
I have tried many browsers in my life and Vivaldi is hands down the best of them. Customizable, fast, reliable, virtually no issues with it. Yes, it runs on Chromium, but Chromium != Google spying on you. https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-different-from-chrome/
What isn't talked about enough is the mobile browser. It repects user issued certificates and allows me to filter the traffic with AdGuard, which other browsers don't. Also it's I think the only mobile browser with actual tabs bar. What's more, you can move the tab bar to the bottom of the screen for easier access, you can even rearrange or stack tabs. Seriously, Vivaldi for the win.
Yeah, but you have no way of verifying that Vivaldi is not spying on you as well. The browser is not open source.
https://vivaldi.com/source/ <— source available at least, which is a lot better than not. They seem to try very hard to push it to becoming open source but are struggling with licensing.
You could monitor network traffic to find out.