this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024

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Privacy

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102

DuckDuckGo failed me today (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have been very happy with DuckDuckGo, and it has helped me break free of routines that I did not feel safe with. Especially the small flame icon that would clear all history, cookies and cache from websites that are not "fireproofed" was great!

But today I had to do a quick example on Tinkercad (3D browser design tool) and it was so slow! I thought that my PC maybe was busy doing something (yeah its an older PC but not THAT old), but when I open the same page on my now parked Opera browser, everything went smoothly.

I am ok with using Opera, or any other browser for 3D work, as I don't really do all that much of it, but I just feel gutted to find out that my now favorite browser sucks so bad at something, not to mention the Microsoft Edge processes when that is the last of any browser that I would choose to use

EDIT: I found out that this was due to hardware acceleration was off, on my DuckDuckGo browser. I had turned it off, because the fonts on websites looked blurry when it was on. The solution was to turn off antialising on the Nvidia control panel, and restart the PC. It is now working well!

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[–] [email protected] 184 points 9 months ago (12 children)

just use firefox. its not that hard

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[–] [email protected] 120 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Excuse me if this is an obnoxious question: But why not just Firefox with the DDG extension (if you really need it)? Search engine-specific browsers tend to be... bad in general. It's going to be a wrapper around some other browser anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 92 points 9 months ago (1 children)

FIREFOX

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago (2 children)

LIBREWOLF

[–] possiblylinux127 9 points 9 months ago (4 children)

If your on windows consider installing though scoop.sh

On linux just use Flatpak

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Scoop and Chocolatey are the only ways to make Windows usable. But Flatpak on Linux will always be the easiest and beat solution, because Linux is simply the best OS.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

YES

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

HELL YEAH

FUCK CHROMIUM, GOOGLE AND ALL OF BIG TECH

[–] possiblylinux127 3 points 9 months ago

YES

[–] [email protected] 86 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Firefox with ublock origin is even better than the DuckDuckGo browser alone. Yes, you can use DuckDuckGo as a default search engine, and even install the extension, if you need to.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Please dont use DDG browser or even worse edge or opera.

Use Librewolf, Firefox or Ungoogled Chromium.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Opera in particular is a dangerous browser to run these days, it’s owned by confirmed scammers and investment-scheme operators.

If you want something with the same ideological history as Opera, run Vivaldi, which was created by ex-Opera engineers.

But yes, for true openness, Librewolf, Waterfox, or Firefox is the way to go.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah If you need any reason to stop using opera, here it is: https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-opera-browser/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Is vivaldi a good alternative?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (4 children)

It is okay, but has little fingerprint protection and still some tracking.

Just use Firefox.

Try googleteller, its a program you can easily clone, compile and run, which beeps if you are connecting to a google server. Chromium even with a very extensive policy and everything GUI degoogled ALWAYS connects to google, repeatedly and very worrying

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Floorp is a nice Firefox fork with a similar mind of customisation as old opera or vivaldi

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

They use ESR because otherwise their GUI stuff would break. So under the fancy hood you have a very dated browser...

[–] [email protected] 58 points 9 months ago (14 children)

Well prepared to be failed again https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/opera-sold-600-million-chinese-consortium/

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago

Worth mentioning that Vivaldi is basically the spiritual successor of Opera, and it's doing pretty well at that. It's still Chromium based though, so unless you really miss Opera for the functionality you're better off with Firefox.

Still, rather Vivaldi than Opera, Chrome, or Edge.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Oh yeah! I am not using Opera any more, and as mentioned it is "parked" so I only have it installed but never use it . I just wanted to check if the issue was browser based of due to my PC. I have updated my post though, because I found out that I had turned off Hardware Acceleration on DuckDuckgo and that was the issue causing the choppy experience

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[–] therealjcdenton 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (10 children)

Like most people said, use Firefox with the DDG extension or use Librewolf (just a heads up Librewolf by default deletes all history and cookie so disable that before signing in)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Librewolf is amazing

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

not to mention the Microsoft Edge processes when that is the last of any browser that I would choose to use

I believe all DDG browsers are webview based, so they use the already installed platform WebView as the engine and add the browser functionalities on top, that's not really a bad thing, since it saves space by avoiding duplicating such a huge component. Realistically, if they rolled their own, it would 100% be another Chromium fork and the Edge WebView is already based on Chromium so it's kind of (but not totally) pointless

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Does this comparison actually take into account whether you are using the same tabs on both browsers and keeping them in the same state?

I've noticed, for example, that in chromium, I can permanently increase CPU usage just by opening a console in a tab and leaving it alone in the background, even if the tab itself is doing nothing.

If both browsers have the exact same number of tabs open, I would question why one has around 40 processes and one has around 20. That number should correspond roughly to the number of tabs/extensions you have open.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the concern. At the end of the post I have added an update to this. It turns out that I had turned off hardware acceleration on the DDG browser and that was the reason it was tapping on my CPU instead

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Best browsers for 3D stuff like games and CADs are chromium based.

I generally use Librewolf (Firefox fork) but for gaming and 3d modeling use Brave. I think it's tge best chromium based browser.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Give Cromite a try. Seems to work well for a chrome browser. I only use it as a secondary, with FF as my primary. It's available on Android, Windows and Linux.

[–] possiblylinux127 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Wait, Cromite is available for linux?

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