Does anyone know anything about it? Any thoughts worth sharing? Is it trustworthy?
Most of the comment section is hating on it being a chrome based browser, and not really answering the question, so let me try.
(partially unrelevant bit, you can skip it if you want to) I have been using it for about a week. before this, i was using qutebrowser (qt-webengine, which is essentially older lts chromium) for nearly a year and discussing with someone how i definitely should not be using such a old browser. So I am trying out “mainstream browsers” again. I went with helium, because the “someone” also recommended it. I was using librewolf for more than a year before qute, and did not like the performance (especially in my case, ha ving keyboard navigation, with something like vimium or tridactyl). Another reason is that i wanted to try something chromium (proper) after a long time.
What it is - if you have heard of ungoogled chromium project, this project builds from that, and they add some ui/ux features. for example, in ungoogled chromium, you can not download extensions from chromestore, you have to use a separate extension, and you essentially “sideload” them. They (helium) have made a middle man service (open, you can host your own instance), which you can use to get a nearly chrome like experience. They also ship with ublock origin (the proper manifest v2 version which is now deprecated in other chromium browsers). Other than that, it is almost stock chromium.
trustworthiness?? - can not really comment on that. I know the devs behind this browser have also made “cobalt.tools” website (imagine yt-dlp, but written from scratch and based in web tech (js)). So they have some cred from that. other than that, team is likely very small, and your proper trustworthiness essentially boils down to - do you trust their work? you can check their patches on github. if you want to, you can try to build from source and patches (building chrome is nightmarishly long). if you use their binary packages (which i am currently doing) then you are putting trust on them (remember xz situation?). in case they are using stuff like github action to generate their builds, then you can check the build files and artifacts as well.
It’s just another Chrome.
Fruit of a very poisonous tree. Never trust chromium. Not even once.
There is Vanadium though.
Exactly. Especially considering what they’re doing to Android.
Don’t even get me started. I’ve always hated Apple for this kind of stuff, and now they’re making Android even worse, piece by piece.
And given that society is dependent on phones, we’re all fucked. I don’t know if a Linux phone can do much given how it’s mostly non capitalistic. I wish though. But adoption-wise I don’t know if it could be a contender anyway. I’m not well-versed in it, but I’m just assuming the worst since the world is falling apart right now and my hope gland needs surgery. 😭
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Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they’re currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface.
By GrapheneOS. Might they be wrong?
Gecko doesn’t have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one.
This seems to be the main thrust. GrapheneOS has a hardened WebView, that using a Gecko browser bypasses and adds more attack surface because you still have the WebView.
Outside of Graphene this is less relevant (because of the lack of hardening) and outside of mobile only the isolation comments are relevant, which they note are being improved rapidly in desktop.
Arguments in favour of using Gecko browsers are typically about preventing a single corporation from monopolising web standards, and having continued access to proper ad blockers, things that are not part of Graphene’s focus.
This is now the second post about this chrome browser in the last few weeks. Marketing team at Helium must really be scraping the bottom of the ideas barrel.
I’ve found it on AlternativeTo, new apps, filtered by open source filter.
Part of me just wants to use GNOME Web and be done with it.
Seems okay, it is trustworthy but it’s basically just a more private degoogled chromium with some extra features.
Which means we’re still beholden to whatever they change in Chromium
So, a Chromium based Librewolf?
Sounds better than bare ungoogled chromium if you ever need such a thing.
I have concerns.
Best privacy
What does “best” mean here? Privacy is binary: either something is private, and only you decide who has access to it, or it isn’t.
and unbiased ad-blocking
Uh-oh. That’s a red flag. When a company makes a big deal out of being unbiased about something that isn’t inherently biased to begin with, I just automatically assume right-wing.
by default.
And how easy is it to change that default if you don’t like it? Or if YouTube kills ad blocking in it? No thanks, I’d prefer it be an extension, thanks.
Handy features like native !bangs
Custom search with extra characters. Firefox has had it for over a decade, and Chrome has had it for a while too.
and split view.
Pretty sure this has been in several browsers recently, too.
No adware,
Thanks, that’s…kind of the bare minimum in a browser?
no bloat,
Degoogled is already that for Chromium, if that’s really what you want. There are several Firefox forks that pull out a bunch of stuff and make it leaner, too.
no noise.
Bold move disabling the sound API. Respect. /s
People-first
Which people? Ok, this is easy to say, but essentially meaningless.
and fully open source.
Isn’t BSD a sharealike license? So they can’t not. Still, props to them.
At the end of the day, I think I’d still prefer a Gecko browser, or Degoogled if I absolutely had to use Chromium.
unbiased ad-blocking
in this case, this just means they are using ublock origin with default filter lists. my guess for their wording is that they are not doing something like brave (you partially see ads) or like edge and other chromes which use some very light form of adblocking, which ofcourse does not work on their websites.
I’d prefer it be an extension
it is. they are shipping the manifest v2 (the full version) of ublock oob.
Isn’t BSD a sharealike license? So they can’t not
no. bsd (i think chrome is 3 clause, but not sure) is a just as open license like mit or gpl (minus the copyleft in gpl). and the core(ish) bits of chrome are lgpl (not sure. i am taliking about blink).
Y
While people can hardern chromium themselves, some people don’t want to spend time learning and configure it. So to make privacy more accessible and less tedious. Things like this and LibreWolf is born
