Chromium browsers

1.1 Chromium

Chromium is the open-source browser at the core of the Google Chrome browser. It’s missing some Google widgets and sync technology but probably spies on you less.

1.2 Google Chrome

The closed-source version of the Chromium project. Chrome is making changes that seem likely to sap autonomy and give advertisers your data, and it does suspicious user tracking. On the other hand, the ecosystem contains cool extensions that I like to use and is a dominant standard, so stuff is very likely to work on it.

Chrome is sometimes (but not always) subject to the same odd emoji quirk as Brave, below.

1.3 Brave

Left-field entrant, hyped upstart Brave attempts to block the conventional ad economy and privacy nonsense and replace it with cryptocurrency-backed privacy-compatible advertising. It seems to be largely Google Chrome compatible, supporting most of the same plugins, etc. It claims blocking the tracking economy overhead makes it faster. Using it is smooth so far.

Weird quirk: on Linux, after each upgrade, the emoji break in subtly different ways. Sometimes it helps to reinstall colour emoji

sudo apt-get reinstall fonts-noto-color-emoji

Sometimes it helps to remove the outdated Unicode 9.0 Symbola font

sudo apt-get remove font-symbola

Some XML config may make the problem go away.

1.4 Arc

• Arc web browser review: a new way of using the internet - The Verge