On the quest for more privacy, I needed to realign my preferred browser choice. I have been using Vivaldi over the past couple of years and have been very happy with that choice. Not too long ago, I even started syncing several profiles over Vivaldy Sync. Absolutely great feature-wise, but not so much when considering privacy, because…

Vivaldi is not Open Source. Although on the road-map, there is currently no self-hosted option for the Vivaldi Sync server. That is no longer acceptable in the light of Attic Missie 1!

The solution could be just a minor adaption, back to my former favorite browser: Firefox!

The only reason I ever considered and ultimately switched to Vivaldi was the need for the Chromium engine for an always growing list of web applications. It now becomes more and more clear that moving away from commercial software also greatly removes the need for Chromium… Welcome back, old friend Firefox!

Or, maybe… Waterfox is noticeably faster. It is also Open Source, runs on Windows and Linux and seems to be quickly gaining ground in the browser world… A new best friend in town! (on the desktop, Firefox still rules all mobile devices, … and Raspberry Pi!)

What could have a simple browser switch (installing the new browser of choice, import as much as possible from the old one, start using the new one) became a project that took several days. Not the browser installation (luckily) but the attempt to install the Firefox Sync Server on an already omnipotent environment broke more than I was ready for. Getting the Python scripts tied in with an already running uwsgi app, caused some severe headaches, broke my Nextcloud and Searx installations and taught me a lot about Apache, make, uwsgi and some inner workings of Linux.

But, two days later, I have got my own sync server and am happily syncing settings, add-ons, history and tabs over several machines to Firefox, Waterfox and Firefox Mobile. Oh, and the rest of Attic Studios is up and running again as well.