General Discussion • Re: Pale Moon's PR Problem

Literally no one on earth (maybe a tiny handful of the most extremist fringe security people) uses openBSD as a home desktop.

The exact kind of people who would prefer Pale Moon over other bloated browsers, and wouldn't mind incompatibility with a few sites. I think it's worth to seek peace with them.

Literally no one on earth (maybe a tiny handful of the most extremist fringe xp users) uses mypal.

These literally would use Pale Moon if they could.

Pale Moon has ended up retro by default[...].

I agree.

Just as a side note, the IRIX and Plan9 folks are also without a browser. Just saying...

(Note: When I say here "Pale Moon", most of the times I mean "Goanna-based browsers".)

I don't think it's worth pursuing to cater to trendy Linux users because they would think Pale Moon is ugly and laggy. But, if you really want that, one "easy" thing someone could do is to provide one theme mimicking the interface of Chrome and another mimicking interface of Firefox (would be a lot of work keeping it always up do date, though). And you'd really have to implement CSD on the GTK3 version.

When it comes to packaging for Linux, it looks to me as the thing preventing it from being packaged for major distros, besides the lack of interest, is the licensing problem, at least historically (vide Debian vs. Mozilla). Another thing that may be preventing the packaging is that most distros don't seem to package Firefox and Chromium forks, and they wrongly perceive Pale Moon as being one of those. I don't think that providing .debs and .rpms would be easier on normies: if it's not on the repos, it's gonna be hard for them. Maybe a step-by-step how to "install" and run from the tarballs would be enough.

For me, it looks like Chrome and Firefox "privacy" forks (and Firefox itself, too!) are implementing built-in ad blockers just to circumvent the limitations of Manifest V3. That said, having an (not built-in, but easily installable) ad blocker could make Pale Moon stand out (I know it kind of does). Better yet if it could be advertised (xD) as being the faster and most powerful ad blocker of them all (XUL extensions are more powerful, right?). Having a built-in ad blocker makes a browser looks unprofessional to me (except for Dillo, which totally rocks).

Another thing that could increase the userbase is making a clear statement against the use of AI-generated "code" to contribute to the project and then request the inclusion of Pale Moon on this list. The only sensible browser they endorse is Waterfox, but, being it based on Firefox, AI slop is inevitable. (Yeah, their politics annoys me, too.) Also, making it to the Lunduke's Non-Woke Software List would be very much desirable, as he, too, doesn't has any browser to recommend (Ladybug is vibecoded, and Brave is a meme, at best).

Also, would be good to advertise that Pale Moon is the only up to date browser that supports NPAPI plugins. Maybe writing a page explaining what that is, and comparing it to Ruffle and to modern Web things that are "basically the same thing but for some reason don't get labeled as insecure" would be good.

The thing that, in my opinion, Pale Moon gets politically wrong is that it insists on being "modern" when it clearly is not. Not that it does not has JavaScript support or is not able to display modern Websites, etc.; I don't mean "modern" vs. "old", I mean "modern" vs. "traditional". And I think that's what Pale Moon is and what it should strive to be. Anyway, that's the way I see it, maybe I'm the one perceiving things wrong here. Please, clarify if that's the case.

(I know that you guys are lacking manpower, I made suggestions here purely ex suppositione.)