Wtf is Vivaldi and what is it good for? Why y'all here?
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@luetage LOL, this person used beaming by Startrek Technologies from bed to bathroom and stuck in porcelan, caused this is failure with transport buffer.
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Why y'all here?
Because Vivaldi is a nice browser and i am so addicted to this extraordinary browser.
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Vivaldi is one of the best browsers out there. Maybe you would be tempted to compare it to Brave or Firefox in terms of privacy. However, although both Brave and Firefox offer a great level of privacy —even a little more than Vivaldi in some cases, for example, at protecting against browser fingerprinting—, Vivaldi have the best privacy-usability ratio. With Vivaldi you are not getting just a browser, but a complete suit for all your personal needs: you obtain an integrated mail platform, an integrated markdown-compatible notes app, a feed reader, a translator (hosted by Vivaldi), a calendar, a mail hosted by Vivaldi. Vivladi offers you to sync a lot of the previous data in an end-to-end encrypted manner, with the data hosted in Iceland by themselves.
So a lot of extensions or more apps that would be needed become unecessary when you have Vivaldi on your devices. This a great avantage because the attack surface is reduced (so you have fewer points of potential failure by you or vulnerability by the system) and you have to trust fewer people: the team at Vivaldi, and not a lot of enterprises.
Vivaldi offers a lot of versatility and flexibility in browser costumization and a lot of options for making navigation a powerful thing. For example, you can put easily various tabs side-by-side, so you can make a research while writing an article. I haven't seen any other browser that offers such level of flexibility, security, privacy, all combined.
They also have a very sustainable business model that guarantee they will not let the browser nor the services they offer for a long time.
For example, one of the greates features in Vivaldi is the option to set up search engines and search on those by typing a prefixed key or various keys. In default, you must press d to serch with DuckDuckGo, or s to search with Startpage. This is better and more intuitive than even the DDG bangs! -
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I'm going to be a (friendly) contrarian. Although I love Vivaldi for its features and customisability most users simply don't care for that. They'll just use whatever is put in front of them, e.g., Chrome, Edge or Safari.
Other users prioritise just security and privacy, so might be satisfied with Brave and Firefox.
There is no "best browser" as such, independently of your hierarchy of values. What we can say is that Vivaldi is objectively the most feature-rich and customisable (to my knowledge) of the browsers. But whether you value features and customisability is subjective.
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@Suhkmuhballllz If you're on Mastodon you might be interested in a live talk that will be taking place today where we'll discuss precisely this topic!
You can join us by going into this link and logging in to your Mastodon account. The room will open at the time of the event.
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@securely4024 this all sounds like exactly what I've been looking for. Thank you for your response. Are they really as secure as people think though? Because there's been a lot of exaggerating of this is the past. Like with the app signal. And apple as well. I guess time will tell.
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@Suhkmuhballllz Vivaldi is a (significant) customization of the Chromium browser engine, just like other Chromium browsers. Vivaldi's user interface is generated by that Chromium engine.
The security of the browser is governed by security flaws in the engine. Whenever there is a security fix in Chromium, Vivaldi updates quickly (usually same day, rarely within a few days, certainly on par with the other Chromium browsers.
When it comes to privacy, there are two aspects: how the browser protects your data from third parties - here Vivaldi has sensible default settings that strike a good balance between privacy and not breaking every web page, and they give you good controls in the settings to further increase the privacy protection
The other aspect is how Vivaldi treats your data. Here, the line is clear: they don't want to have it in the first place and they have an impeccable track record
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@Suhkmuhballllz
In the part of the enginee: Chromium is a lot more secure than Gecko.
In the part of the browser comany:
Vivaldi is in Norway, in Iceland and in USA.
According to a 2019 Comparitech article, Norway (there are the headquarters) has adequate protections, implementing GDPR, fine companies for not protecting data, additional privacy protection in certain professions, and protection to freedom of speech and press.
Decryption laws doesnt apply in Iceland (last time i check some years ago). Look at the article Data protection and privacy in Iceland by Lexology.
In the part of the team: The founder of Vivaldi has a lot of experience with browsers: he created Opera
In the part of the security of websites: For protecting at websites, the most useful that can be done is using Chromium and don't downloading files or scanning (for example, with Virustotal) what is downloaded.
Nevertheless, there are 0 day attacks. For those things not Chromium will protect much you against that, at least not by default in most browsers. Here you would need to deactivate JIT (javascript in real time), WebGL, WebRTC. That will worse you internet browser activity significatively.
Edge have a policy that is linked with Windows natively, and even have a so-called "super-duper security mode". But get Edge's seurity at the cost of Microsoft privacy invation! For sited that can infect your device or hack your browser, using Vanadium on GrapheneOS is the best thing to do.Also Cromite offers a high security on desktop and on Android. Would be the next after Vanadium in terms of security. But it doesnt have all the things that make browsing fun as Vivaldi does! With Vivaldi making a research is a good experience. With Cromite and Brave it isnt so.
The only caveat with Vivaldi is that it isn't open-source. For me, it that isnt so much problem, because although open-source sofyware probably isnt bad, it cant guarantee that it isnt, so theres no much to win in terms of security on an open source browser over a non-open source one. Vivaldi is committed to privacy: i trust them. I dont trust Microsoft or Google. I dont like Brave AI and Crypto. But i trust Vivaldi.
And Vivaldi implements E2EE. So if you are asking if data is secure, it is securely synced. Even if Vivaldi or a hacker would like to spy your notes, they cannot! The drawback of this approach is that once the password is forgotten everything is lost. But just make sure to use a mnemonic device to remember your password and that is!
Signal —as Brave— like crypto. Vivaldi doesnt promote crypto or blockchain (because there is no necessity of damaging more the climate with that fluctuant coins). That was the scandal. Also Signal didnt updated Github for some time. Personally, it makes me doubt of the company but I trust the encryption that they implement. Also, Signal now have usernames, take a look!
Apple is a business. Apple is like Google: they both say that they protect your privacy. Apple have changed a little for worst on privacy over the couple of years, but I dont expect that this will happen to Vivaldi. Vivaldi is from the start to the end privacy advocate.
So i dont think Signal scandals not Apple privacy problems can be applicable to Vivaldi. With Vivaldi you gain so much and lose only Google Chrome (who likes Google Chrome anyway?)!
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@Suhkmuhballllz Also, Vivaldi have been since 2015, so the tine test is already passed!
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Really is the most flexible and customizable browser experience. You can control everly detail of your experience. Plus this is the only browser experience that now allows you to use chrome extensions in the sidebar apps which was added in a pretty new update.
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@shifte you need an award for this comment.
