Alternatives to uBO

skiffman

IMO AdGuard's content and ad blocker does the job no less than uBlock Origin. AdGuard with its vpn are the perfect replacements for me when that time comes.

supermurs

@skiffman

I second this, Adguard has been really good!

npro

@skiffman said in Good Bye to Vivaldi:

IMO AdGuard's content and ad blocker does the job no less than uBlock Origin.

That is not true, it may do blocking ads but it can't do much about your privacy and speed, for example if you visit a popular football site (kicker.de) you 'll see that -like most pathetic sites in this time and era- you don't have just visited kicker.de but 10 more sites in the background that you are not aware of, basically accepting ~~spying~~ whatever scripts running in the background from them (consuming also unneccessary bandwidth and slowing down page loading). I'm not even sure AdGuard can detect CNAME cloaking, i.e official subdomains appearing to be "legit" , but in reality pointing to other external addresses containing ads and whatever else, a thing ublock Origin MV2 in Firefox and its forks can do.

In ublock origin you can see this breakdown where you can block all that stuff.

electryon

@skiffman said in Good Bye to Vivaldi:

IMO AdGuard's content and ad blocker does the job no less than uBlock Origin. AdGuard with its vpn are the perfect replacements for me when that time comes.

I hope you mean the app. The app is very good and it is the best money I ever paid.
But let's be real. The MV3 extension doesn't do the job like uBO did it or how Brave's built in adblocker does it.
Adguard MV3 has to use workarounds to wake up the service worker and in various scenarios the page is loaded before the filters being applied.
It may not be noticable, but in many cases all these nice sites manage to load in background before they get blocked.
So @npro is right, you can't be sure what managed to get loaded in background, so there are privacy issues in an MV3 adblocker (not in UBOL though because gorhill didn't use any workaround and that's why it is.. lite) that do not exist in an MV2 or a native adblocker.

Pathduck

Moving to Extensions as this is no longer a Linux support topic.

Carry on

barbudo2005

@npro @electryon @Pathduck

1.- If I use this setting:

I obtain this in the Logger:

2.- If I use this setting:

And this filter:

||bitmovin.com

I obtain the same in the Logger:

Is the result equivalent?

Pathduck

@barbudo2005 I've not really used uBO's dynamic filtering a lot, but I think they're the same thing.

You're blocking requests to bitmovin.com globally.

If you do this (local rule):

It is the same as this:
||bitmovin.com$domain=kicker.de
I.e. blocking requests only on the kicker.de domain.

barbudo2005

@Pathduck

Said:

I think they're the same thing.

I think the same.

Then answering @npro who said:

..but 10 more sites in the background that you are not aware of, basically accepting spying whatever scripts running in the background from them (consuming also unneccessary bandwidth and slowing down page loading).

You can maintain privacy and speed by converting the format of "My Rules":

* domain * block

To this one:

||domain

And using them in "User Rules" in Adguard.

Checking "My Rules" section in uBO I have about 1000 domains that it accumulates over the years, that I converted easily to the new format.

npro

@barbudo2005 That's not the point, the point is that AdGuard can't do the job of uBlock Origin on its own, easily and effectively. If uBlock Origin fails to show those subdomains with MV3 in order for one to block them (uBO writing a rule for them in the background) then I can't covert anything to AdGuard, can I (rhetorical question).

(Btw, I'm not looking for hacks, bypasses and conversions at all, I'm happy with Floorp where I can still do that (creating rules with a simple click), June 2025 will be over for me with Vivaldi, unless they offer this functionality with their own native ad-blocker)

barbudo2005

@npro

Said:

I'm not looking for hacks, bypasses and conversions at all, I'm happy with Floorp...

You should have started with that.

npro

@barbudo2005 I didn't have to do any there so I don't know why you are laughing... and even if Floorp goes south I can still use Firefox, uBlock Origin works fine there and I can also still make use of sidebery, the superior incredibly flexible tab management I'm used to (contrary to Vivaldi's failed ones).

barbudo2005

@npro

I wasn't laughing, it was just a joke.

I fully respect your decision to switch as I also use Firefox and will continue to use it.

Stardust

@npro said in Good Bye to Vivaldi:

In ublock origin you can see this breakdown where you can block all that stuff.

Exactly!

Blocking ads sub-domains per-site or globally is the killer uBO feature! I can't imagine how do you even browsing without it.

When/if uBO is not going to work in Vivaldi, Firefox+uBO will do most of my browsing instead. I am not gonna uninstall Vivaldi, you need chromium browser around anyway and Vivaldi is the best chromium browser.

Sadly Mozilla is quickly moving downhills with built-in ad tracking in Firefox and other anti-user features. Bad times for browsers

Catweazle

@Stardust, I still don't have problems with the Vivaldi Blocker and a script. No ned to change to Firefox or fork.

Stardust

@Catweazle well if that setup works for you

I will never give up my uBO!

Catweazle

@Stardust, you still don't give up uBO, we'll see what Mozilla does after Mv2 shutdown next year. It will be last somewhat longer, but for sure not indefinitely, Mozilla depends too much on Google.

Stardust

@Catweazle said in Good Bye to Vivaldi:

@Stardust, you still don't give up uBO, we'll see what Mozilla does after Mv2 shutdown next year.

Yea, I only expect bad things from Mozilla now, we will see.
Maybe gorhill will create a new browser with built-in uBO who knows! Internet needs a hero again.

Catweazle

@Stardust, I don't know if this will make sense, it's easy for Google to invalid Adblockers, see YouTube and the effort of Gorhill to surround it almost on daily base. Most Websites use Google APIs and advertising from Alphabet. I don't think Google allows to be so easy to spit on its invention Mv3.
You can't even use extensions in the Chrome Store, none of these works there, only inbuild features can do this.

Stardust

@Catweazle uBO has been blocking YouTube ads for years. uBO won! The fight is not over.

barbudo2005

@Stardust @npro

How many of these rules do you have in the ‘My rules’ section on uBO?

* domain * block