I would like to invite all of you Linux users to check out the latest release of Konform Browser.
Konform Browser is a free/libre and open-source (FLOSS) fork of Firefox with the primary goals of security, privacy, and user freedom. Hoping to be an example of how these three goals don’t have to be at odds but support each other and work in harmony. Would love to hear your feedback on if it’s in the right direction and what can be improved.
Been posting on and off the lemmies about the project during 2026. Below are major highlights since 140.8.0-103 update from a week and a half back:
- Bundling and enforcing use of bundled fonts. Konform Browser now carries the same font-loading patches and bundled fonts as Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser. While this does increase download- and installation sizes, it has two clear benefits:
- Significantly improved resistance against font fingerprinting used by tracking scripts. Konform Browser should now be more robust against this attack by having shared global font fingerprint.
- All languages and scripts should render as expected regardless of what fonts you have installed on system.
- Also bundled is now Multi-Account Containers Lite addon. It’s a debloated1 fork of Firefox Multi-Account Containers so you can utilize Container Tabs and set per-container proxies without installing addon for it.
- While “AI chatbot” feature was already disabled and hidden by default, it was previously still possible to trigger activation of proprietary networked centralized cloudbots by setting pref
browser.ml.chat.enabled=true. These have now been fully removed and replaced by a single provider utilizing locally running llamafile instance. - Ported a bunch of security fixes and improvement on fingerprinting protection from FF Rapid Release and Tor Browser which didn’t make it into upstream FF ESR.
For details and references see linked release notes. For even more details I hope the commit log is digestible.
Packages available for most Linux distributions.
Konform Browser is also on Mastodon where followers make me happy: https://techhub.social/@konform
1: Similarly as rest of Konform Browser: Removal and disabling of telemetry, analytics, ads, touting, nags (“call-to-actions”), and integrations with centralized proprietary service (Mozilla VPN in this case).
Cross-post. Original Thread @ https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/56107349
In the now up-to-date README.md we find the following line:
A couple of privacy-related patches not built elsewhere
Cool. But…, could you name those explicitly?
Mullvad Browser is also based on Firefox ESR and is the product of a joint development involving both Mullvad and the Tor Project. Could you please explain why anyone should consider Konform Browser over it?
Cool. But…, could you name those explicitly?
Thanks for checking out! Not in the readme, because it would be a PITA to keep that up to date over time, especially when rewriting for new context each time. They are already covered in release notes and commit log1 for the curious. You can also look under
patches/konin the source git repo.Could you please explain why anyone should consider Konform Browser over it?
Am engineer not a salesperson or influencer. I guess that means at this early stage it’s primarily targeting the audience who are able/willing to make sense of and contextualize the given material themselves, or willing to take a leap of faith. The pros/cons vs other browsers is something I hope to leave to other users to talk about and share around. Would be cool to hear your thoughts, for example! Maybe this is relevant for some, though.
Also, pull requests attempting to improve the documentation are very much welcome. Would be great to get more contributors involved and one doesn’t have to be deeply technical to write good docs.
1: Can click the commit hash for a release under
/releasesand thenxxx commitsto list commits for specific releaseThanks for the quick rely!
That is very tangible, indeed. And kudos for providing the only browser that aced the ‘test’!
Also, pull requests attempting to improve the documentation are very much welcome. Would be great to get more contributors involved and one doesn’t have to be deeply technical to write good docs.
Hehe 😜. I do admire your work, but don’t get your hopes up 😅.
Anyhow, I will add it to the list of Firefox(-based) browsers worth looking into. To be clear, I’m not a primary consumer of the product category. FWIW, I would install it on my system if I were*.
Full-page machine translations are disabled
Firefox translations are done offline (after downloading the model for a langauge pair).
Does anybody know why Konform decided to disable this very useful feature?
Oh, thanks for bringing that up - that’s out of date and no longer true so I guess the readme does need an update1. While you are correct, the offline translations feature wouldn’t actually work when blocking its access to RemoteSettings server. There was also a bug (still present in LW) which prevented locally cached results from being used. As Konform Browser does have a strict policy of not initiating connections to “trusted” servers on its own by default and without explicit user consent, it made more sense to remove it than leaving UI for a completely broken feature until it could be done properly.
Since that was written:
- Bugs fixed in Konform so translations do work fully offline now
- An about:welcome “onboarding” screen was introduced where user has 4 presets to choose from. 3 of them (all but
Purely Private 🔒️) allow translations feature and 2 (✳️Basic Functionalityand🦊Just Make It Work) makes it default and enable the automatic downloads of models from Mozilla server like in FF. about:translationsunhidden and can be used for direct translations of direct input
So in reality I would say offline local translations actually work better in Konform than in FF and other forks.
In the future hoping to improve this further by redistributing the models as packages for separate installation on system. Then you can use them without needing the browser itself to download anything at all. Similarly to how it’s already done for spelling dictionaries and uBlock Origin.
1: EDIT: Readme has been updated to be less out of date more closely resembling current state of differences.
Nice, thanks.
It would certainly be nice to be able to pre-download language pair models without selecting to and from and then actually initiating a translation using the model i don’t have yet.
re: getting uBlock externally, i also see the attraction of that approach but unfortunately Debian’s package was last updated in October (from 1.62 to 1.67) while AMO has a release from January (1.69) :/
imo it would be better to bundle UBO and ship its updates along with browser updates.
are there plans to distribute Konform via flathub?
It would certainly be nice to be able to pre-download language pair models without selecting to and from and then actually initiating a translation using the model i don’t have yet.
Agreed that would be nice. Closest you get conveniently from inside browser today is to switch temporarily to “Basic Features” preset for model downloads (then maybe restart for good measure) and switch back to “Core Security” preset for actual use.
re: getting uBlock externally, i also see the attraction of that approach but unfortunately Debian’s package was last updated in October (from 1.62 to 1.67) while AMO has a release from January (1.69) :/
I don’t think it will be directly bundled due to the list updates and some users will not want it so it should remain optional. That being said, will already be looking at packaging for NoScript so when that happens I think should be reasonable to do the same with up-to-date uBO.
are there plans to distribute Konform via flathub?
Officially can’t/won’t due to Github being both unreasonable and a supply-chain risk. Anyone is free to do so independently, however. If done in responsible and reasonable way (don’t introduce breaking patches or leave users hanging weeks without security updates plz) could be supportive of such initiative whether done indepently or via Konform Codeberg.
I realise the icon is a fox, but from a distance it looks like a man with a beard…
one-eyed man with a beard
Some day, someone is going to have to explain this one…
There is actually a third visual reference in the logo that may be a bit less obvious.
Oh, it’s supposed to look like a man with a beard?! What’s the 3rd reference? I guess it kind of looks like the yin and yang symbol, but I doubt that’s it.
The bulbous head is reminiscent of a beluga whale.
I dislike the logo immensely.
The bundled fonts are a great idea. I recently learned that fonts are my biggest susceptibility to fingerprinting
this is cool i’ll check it out
How is this different from librewolf
While that section in readme is not entirely up to date, combining that with release notes should hopefully give decent idea. Let me know if you have remaining questions after returning from those! You could also try it out and see for yourself.
Update: Readme has been updated to be less out of date and that diff list is now more closely resembling current state of differences. In particular, local full-page translations is supported feature in Konform Browser, unlike the readme previously stated.
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What a horrible logo, it took me so long to see the fox. I kept seeing a horrible bird or beluga looking up
Care to comment on the actual content of post or the topic of the project rather than aesthetics of the thumbnail icon? It’s a web browser, not a lifestyle brand, and this isn’t c/logodesign 🙄
No. It’s really bad, and that is my first impression of this software. Not fair but, judging a book by it’s cover and its a bad cover 🤷♂️
What an atrocious name choice.
What an atrocious comment choice.
