Hold up, Falkon seems pretty promising from my usage so far. I'll keep this page in case I need firefox for homework tho.

Reminder to self next time I need to reinstall firefox

Setup

Problem: using firefox with arkenfox feels like using a gas lawnmower. If you have ever used a gas mower, you know what I'm talking about.

Approach: I am gonna start off with nothing, which will be painful, then uncomment a line each day.* By the end, I will hopefully have a fully working arkenfox setup, but without the technical issues I usually run into with it.

Firefox Fork(s): Vanilla and Dev Edition

Usually I'd go for LibreWolf — and once I learn flakes I'd like to try FireDragon — but that's not really an option here, since that has the arkenfox choices as the default, plus some other stuff that could add noise to this experiment.

Desired Outcomes

Low-Priority but Would Be Nice

  • Be able to log on to Twitch.TV

    • While it's probably a good thing to not give Twitch.TV whatever data an out-of-the-box arkenfox install would withhold from it, which the platforms deems so important that it would prohibit users from logging in for withholding it; I have a few friends that stream on twitch and I miss them. I'd a least want to know what setting that is, so I can have informed consent in allowing the platform that information.

    Also, being able to comment on projects on curseforge requires Twitch, since it seems like they're never going to finish moving it to overwolf. Not that I'd prefer using overwolf, I'd rather not use curseforge at all, but it still has a chokehold on like 10% of the MineCraft modding scene, and due to interdependency and poor archival, that's strong enough to remain prevelant.

Issues Encountered, Causes, & Fixes

Resulting user.js file

TBA

Day 1: Raw & Unprotected

The hardest part of this is not having all the stuff I know is important from the get go.

Initializing: Round 1

  • ✅ Install ublock
  • ✅* Set search engine to Mojeek and remove all the sponsored search engines, leaving only Mojeek and Wikipedia
    • ⚠️ Didn't connect first try, but immediately connected after. Could just be Wi-Fi hiccup, but I'm nervous now.

    I'm still doing the stash thing, quite successfully so, but I've switched from DuckDuckGo as my backup to Mojeek.

  • ✅* Log onto neocities and upload this page
    • ⚠️ Oh god it did it again.
  • 🔍 Check about:config, show only modified preferences.
    • 💀 Oh there's already stuff changed on launch... Including "network.dns.disablePrefetch = true" Is that a Dev Edition thing?

      • It's a bit of a task to switch to vanilla vanilla firefox on NixOS — though I did have both installed before the lost backup situation — but I guess this is unavoidable on Dev Edition.

Conclusion of Round 1:

  • For now, dev edition is out.
  • Could be an external issue.
  • Really hope this isn't an external issue.
  • Gonna do some cleaning and get pure vanilla firefox set up.

Initializing: Round 2

  • 🔍 Check about:config for modified preferences on first launch

    • Seems like the only stuff that is modified on launch has to do with telemetry.

  • 🔍 Close and check again in case that does anything

    • Nope! Prefetching is enabled! Now I can start for real this time!

  • ✅ uBlock
  • ✅ Mojeek loaded immediately! 🎉
  • ✅ Search Engine Stuff
  • ✅ Switched to dark theme to protect my gamer eyes
  • ✅* Neocities
    • ⚠️ Okay I should've known it wouldn't be that easy.
  • 🔍 Check about:config again
      • 💀 Prefetch got turned off again
  • 🙀 Repeat prior steps without switching theme??
  • 🔧 Delete .mozilla, launch, install ublock, close, reopen, check about:config
    • 😹 Oh thank god it wasn't the theme
  • 🛡️ check ublock config??
  • ⁉️ disable "disable prefetching"
  • ♻️ Reopen
    • 💡 uBlock changed an about:config option?!?!

Conclusion of Round 2: Damn I didn't expect that. So maybe Dev Edition is fine?

Initialization: Round 3

  • ✅ uBlock, disable the disabling of prefetching.
  • ✅ Mojeek, set as default, remove unnecessary engines.
  • ♻️ Neocities refused to connect a few times.
  • 🔍 Check about:config geo settings

Conclusion: Okay I remember this, mozilla's geo provider is unreliable, and I suppose a geo provider is necessary? I'll have to see what lynx uses, since lynx works just fine, but for not I'll use google's geo provider.

Initialization: Round 4

it took a few tries because I'm getting to the point where actually making the user.js would be useful)

  • ✅ set geo to google, disable geoclue
  • ✅ uBlock, disable prefetch disabling on load
  • ✅ add Mojeek, set default, remove sponsors
  • ✅ Neocities, small connection issue but I genuinely think it was a wifi thing this time because it seems to be working now.

Conclusion: okay so maybe I can just use arkenfox without having to thanos method it, I'll try later tho I'm tired.