Firefox is out, Vivaldi is in.
Arch-based Linux distribution Manjaro is no stranger to making bold decisions that may or may not ruffle the community’s collective feathers. In 2019 it disrupted the status quo by replacing LibreOffice with FreeOffice as the default office software (and then decided to give users a choice during OS installation). Today, Manjaro is orchestrating another upheaval: it’s replacing its default web browser.
Firefox is out. Vivaldi is in.
“In our repos, Manjaro always provides the very latest version of Vivaldi, and thanks to direct developer contact we are now also able to include matching default themes for our editions,” says Co-CEO of Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG, Bernhard Landauer. “To give Vivaldi more of the attention it deserves, I decided to include it as the default browser in our popular Cinnamon Community Edition. With its remarkable browsing speed, exceptional customizability, and especially the way it values user privacy, Vivaldi for me is a perfect match for Manjaro Linux.”
The change goes official today for anyone doing a fresh installation of Manjaro’s Cinnamon Edition. But if you want to see what all the fuss is about, Vivaldi is available in Manjaro’s repositories, meaning it’s just a click away.
Vivaldi offers a wide range of customization beyond just color schemes.
And Vivaldi sure has been making a fuss lately, pitching itself to Linux enthusiasts with two persuasive pillars that the community values: privacy and deep customization.
The privacy angle is a crucial one, as users grow continuously weary and distrustful of software created by Big Tech. Vivaldi makes a three-pronged promise:
- “We don’t know who you are.”
- “We never track you.”
- “We never know what you do with Vivaldi (and prefer not to know).”
Vivaldi ships with both ad and tracker blockers (on Android and desktop versions), a built-in mail client, feed reader, calendar, split-screen and grouped tabs, and a notes manager.
It also treats Linux as a first-class citizen by not making the community wait for Vivaldi features well after Android, Windows and macOS receive them.
I don’t have enough hands-on experience (yet) with Vivaldi to inject my own opinion, but on paper it offers the right mixture of features, privacy blocking and customization to make it a worthy competitor to Firefox, Chrome and Edge.
Though I’m quite curious to see if other Linux distributions follow Manjaro’s lead. Especially since Vivaldi is only partially open-source.
The Manjaro and Vivaldi teams both say they’re working together closely to improve the experience, and will be on the lookout for issues or requests from its users.
