For those who can't wait for Cyberfox or Waterfox

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by Cimmerian, Jan 8, 2013.

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  1. Defcon

    Defcon Registered Member

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    I wish someone would make a build of Firefox that didn't use the profiles.ini stored in %appdata%. The portable versions have their own launcher app which then runs the actual firefox from within a bin folder which I don't like.

    This way I'd be able to have a fully self contained folder with the profile included, and test multiple browsers. Right now all the variants will end up using the same profile unless I use '-p' or have 'ask at startup'.
     
  2. WHiZ

    WHiZ Registered Member

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    New member here too. I decided to register after reading this and a couple other threads. I just wanted to add my 2cents.

    I was a long time firefox user and was getting sick and tired of my browser topping 2+gigs of ram and then dying... so around the middle of last year i started looking for alternatives.. chrome was a no-go for me due to security/privacy concerns with all the information google already has on me, i didn't want it having even more. so i switched to waterfox.

    It made a world of difference to me. it wasn't perfect, frankly junk code compiled and tweaked to perform better is still kind of junky.. ( aka the firefox code base isn't well written and optimized like chrome etc. ) I had been a loyal waterfox user up until about a month or two ago when they couldn't get past version 16 due to compiler issues. I decided to look around for other good alternatives.

    I likewise stumbled upon cyberfox. It sounded interesting but i frankly wasn't that trusting when i was reading the forum it was posted on.. The site had the appearance of a hacker/script kiddie type site. I'm not saying it was, i'm just saying that similar to the impression others have gotten, the color schemes, graphics, and big red text about how you have to register to even see download links etc was very off putting.

    I tried to find more information on it and i couldn't find a way to get it without registering which i didn't feel like doing. Within a couple days of this i found it posted on sourceforge. (a much more well known, reputable site.) I decided to trust it seeing it was posted there with the source, and ran it through sandboxie just to be safer...

    Long story short i've loved it's performance.. But i hate it's butt-ugly (in my opinion) icon... I've also had to stop running it under sandboxie because i can't get the settings right to not have it make copies of the profile etc.. I've tried editing the firefox group code to add it etc, and nothing seems to work that well. Anyways, I kept watching for my waterfox to come back out as i much prefer the peace of mind of having my web browser sandboxed.

    It came out, i installed it like 2 days ago.. While it may have been the fastest, having now experienced cyberfox, i'm finding waterfox has some speed and memory leak issues etc that i haven't experienced as bad in cyberfox. (i'm sure mostly due to the underlying firefox codebase but perchance could be due to tweaks as well.) So i'm back to cyberfox.. Still hating the icon, still not 100% trusting of it, and still wishing i was sandboxed.

    I'll try out a couple of the other variants you listed too. I happen to love process hacker, its a great tool. Far better than process explorer which had been my previous go-to.. So i might try that one first.. Anyways i just wanted to add another opinion on the whole cyberfox icon, site, and other things..
     
  3. ratchet

    ratchet Registered Member

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    Someone posted a link to some alternative icons. Not sure if it was in this thread or not. Then someone else posted some icons (not specific) they made on some other Wilders forum and he said he'd make them for anyone. Lastly, I only access Cf through Sb's quick launch icon so I don't have its icon even visible.
     
  4. WHiZ

    WHiZ Registered Member

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    Yeah i saw that thread. I don't care about the launch icon as much as the running icon which shows all the time in the taskbar even if you change the launch icon.. =)

    I'm currently using that one from the process hacker dev. I kind of like how he just took the basic mozilla one, applied his changes and compiled. No need for personal grandiosity.. There is seemingly no difference other than better performance. He didn't feel the need to re-brand or anything, meaning that it works flawlessly in sandboxie etc. I agree looking at the links posted he's worked on a number of products i'm quite familiar with... ffdshow, process hacker.. etc.. which is a big plus...

    So far so good!
     
  5. The Red Moon

    The Red Moon Registered Member

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    Ok ive been using cyberfox for the past week and its so impressed me ive dumped comodo dragon for it.
    This is just as fast and i love the homepage.
    It has all the great firefox add ons and its a great browser.
     
  6. Mman79

    Mman79 Registered Member

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    Yep, it's the first "Firefox" I've been truly interested in staying with in a long time, which works out well now that I feel Chrome is getting buggier with every new release.
     
  7. The Red Moon

    The Red Moon Registered Member

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    only thing i wish firefox would handle better is its updates.why cant it update internally like chrome .
    That is the only gripe i have with firefox and its variants.
     
  8. Mman79

    Mman79 Registered Member

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    Do you mean as in no warning, you just open it up and it's updated?
     
  9. The Red Moon

    The Red Moon Registered Member

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    no sorry i should have been clearer.
    I mean when a major new version is released it always requires the present version to be uninstalled first to install the new version.
    Basically with every version release its a complete fresh re-install.
    Minor updates work internally but new version numbers say 17.0 to 18.0 require uninstalling.
     
  10. Mman79

    Mman79 Registered Member

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    In the case of Cyberfox I thought that was no longer the case. In Firefox proper..I've not heard of this in forever.
     
  11. Bodhitree

    Bodhitree Registered Member

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    Link to this dudes Firefox?
     
  12. WHiZ

    WHiZ Registered Member

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    Sorry i hadn't seen your post..

    It was listed in the second post in this thread.. I downloaded it from there..
    http://xhmikosr.1f0.de/firefox/

    I've been using it faithfully since feb 2nd.. having used both waterfox(for about 8mo) and cyberfox(for about a month or so).. I have to say i'm finding i like this guy's build a LOT.. Very fast and efficient.. And like the original poster said, its as close as you can get to a true 64bit firefox..

    As of my writing of this he doesn't have a 19.0 final there, just the 18.0.2 and 19 beta 5.. but i'd imagine a 19 should be in very short order..

    I had downloaded and not tried two other suggestions from this thread. I was quite happy enough with this one.. so that says a fair bit..

     
  13. ratchet

    ratchet Registered Member

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    ScreenShot001.jpg

    ScreenShot002.jpg So I'm confused here! What is the difference between XhmikosR's and Cyberfox? For the record, I want my x64 profile to be exactly like my standard (32) Ff. My benchmark compared to some other averages, suggests I'm not going to gain much, if any performance. I mostly just want to know the difference. Thank You!
     
  14. WHiZ

    WHiZ Registered Member

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    what did you use for that benchmarking?
     
  15. WHiZ

    WHiZ Registered Member

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    XhmikosR's is a vanilla pretty much unmodified version of firefox, just compiled to take advantage of x64 architecture.. cyberfox/waterfox are all modified and compiled.. The concept being that they might be able to introduce performance enhancements, but realistically may introduce extra bugs or degradations too..

    The question is which would be fastest.. I have 18.0.2 installed for each i'll run a couple benchmarks if you tell me what that is you ran above...
     
  16. WHiZ

    WHiZ Registered Member

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    Eh.. scratch that... i had 18.0.1 for cyber and water.. waterfox never came out with a 18.0.2 and i downloaded 18.0.2 of cyber... download went fine... the install went fine, until after it was done installing and went to install the pre-resqs... needless to say, it is a little concerning... I'm familiar with false positives, however i can't really say this is one... so i'm not sure if it does or doesn't have a virus.. The download itself scanned fine, it was when it went to unpack and install the preresq that norton found something funky...
     

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  17. ratchet

    ratchet Registered Member

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    speed-battle.com
     
  18. Cimmerian

    Cimmerian Registered Member

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    Most likely a false positive. That's the MS Visual C++ Redistributable, which Cyberfox needs to install & run properly.
     
  19. ratchet

    ratchet Registered Member

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    I use Norton too and always get that. For whatever reason I just keep going and it installs and runs fine.
     
  20. WHiZ

    WHiZ Registered Member

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    Yeah.. i'm aware what the filename is... But i'm also aware the best way to distribute a virus us to attach it to something people want and that would appear harmless.. ;) Also if a developer gets infected, what they package and distribute would also get infected in most cases..

    On a sidenote... the Cyberfox 19 and 18.0.2 installers from the dl mirror were reported as having the virus.. the previous 18 one that i had of cyberfox did not report that way.
     
  21. WHiZ

    WHiZ Registered Member

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    My unscientific x64 firefox benchmarks....

    Let me start by saying i don't have the latest/greatest computer.. I have a mid range computer.. so many people would have much better results, many others would be similar... but overall results generally do scale well... The tests were done with my normal firefox profile and normal 22 extensions unless otherwise noted..

    i felt this provided the best real-world use example as what makes firefox so popular is it's ability to customize and integrate extensions to let it best meet your needs/requirements for how you browse.

    Also.. due to virus detections by norton in the cyberfox vc redist install, to stay safe i ran it from within a sandbox... Aka it is going to be very slightly slower than normal. To provide a baseline comparison of sandbox vs non-sandboxed performance you can look at the * + **. The first one is without a sandbox, the second is from within a sandboxie sandbox. So realistically the performance difference is little-none..

    First i started with 18.0.1(because it is the latest version of waterfox made) of waterfox & xhmikosr, with 18.0.2 of cyberfox (keep in mind 18.0.2 is slightly faster than 18.0.1. based on the 19's benchmarks i'd say xhmikosr's would top cyberfox though in a head to head of 18.0.2)

    The hands down winner of 18.0 is waterfox by a nice margin.

    Version 19, needs a little explaining. Waterfox has no version 19, and they have been majorly lagging behind recent months, which is why many of us are looking for alternatives. So i'm only testing between cyberfox and xhmikosr. Because of another virus warning on the install of cyberfox 19 i decided to deny it access to my ff profile and plugins.

    As such *** was run as a clean install with no profile or plugins.. As we see it easily beat out xhmikosr which had 22 extensions running.

    I thought i should try to provide a 1-1 comparison, but seeing how i wanted something that was more realistic and representative of how most people actually browse instead i decided to disable most of the extensions to see just how much they ere bogging me down. I trimmed down to a lean 6 extensions.. re-ran xhmikosr and it came in as *.

    Then to try to eliminate the sandbox as a contributor for the big difference i ran xhmikosr again from a sandbox with the trimmed plugins of 6. It came in as **.

    So my observations/conclusions after testing are thus:

    1) the best performance increases come from upgrading to the next major version line which seem to have more optimizations.

    2) The tweaks and effort put into Waterfox make it faster than the core manilla firefox codebase (xhmikosr). As such, it has the best overall performance when it has an actual comparable major version. The problem being is it hasn't been having comparable versions lately..

    3) when waterfox doesn't have a comparable major version, switching to any other firefox browser of the newer major version will yield better results..

    4) the 3rd best way to improve performance after using the latest version, using waterfox(if avail) or another variant(if waterfox isnt avail), is to look at what extentions you have loaded and try to trim the fat. customization is great, but it seems as if it comes with a major cost.. play around and see what ones you can live without and decide if the remaining ones are worth the performance cost.. some cost little to nothing performance wise, others cost quite a bit performance wise...

    5) apples to apples, the xhmikosr firefox build is faster and overall the better choice than cyberfox when there is no waterfox.

    6) sandboxing your webbrowser doesn't affect performance much at all, so keep yourself secure and sandboxie it!

    well there you have it... some hours of work.. for pretty much where i already was at... however at least now i know to switch back to waterfox when it comes out with a new version...


    key:
    * limited extensions to 6
    ** limited extensions to 6 & sandboxed
    *** 0 extensions & sandboxed
    **** full extensions and sandboxed
     

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  22. ratchet

    ratchet Registered Member

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    I install from sourceforge. Wouldn't they be scanning it for malware before they make it available?
     
  23. WHiZ

    WHiZ Registered Member

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    i downloaded mine from sourceforge too under that same assumption...

    however keep in mind, a virus will be detected in 1 of 3 ways...

    1) a standard defininition matches a known virus.. Aka these matches are only for viruses that are known about already and already added to scan engines..

    2) a pattern definition matches a pattern of code that exists for a known virus type..

    3) a suspicious activity match, each antivirus maker has its own way to determine if a piece of software is doing something virus-like in which case it will flag it as a generic type or suspicious and ask you what to do.

    0 day, or new viruses don't get detected. instead they infect hundreds of thousands of people early on.. They only start getting blocked and detected after the antivirus makers find them and start adding them into the scanners and protection definitions. that is why when you want to release a virus, you release it where people will download it NOW.. and FAST rather than wait a few months... That's why they put them in the latest movie, app, or other download that everyone wants..

    in my case, it gave no such option about what to do about it. norton 360 marked it as a known virus and removed it both times and wouldn't even leave me a quarantined file to try on totalvirus.com etc.. it did however auto upload/submit itself to symantec for recording..

    i'm not saying the cyberfox installer does indeed have a virus. it may be harmless.. however, the fact that it is in a supposed redistributable from ms that is packaged "inside" the cyberfox installer that is being flagged..

    the whole thing tends to raise a concern with me personally.

    1) false positives do happen on unknown software with all antivirus software occasionally..

    but for that to happen with a supposed major piece of microsoft software claiming to be an unmodified installer from microsoft isn't just rare, it's pretty much unheard of.

    The antivirus products would/should have exemptions in them for signed ms software with a valid signature. which would lead me to believe this redistributable was modified, which would break any signature.

    2) normally software doesn't include the redistributable if they are a downloaded piece of software. they have the installer download it directly from ms if your system needs it.

    in most cases it wouldn't be downloaded, as most people already have the vc redistributable installed. on a cd, they normally include it so you don't have to download it if you are on a computer without inet access.

    in fact why would you take a program that is 20mb and add a 10mb redistributable attachment increasing the install program by 150%? seeing not everyone is on super fast internet that doesn't make sense either.. the other ones that compile with the same ms vc++ don't include it..

    3) even if it is legit, by it not downloading the redistributable directly from microsoft you wouldn't be getting the most recent version with bug and security fixes..

    4) if you want to release a virus, you include it in things people will want to download and run. you'd hide it within something else. in theory you could have it in an installer or application not in it's completed form so it wouldn't be detected when downloading etc. It would only piece it together into the completed virus when run..

    lastly... again.. it may be completely clean with no virus.. i ran the thing for a good month or two... (an earlier version that norton didn't detect that way) now i'm regretting that choice... i'm thinking i should have stuck with my initial gut impression of it.. personally i will hope for the best.. but i'm going to do a full scan tonight just to be safe.. ;)

    then again, if it was a new virus...

    anywho.. my 2 cents... take i for what it's worth...
     
  24. ratchet

    ratchet Registered Member

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    The last time it happened I too did a complete scan and Norton didn't find anything. I have Malwarebytes Pro (or whatever it's called) real time and no flag from it either time but I'll try a full scan now. What do you make of the fact that Norton states it blocks it but yet seems to install and run just fine?
    So I did a full Malwarebytes scan and everything came up clean. So if it is really malware, Norton has succeeded both times from infecting the system.
     
    Last edited: Feb 20, 2013
  25. WHiZ

    WHiZ Registered Member

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    norton blocks the redistributable install... not the cyberfox install... so the main cyberfox exe still runs as you already have the redistributable installed... (like i said as to it being odd why you'd include it when most would already have it anyways)

    my norton crashed while trying to do a full reputation scan(i was doing that prior to the full av scan as its generally faster and can give a quick glimpse in many cases).. sadly since the crash norton refuses to reopen/reload (not a good sign.. lol... but could just be a coincidence).. Norton suggested i reboot to so it could try to fix itself...

    Leary of rebooting and wanting to check some things first, I'm currently doing a couple full scans... one with windows defender, one with microsoft malicious software removal tool... then i'll either do a malwarebytes or reboot to do a norton one next...

    i'm hoping it's nothing... or it is just something in that one file and norton blocked it.. i'd be fine.. my bigger concern however is that it is something new that norton just added to their defs so its just now detecting it, and it might have been infected before too.. i don't know.. but because of the sandbox issues i had with cyberfox for the month or two i ran it... i ran it most of that time unsandboxed which means it would have had free rein of my system... so obviously i'm not leaving anything to chance.. i'm scanning the heck outta it..

    i feel kind of stupid for not sticking with the normal rule of thumb of if you don't know where it's coming from.. don't trust it.. don't run it.. once i saw it on sourceforge i figured i could trust it.. but realistically.. how hard would it be for a hacker to spend 5min and make an acct there and post malicious stuff too?
     
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