
Vivaldi Browser: Chrome engine, no personal data collected - netgusto
https://vivaldi.com
======
netgusto
Is Vivaldi Open Source?

[https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-
source/](https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/)

Short answer: no.

Long answer: no, but...

    
    
        Vivaldi is not made available under one
        unified open source license. It does contain
        the Chromium source code with changes made
        to allow the HTML/CSS/JS based UI to run.
        All changes to the Chromium source code
        are made available under a BSD license and can
        be read by anyone on vivaldi.com/source/.
        Details in this regard are explained in
        the the README and LICENSE files within the package.
    
        In addition, our UI code is written in plain,
        accessible code for those who read HTML, CSS and JS.
        This means that for all practical purposes
        the Vivaldi source code is available for audit.
    
        Vivaldi also contains third party code. Licenses
        for these parts can be found in the source
        package and in the installed browser by
        navigating to vivaldi://credits

------
m_b
As it isn't open-source, how can you trust this? What certify me that my data
are safely stored and don't sold to commercial partners??

~~~
simias
I have the same reaction. I'd sooner use Firefox with a few privacy-enhancing
extensions.

~~~
m_b
I'm running Chromium with HTTPS everywhere, uBlock Origin, Wappalyzer
(curiosity purpose) & Bitwarden (password manager). It's the best setup I
found regarding performances & energy consumption for my GNU/Linux laptops.

~~~
moystard
It might be in terms of performance and energy consumption, but it is clearly
not when it comes to privacy.

~~~
amelius
Could you explain, what privacy issues exist with Chromium?

~~~
morganvachon
This was one of the more egregious ones from a few years ago; since fixed, but
as far as I'm concerned the trust was permanently broken (what's to stop them
from doing something similar and hiding it better, after all this made it past
the package maintainer until a user complained).

[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=786909](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=786909)

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
By the way, I think this comment [0] sums it up well for many HN folks:

> As a web developer, I like chrome. As a private person, I uninstalled it.
> You might call it a feature or a core extension, most people consider this
> spyware.

[0]
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=491435...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=491435#c12)

------
emilsedgh
Saw that Tell HN yesterday about Chrome logging you in to Gmail.

Switched to Firefox. It's so damn fast nowadays (it wasn't up until a while
back)

Good job at amazing people at Mozilla. You're killing it.

~~~
supuun
And UI is better than chrome IMO. Built-in dark mode rules.

------
nerdbeere
I'm missing a "Why we are doing this" section on the website. It's not open-
source and I wonder what their motivation is. How are they making money?

~~~
jhoh
Vivaldi ships with a load of preselected bookmarks. Mainly big news sites and
some online stores. It seems like there is some affiliate marketing going on
there. Some of these bookmarks link to a vivaldi.com page that redirects you
to a siteplug.com page which again redirects you to the actual page.

Example bookmark: AliExpress -> [https://vivaldi.com/bk/aliexpresscom-
us](https://vivaldi.com/bk/aliexpresscom-us) ->
[http://ww2.siteplug.com/fly?${tracking](http://ww2.siteplug.com/fly?${tracking)
params} ->
[https://best.aliexpress.com/?${more](https://best.aliexpress.com/?${more)
tracking params}

Siteplug seems to be the service with they use to monetize the traffic. Notice
that the redirect link doesn't offer a https version. Neither does their
website [0] that also just shows me a dead bird on most pages [1].

[0]: [http://siteplug.com](http://siteplug.com) [1]: [http://siteplug.com/for-
partners](http://siteplug.com/for-partners)

------
m0nty
I moved back to Firefox after an update to Vivaldi started lagging badly when
I woke up my PC. Maybe it was an extension, but after disabling some of them I
realised I don't really have time or inclination to find out.

Another thing I didn't like was the re-purposing of the F6 button so it didn't
highlight the URL any more (I guess I could change this; not sure) and the
history page, which seemed quite confusing whenever I tried to use it.

It's not a bad browser but neither is it so good I want to put up with those
times it breaks or does something gratuitously different.

------
mosselman
I tried Vivaldi a few days ago as Firefox, despite their efforts to up
performance, is still far too slow for me. The disadvantage I found that
Vivaldi has is the number of extensions is basically 0 (please correct me if I
am wrong). Installing chrome extensions is possible if you build from source
and bake in the extensions, which is not something I am interested in.

I currently use Opera, but I am unsure about the privacy. Opera works very
well though and there is an extension that allows installing chrome-extensions
which works out very well.

Any thoughts on Opera's privacy?

~~~
dvdgsng
You can install any Chrome extension using the regular Chrome web store:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/)

Link is on the "Apps" page: vivaldi://apps

~~~
mosselman
Wow, how strange. I just reinstalled vivaldi and checked and I couldn't
install extensions because 'Add to Chrome' read 'Available on Chrome',
redirecting me to a chrome download page. After refreshing the button changes
to 'Add to chrome'!? Either way, now I CAN install extensions. Thanks for
making me retry.

------
da_murvel
A colleague of mine tried Vivaldi 1.5 years ago, while he liked the split
screen feature he found it way too slow and it had serious lagging issues from
time to time. Much can happen in 1.5 years and I don't know if they were using
V8 back then. But yeah, what I saw wasn't really that impressive. And no open
source? Yeah, I think I'll stick with Firefox and my tinfoil hat extensions a
while longer.

~~~
dvdgsng
Performance is just fine, no issues running dozens of tabs daily, no "lagging"
whatsoever. And split screen is amazing, yes.

------
baal80spam
Firefox is slow as molasses for me, Chrome-based browsers feel SO MUCH
snappier - I'm talking about things like e.g. tab-detaching.

I moved fully to Vivaldi about half a year ago and I couldn't be happier.
There are only 2 issues I've encountered so far:

\- sometimes, video in full screen is flickering (known issue) \- sometimes,
when the tab is closed while playing video in full screen, the whole browser
UI disappears and the only way to fix this is to kill and restart the browser
- the obvious workaround is to never close the tab while being in full screen

Other than that I'm very impressed with Vivaldi. Gestures, clean and USABLE
interface, web panels are great features that I can hardly work without
anymore.

~~~
safanycom
This is a tuned version of open-source Chromium with extra ergonomics. Made by
the original Opera dev since they split a few years ago. Twenty years track
record in making fast and secure stuff.

Why just use one browser???

I always have four or more and Vivaldi is #1 or #2 but FF is my mail/chat
because of the containers

------
mysterydip
I would be more convinced in their "we respect and protect your right to
privacy" if there wasn't a "we use cookies to enhance your experience" banner
at the top.

------
thunderbong
The main reason I like Vivaldi is because I can use a lot of the functionality
which I could get in the old Opera (ver 12 and earlier).

The keyboard controls (especially the single key shortcuts) save a huge amount
of time. An example would be to navigate across tabs, or close all the tabs on
the right (or left) are a huge timesaver.

Additionally, viewing pages in the reader view (again with a single key
shortcut) gets rid of all the unnecessary stuff on the web page.

People who remember the power of the old Opera browser should give this a
shot.

------
samuell
How does it differ from Brave [0]? (Which is also based on Chrome, is free and
open source, and well integrated even in Xubuntu, for the latest dev version
[1])

[0] [https://brave.com](https://brave.com)

[1] [https://brave.com/download-dev/](https://brave.com/download-dev/)

~~~
netgusto
In addition to what you noted, Brave has an integrated Ad-blocking / Tracker
blocking software enabled by default + an integrated way to compensate content
producers for the incurring loss of revenue.

Vivaldi has some neat features like Tab stacks and Split screen.

------
Theodores
Developer mindshare is important for the success of a browser and, right now,
if I go to 'caniuse' there are all of the main browsers plus a few that have
no interest to me - old I.E., 'Opera Mini' and so on.

For Vivaldi to get a little bit further they need to become a first class
browser that developers think about, test with and talk about.

~~~
netsharc
It uses the same engine as Chrome/Chromium, my guess would be in 99% if not
100% of cases they will behave the same.

------
bdz
ungoogled-chromium is what I use

[https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-
chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

~~~
thunderbong
Thanks for that. I hadn't heard of it before. Will give it a shot as well.

------
romanovcode
Closed-Source. No thank you.

~~~
abbiya
[https://vivaldi.com/source](https://vivaldi.com/source)

~~~
r3bl
That's source available, not open source.

You can view the source, but you can't contribute to it, create forks, etc.

Source available is one of the prerequisites for software to be considered
open source, but not the only one.

