243: Vivaldi CEO Interview - Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner

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Question in the show:

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Dang, I just published my own take on it based on the impression I got asking people on Reddit :smiley:
I’ll have to listen to the episode and figure out if there is any potential for new content here…

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I’m going to say that I’m very impressed with the conversation with Jon. It’s given me something to think about, and I’m changing my thoughts on Vivaldi a little bit. While I’m not a huge fan of closed source in general, at the same time I recognize that companies need to make money to pay developers. (Which seems to be a bit of an anathema to some members of the broader Linux community)

I’m giving Vivaldi a shot, and it seems like it’s a solid browser.

Thanks for bringing Jon on, and thanks to Jon for taking the time and answering some questions!

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The interview almost had me convinced to try Vivaldi again. But the forced telemetry (spying) is a deal breaker for me. I realize that most of the Destination Linux podcasters disagree with me. Nevertheless, when anyone tracks my ip (from which you can learn my isp, location, vpn service, etc.) and the times that I’m active, and the operating system, patch levels, and who knows what else vivaldi is tracking - yeah, I’m not going to try it.

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I firmly believe you should make the best decision for your data and information. The telemetry they capture transparently is fine for some and for others they would prefer zero and I support that. For me, this doesn’t change the fact I still use Firefox (which also gathers telemetry by default) but when I need a chromium base I’m enjoying Vivaldi.

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Your position on chromium is understandable, considering that you need to test services and report on them to your listeners. In my personal life, I can afford to be a bit more dogmatic: if a website doesn’t support Firefox, then I probably don’t need it that much.

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Worthy of mention would have been FerenOS as 1st to make Vivaldi its default browser.

Also, MX who make it readily available to install along with others such as Brave, Palemoon etc.

Q40S is also making it easy to install.


Still frustrated at Mozilla for giving their CEO a 400% pay increase while laying off 250. Where’s the true community spirit here?

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This is one of the things that’s so very frustrating, Firefox is a legit competitor to chromium, yet it’s managed by group that makes decisions like a duck that’s been hit in the head too many times.

I want Firefox to succeed, but it seems that Firefox doesn’t want to succeed.

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For years, i would recommend Firefox everywhere, not anymore.

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Thanks, everyone! Very informative interview with Jon - I learned a lot about Vivaldi that I didn’t know :slight_smile: Also great to see you’re using Jitsi for video now too!

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Very good interview – learned a great deal about Vivaldi and raised it to be within my view when considering browsers. Now to try it out…

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It was a interview that enticed people to try out Vivaldi, but I had a few thoughts/questions that weren’t asked.

Like they mentioned expressing dismay about the discontinuation of the Presto and understood the concerns users might have about Vivaldi using the Blink engine, by why not be really modular and let the user choose which engine it should use?

And another question that popped up during the interview was; mobile version when? :thinking:

I thought there was an Android version? I can imagine there’s not much value for them in making an iOS version, since it’s still got to be safari under the hood.

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Thank you all for the great feedback! I am glad the interview was informative and enjoyable. To respond some specific things:

We talked about the telemetry being collected and I don’t remember and IP Address being included at all. I could be wrong but I only remember a unique id system rather than an IP address. They do collect other data but I dont think anything is classified as personal data. This is not to say that you should be okay with any telemetry, that is up to you to decide of course. I just wanted to clarify that I don’t think they track IPs.

I’m glad you enjoyed the interview. We are using Jitsi for the Patron Virtual Stadium but we are currently using VDO Ninja for the recording of the show. We are still working out the growing pains with VDO Ninja but it has some great potential as a solution so I hope it can be.

Building a browser on multiple engines would be very very difficult especially when Vivaldi started the differences between Firefox and Chromium were drastic. There is some shared code now but it is still very different so it wouldn’t be practical to create a browser with support for multiple engines because it increases the workload exponentially. I would like Vivaldi to rebase on Firefox but it doesn’t seem like it would be practical.

as for your other question about mobile, I will second what @SquirrellyDave said with there is an Android and iOS might not be in the books for them.

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I still have to listen to the whole interview but that is where I agree with Vivaldi, not to refocus on a mobile version. I do not use any major browser on mobile anyway.

As for using two browser engines I agree, there is no point, too much work. They need to focus on one engine and do it well but I really would prefer them to use Firefox’s engine, too.

I am looking forward to listen to the whole show.

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@kernellinux Be stuck no longer. PASSWORD HINT: “I leave you neither sitting, nor standing… Like the purgatory of chairs, What am I?” ***** (5 characters)

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Is it “stool” by any chance?

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@SquirrellyDave & @MichaelTunnell it must’ve been more than 2 years the last time I searched for Vivaldi on the Play Store (I usually use F-Droid for my apps) :smirk::+1:

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“loots” actually, for more security.

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