With Chromium being increasingly the only supported browser we soon won’t have a choice which browser to use for certain websites anymore (e.g. Firefox).

That’s where I disagree. I think that if we do get an internet where Chrome is the only option and it sucks, we’ll get another browser option. Firefox for example went through a few years of being a bad browser but it has gotten past those hurdles. People are lazy and change is slow, but once it starts I think it is unstoppable.

I’ve never really understood this argument. The history of browsers shows that a browser choice screen isn’t necessary. IE used to be dominant until it started sucking so much that people looked for alternatives. For a while that alternative was Firefox, then Chrome came along and people moved to that.

I think the problem for alternate browsers on PC is that all browsers are good enough at the things most people care about that they don’t look at alternatives anymore. Most pre-built computers come with Chrome pre-installed and if it isn’t, people seek it out on their own to download it. More savvy users know about Chrome’s issues, but those aren’t issues users really care about.

What does need to be addressed is how iOS and Windows either don’t really allow you to use another browser, or make it difficult to switch. iOS needs to allow other rendering engines so alternative browsers aren’t just a skin over Safari and Windows needs to stop with preventing users from changing the default browser for things like widgets.

Besides the listed examples from the article, what would be the impact for normal to even hobbyist root users? It seems like this is a good idea to prevent modification of legit certs and allowing certs to be updated remotely.

As touched on above: if you’re configuring your own system CA certificates on Android right now for debugging, reverse engineering, testing or research, that option is going away in Android 14, and presumably all future versions too.

It literally feels like a blast from the past. I remember being on forums in the 90s and early 2000s hearing all this Linux evangelism. Then I say “the second a user has to touch a command line, they’re out” and everyone acts like this isn’t a reasonable take.

Thankfully though, Linux has evolved and ChromeOS and Android have shown how lower needs users and limited platforms like mobile can use Linux and not have to deal with the complexity of old-school Linux.