The really great thing about open source
there is always a hacker stripping out the bad stuff, leaving in the good stuff and releasing it to the public.
thank you!
there is even a mobile version of it.
BE AWARE!
While IceCat is very very fast – disabling a lot of JavaScript (actually ALL JavaScript :-D) – THIS RELEASE SEEMS TO NOT GET UPDATED VERY OFTEN. (its Version 38 something even Debian’s repo has Firefox (IceWeasel) ESR 45.4.0)
So there might be critical bugs that were not fixed yet – tearing potential security holes – while browsing. Not good.
NoJS AT ALL 😀
Another problem: I COULD NOT GET ANY JAVASCRIPT TO WORK.
The world is JavaScript-crazy. To my experiences with this scripting language – it is cool that it exists but: it is slow and dangerous! IT CAN SPY ON/ATTACK/HIJACK YOUR ROUTER 😀
Unfortunately, i think Facebook even works well without JS, but Diaspora and WordPress FAIL BADLY (IMHO) with JS disabled 🙁
That is definitely a downer – the question is – allow JS on those sites only? or disable completely and not use it 😀 and ask the programmers to change their ways. More backend, less front-end.
A website/portal without JS support might be perfectly doable – the question is: will people do that. For security reasons we should. Unless client-side scripting could be done in a safer way.
The Firefox NoScript Addon is even praised by Ed Snowden himself:
“[A] mention doesn’t come as a surprise since NoScript has been often cited as a ‘defensive weapon’ for activists and other people targeted by oppressive governments,” he concluded.
Edward Snowden endorses NoScript as a countermeasure against state Surveillance State
download mirror here: noscript_security_suite-2-9-0-14-fxfnsm-xpi-tar.gz
https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/ -> What this Addon wants to do:
“LibreJS is not a security tool. Its goal is to detect nonfree nontrivial JavaScript, and it currently does not detect whether free or trivial code is malicious or not. Other free Mozilla extensions and add-ons may be available for this purpose.
LibreJS is always a work in progress.
If you find a bug, please report it to bug-librejs@gnu.org.”
A Browser without JavaScript is supersafe – but (unfortunately) pretty useless right now (2016.10).
Blocking all JavaScript that has license or not is the “hardcore approach” to the web nowadays 😀 (almost all more sophisticated sites will break – some not even displaying any TEXT and PICTURES (NO KIDDING! EVEN UNIVERSITY-PORTALS HIGHLY BET ON JS! BAD BAD BAD! :-D)
The cool thing about JavaScript: THERE IS NO CLOSED JS-SOURCE, IT IS ALL “OPEN SOURCE” PER DEFAULT (maybe obfuscated, compressed but OpenSource)
But yes of-course – is JQuery’s MIT-license = Free Software? – https://tldrlegal.com/license/mit-license
“In order for a file to be detected as free, the license notice should appear in a JavaScript file above all code, at the very top of the file.”
https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/librejs.html
https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
For the mobile variant of IceCat, see IceCatMobile
IceCat v45 is still in beta and have not been packaged for Trisquel. IceCat 38.8.0 (based on Firefox ESR 38.8.0) has 7 critical bugs.
- A direct workaround for bugzil.la/863246: No Resource URI Leak.
GNU IceCat (originally GNU IceWeasel) is part of GNUzilla (the GNU version of the Mozilla Application Suite). GNU IceCat aim to be based on the the current official release of Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) with removal of trademarked artwork and proprietary components.
However, IceCat is not a straight fork of Firefox ESR; instead, it is a parallel effort that works closely with and re-bases in synchronization on the latest Firefox ESR as the upstream supplier, with patches merged upstream whenever possible; although it should be noted that security updates to IceCat.
Another important difference between Mozilla’s Firefox and GNU IceCat is that IceCat has a focus on freedom and privacy, such that it is designed to make it easy for the user to: block execution of non-free JavaScript with GNU LibreJS or disable all JS, block privacy trackers with SpyBlock (Adblock Plus fork), get redirected to HTTPS when possible with HTTPS Everywhere, and more!
And lastly, whereas new versions of Firefox are being created such that they support Digital Restrictions Management systems through their implementation of the Encrypted Media Extension, GNU IceCat will not include an EME implementation as it opposes efforts to popularize and ease the dissemination of DRM technology and related proprietary software.
GNU IceCat was formerly known as GNU IceWeasel but changed its name to avoid confusion with Debian IceWeasel who had the name first.
HELP US: we are working to improve our list of addons and extensions for GNU IceCat. Please help us in reviewing proposed addons and adding those that are properly licensed free software programs. See:
Documentation
Starting with Firefox 48, Mozilla is shipping its first production Rust code
- IRC general channel
- irc://chat.freenode.net/icecat
Mozilla Sync my passwords?
thanks a lot. thats what you probably DO NOT want.
Take your Web with you
Sync Firefox wherever you use it to access your bookmarks, passwords, tabs and more from any smartphone, tablet or computer.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/sync/
Introducing GNUzilla and IceCat
GNUzilla is the GNU version of the Mozilla suite, and GNU IceCat is the GNU version of the Firefox browser. Its main advantage is an ethical one: it is entirely free software. While the Firefox source code from the Mozilla project is free software, they distribute and recommend non-free software as plug-ins and addons. Also their trademark license restricts distribution in several ways incompatible with freedom 0.
Privacy protection features
- LibreJS: GNU LibreJS aims to address the JavaScript problem described in Richard Stallman’s article The JavaScript Trap.
- Https-Everywhere: Extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure.
- SpyBlock: Blocks privacy trackers while in normal browsing mode, and all third party requests when in private browsing mode. Based on Adblock Plus.
- AboutIceCat: Adds a custom “about:icecat” homepage with links to information about the free software and privacy features in IceCat, and checkboxes to enable and disable the ones more prone to break websites.
- Fingerprinting countermeasures: Fingerprinting is a series of techniques allowing to uniquely identify a browser based on specific characterisics of that particular instance (like what fonts are available in that machine). Unlike cookies the user cannot opt-out of being tracked this way, so the browser has to avoid giving away that kind of hints.
Downloads
Official releases of IceCat are available from ftp.gnu.org, or any GNU mirror. Please use a mirror if possible. Besides the sources, binary releases for GNU/Linux (32 and 64 bit) are available.
IceCat is generated from Firefox with the scripts available at http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git.
Free add-ons and plugins
We maintain a list of free addons.
GNUzilla runs its own plugin finder service at gnuzilla.gnu.org.
Langpacks
You can find langpacks for IceCat in the official GNU FTP: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuzilla/ in the “langpacks” directory for a given release
These langpacks are generated automatically from the original Firefox ones, if you notice problems in your locale, please let us know at the <bug-gnuzilla@gnu.org> mailing list.
Online help and documentation
Community driven manuals are available at http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:IceCat/
Mailing lists
General discussion of these projects take place on the mailing list bug-gnuzilla@gnu.org (it’s not just for bug reports, despite the name). Feel free to subscribe or browse the archives.
To subscribe to the GNU IceCat mailing list, either use the mailman web interface or send empty email with a Subject: header line of just subscribe to bug-gnuzilla-request@gnu.org.
Found a bug? Have a suggestion? Please report it to the mailing list, trying to specify all the information that could be involved (platform, program version (the command icecat --version will report this), and build tools version if building from source code). Please report both the behavior you expected to the actual behavior you observed.
Getting involved
Development of IceCat, and GNU in general, is a volunteer effort, and you can contribute. For information, please read How to help GNU. If you’d like to get involved, it’s a good idea to join the discussion mailing list (see above).
- Maintainer
- GNU IceCat is currently being maintained by Ruben Rodriguez. Please use the mailing lists for contact.
Origin of the name
The name “IceCat” was coined to show our relationship to the Mozilla Firefox browser. Ice isn’t Fire and a Cat isn’t a Fox, so it is clearly a different package (we don’t want Mozilla blamed for our mistakes, nor cause confusion with their trademarks), but is equally clearly intimately related (of course nearly all of the work comes from the Mozilla foundation effort, so we want to give credit).
The gNewSense BurningDog browser and the Debian IceWeasel browser are similarly derived from Firefox, also with the intent of being free software. Technically, however, these projects are maintained entirely independently of IceCat. (Previously, this GNU browser project was also named IceWeasel, but that proved confusing.)
About GNU and the GNU Philosophy
The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software—free as in freedom, not price. Its principal sponsor is the Free Software Foundation.
The free software philosophy is the root and motivation of the guidelines and goals of the whole free software movement, a worldwide community.
Please join us!
Please send FSF & GNU inquiries to <gnu@gnu.org>. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.
Please send broken links and other corrections or suggestions to <bug-gnuzilla@gnu.org>.Copyright 2012,2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
We thank the Hitflip team for the IceCat logos.
GNU IceCat, formerly known as GNU IceWeasel,[3] is a free software rebranding of the Mozilla Firefox web browser distributed by the GNU Project. It is compatible with Linux, Windows, Android and OS X.[4]
The GNU Project attempts to keep IceCat in synchronization with upstream development of Firefox while removing all trademarked artwork. It also maintains a large list of free software plugins. In addition, it features a few security features not found in the mainline Firefox browser.
“Gnuzilla is the GNU version of the Mozilla suite, and IceCat is the GNU version of the Firefox browser. Its main advantage is an ethical one: it is entirely free (as in speech) software. While the source code from the Mozilla project is free software, the binaries that they release include additional non-free software. Also, they distribute non-free software as plug-ins. (IceCat does keep the triple licensing used by Firefox to facilitate the reuse of code.)”
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
From the Gnu website: (Previously, this GNU browser project was also named Iceweasel, but that proved confusing.)
IceCat is the GNU version of the popular Mozilla Firefox Web browser. While Ubuntu versions to date have included Firefox by default, its future is under scrutiny with the apparent conflict between Debian’s definitions of free software and Mozilla’s trademark of the Firefox logo.
IceCat is the counterpart to Firefox. Icedove is the Thunderbird equivalent and Iceape corresponds to the Seamonkey suite.
If you want more information about these programs, try the Gnuzilla home page first. For a synopsis of the issue, try this InternetNews.com article. You can also read the original Debian bug report describing the dispute.
This wiki entry began as a forum howto, but is better suited to a wiki page so other community members can fine-tune the methods
Setup:
please check for yourself what the latest version is: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuzilla/.
As we are speaking it is version: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuzilla/38.8.0-gnu2/ (DATE: 2016-10-07 TIME: 12:22:44)
[cc lang=”bash” escaped=”true” width=”600″]
mkdir /software/icecat;
cd /software/icecat;wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuzilla/38.8.0-gnu2/icecat-38.8.0.en-US.linux-i686.tar.bz2; # download
bunzip2 *.tar.bz2 # unpack even more
tar fx *.tar; # unpack even more
./icecat/icecat; # give it a testrun
apt-get install mozo; # install Gnome2 MATE Desktop menu editor, so you can integrate IceCat into your application “startmenu”
wget https://dwaves.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/icecat_Browser_Logo_GNUzilla_FSF.png; # get the logo 😀
[/cc]
Related Links:
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