[deanhills]

My preference is Firefox because it's not commercial, however Chrome works better and faster for me right now, particularly when I have slow Internet periodically. For now I use Google Chrome for searches, and Firefox as my backup search engine. Google is definitely not the best, even for searches, as it is super commercial and intrusive, doesn't come up with the search results I need, as well as it wants me to sign up and in first before I can tune the settings the way I want them. I've resisted doing that so far. If Firefox can fix its lagging and using too many resources, particularly when I have issues with slow Internet, then I'll make it my main search engine again.

[fChk]

This kind of threads are just silly!.. Sorry!.. but Best?!.. from which perspective and for whom(/what kind of individual you are)?.. Because, at the end of the day, objectivity won't cut it in this kind of comparisons; there is always pros and cons in everything and the call is YOURS.

So, if we believe the masses (ie. the browser market as of Nov. 2019) then Chrome would be the "best". Check the stats at financesonline.com. Chrome accounts for 66.22% while Firefox has 9.54% of the browser market.

What those numbers tell us?.. To me they just point to the fact that Google has succeeded in "selling" its browser to the mass, using its dominance as a Web Tech giant, in exchange of a systematic violation of their privacy (day in day out.) That's the whole story of those number. The herd mentality does the rest; Chrome being so hyped up that the common mortals just fall for it.

Now, to remove the privacy question from this equation, I'll drop any further reference to Chrome and replace it by referring to Chromium, which is the open source version of Chrome and the basis of a plethora of forks (among them Brave browser -Brendan Eich's new browser after his resignation from Mozilla- and Microsoft Edge.)

Chromium isn't as "sexy" as Chrome but that's the price you pay to preserve your privacy. On Linux, most distribution provides the missing parts (e.g. mp3+mp4 media support), so it should not be a problem. Otherwise, Brave browser is a good alternative.

On purely technical grounds, Chromium and Firefox are basically the two top notch browsers out there (Safari being the third.) Their performance are roughly the same, outperforming each other in particular tasks with a slight edge for Chromium. There are many benchmarks you can consult on the Web (those on phoronix.com came to mind.)

We should also know that the performance of each browser change over time; the general trend being that it increases but it can also decrease in versions where significant features were added without been fully optimised. Check this benchmarking for Firefox versions.

The thing is that software is complicated, but human-beings are even more complicated; and when you mixed those two, unexpected results occurs :-)

So, back to the question, Chrome vs Firefox?... Of course, Firefox!