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Add to SafariWhen comparing Pale Moon vs GNU IceCat, the Slant community recommends Pale Moon for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop web browsers?” Pale Moon is ranked 5th while GNU IceCat is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Pale Moon is:
"Classic" Firefox add-ons can work, but they are not supported and should be updated or forked to become a Pale Moon add-on.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Has its own add-on ecosystem, built on time-tested technologies such as XUL (plus JS and CSS) and XPCOM
"Classic" Firefox add-ons can work, but they are not supported and should be updated or forked to become a Pale Moon add-on.
Pro Designed for usability, not the shiny new things
Pro Light on resources, although it's not its main focus
Pro Independent from Google and Mozilla
Pale Moon is an independent fork of an older version of Firefox. Therefore, it is independent from Mozilla and are not affected by their terrible decisions such as removing XUL, adding telemetry, pocket, etc.
Pro Customizable
Pro Stable
Pro Support for existing web standards
Pro Respects your privacy
Contains much less spyware than Chrome and Firefox and all of it can easily be disabled.
Pro Open source
So we can verify that the browser is not spyware.
Pro Supports complete themes
Pale Moon supports complete themes, something which Firefox used to have before version 57.
Pro Support for GTK themes
Pale Moon supports your GTK theme while Firefox does not.
Pro Uses Goanna layout engine
Unlike most other browsers, Pale Moon uses its custom engine.
Pro Has its own library of legacy extensions
Pro Very Independent
It isn't controlled by Google nor Mozilla, has its own engine.
Pro Good community support
Pro Optimized for modern processors
Pro Legacy Firefox
Pro All the benefits of Firefox, but with 100% free software
Pro LibreJS
LibreJS blocks proprietary JavaScript code, ensuring your user freedom.
Pro Protects your freedom, certified free by the FSF
Pro Extra security and privacy features
Pro Made by idealists
It is part of the GNU Project.
Pro No spyware
Pro Https-Everywhere by default
Pro SpyBlock
Blocks privacy trackers.
Cons
Con Unsecure
Pale Moon lacks the sandboxing and other privacy protecting features included in latest Firefox releases.
Con Still contains some spyware
Default homepage is spyware and search suggestions and automatic updates are enabled by default.
Con Outdated rendering engine
It is an really old fork of Gecko that misses many of the newer web features.
Con Pale Moon is based on very outdated Firefox code
Con Uses Goanna
It an old Gecko-fork that is developed mainly by one man.
Con Lacks popular extensions and adblockers
It doesn't have ublock origin and umatrix.
Con Does not contain multi-process sandboxing
Con Android version has odd behavior
Clicking does not work.
Con Pale Moon's website is cloudflared
Con WebAssembly enabled by default
Con Lead developer loves Cloudflare and hates Tor
Website is cloudflared and he thinks most sites should be hostile towards tor.
Con Incompetent developers
Con Too much bloat
The browser comes with 15 addons installed by default, most of which are useless or ruin one's browsing experience.
Con Mainly just an old Firefox
It is mainly a renamend older version of Firefox that comes preinstalled with some extensions.
Con Not up to date
Latest binary is still version 60.7 ESR and was last updated over a year ago
Con Requires too much unnecessary configuration to use
You have to manually delete all the bloated addons from your files (only for them to show up again when the browser is updated) and manually install some addons and themes that the browser labels as "corrupt".
Con Very slow boot time
It takes 10+ seconds for the browser to load up
Con Can't install some Firefox themes/addons
"Installation aborted because the addon appears to be corrupt".
Con Includes LibreJS by default with no way to remove it
Con Very slow boot time
It takes 10+ seconds for the browser to load up
Con Dependent on Mozilla
Since IceCat is based off Firefox, it's dependent on all of Mozilla's decisions.
Con Made by idealists
It is part of the GNU Project.
