Technology
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I have a pretty slow machine and GNOME Web is unusable on it. The performance is not comparable to Firefox or Chromium. Extensions are very important for regular people apparently (judging from old Firefox Play Store reviews). Also Firefox and its derivatives are known for advanced privacy features that GNOME Web doesn't have and likely will never have because GNOME is about extreme simplicity by all costs.
I like GNOME Web and I really can see myself installing it on an old person's computer because of awesomely simple UI. But it's not for most people and I'm afraid that without commercial support there won't be any good regular browsers based on WebKit. I wish engine-specific features didn't exist. Everything would be so simple without them.
That's fair, I haven't tried it on low end/older hardware. I only just found performance good enough in the 46 release so I've only tested on my high and middle end system. I have some n200 hardware arriving soon and I might give it a go on that.
Advanced privacy and security I agree with and that's the main reason I don't use it daily personally. I think better extension support would be a good step in enhancing that even if they keep the base simple. There is also non trivial issues such as fingerprinting which is going to be a lot easier on a browser with so little users.
Firefox does currently have a few more options and I don't see Gnome Web getting that ootb any time soon. Granted half of firefox's options these days is to disable telemetry from Mozilla, the actual user exposed options isn't huge (outside of about:config). Gnome does have gsettings which could serve a similar usage as already seen with enabling web extensions.
I don't think it will be mainstream any time soon not until Linux is or they support other oses. But I want to be optimistic on how it will be for Linux usage especially with the tablet and mobile scene starting to take shape and Gnome Web being one of the most viewport responsive browsers.