Quad9 DNS is where it’s at.

It’s a solid mix of having a lot of the privacy settings enabled, but without fully disabling all services that a majority of people might like or use (having a Firefox acct to sync favorites might be one). There are auto updates and patching that’re pretty quick to get released too.

I found a reddit post from the dev commenting on it a while back. Seemed like a sensible balance. https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/14seevh/comment/jqwuan8/

Either way, Librewolf and Waterfox seem like they can accomplish the same things, but just have a few default settings that differ. LW eliminates all possible Firefox account sync and services, but the fact I don’t use them, they’re not enabled. WF unfortunately leaves the default search to Google instead of startpage or Ecosia, but that’s a simple click at the top or change in settings. LW has Duckduckgo. LW has strict cookie settings enabled by default which might break some sites that require it for full functionality. Some people might not like that or want to whereas WF didn’t mess with settings. I’m more so talking about the masses or someone just starting out getting into privacy stuff that might prefer these things, but by no means are th either bad or worse than Firefox or Chrome.

Idk, primarily bc Lumo was a part of Proton, which I use, and I liked the ability to do offline searches and searches that delete ASAP after closing the tab. Plus honestly I’ve not specifically checked out lechat, so maybe I will!

I would recommend Ecosia as a search engine, Waterfox as a browser, and Lumo as an AI chatbot if you’re fixed on using AI.

Waterfox is Firefox with all privacy settings on. Simple enough.

Ecosia is a German-based search engine company that uses profits for replanting trees and reforestation. They use several resources for search results, so understand it’s not 100% based on pushing full privacy. I just figure they’re doing good with their money.

Lumo is the Proton-based AI that’s Mistral at the heart (French-based ai company focused on privacy) with some other tools under proton’s belt too.

Combined, I think this gives everyone/anyone a potent level of security/privacy with out-of-the-box use and no special tweaks or settings required.

You could go one step further and use 9.9.9.9 for DNS either at the browser level or gateway level for the whole home!