Mozilla (Suite) was similar to Netscape Commumicator and included browser, mail, webpage editor and maybe other functions as well. I don’t recall you could install the components separately. Later they decided to release a standalone browser (Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox) and then mail client (Thunderbird). IIRC they had standalone calendar (Sunbird) and webpage editor as well. Eventually they discontinued Mozilla and the closet thing would be the community-maintained Seamonkey.

I switched to Pear Launcher. Pretty affordable and doesn’t request network connection permission. It’s not as feature rich as Nova but it fulfills my needs. You can assign swipe up gesture on app icon (but not swipe down and not on folder).

I’ve been a Windows user since the 90s and only used Linux occasionally. But starting with Windows 10 this thing is becoming more and more difficult to manage. The unlimited amount of popups, changing settings randomly without asking, A/B testing on difficult computers or different accounts on the same Windows installation, some settings only appear after a while or opening/closing the software several times…

It’s so painful to deal with. I’ll probably switch completely to Linux soon when I have spare time.

IIRC they switched to webextensions in Firefox 57 in 2017. Even before that it was never the browser with the biggest market share, and Chrome had already got a huge market share in 2017.

I’ve been using Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox as my default browser since 2003. Never understood the appeal of Chrome.