just use firefox. its not that hard

Excuse me if this is an obnoxious question: But why not just Firefox with the DDG extension (if you really need it)? Search engine-specific browsers tend to be... bad in general. It's going to be a wrapper around some other browser anyway.

FIREFOX

Firefox with ublock origin is even better than the DuckDuckGo browser alone. Yes, you can use DuckDuckGo as a default search engine, and even install the extension, if you need to.

Please dont use DDG browser or even worse edge or opera.

Use Librewolf, Firefox or Ungoogled Chromium.

Well prepared to be failed again https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/opera-sold-600-million-chinese-consortium/

Like most people said, use Firefox with the DDG extension or use Librewolf (just a heads up Librewolf by default deletes all history and cookie so disable that before signing in)

not to mention the Microsoft Edge processes when that is the last of any browser that I would choose to use

I believe all DDG browsers are webview based, so they use the already installed platform WebView as the engine and add the browser functionalities on top, that's not really a bad thing, since it saves space by avoiding duplicating such a huge component. Realistically, if they rolled their own, it would 100% be another Chromium fork and the Edge WebView is already based on Chromium so it's kind of (but not totally) pointless

love how every browser is just 600 processes per tab these days

Hmm, DDG, Edge and Opera are all just Blink/Chromium.

DDG intentionally has less features than other browsers (reduced attack surface) so it may lack the front-end components for interactive 3D rendering and be outsourcing them to Edge.

What happens when you try this in a non-Chromium browser?

Does this comparison actually take into account whether you are using the same tabs on both browsers and keeping them in the same state?

I've noticed, for example, that in chromium, I can permanently increase CPU usage just by opening a console in a tab and leaving it alone in the background, even if the tab itself is doing nothing.

If both browsers have the exact same number of tabs open, I would question why one has around 40 processes and one has around 20. That number should correspond roughly to the number of tabs/extensions you have open.

Best browsers for 3D stuff like games and CADs are chromium based.

I generally use Librewolf (Firefox fork) but for gaming and 3d modeling use Brave. I think it's tge best chromium based browser.