Desperate need for lightweight browser.

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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wiak
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Joined: Tue 11 Dec 2007, 05:12
Location: not Bulgaria

#16 Post by wiak »

p310don wrote:As big, bad and bloated as the browsers are becoming, the site you visit affects things greatly.

Sites with a reputation for gathering your data, eg google sites & facebook struggle to load on my weakest PC, but more basic sites even netflix have virtually no problems.

This murga forum, with no tracking or ads, loads on pretty much any PC, in any browser.
Yes, I agree with this. Certainly it would be nice to have a browser that uses less memory, but the main overloading issue seems to be a webpage complexity issue. Well written webpages remain fast and lean, but the most popular sites are data gathering and advertising monsters, whose processing really take a hit on system resources.

wiak

philtoutou
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu 08 Apr 2010, 17:03

lightweight browser in puppy

#17 Post by philtoutou »

Hello
to answer to steff99
I suggest testing Dillo but in text mode ( not in console )
an another one with vivaldi than I used on pi3 for 2 months in order to get rid of slowing pages
You’ll find easily their home site in Scandinavia
https://help.vivaldi.com/

I try to get memory usage : about vivaldi 300Mo

hamoudoudou

Midori is Lightweight

#18 Post by hamoudoudou »

Midori is Lightweight
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lmemsm
Posts: 51
Joined: Wed 27 Jun 2012, 15:01

#19 Post by lmemsm »

The lightest webkit browsers I've been able to find are netrider ( https://sourceforge.net/projects/netrider/ ) which is used by NanoLinux and fifth ( http://fifth-browser.sourceforge.net/features.html) which is available as a package for TinyCore. They're both webkit based, so they handle JavaScript and several other modern browser features.

I noticed several mentions of Dillo in the thread. I personally like D+ ( https://sourceforge.net/projects/dplus-browser/ ). It's no longer actively developed, but it's a highly portable fork of Dillo. I thought the code was pretty cleanly handled and didn't find it too hard to add new features. It does have https support using openssl and another library option. However, the license doesn't have an exception for libressl and I'm planning on making the switch to it. Was considering looking into how hard it would be to support bearssl as an option. One drawback of D+ and Dillo is no JavaScript support. Also, last I checked, CSS support was limited.

By the way, if you don't want to run the browsers from within X Windows, FLTK based applications can be built with nano-x and run in framebuffer mode (which is what NanoLinux does).

musher0
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Location: Gatineau (Qc), Canada

#20 Post by musher0 »

Hello all.

If you're in "desperate need for a light-weight browser", as the title of
this thread says, hearing that the good people at Twibright-Labs have
released v. 2.19 of their dual console and graphics Links browser may
come as music to your ears. http://links.twibright.com/

BFN.
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

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8Geee
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#21 Post by 8Geee »

There is also NetSurf 3.8 found here.

Regards
8Geee
Linux user #498913 "Some people need to reimagine their thinking."
"Zuckerberg: a large city inhabited by mentally challenged people."

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mouldy
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#22 Post by mouldy »

Are there really that many people out there struggling with such antiques on daily basis that need super light browser. The death of XP and Vista made available whole lot cheap or free computers that have no problem with full browser on light system like Puppy. Many if RAM maxed out can even handle win10, ....well a locked down win10 that isnt trying to secretly serve two masters and you arent first master in line. A two core processor and 2GB RAM isnt difficult or expensive.

Dont get me wrong, I used to always use a light weight browser if at all possible, it was way to get some performance out of ancient machine and dialup connection, but modern web really requires full browser with javascript turned on and thus extensions to control the data collection, cookies, ads, autoplaying videos, etc. Light weight browsers tend not to have good javascript abilities if any and little control beyond just completely turning off javascript. Yea this site loads fine, probably even in Arachne running on DOS, but most sites dont. Lot sites if you try to open without javascript, wont even try, they just pop up warning to turn on javascript and wont cooperate until you do. And old browsers with older javascript support tend to throw up script errors like crazy.

EDIT: Thinking more wasnt there somebody with thread on how to install a cell phone browser? I guess if you can fake out websites to offer you the simplified page for cell phones, you might get ahead of the game. Course cell phones now are rivaling lower end desktops in computing power. So the mini age of simplified web pages for cell maybe ending.

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rufwoof
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#23 Post by rufwoof »

http/https is pretty much owned/controlled by those that paid for it (advertisers). If you want to partake in that then you'll have to buy things such as faster/later devices in order to 'keep up'. Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol -> Google Add Placement Protocol.

There are alternative protocols, but that tend to be more in keeping with the Unix philosophy of everything is a (text) file. Combined with a android for when you absolutely must partake in GAPP and for the non-GAPP side of things old very low powered devices can be used and you'll see little speed differences between old and new hardware/kit.

Puppy (I prefer Fatdog myself), is a gap-filler. You can boot a factory-fresh 'clean' version at each reboot that includes a as-good-as freshly installed (clean) browser such as Chrome, such that there's less opportunity to have that device infiltrated (I boot from usb and unplug the usb after having booted, so it can't be cracked, only the live ram copy that is cleaned out at reboot might be compromised). Runs the latest chrome fine, and Fatdog works very well on the non-GAPP side as well ... and on kit that is 10+ years old.

For mail, irc I use non-GAPP (ssh into a ssh server and run irc/mail on there). I even use non-GAPP to tunnel GAPP traffic (ssh socks proxy, so remote web sites accessed via http/https don't see my IP, but instead see the ssh servers IP, and my ISP (state) can't see each and every site that I visited (anti State level profiling/monitoring)). For banking that mostly has to be via GAPP nowadays, and I use my ISP's link/routing/dns for that, again using a clean booted system. Increasingly I'm partaking less in GAPP based message boards such as this board, and instead using non-GAPP messaging instead - I can access Facebook etc. and the likes, but rarely do on non-android devices (android's are better 'always-on' devices for the likes of instant messaging purposes).

You many have noticed how its not so easy to merge/interface between laptop/desktop and android phone. The optimal would be to be able to tether your laptop to your phone so it also was always online, and where you could see and control the phones screen/input via the laptop and transfer files/content between the two. Yet despite all of the clever technology out there, such interoperability between laptop and android is lacking. Perhaps because GAPP would prefer such barriers to remain.

If whatever lightweight (due to system specification) browser you use on your system falters, then use a android browser instead. In which case the degree of lightness of PC/laptop browser will be a function of the system specification. On oldest/low powered that might mean something like lynx. On later more powerful kit it could even be the latest version of chrome.
[size=75]( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) :wq[/size]
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=1028256#1028256][size=75]Fatdog multi-session usb[/url][/size]
[size=75][url=https://hashbang.sh]echo url|sed -e 's/^/(c/' -e 's/$/ hashbang.sh)/'|sh[/url][/size]

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8Geee
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#24 Post by 8Geee »

mouldy

Its really not the browser, so much as the webpages themselves. Just horrible hidden click-links, and monetizing schemes galore.

ION: I have an Atom n270 that can play nice on the internet with FF66.0.5 Yes, it is bloated even compared to FF27.0.1. But this is a frugal install puppy I'm running, just go to 2Gb ram. As Musher0 (2018) and I (2019) have posted here, netsurf is a suprisingly good little, no-nonsense browser. Just maintain the cookies and URL files (dot config) before shutdown. Geany can do that. There ARE caveats, but nothing fatal. Like no social media sites, WIFI (if there is an accept page, like at free connect places), banking, or buying. But for just getting around the 'net its useful. And it makes FF27 look bloated. Its primarily hard-wire ethernet based, but if you have a smartphone plan, login name and pass should get you on-line.

Regards
8Geee
Linux user #498913 "Some people need to reimagine their thinking."
"Zuckerberg: a large city inhabited by mentally challenged people."

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nic007
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#25 Post by nic007 »

I have been using Opera Mini now for years as my primary browser for general browsing. Runs via an emulator and you need JRE. Very quick and saves data. This works much better than html browsers like Netsurfer. I only use a big, new browser for streaming media which you can't do with Opera Mini.

goingnuts
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#26 Post by goingnuts »

I found that links2 is the lightest browser with https support as it does not require any elements of openssl installed if linked static (dillo does).
I experimented with 2.17 and managed to reduce size of binary to 1150K upxed/2235K static linked (uclibc/tinyxlib). To do this I eliminated all languages but english and reduced fonts :

Code: Select all

cd graphics/font
rm -rf cen* jap*
cd ..
./gen
cd ..
cd intl
echo english > index.txt
rm -f b* c* d* estonian.lng f* g*.lng h* i*.lng l* n* r* p* r* s*.lng t* u*
./gen-intl
./synclang
cd ..
LDFLAGS="-Wl,--gc-sections,--sort-common,-s -static" CFLAGS="-pipe -Os -mtune=i386 -Wall" ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-graphics --mandir=/usr/share/man --without-atheos --without-pmshell --with-ssl --enable-graphics --without-directfb --without-svgalib --without-libevent --without-lzma --without-getaddrinfo --without-fb
make
Temporary download: links-2.17.pet

wanderer
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Joined: Sat 20 Oct 2007, 23:17

#27 Post by wanderer »

hi goingnuts

am using your links browser in upupbb32

and it works great
it displays better than dillo

thanks for making this

and great to see you again

do you still play with pupngo
you are the master of tiny apps and static builds

wanderer

cthisbear
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Location: Sydney Australia

#28 Post by cthisbear »

goingnuts:

I downloaded this and will test it later.

Thanks mate.....Chris.

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