The computers you meet on today's desktops are equipped with very fast
processors (usually over 1GHz) and a few hundreds megs of RAM. Even
very complicated and resource-consuming applications don't cause any
problems for them. However, there are still old machines around which
can't easily run such programs. They either don't launch them at all
or run so slowly that sensible work can't be performed.
Web browsers are certainly very complicated. They have to support many
standards elaborated by the World Wide
Web Consortium (HTML, HTTP, CSS, etc.), along with many other
issues.
On Linux, the browser which can do this almost completely is Mozilla. Unfortunately,
as a very large and intricate application, it calls for a fast, modern
computer. On the elderly ones, it runs very slowly. My PC has a 200MHz
Pentium and 32 megs of RAM, and it takes about 10 seconds to launch
Mozilla. To work with it is very inconvenient.
The only solution is to use browsers which don't support all the Web
standards, but are much faster and require less system resources. Such
programs usually don't serve CSS, JavaScript, or more complicated HTML
elements. Nevertheless, they render most pages correctly and can be
successfully used in everyday work. Of course, you can't avoid
situations in which you are forced to use Mozilla (or a similar
browser).
Weak computing power isn't the only factor in favor of lightweight
browsers. Others include: individual preferences, the graphics
environment being used (some of the mentioned browsers don't need X),
and operating system configuration. Lightweight Web browsers are
useful and important.
In this review, I'll discuss four programs: Links, Dillo, Amaya, and
w3m. In choosing applications, my primary requirements were: They had
to be graphical Web browsers and they had to be Open Sourced. Of
course, there are a few more that satisfy those requirements but were
still omitted. Some of these are in a very early stage of development
and aren't useful; others are too old and no longer supported.
You might ask why the Phoenix
browser isn't mentioned; after all, its developers call it
lightweight. I don't agree with them. Phoenix is still several megs
and takes more than five seconds to launch. In my opinion, it will
never be fast and small enough because of its close connection with
Mozilla.
I hope this review is useful and will encourage you to try these
interesting browsers. Feel free to write me about your feelings and
observations.
Links
The Links project
started in 1999. Its initial author was Mikulas Patocka. In 2000, more
developers joined him: Petr Kulhavy, Karel Kulhavy, and Martin
Pergel. All of them come from the Czech Republic and are students at
Charles University in Prague. Besides the main programmers, more than
sixty people from all over the world have contributed to the
project. They provide translations, testing, bugfixes, graphics,
etc. It is a quite mature Open Source project released under the
GPL.
In its beginning, Links wasn't supposed to support graphics at
all. Mikulas Patocka wanted to make a Lynx-like browser with
some additional features. It did its job well in those days, but then
more people were invited to the project. The larger group of authors
decided to fit the browser with support for graphics and JavaScript
and many more features. Great progress has been made since then. Links
runs on many platforms (Unixes, BeOS, OS/2, and Windows) and in many
graphics modes (SVGAlib, X, the Linux framebuffer, and others). It is
very fast and stable.
It has served Web pages in graphics mode for two years, and is very
good and mature at it. Its JavaScript support is quite unusual in this
sort of browser. It isn't as functional and powerful as that in
Mozilla or Internet Explorer (many elements of the language itself
aren't supported, and the DOM implementation is rather poor), but for
many sites, it is just enough. Such functions as opening new windows
and rollover images (which, in fact, are the most often-used) work
without any problems. Most importantly, almost every aspect of script
functioning can be controlled by the user, so you don't have to put up
with unnecessary and unwanted popup windows when you enter a site. You
simply decide whether or not you want to have them opened.
For displaying Web pages, it is the best-implemented of all the
browsers covered. HTML 4.01 is almost fully supported, so it's no
problem for Links to show inline frames (though in some less practical
way) or complicated tables. Even the positioning of page elements is
exceptionally good; everything is placed where it should be. On the
downside, Links doesn't support CSS styles at all. Personally, I don't
find this a big disadvantage, since most sites based on CSS look good
anyway.
Links uses its own set of fonts (because of portability issues), and
thus doesn't depend on those delivered by the operating system. You
could find this very useful, but, unfortunately, there is one big
disadvantage to this implementation: There is no support for text
selection. It isn't possible to copy some useful information or even
paste the URL you want to visit (you must enter it manually or start a
new Links instance). Another weakness of this solution is the lack of
italic fonts (the bold style is used instead). (There is an
unofficial branch of Links, links-hacked,
which solves these problems as well as many others.)
Links also supports HTTP 1.1 (though the HTTP Authentication mechanism
doesn't work), HTTPS, FTP connections, background downloads, keepalive
connections, and hierarchical bookmarks. On the downside, it doesn't
support plugins, so Java applets and Flash pages won't work.
Summary
Advantages:
- good HTML support
- speed (it starts in less than 2 seconds)
- a good user interface
- portability
- both text and graphics modes
- quite good JavaScript support
Disadvantages:
- no support for CSS
- no support for Java applets or Flash
- no support for HTTP Authentication
- no support for text selection
Links is the browser I use for everyday work. I have to launch Mozilla
for the most complicated sites (those which use DHTML or CSS heavily),
but the others work very well and look very good in Links. The Czech
browser is very mature, with a nice user interface and features which
help to make your Web surfing pleasant.
Dillo
Dillo is in an
early stage of development even though, according to the changelog,
the project started in 1999. Its maintainer from the beginning has
been Jorge Arellano Cid. Besides him, there are three core developers
and three steady developers. Unfortunately, the authors can no longer
contribute to the project as actively as before, and are looking for a
sponsor or other funding method.
The main factors being considered during Dillo development are speed
and size. That's why the browser has been written entirely from
scratch (only a few parts were taken from Gzilla). The whole is
based on GTK+. Dillo is one of the fastest and smallest browsers (it
competes even with text browsers in this field). The executable is
less than 300kb and starts in less than 2 seconds.
As for functionality, Dillo is a bit worse than Links, but, as I said,
this results from its early version and not-so-active
development. Fortunately, it can be successfully used in everyday
work, and you won't need to launch a more feature-rich browser as
often as with Links (or the other ones). Pages are rendered fairly
well (and very quickly), though some HTML elements (such as frames)
aren't supported. Quite rarely, a Web site is shown in a strange
way. Some problems may occur when a page uses JavaScript, Java, or
Flash (which aren't supported). Moreover, Dillo doesn't handle FTP or
HTTPS connections. Like Links, it lacks text selection support; I
hope this problem will be fixed soon, since it really makes surfing
difficult.
One of Dillo's advantages is the way it handles history issues. A few
recently-viewed pages are stored in memory, so clicking the back or
forward button produces an immediate effect. There are also other
mechanisms that cause sites to load rapidly.
Summary
Advantages:
- speed and size (really impressive!)
- good page rendering
- some nice configuration options
- Dillo can be (and, in fact, is) used on mobile devices such as
PDAs
Disadvantages:
- it lacks many features
- it's in early stage of development
- a few HTML elements aren't supported
It's hard not to appreciate Dillo's speed, its basic and most
important strength. The browser not only launches very quickly but
also renders pages and loads them from cache almost
immediately. Besides this, it manages to draw Web sites quite well and
can be successfully used in everyday work.
I believe that this small application will be widely used on embedded
devices (it has been already ported to some). It fits them like no
other browser. Maybe it's worthwhile to develop Dillo in this
direction, then?
Amaya
Amaya is one of the
most interesting applications covered in this short article. The
project is managed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a quite
solid institution. It is used as a testing ground for new Web
technologies (it supports MathML, SVG, etc.). The first public version
dates to 1996, and the current one is 7.1. It is developed very
actively; new releases are published very often, sometimes more than
once a month. Nevertheless, it is fairly stable.
Since the W3C uses Amaya to showcase its new technologies, it supports
many standards, even the newest ones. It gives you an opportunity to
check them out and even (thanks to its editing capabilities) create
something really interesting. Unfortunately, such an approach makes it
very hard to cope with all the issues, so support for recent
technologies, though initially implemented, isn't complete. Even the
support for the elderly ones is sometimes not mature enough. It is
worth the wait for the next release, however, since each usually adds
support for a large number of features and fixes most bugs.
Let's look at what is most interesting to us, the browsing
capabilities of Amaya. I'll cover the other features later.
Amaya supports such standards as HTML 4.01, XHTML, and CSS. The
latter, however, isn't implemented well, since many elements aren't
handled correctly or aren't handled at all. Fortunately, the situation
is getting better with every new release. Also, HTML frames don't work
(and probably never will; the Amaya authors find them incorrect and
think they should be removed from the language itself).
Web pages are rendered quite well, though problems may sometimes occur
(e.g., text or images shown in the wrong place or one element covered
by another). Of course, the CSS support is a big advantage, and the
appearances of many sites better fit their authors' ideas than is the
case with the other browsers. Another feature which distinguishes
Amaya is that you can select and copy any piece of text (you can even
paste it in the edit mode).
There are a few issues with handling links in Amaya. For a start, you
have to double-click to activate them, which can be quite annoying.
Even worse, when you move your mouse over a link, nothing happens. The
cursor doesn't change, and no information is shown in the status
bar. It's often hard to figure out where the link leads.
Besides the features mentioned above, there are also a few which are
very unique and interesting. The zoom function is one of them. Imagine
scaling an entire page, not only the text, but also the images, vector
graphics, and other elements. Thanks to this, it is not a problem to
make any document readable, even one with the strangest font
settings. Of course, this feature is most useful for people with sight
disabilities. The other property worth mentioning is the ability to
show a page in many different views; you can see the structure,
source, or table of contents. There is also a view that enables you to
look at pages in a text-only mode.
As for network protocols, Amaya does very well. HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 both
work with no problems (thanks to the libwww library, also developed by
the W3C). If you want, you can also use WebDAV or FTP to make a
connection. This means that you are able to save the documents you
edit directly on your server (the HTTP PUT method is available as
well). For small Web sites, this is simply a great solution, since you
need only one application to cope with HTML-related work.
It's time now to show what makes Amaya a completely unique browser. As
I said at the beginning, document types such as MathML and SVG are
supported. Moreover, you can not only view, but also edit them. What
about combining many technologies into one file? It's possible, so
think about embedding equations in HTML and enriching the whole with
nice SVG-based charts or drawings. And don't forget about XML and
annotations! They are here as well.
Summary
Advantages:
- it supports many document formats
- it is not only a browser, but also a WYSIWYG editor
- you can save Web pages directly to your server
- it is being developed very actively
Disadvantages:
- many standards aren't implemented completely
- some Web pages are displayed incorrectly
- the user interface is sometimes annoying
- frames aren't supported at all
For those who like experimenting with new technologies, Amaya is just
great. It is also suitable for preparing scientific works (and, of
course, HTML Web pages). The HTML, SVG, and MathML mixing ability and
the fact that Amaya is an authoring tool enable this. I guess that
because of more work being done on these aspects of the application,
browsing capabilities aren't as good as they could be. However, I
think Amaya can be used in everyday work.
Amaya is certainly one of the most interesting browsers mentioned in
this article. The authors of the project are praiseworthy. However, I
don't use Amaya very often.
w3m
w3m is quite an old
browser (the first version was released in 1995), and it isn't being
developed very actively. The author, Akinori Ito, doesn't add new
features currently, he only tries to fix bugs. Besides the main
branch, there are a few which equip w3m with features such as
multilingual text support.
w3m is really a text-based browser. The reason I decided to cover it
here is that it now supports image displaying; you don't need to use
external tools to view them anymore. You might think that it is little
more than Lynx, but that's not true. It has many features that Lynx
lacks, such as really nice support for table and frame rendering; even
the most complicated are handled correctly. You can think of w3m as a
real graphical Web browser.
Summary
Advantages:
- speed and size
- great for fast Web browsing or when you are looking for specific
information
Disadvantages:
- lacks many basic features (forget about font styles or background
images)
- limited support for the mouse
- a page has to be downloaded completely before it can be rendered
- it isn't being actively developed
Author's bio
Kamil Klimkiewicz switched to
Linux a half a year ago. Before that, he used both Windows and Linux,
but the latter was only his secondary operating system. He's now very
happy and uses Microsoft's products very rarely. He really enjoys the
freedom given him by the Linux and Open Source community. He is also
interested in the history of computers and runs a Web site about it at
http://historia./.
Recent comments
One more I can add.
I use and love links in the graphical mode. Fast light (1.8 megs if
compiled static!) and reliable. Fast in this case not only means it
loads fast but it also means it renders fast. I might also suggest
browsex (that's browse x not brow sex :) ) I've found it to be great
on a small 486 mini notebook I have. It actually loads faster than
Mozilla on my desktop and at substantially less of a footprint. It
can be found at
/ (/)
Like the others it's open source and .... free as in beer.
How about Galeon?
Galeon missing?
Re: How about Galeon?
> Galeon missing?
Galeon is a good browser, but I also wouldn't categorize it a lightweight browser.
Before you yell at me, let me explain what lightweight means to me. Right now I'm creating my own bootcd from scratch and I intend it to be used as a minimal graphical desktop environment to run on a i586 or greater. It is my experiment to see how little memory I can get it to use. Thus light weight would not include galeon/phoenix etc.
Personally, I've had most of my experience with dillo. This article was good to help me find a few more to consider. Thanks
Text selection and Links
> Links [...] There is no support for text selection.
Actually, and strictly speaking, you /can/ select text (ala mc, the
Midnight Commander) ... inclusive copying and pasting; you just have to
start another, temporary or not, parallel session without the "-g" option
(the normal text-mode Links). But agreed: it's annoying. Otherwise Links
is really a understatement nice (little) beast. Runs beautifully on my
P166 with 32MB even with the "-g option" (graphical mode).
I did not know about the Links-hacked. Thank you for the tip, I will try
it illico et immediate :)
Konqueror?
Konqueror CVS is as fast as hell here. Only problem it
needs better CSS support. Hopefully with Apple's Safari it
is coming too...
Re: How about Galeon?
> Galeon missing?
Galeon is heavier than phoenix, which he does mention as heavyweight. Something I agree with.
Mozilla and Phoenix are not Gecko -- Try Skipstone!
I enjoyed the article, but I was very surprised
to see no mention of Skipstone!
The author may not be aware that while Mozilla
is indeed a very bloated program, and Phoenix
really isn't much better because it relies on most
of the same underlying bloat such as the user
interface layout language, the actual HTML
rendering engine, protocol support, Javascript
support, and so on that lie at the heart of
Mozilla are extremely compact and efficient.
That's because Gecko (the HTML rendering engine)
has been optimized with care by those who
need to embed it in small devices.
OK, so if Gecko is so great, why are all the
X-based browsers such pigs? One of them isn't!
Skipstone is a Gecko-based browser with a simple
Gtk-based user interface. Just Gtk -- NOT Mozilla UIL,
NOT full Gnome like Galeon, NOT full KDE/Qt
like Konqueror.
You don't need to take my word for it -- just
try Skipstone on the small machine of your choice.
I discovered it when I moved my wife's
32MB Pentium 133 laptop from Windows 95 to Linux
and couldn't believe how slow Mozilla and
Phoenix were. Skipstone has acceptable startup
time on a 32MB machine and is completely usable
with no obnoxious delays, yet it has all of
the features you would expect to find in Mozilla,
because it is built on Gecko. I can't
recommend it highly enough.
The only catch I can think of: yes, you can
install Sun's java plugin just as you would for
Mozilla, but Sun recommends no less than 48MB
of RAM when the plugin is used to display
applets in a browser, and in my experience
they are right -- the swapping is awful.
On the good side, Flash and other non-Java
embedded plugins run just fine on her machine;
flash animations, MP3s and the like don't
slow her system down at all. The official
Linux Flash player works perfectly with
Skipstone, as does Plugger. Plugger can be
convinced to launch ghostview for very
memory-friendly PDF support.
The author hasn't done much with Skipstone for
a while, but I really haven't found anything
missing, so that doesn't seem like a big problem.
You can find Skipstone here:
Skipstone Home Page (www./skipstone)
Of course, when you decide to run X on a machine
with limited memory, a lightweight browser isn't the
only thing that helps. You should also evict
KDE and Gnome and run a lightweight window manager;
icewm looks and feels very modern and is easy
to configure. It is also an easy transition for
folks used to Windows. You shouldn't run gnome- or
KDE-based applications if you don't want the full
overhead of those environments dragged in; but gtk-based
applications like gimp are fine. If you really
want to save memory, use rxvt instead of xterm, and
certainly don't run kde or gnome-based terminal windows.
(P.S. I'm just a very happy Skipstone user. It is
open source and free-as-in-beer, of course.)
Re: How about Galeon?
> Galeon is a good browser, but I also
> wouldn't categorize it a lightweight
> browser.
In fact, galeon was a lightweight browser. But since 1.2.x release... hum.
In the past, it was really faster than mozilla. But mozilla 1.0 is fast and galeon is no longer faster. In fact, I found out that galeon start slower than mozilla on all my computers now.
Re: One more I can add.
> Like the others it's open source and
> .... free as in beer.
It under an artistic license.
According to screenshots, it does not seems as good as mozilla/links v2
/brxshot1.jpg
Opera
More than likely didnt make the list because it's open source....but Opera starts instantly and runs fine on my p266mhz. I would have to say that Opera is one of the best browsers available for Linux (and Windows) right now.
Maybe there should be another category
It seems to me there should actually be three classifications of browsers: Totally un-lightweight (Mozilla), lightweight but still intended for powerful machines (Phoenix, Opera, Galeon, etc.), and truly lightweight (like in the article). Each type is useful in some situations.
Mozilla slowness mostly due to swapping
If you have > 128 megs of memory, you can run mozilla comfortably even if your CPU is slow. I find the performance quite acceptable on my 333Mhz 256MB machine, especially phoenix. I do use dillo occasionally, though, mainly for local files.
Re: Text selection and Links--Links-hacked
Links-hacked ... nice: I am replying just through it. It does look like the other graphical-mode links, the Lord of the Rings-like icons (which are not even bad) on the upper left corner :)
Some *crudities* that I will discover for sure still, but not at all bad: I will stick with it.
And: I had to configure it --without-freetype ... which seems to have no consequences.
Re: Mozilla and Phoenix are not Gecko -- Try Skipstone!
I just tried Skipstone again
today
for the first time in a while, and I have to say
I'm impressed. It's
FAST (just barely slower than Links's GUI mode,
which itself is just
barely slower than Link's text mode), it has
most of the features of
Galeon including full NS/Mozilla plugin
compatibility (yes, even
Java), and it renders beautifully, since it
shares Mozilla's Gecko
renderer.
I have been going back and forth between
Links (not so pretty, and
lacking in plugin support) and Opera (a little
slower, some of the
plugins e.g. JAVA not fully
compatible/functional) as my two main
browsers, but I thiink that, after a little more
testing, Skipstone
will replace them both. The only downside is
that the Skipstone
install requires Mozilla, since it uses
Mozilla's renderer, but I'm
trying to think of Skipstone as a small addon to
Mozilla that triples
its speed, and that seems to be helping to put
my mind at ease.
Levi
Re: Text selection and Links
you can easy copy/paste in links, you just have to keep the SHIFT key pressed when you go select/paste the text, just it :)
Re: Mozilla and Phoenix are not Gecko -- Try Skipstone!
> OK, so if Gecko is so great, why are all
> the
> X-based browsers such pigs? One of them
> isn't!
> Skipstone is a Gecko-based browser with
Can Skipstone render java./j2se/1.4....
in less than 10 seconds on a 500MHz machine?
I'd be very surprised if it could, being based on the same rendering engine as Mozilla.
Re: Mozilla and Phoenix are not Gecko -- Try Skipstone!
>
> Can Skipstone render
> java./j2se/1.4....
> in less than 10 seconds on a 500MHz
> machine?
> I'd be very surprised if it could, being
> based on the same rendering engine as
> Mozilla.
>
Heh, you fool. I went to that page, since I'm on a dialup connection I first loaded it (took 2 minutes), saved to the hard disk, opened it from hard disk and made a bookmark in the toolbar. I closed skipstone and the profiling begins! Actually with Skipstone it's easy, the tab's title of the page is red until it loads completely, when it becomes black.
Opening skipstone through my Blackbox's hotkey: 1,4 seconds.
Opening the hard disk bookmark: 4,03 seconds.
To this, I'm running on a PIII 800Mhx. HOWEVER, I'm also decoding oggs, running setiathome, serving web pages, batch downloading other things, and ripping Queen's audio cd. According to top, skipstone consumes only four times the memory of my text browser elinks. Very impressive. I've already replaced Phoenix, feels sluggish compared to skipstone.
Man, try it, you won't even look back.
Re: Mozilla and Phoenix are not Gecko -- Try Skipstone!
> Heh, you fool.
You're the fool here. Your machine is twice as fast as mine (don't just look at the MHz. A PIII is a lot faster than a K6/2 with the same clock). It's no wonder it renders twice as fast. My brother's 800MHz has no problems rendering the page either.
> Opening the hard disk bookmark: 4,03
> seconds.
You think that's fast? You've obviously never tried Opera.
> HOWEVER, I'm also decoding oggs, running
> setiathome, serving web pages, batch
> downloading other things, and ripping
> Queen's audio cd.
All stuff that doesn't take that much CPU time.
'links' advertisement
lynx is under active development (much of the remaining text is inaccurate, anyway)
Re: Maybe there should be another category
One browser you left out is the old Netscape 4.x, a bloated pig in its day but now looking quite nimble. And it was released as free software in the original Mozilla release. If such a buggy browser were released now it wouldn't be worth considering, but there is still a lot of 'Netscape compatibility' in web design textbooks and so on.
The Netscape 4.x (or '5.x') code must still be in Mozilla's CVS somewhere, but I couldn't discover how to check it out.
Re: Mozilla and Phoenix are not Gecko -- Try Skipstone!
> >HOWEVER, I'm also decoding oggs, running
setiathome, serving web pages, batch
downloading other things, and ripping
Queen's audio cd.
>All stuff that doesn't take that much
CPU time.
Think twice. Setiathome and oggenc are two processes which will suck all the CPU for them, running them alone, each gets 50%. This means that ignoring the other tasks, skipstone could have never had more than 33% of the CPU. Calculating 800Mhz * 0.33 makes my benchmark similar to that of a PIII at 266Mhz. Since you say that about your k6 machine, I'm glad I bought an Intel chip instead of that cheaper and faster AMD one I was offered...
> You think that's fast? You've obviously
never tried Opera.
I have tried it, but as you see I'm not the one moaning about browser benchmarks discouraging the use of other software basing myself only the features list of a superficial review. In fact, I only use graphic browsers at work, and there my machine makes Mozilla as fast as lynx...
There are two suspicious things about your negative comments: first, you use a graphical browser for something you don't really need one, you could use a text one, much faster than anything discussed here. Second, if your bottleneck is documentation rendering, please tell me where do I get your neuronal brain-to-cpu bidirectional bus, I want near-to-nul development time too!
Re: One more I can add.
>
> % Like the others it's open source and
> % .... free as in beer.
>
>
>
> It under an artistic license.
>
> According to screenshots, it does not
> seems as good as mozilla/links v2
>
> /brxshot1.jpg
I use browsex on an everyday basis. I also use opera. Between the two I use nothing else. I must say that as far as screenshots and interface go browsex is not the pick of the litter, however considering the topic at hand is speed and rendering I think browsex is the best chose. Browsex can handle css dhtml, some cgi, html, grapohics, animated graphics, and is built entirely in python. Being build in python I feel it is safe to say, as the browser grows and continues to meet more and more standards it will continue to remain as fast as it is now. The only thing thta truely needs improoved is the user interface. I don't know about the rest of the readers, but interface isn't an issue with me.
Re: Opera
> More than likely didnt make the list
> because it's open source....but Opera
> starts instantly and runs fine on my
> p266mhz. I would have to say that Opera
> is one of the best browsers available
> for Linux (and Windows) right now.
I agree completely ... though it pisses me off big-time that Opera/Linux decided to use the horribly slow and bloated Qt libraries for their GUI. Interfaces build out of things like the Fox-Toolkit are *so* much leaner on resources. Opera/Linux 6 uses twice the RAM of the Win32 counterpart.
Re: Mozilla slowness mostly due to swapping
> If you have > 128 megs of memory, you
> can run mozilla comfortably even if your
> CPU is slow. I find the performance
> quite acceptable on my 333Mhz 256MB
> machine, especially phoenix. I do use
> dillo occasionally, though, mainly for
> local files.
This article is about low-end systems -- systems with more than 128MB RAM are not "low-end".
Re: Konqueror?
> Konqueror CVS is as fast as hell here.
> Only problem it
> needs better CSS support. Hopefully with
> Apple's Safari it
> is coming too...
Actually the CSS support in KDE-3.1 is better than
that of Internet Explorer 6 and almost on par with
Mozilla's. What is still not 100% perfect is Javascript
support.
We run Konqueror on P2-300 Mhz without any speed
problems.
Re: Mozilla slowness mostly due to swapping
> This article is about low-end systems --
> systems with more than 128MB RAM are not
> "low-end".
That is so 5 years ago, man.
Re: Mozilla slowness mostly due to swapping
>
> % This article is about low-end systems
> --
> % systems with more than 128MB RAM are
> not
> % "low-end".
>
> That is so 5 years ago, man.
Uh, go look in a computer paper, the average system you buy these days comes with 256MB SDRAM. "Low-end" is at the bottom of the scale, not in the middle.
A Pentium 1 class system with 48MB RAM is low-end, but a 450Mhz CPU with 128MB RAM is not low-end. That is, unless you are made of money and can afford to buy an AMD 2800+ with 512MB DDR RAM on a passing whim (if so, send me one).
And for the record, I have 640MB RAM on my machine, and Mozilla is still freaking slow to load. I loathe loading it up on the very seldom ocassion when Opera can't render something and I really need to access it.
I have Phoenix at work for the once-in-a-while when Opera doesn't work.
Any time I am floating around console-land I use Links or w3m. I like some of the features of w3m, but find it's default keybindings painful to use, and after my detailed key bindings got erased a while back I haven't bothered to remake them.
Re: Mozilla and Phoenix are not Gecko -- Try Skipstone!
> Think twice. Setiathome and oggenc are
> two processes which will suck all the
> CPU for them, running them alone, each
> gets 50%. This means that ignoring the
> other tasks, skipstone could have never
> had more than 33% of the CPU.
> Calculating 800Mhz * 0.33 makes my
> benchmark similar to that of a PIII at
> 266Mhz. Since you say that about your k6
> machine, I'm glad I bought an Intel chip
> instead of that cheaper and faster AMD
> one I was offered...
actually, those two will ONLY split any cpu left over _after_ everything else has had its share. unless you were running skipstone under 'nice' to make it run on the same [low] priority level
My skipstone doesn't find the pixmaps
when I execute my skipstone, it doesn't find the pixmaps, i think that skipstone doesn't know where is installed.
they are at /usr/local/share/skipstone/pixmaps/default.
anyway I was looking for a light browser and whithout icons its even lighter.
actually it acomplished all my expectations, great rendering and extremely light. i rated 9, i could rate it 10 if I had icons.
PS2
I know this thread is a little old, but I have the linux kit for the PS2, and have had it for quite some time. It has extremely little ram and real CPU power. It wasn't really meant to be a pc, but it's still really cool to run nessus on it. Anyway, back to the topic. When I first got it, I hated the performance, so I did a lot of searching in order to save it's precious resources. Dillo with BlackBox(or any of the *boxes, I have 3-4 of them setup, but ended up using blackbox mainly, since it seems to be the most popular of the group). Dillo was by far the best performing browser on it, other than Lynx, although I haven't tried Links yet. I only wish I could get tinyX running, or smallX, or whatever it is called now.
Re: Mozilla slowness mostly due to swapping
Must be this. I run Mozilla absolutely problem free and it runs very fast: I wondered what the comments were all about. It also seems to fall over less often than IE
BozMo (/)
Mozilla
I've noticed with the release of SP2 (XP), IE tends to crash a lot not to mention all the security issues with IE Web Hosting (www.)
A humorous (www.eYell.com) site detailing IE.
Re: Mozilla
> I've noticed with the release of SP2
> (XP), IE tends to crash a lot not to
> mention all the security issues with IE
> Web Hosting
>
> A humorous site detailing IE.
You can find another Linux Ecommerce Browser Here Ecommerce Business (www.sidBusiness.com) site!
Re: Mozilla slowness mostly due to swapping
> If you have > 128 megs of memory, you
> can run mozilla comfortably even if your
> CPU is slow. I find the performance
> quite acceptable on my 333Mhz 256MB
> machine, especially phoenix. I do use
> dillo occasionally, though, mainly for
> local files.
I would say 128 MB is the bare minimum. 256 seems more acceptable such as the example at sid (www.) or iFault (www.iFault.com)
Arachne v1.79 for DOS
I'd like to add that the DOS fullscreen browser Arachne is GPL'ed now. There have been several updates since the last official version v1.70rev3, and there's a Linux beta version, too:
Freshmeat project page (/projects...)
GPL version (www./glennmcc/) by glennmcc (/~glennmcc/)
Re: Mozilla slowness mostly due to swapping
Wow, I didn't know that. Thanks for the info.
Mozilla Firefox
I think that Mozilla Firefox is the best lightweight browser today. Firefox has small size and fast speed, easy customized by themes, safe from malicious spyware, css2 compliant, has useful features and much more…
Re: Opera
> More than likely didnt make the list
> because it's open source....but Opera
> starts instantly and runs fine on my
> p266mhz. I would have to say that Opera
> is one of the best browsers available
> for Linux (and Windows) right now.
I fully agree. The last release of Opera is the best choice at the moment. This is a popular opinion.
Re: How about Galeon?
>
> % Galeon missing?
>
>
> Galeon is heavier than phoenix, which he
> does mention as heavyweight. Something
> I agree with.
>
>
I think FireFox is most light browser at moment
although some my friends really think that the last version of Opera is more easier
Re: Mozilla Firefox
css2 compliant
CSS2 Browser Compatibility has been tested for Firefox and IE
lightweight browsers
Enigma is a very fast browser, and stable. www.
Re: Mozilla Firefox
> I think that Mozilla Firefox is the best
> lightweight browser today. Firefox has
> small size and fast speed, easy
> customized by themes, safe from
> malicious spyware, css2 compliant, has
> useful features and much more…
Firefox is hardly light. currently it's using a 3rd of my system's ram.(100MB) It's seen it using more.
But I'll still use it because it's the only browser out there with proper standards support.
I recently used Galeon, the version that comes with Debian Squeeze. It renders pages just as Firefox (it uses the same engine) but uses considerable less RAM and CPU. I suppose it has to do with the fact that it uses native controls and has less "features" (which I personally do not use on Firefox). It has become my new favorite browser.
Another list of lightweight web browsers for Linux:
www.compmiscellanea.co...
Just web browsers with GUI listed. Console or text-based browsers are a different category.
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