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Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 03:33
by bester69
Hi,
Is there any internet browser focus in older spec PC's. I need something like a firefox/chromium browser based on, with a stucked older engine whose develop is based on security updates and optimal performance. Something like a LTS older version of firefox/chromium with just security updates. I meant with each new update, internet browsers need more CPU and RAM, and in older computer they are not workable anymore.

In my case Im stucked in Opera v42 for this reason, a cant update cos it dowgrade performance, and i'd like something that keeps engine with patches like a LTS browser or so. :|

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 03:47
by bester69
Pale Moon is an Open Source Goanna-based web browser completely built from its own, independently developed source that was forked off from Firefox/Mozilla code a number of years ago, and focuses on efficiency and ease of use by carefully selecting features and optimizations to improve the browser's stability and user experience,..

It aims to provide close adherence to official web standards and specifications in its implementation (with minimal compromise), and purposefully excludes a number of features to strike a good balance between general use, performance, and technical advancements on the Web.
Perhaps, I shoud try Pale Moon, It seems to be forked from an older versions of Gecko, furthermore there seems to be much activity development behind it. Im going to test it.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 10:10
by Wheelerof4te
Again with the performance issue, eh? I remember telling you before to switch from using KDE to some lighter DE, since the specs on your machine were too low for KDE. But you didn't listen. You say you liked KDE and want to use only it. That's all fine and dandy.

BUT, can you please STOP, I mean REALLY, REALLY STOP with these BS threads? You are wasting people's time when they click on this subforum expecting to find some good new interesting topic, and they find only your whining. I bet Firefox will run great if you would run it on XFCE or LXDE. Or even plain simple Openbox.

Please, use some COMMON SENSE.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 11:22
by Lysander
Wheelerof4te wrote:Again with the performance issue, eh? I remember telling you before to switch from using KDE to some lighter DE, since the specs on your machine were too low for KDE. But you didn't listen. You say you liked KDE and want to use only it.
But... KDE is the Ultimate Stable Desktop!

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 12:51
by MALsPa
bester69 wrote:Perhaps, I shoud try Pale Moon, It seems to be forked from an older versions of Gecko, furthermore there seems to be much activity development behind it. Im going to test it.
Good choice, hopefully, for you. I like using Pale Moon, and it has worked out well for me on my old, piece-of-crap "test" computer.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 13:19
by None1975
bester69 wrote:Hi,Is there any internet browser focus in older spec PC's. :|
Hello. You can try lightweight Webkit browser following the UNIX philosophy-uzbl browser. Here link https://packages.debian.org/stretch/uzbl.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 13:26
by bester69
Wheelerof4te wrote:Again with the performance issue, eh? I remember telling you before to switch from using KDE to some lighter DE, since the specs on your machine were too low for KDE. But you didn't listen. You say you liked KDE and want to use only it. That's all fine and dandy.

BUT, can you please STOP, I mean REALLY, REALLY STOP with these BS threads? You are wasting people's time when they click on this subforum expecting to find some good new interesting topic, and they find only your whining. I bet Firefox will run great if you would run it on XFCE or LXDE. Or even plain simple Openbox.

Please, use some COMMON SENSE.
DE dont consume nearly CPU only RAM, and my problem hast to be with CPU consum. I can open up to 20 tabs in chrome/firefox with not any problem. The problem i've is that new engine browsers require more powerfull CPU or graphics chipsets (i really dont know where exactlly the problem is), and rendering tend to lag or go slower than previous versions.

As for KDE 5 and Stretch im really delighted with it, Indeed Im using KDE 5.9, and very pleased with performance. So please...

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 13:30
by bester69
Lysander wrote:
Wheelerof4te wrote:Again with the performance issue, eh? I remember telling you before to switch from using KDE to some lighter DE, since the specs on your machine were too low for KDE. But you didn't listen. You say you liked KDE and want to use only it.
But... KDE is the Ultimate Stable Desktop!
Yes, Im agree

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 13:43
by GarryRicketson
Wheelerof4te wrote:Again with the performance issue, eh? I remember telling you before to switch from using KDE to some lighter DE, since the specs on your machine were too low for KDE. But you didn't listen. You say you liked KDE and want to use only it. That's all fine and dandy.

BUT, can you please STOP, I mean REALLY, REALLY STOP with these BS threads? You are wasting people's time when they click on this subforum expecting to find some good new interesting topic, and they find only your whining. I bet Firefox will run great if you would run it on XFCE or LXDE. Or even plain simple Openbox.

Please, use some COMMON SENSE.
I can not see what he/she posted this time, but if the posts are
not appropriate, or contain spam , please report them.
I don't look at these posts any more.
Image
Thanks

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 13:44
by bester69
I think I will finally have to set a firefail script solution for being able to use opera v42, something like this.:

opera.sh

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
#
killall firejail
rm -rf ~/.config/opera
tar -xvf ~/LINUXDEBS/NOBACKUP/operasec.tar.gz
clear
firejail --private=/home/user/.config/opera --dns=8.8.8.8 --dns=8.8.4.4 opera -no-remote &

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 13:55
by Wheelerof4te
bester69 wrote:DE dont consume nearly CPU only RAM, and my problem hast to be with CPU consum. I can open up to 20 tabs in chrome/firefox with not any problem.
Do you know what RAM actually is? It is a very fast memory used to store "resources" of an application. Once that memory is used up (which is easier under resource hogs such as KDE), your PC/laptop/tablet/Tetris switches to virtual memory (called swap in Linux). And that memory is so slooooooooow when compared to RAM. So yeah, if you really do open 20 browser tabs in KDE on that old PC that you have....well, get it? No? Ok, have it your way then.

Bye.

@Garry He just wants some lighter browser than Firefox, and is asking for suggestions. Instead of searching on the Internet, he comes here asking us. I say this is either spam, or just another one of his attention grabbing posts. Anyway, I won't be answering his posts anymore since he is so stubborn.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 15:11
by GarryRicketson
Oh, Ok, I see,... there are many listed in a search,...

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 16:17
by bester69
Wheelerof4te wrote:... Instead of searching on the Internet, he comes here asking us. I say this is either spam, or just another one of his attention grabbing
posts. Anyway, I won't be answering his posts anymore since he is so stubborn.
.
ohh man, this is offtopic forum, not support forum... i dont get why you all so stubborned.. You just take it easy, i dont think im bothering anyone, I just like to exchange points of view with others users, and listen their opinions. I repeat this is not support forum, just offtopic to be relax :roll:

As you might know from others of my own posts, I couldnt work properly with kde until I installed the 4GB.
At first i Upgraded to 2GB RAM, and i could not yet work, so I next upgraded to 4GB, now no more problems anymore with RAM.

By the way, Im a telecommunication engineer, so I do know somethings.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-14 16:40
by dasein
bester69 wrote:i dont think im bothering anyone
Image

I know you're joking, because otherwise you'd qualify as clinically delusional.

Wheelerof4te was exactly correct in characterizing every single thread you've ever opened as BS. I have lost count of the number of times you've been called on it. You seem to have an electronic equivalent of Munchausen Syndrome; you post here only to get attention. And as you've been told many times, it's annoying as all fsck.
bester69 wrote:I just like to exchange points of view with others users, and listen their opinions.
No, you like to pretend that your fact-free, pig-headed opinions are technically correct, much less useful.
bester69 wrote:I couldnt work properly with kde until I installed the 4GB.
And yet somehow others manage to make KDE work very nicely in 2GB, and even 1GB for single-purpose use-cases. That really ought to tell you something, and the fact that it doesn't tell you anything speaks volumes about your level of technical cluelessness.
bester69 wrote:By the way, Im a telecommunication engineer, so I do know somethings.
I'm stunned (and frankly deeply skeptical) to hear that you are even an adult. Your posts give every impression of a teenager who lives in his parents' basement.
Wheelerof4te wrote:BUT, can you please STOP, I mean REALLY, REALLY STOP with these BS threads? You are wasting people's time...
+ You are a one-person time-and-attention sinkhole.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-15 02:31
by stevepusser
There's also Qupzilla: the latest 2.1.2 is backported for Stretch from Sid here: https://build.opensuse.org/package/show ... a/qupzilla

If you don't want to add the repo, you can go directly into the i386 or amd64 folders and download the libqubzilla1 and qupzilla debs for manual installation: http://download.opensuse.org/repositori ... ebian_9.0/

Though its appimage might incorporate a newer qtwebengine than Stretch has available, and thus be more secure. Though when I tested the backport and the appimage on an HTML5 compliance site, the scores were identical. Seamonkey may also be worth a look.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-15 05:51
by Nili
This Browser Benchmark is from 2016. I can't guarantee its accuracy but before installing Pale Moon on my old stystem. This link i have taken as reference.

IMHO Pale Moon looks and works very good for odd desktops/laptops. I like aswell for other reason. Have ALSA sound in default, GTK2, Mozilla Firefox old style. Have no Adobe Flash in default, Have no CISCO open h264*... Exactly have zero plugins installed.

It is worth having a look for a while and make your conclusion yourself.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-15 09:08
by lbuiyzxl
What is hardware information of your older PC?
Already try zram and lxde-core?

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-15 10:07
by deborah-and-ian
I can relate to what you post as I have a netbook that had similar issues. It has a very weak Atom CPU and 2 GB RAM. Let me tell you that the RAM rarely is the issue. I mean, sure, browsers do take a lot of RAM, but it's between 500-1 GB. Still my netbook was churning. It had no problems using a full featured DE like Mate or even KDE without compositing. Even playing HD video was fine. But the browser was the only bottle neck. And no, switching from Xfce or Mate to Openbox, Awesome, whatever didn't help. The CPU was weak and that was it.

My suggestion is to use a very lean browser for sites where you just need the text and normal images. Like dillo or even elinks on the console. For the heavy stuff like javascript, the Webkit browsers are usually leaner on CPU usage. My suggestion is then to use Qupzilla. To be secure, get it from one of the mentioned backport repos or best from the Appimage provided on their website. Don't use the Debian version, as webkit will soon be outdated even in Stretch and I don't think Debian has an update policy for it in mind. Pale Moon would be my 2nd suggestion.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-15 10:11
by Lysander
bester69 wrote: Yes, Im agree
I think your irony chip has shorted.

Use Lynx. I promise you you'll have no RAM issues.

Re: Lightweight browser for older PC's?

Posted: 2017-08-15 18:36
by bester69
Ive tested qupzilla and Palemoon, palemoon do weirds thing likes rendering with movil look layout some pages, qupzilla seems to work better, i dont like them..

I always come back to a browser based on chrome, so I went to Chrome Changelog version history ,and to opera pub, to trace the version engine used for each opera version, and to the Chrome's changelog to see what version might consider to install in order to performance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Ch ... on_history
https://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/desktop/

I installed some opera versions with differents chrome engines/ javascript engines, tested performances, and curiously, i couldnt improve what i already had (Opera v42.x.517). Opera v42.x.517 --> Chrome/55.0.2883.87

Operav42 is a compilation from 26-Jan-2017, so its a worthy browser, still a young one to come into engine features obsolescence.
--> I recommned OperaV42 or OperaV44 if you are getting some lag with web pages.

There are lighters and fater Opera versions for older pc's such as Opera (26-29) using earliers chrome engines (from Dec-2014 on), but they give you a gui version of opera some poor. And a closer chrome engine to obsolescence web features.