Trying out the Qupzilla Browser 2.1.0 appimage in Jessie

[stevepusser]

It absolutely starts up faster for me than Firefox, which is a surprise for an appimage, and also seems to be quite good handling memory use. And it scores a 497 out of 555 at html5test.com when Firefox gets 467...It seems to have made some advances since the 1.8.X versions I last tested.

Its use of qtwebengine for the backend makes natively built packages impracticable on a Jessie base, but that should not be an issue on Stretch, so I expect that other architectures should be able to be built there besides the 64-bit-only appimage, and would run even faster with less memory use. The appimage won't run on a Wheezy base without a backported libc6--there is a repo with that for Wheezy, though.

[phenest]

Chromium scored 505.
QupZilla scored 320.

At least, for me. I'm on stretch.

[stevepusser]

Chromium scored 505.
QupZilla scored 320.

At least, for me. I'm on stretch.

Is that with Stretch's older 2.0 version of Qupzilla, or the Appimage? Google's Chrome nails 519 on Jessie for me, Slimjet 506...

[mor]

I got curious so I went ahead and tried the version 1.8.9 from Testing which indeed does 320, while 2.0.2 from Unstable scores 487.

Bye

[phenest]

Yes, I tried 1.8.9.

It absolutely starts up faster for me than Firefox, which is a surprise for an appimage

I concur with the fast startup, but what is meant by appimage? How is that relevant or important/unimportant?

Also, is it any good, i.e. features like bookmark/password/download/extension management, rendering quality/speed, website compatibility etc.

[stevepusser]

Appimages are relevant in that it's the only way to run version 2.1.0 in Jessie, or Wheezy with an added repo...or Stretch, for that matter, unless someone steps up and ports a native build over, since Stretch is frozen. See appimage.org to see explanations.

Also, is it any good, i.e. features like bookmark/password/download/extension management, rendering quality/speed, website compatibility etc.

Yes, in my opinion--and there's been a lot of posts here about the never-ending search for a lightweight yet modern browser for older machines. A "heavy" website such as the HuffPo is still going to make any browser use a lot more RAM than something like a page on these forums, but Qup seems to do really well.

[deborah-and-ian]

It absolutely starts up faster for me than Firefox, which is a surprise for an appimage

Alas, anything starting up faster than Firefox is no surprise for me anymore.

[No_windows]

I don't know what an appimage is, and I don't have time to research it right now, but I've noticed that Qupzilla, from the Jessie repos, eats memory when it's left open, which is the way I use a browser.

Maybe I'll look into this 2.1.0 appimage, as I otherwise like Qupzilla.

[pcalvert]

Appimages are relevant in that it's the only way to run version 2.1.0 in Jessie, or Wheezy with an added repo...or Stretch, for that matter, unless someone steps up and ports a native build over, since Stretch is frozen. See appimage.org to see explanations.

Using the Nix package manager may be another option. I've been meaning to look into it, but haven't had the time.

See: Nix: The Purely Functional Package Manager

Phil

[stevepusser]

We also have flatpak in jessie-backports, but there don't seem to be any of those for Qupzilla.

[deborah-and-ian]

I've had a bug in the Qupzilla appimage where it wouldn't use my keyboard layout (even though all other applications did), but rather some weird one. It seems like English, but it would have the special character switched around all over the place.

[deborah-and-ian]

Just to report that the keyboard issue is apparently there when using Openbox and switching layouts with setxkb, but not within Xfce.