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Quest to find a light web browser, not on Webkit
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kgdrenefort
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 9:31 am    Post subject: Quest to find a light web browser, not on Webkit Reply with quote

Hello,

I have to use, maybe for a while, as my main computer a paper-weight (Asus Chromebook C200M).

Context:

It runs pretty much fine on Gentoo with Xfce.

My main problem is, while compiling (since my binhost is in maintenance actually), I took one core for emerge and it leaves only a single core for the whole system. Having 4Gb of ram, I can't even set -j2 without half of the compilation failing on memory exhaustion.

Firefox, without a compilation beside, is running fine (mostly, regarding the hardware). But once it compiles, it's usable, merely you can't go on Youtube or some awfully website as Reddit. Too much Javascript, I guess, are the main problem here, beside website not optimized.

Technically my computer is less powerful than a Rasperry Pi 4, the only good things is I have an NVMe on it.

---

Quest:

I want a web browser, without Webkit (for different reasons, such as I hate Google and the compilation of webkit is a circle in hell by itself, specially on my paper-weight).

It has to be light, too, removing useless features (who cares if my web browser can read a PDF, seriously ?) as any form of request from the project (as do Mozilla very often, I guess it could leads to useless ressource usage).

Finally, it has to be compatible with plugins as uBlock Origin, or any type of ads filter.

My last experience with another web browser was probably Midori, which was absolutely not able to block a sick kitten, as for ads… It was just a lie to say it was working :).

---

I saw some Firefox's alternatives, such as GNU Icecat, LibreWolf…

But since any compilation would take a while on this machine, I'll avoid to run one if I'm not a bit sure of what I'll use.

Any recommandation ?

---

Alternative question:

Do you think local USE flag as pgo, lto, jumbo-build, beside making the compilation really longer, would help Firefox to be more reactive ? I do not really care about the runtime, firefox compiled with default use flag didn't takes a lot of time. I'm more concerned once it started.

Regards,
GASPARD DE RENEFORT Kévin
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kgdrenefort
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 12:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm trying one recommanded on #gentoo-chat, elinks.

So far it seems to works more or less good on forums.gentoo.org (I am replying with it currently, that is a test) and could read wiki.gentoo.org.

Aside I try to compile from git's source dillo-plus.

Regards,
GASPARD DE RENEFORT Kévin
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wjb
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 26, 2024 6:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I use www-client/firefox-bin on my two weakest machines, of which one is a laptop from 2008 with 2G RAM. This might be a bit slow sometimes but can basically handle most things.
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C5ace
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2024 9:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Try www-client/netsurf.
www.netsurf-browser.org
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siljrath
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2024 5:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Besides exploring the output of
Code:
eix -cC www-client
,

another couple ideas I have which may help for the problem examples given:

Regarding reddit: Even on my most powerful running machine, I still swap out the
Code:
www
for
Code:
old
in the url, to get a much more lightweight smooth running experience.

Regarding youtube: There are proxy sites like piped or those using invidious, as well as there being the ability to play youtube videos, without visiting their website (or any website), e.g. using mpv+yt-dlp, and there are many other tools too (which I'm less familiar with), (and ways to subscribe with rss and more[/code]), such as iirc smtube and others, tuis and guis, much to explore. :)
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Zucca
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 29, 2024 7:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

C5ace wrote:
Try www-client/netsurf.
www.netsurf-browser.org
I can confirm, this is quite a light browser with its own engine. However, more complex sites don't work with it.
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RumpletonBongworth
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 17, 2024 9:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pale Moon contains a fork of the Gecko engine that wilfully avoids the multiprocess overhaul that Firefox was eventually subjected to and can therefore be expected to use less RAM. It does a fairly good job of contending with the 'modern' web, though it's not as broadly compatible as modern Firefox and Chromium-based browsers. I'm not sure what the situation is as concerns Gentoo packaging, however. Other than Pale Moon, the options are pretty dire, unless you are willing to forgo any semblance of compatibility with the web at large. That being said, Ladybird is worth keeping an eye on.

As an aside, and having only 4G, you would likely benefit from having swap as zram and setting a fairly high swappiness value to induce RAM compression. These days, operating systems such as Windows, macOS and iOS perform RAM compression in some situations. There is an interesting Reddit thread concerning the topic (just be sure to ignore the cretinous posts by FeelingShred).
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e8root
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 18, 2024 7:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Seamonkey is another interesting Gecko based browser.
It uses older open source Mozilla Browser codebase mixed with developments from Firefox. It is full fledged browser with YT compatibility, WebGL and even WebAssembly.

Build time on my PC is less than 5 minutes versus almost 26 minutes for Firefox. Chromium takes few times as much as the Firefox still.
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RumpletonBongworth
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 20, 2024 6:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

e8root wrote:
Seamonkey is another interesting Gecko based browser.

It is interesting. The problem for OP may be that it doesn't end up saving much in the way of runtime memory consumption, since it is based on the post-Quantum Gecko engine as of version 2.53.1 Beta 1. On the other hand, that does make for good web compatibility.
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