Re: suggestions for a fast web browser?
on Sat, Jan 11, 2003 at 03:32:12PM +0530, Sandip P Deshmukh (deshmukh@escortsmumbai.com) wrote:
> one of the things that bother me in my set-up is browser. mozilla is
> what i use currently and i have to wait for ages before it loads. for
> text login, i have tried lynx and links. both are decent and quick but
> none of support for folders in bookmarks.
For a general set of reviews:
http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/NixBrowsers.
My personal GUI browser of choice on modern systems is Galeon.
Responsiveness is a factor, but overall useablity matters far more. For
text/console browsing, w3m (similar to links, but different keybindings,
and IMO more usefully configureable).
There are a number of transition points for browsing. Running X on a
system with less than 486 processor and 32 MiB RAM is not recommended.
A minimal end-user desktop can be run on a Pentium with 32 MiB or more,
but software choices are going to be limited. For a "modern" desktop, a
PII-300MHz system with 128MB+ RAM is a baseline. 1GHz & 256 makes for a
snappy box, 2GHz+, 512MB+, and SCSI disks would be a screamer.
For console clients: w3m, no second thoughts. Running it within
'screen' in a terminal window in X is also surprisingly useful.
The lightest graphical browser I know of is dillo. It will run on older
hardware, and is relatively stable. It's also very feature poor.
Opera is fast. I don't run it much (frankly it annoys me), and I don't
know of its memory footprint requirements.
Older Netscape browsers (3.x and 4.x series) may work for old hardware.
These are abandoned projects, and may have significant security risks.
The 4.x and 6.x series were abominations: buggy, flouting standards,
and prone to crashing.
BrowseX, previously mentioned here, is based on Tk/Tcl. It has a small
disk footprint (other browsers, including dillo, require additional
libraries). Its runtime footprint is larger than dillo, and it's
markedly less responsive, though fairly full featured. If I had to pick
a small, but featureful, browser, it would be BrowseX.
Konqueror performs fairly well, and is packaged with KDE. As a browser,
it's fairly responsive, though you'll probably find KDE drags down an
older system. Konq *can* be run independently of KDE.
Phoenix, Skipstone, Galeon, and Mozilla are all based on the Gecko
rendering engine, in rough order of lightness. Again, my preference is
Galeon. None of these is particularly suited for older hardware (say:
P-133/64MB), and none of them appears markedly faster or slower than the
others. Galeon and Mozilla are the most polished of the set.
> i am looking for a browser that will load quickly, have bookmarking
> ability - preferably with folders.
Again, my pick on anything remotely resembling modern HW is Galeon.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Geek for hire: http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
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