Browsers are too slow

[YSt]

Hi. I'm new to Linux. I searched various forums including this one, but couldn't find a clear answer to my question.

Recently, I made a full install of Puppy Linux 8.0, 64 bit, on an old laptop
specs: core i3 330M (Intel graphics GPU), 6GB RAM, HDD
primary aim was to be able to watch youtube videos in a browser
previously it had Windows 8. youtube and browsing was slow and the laptop was running hot.
Then I tried Linux Mint Mate, browsing and youtube worked but the laptop was running even hotter than under Windows.
Then I tried Puppy Linux. It was very fast, but the problem is the internet browser. It is very slow, especially youtube. The page rendres extremely slow and youtube is very slow.
I tried SeaMonkey, Pale Moon. There doesn't seem to be any reason to try others. I guess they will be as slow as these two.

Is there any way to fix this? Or maybe the best way is to go back to Windows 8?

[xenial]

@YSt
It should be noted that palemoon and seamonkey are currently experiencing issues in regard to rendering youtube correctly.
Youtube is a google owned video service and naturally they will target their own browser(google chrome) for the best experience and chromium based browsers will work better than palemoon and seamonkey.

I would advise installing firefox or one of the numerous chrome clones to give a fair assessment.

[user1111]

Indeed. @MochiMoppel's script where you right click copy link to URL then run the script that pulls in the clipboard content (url to the video) and plays it in a manner that avoids youtube ads works great for playing in chrome, but is very choppy even if pasted into vlc ... very much looks like google intentionally cripple the competition and naturally without recourse will continue to revise things to continue to do so.

I suspect that the future may see a return to a likes of a modern day Compuserve type alternative, where the competition collectively set up their own ad/cookie free net in return for a monthly subscription, as a alternative to google-domination (tracking/profiling/ads). Of the two I'd be happy to pay $10/month knowing 10% was going to support the net, 90% to content/application providers and without ads/tracking over that of the present IMO relatively high (indirect) costs as things as they are.

[amethyst]

@YSt
You may consider watching youtube video via an external site without going to the offical youtube site OR change your browser's user agent settings for youtube so that you go to the mobile youtube site instead which is much lighter and quick loading. Both methods have no youtube ads. See more info here: viewtopic.php?p=52433#p52433 and viewtopic.php?p=52517#p52517

[YSt]

@YSt
It should be noted that palemoon and seamonkey are currently experiencing issues in regard to rendering youtube correctly.
Youtube is a google owned video service and naturally they will target their own browser(google chrome) for the best experience and chromium based browsers will work better than palemoon and seamonkey.

I would advise installing firefox or one of the numerous chrome clones to give a fair assessment.

Thanks. This seems to solve the issue. I installed chromium and frankly it is very fast both at rendering pages and watching youtube.

[mikeslr]

Hello, YSt, and to the kennels.

You may want to try out vivaldi. Despite its very-useful/gimmicky GUI (depends on who you ask) Vivaldi is reputed to be the fastest of the Chromium-Clones. My experience is that while it seems slow to open, once opened it is, indeed, very responsive.
It's easy to try out. Just download MIkeWalsh's Vivaldi-portable. viewtopic.php?p=3491#p3491. It's packaged as a 'tar.gz'. Right-Click the tar.gz and select UEXtract from the pop-up menu. An extracted folder will be created; and within that the Vivaldi-Folder. You can move the vivaldi-folder anywhere.

I may not have MikeWalsh's latest creation. In my vivaldi folder are two scripts (LAUNCH and LAUNCH_NL), Puppy 8.0 [by the way, in the future refer to it as Bionicpup64 to avoid confusion] should start by left-clicking the LAUNCH script. It will use libraries included in the folder. The LAUNCH_NL script is used for newer Puppys, such as Fossapup64_9.5 which has built-in the newer libraries that Vivaldi requires.
In some of Mike's latest portables he's handled that difference with just one script; and has included scripts for creating menu entries without regard to where you've stashed the portable's folder. But, as I said, I may not have the latest version. If you need to create a menu entry, let us know.

By the way, you mentioned that you have a 'full install'. With 6 Gbs of RAM you shouldn't have unless you intend to compile applications; and even then you probably shouldn't. The operating systems of a Full Install and a Frugal Installs are identical; as are their built-in applications. They are just deployed differently. Puppys were originally designed to run as Frugal Installs. The ability to deploy them as a Full Install was developed a dozen years ago when computers rarely had more than 256 Mbs of RAM in order to expedite reaching desktop. On today's computers the difference is measured in micro-seconds.
See this post about Frugal vs. Full Installs, https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... 9#p1023489. The biggest problems with Full Installs is that they are not secure and that it is almost impossible to fix any problem you can get into using them. So, before you get 'too deep into the woods' if you decide that you would rather continue with a 'Frugal Install', just ask. We'll be happy to help you get from where you are to where you should be.

[Flash]

Firefox has always played YouTube videos just fine for me, in many different varieties of Puppy Linux. You don"t have to install Firefox to try it out. What I do is download Firefox from here, unzip it, then, in ROX-Filer, right-click on the resulting Firefox folder, choose Permissions, then Yes. Then I open the folder and find the gear-shaped icon labeled Firefox, right-click on it and choose Permissions and Yes again. Now when I click on that gear-shaped icon, the latest and greatest Firefox browser opens. Of course I've already set up an Internet connection, and sometimes I have to help Puppy find the sound card and get that set up to work first.

[Geek3579]

I had the same trouble with browsers some months ago, especially the looong time for the first load. Mainly with sfs based software, and also using gmail. It was very frustrating.

I have found mikewalsh's portable Chrome and Edge browsers much better, especially Edge. First loads are a bit slow in both cases, but from then on its not an issue. MIN browser is a more simpler browser but seems faster still than the aforementioned.

Vivaldi is my go-to for gmail, as its very, very responsive once loaded, as mentioned in previous posts.

I have had few problems with watching you-tube on any of these, but later versions of Chrome/Edge are critical for many on-line presentations including ZOOM sessions.

[Phoenix]

Hi. I'm new to Linux. I searched various forums including this one, but couldn't find a clear answer to my question.

Recently, I made a full install of Puppy Linux 8.0, 64 bit, on an old laptop
specs: core i3 330M (Intel graphics GPU), 6GB RAM, HDD
primary aim was to be able to watch youtube videos in a browser
previously it had Windows 8. youtube and browsing was slow and the laptop was running hot.
Then I tried Linux Mint Mate, browsing and youtube worked but the laptop was running even hotter than under Windows.
Then I tried Puppy Linux. It was very fast, but the problem is the internet browser. It is very slow, especially youtube. The page rendres extremely slow and youtube is very slow.
I tried SeaMonkey, Pale Moon. There doesn't seem to be any reason to try others. I guess they will be as slow as these two.

Is there any way to fix this? Or maybe the best way is to go back to Windows 8?

This depends on a couple of factors, the cpu, memory, disk, and gpu.
Each of these will have some impact on how the browsers work. If you have a decent cpu/gpu and memory, but the disk is slow, expect slow initial startups and then it should be faster. This is because Linux takes advantage of file caching meaning the next time you query for the same stuff it will retrieve from RAM instead.
If memory is short, don't expect anything great out of the computer. Everything will start tanking down because each piece of software is desperately competing for time to be executed, which is made far worse if you have swap, because you will have it swap, swap and swap! (Without swap? Browser gets reaped by the OOM killer most likely, but it could instead target your desktop and drop you into a terminal.)

But if memory is slow, (there's a speed to how fast you can flip the bits!) well that isn't as bad, but it might become noticeable in certain circumstances.

If cpu is poor then you really can't expect good speeds, as well the gpu may struggle to render in time. Meaning videos will go far worse.
The most likely limiting factor judging by your specs is the HDD and possibly RAM.

[amethyst]

As far as Gmail goes, I always use the basic html page setting as default. Very fast because you don't have all the other crap loading in the background. Also saves a lot of data. This is the url I'm using at the moment: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/1fp4 ... /?zy=g&f=1