Pale Moon 'portable' browsers - 32- & 64-bit

[xenial]

Just a warning to all palemoon users that most of the complete themes will become incompatible with the new version 31 which was updated 2 days ago.Not certain when a fix will appear from the themes developer.

I am personally finding the updated palemoon from version 30 onwards to be using far more cpu usage than usual and i have found seamonkey to be better in this regard.The palemoon project is down to one developer now so updates will be thin on the ground.

I am leaning more towards seamonkey which is a highly underrated browser and runs great on fossapup 9.5.

[mikewalsh]

@xenial :-

Cheers for that, mate. Something to watch out for.....

Mike.

[mikeslr]

Just a warning to all palemoon users that most of the complete themes will become incompatible with the new version 31 which was updated 2 days ago.Not certain when a fix will appear from the themes developer.

I am personally finding the updated palemoon from version 30 onwards to be using far more cpu usage than usual and i have found seamonkey to be better in this regard.The palemoon project is down to one developer now so updates will be thin on the ground.

I am leaning more towards seamonkey which is a highly underrated browser and runs great on fossapup 9.5.

Thanks, xenial, for the review. Personally, I prefer Waterfox-Classic. The publisher advises that using old technology may present a security risk you undertake on your own. However, it just received a security update quashing some, but not all, the reported vulnerability. I appreciate the publisher's honesty and am encouraged by its continued efforts to improve security.
What I like most about Waterfox-classic is THAT it does still use firefox's older technology. That means that the Classic Firefox addons can be installed and function, including those relating to privacy and security, and/or downloading videos. Like firefox, it's easy to start via alternate scripts, one for security the other for general web work.

Perhaps not the best

[mikewalsh]

Well, the problem's still there in PaleMoon 31. Starts off fine, but a few seconds after opening any new tab with a site, CPU usage starts climbing.....followed by temps.

• At idle; 2% CPU - 30C

• Open Pale Moon with one tab - Puppy Forums. 10 secs later -> 15% CPU - 42C

• Two tabs open (add Bleeping Computer). 10 secs later -> 22% CPU - 46C

• Add a third tab - YouTube. 10 secs later -> 38% CPU - temps now over 50C! (This thing averages out around 32-34C much of the time, unless I'm rendering videos or similar activity.)

And this is with a relatively recent, "Coffee Lake", 9th-gen Intel Pentium "Gold" quad-core - 3.7 GHz, TDP just 54W. I hate to think what this is doing to older-generation CPUs.

-------------------------------------------------------

Anybody using 64-bit Pale Moon-portable, my advice is to stay with v29.4.6.1 for now. Don't accept the update. I performed the above experiment on a copy of the portable.....NOT my main one.

If Steve Pusser builds a 32-bit v31, I won't package a portable for it until and unless I'm satisfied that the problem has gone. Till then, the available version will remain at v29.4.6.1.

Mike.

[xenial]

@mikewalsh
Thank you for the test and confirmation.I don't have as powerful a machine as you so i was kind of expecting "higher" cpu usage but even with just my homepage open (DDG) the cpu was soaring to 64% which were intermittent spikes so i consider the update has inherited the problem from the previous recalled version 30.

Even chrome and chromium are lighter than palemoon at this present time..
Don't get me wrong it's a decent browser but it still has issues.

Peebees chromium builds always hang around the 4-5% mark with non media sites.
Obviously with age of my computer i'm not expecting perfect resource usage but 60 odd % is too high in my humble opinion.

[mikewalsh]

@xenial :-

I tend to find that opening more tabs has no effect on temps or CPU activity; all it usually does is eat more RAM (more noticeable with the 'clones', since every tab runs in its own separate sandbox).

There's definitely summat not right there. I wonder if Moonchild is more amenable to reports of problems than Tobin was?

As for Chromium, strictly speaking that's not peebee's work, any more than Chrome is mine. We're both of us re-packaging someone else's work.....in the case of Chromium, thanks are probably due to Eric Hameleers (better known as 'AlienBob' of the Slackware community).

Mike.

[geo_c]

I'm in version 31 v30 right this minute, and I want to say that I think it has threading issues. As I scroll the forum individual cpu threads on my i7 pop to 75%, while the rest stay around zero. They seem to take turns, starting at the top and working their way down the line, returning to the top. Very odd.

[mikewalsh]

Okay, gang.

Following months of messing-about after Tobin left the project and chucked a few spanners into the works by way of a parting-gift (!), I think we can say Pale Moon is back to behaving itself once again...!

Notwithstanding comments by @geo_c above, which I'm willing to concede may well exist, I've just been trying out the current version of Pale Moon.....ATM, v31.1.0. Watching YouTube vids, and generally browsing while doing quite a mixture of things, everything's remained around the 35° - 39/40° C mark. That's absolutely bang-on-the-nail normal for this HP desktop rig, so I for one am now quite happy to use it as a viable alternative once more.

I've updated the 64-bit version in the repo to v31.1.0, meaning that updates should perform as normal from now on, given that the past few months' "issues" seem to be behind us at long last. This should sidestep the updating issues that were present while Moonchild was trying to rebuild a fully-functional browser!

BTW, just so's y'all know, this is the GTK2 version.....NOT the GTK3 one. The GTK2 version is totally fuss-free, which is what we want.

I'll publish an update to the 32-bit version IF Steve Pusser decides to carry on with it.

Mike.

[geo_c]

Notwithstanding comments by @geo_c above, which I'm willing to concede may well exist, .....
Mike.

I'm going to edit that post, because I may have actually been on version 30. I had some updating issues as I may have incorrectly symlinked a profile folder! I currently am updated to version 31, and I've started a topic about it here: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6258

added: Running the portable v31, runs great! Still behaves as described in the above topic. But for me it's not a deal-breaker. It's very fast and responsive.

[peppyy]

Posting from Firefox again.

Made the mistake of updating Pale Moon Portable this evening to, 31.1.0 (because I was getting errors from eBay.)
Totally unusable now since update. Super high CPU and still can't connect to lots of sites.
How do I roll it back? Or preferably forward?

PS. FF 102.0 (64-bit) still is low CPU.
Is it time to switch?
I love Palemoon, although it seems that there are more and more sites that I can't use it on. My computer fans crank up as soon as I launch it.

Palemoon states in the site that,
"v31.1.0 (2022-06-07)
This is a major development update, focusing on media support, browser stability, performance and web compatibility."

Specs in signature.

[mikewalsh]

Hm. Perhaps I spoke too soon..!

Behaviour seems totally unpredictable, and varies not only from person to person, but from machine to machine AND from Puppy to Puppy...

Earlier on it was fine. Had a trawl round Pinterest a little while ago, and after several pages it had seized up solid. Temps were up a bit - low to mid 50s this time, but processes were approaching the 1000 mark.....and the only way to shut it down was to literally kill it.

I think @geo_c was right. It seems to have threading problems that manifest themselves after heavy browsing. Like they don't clear themselves when done with, so there's a ton of zombie processes hanging around?

I still like Pale Moon, though, when all's said and done. I have a slightly older 29-series I keep around - v29.4.1 - on which I've disabled the updater. This is just prior to the start of all the crap we've been seeing in recent months, and it runs as sweet as a nut. No problems of any kind....

But the clones run sweeter still..!

@peppyy :- I always tend to try out upgrades/updates/modifications on a 'copy' of an existing portable app first, so I can satisfy myself that things are working as they should BEFORE moving it to its usual, permanent home. It's yet another advantage of the portable method, which you can't easily do with a normally-installed application....

Mike.

[xenial]

Okay today's update seems to have cured the resource foes i was experiencing and is running sweet again.

[mikewalsh]

Yes, I have to agree. Once again - at long last! - Pale Moon is back to being the decent browser it always was.

v31.1.1 appears to have fixed the high resource issues, AND the threading issue, too. I've been doing all sorts in it for the last few hours, and temps haven't broken the 38C mark yet. Which is pretty much what I've always expected from it.

Looks like Moonchild's cracked it!

Mike.

[mikewalsh]

With regard to a 32-bit build, I'll be waiting until Steve has put together a package for v31.1.1. His repos only show v31.1.0 as the current build.

However, I'm not at all certain as to whether 32-bit Pale Moon will run under older Puppies any longer. Steve appears to have switched his build environment, and it seems the oldest Puppy his Pale Moon builds now support is Bionic. The days of running Pale Moon on very old Pups may be numbered.

These I can only find on his Ubuntu-build page. The previous link provided by peebee, to Steve's 'generic' build, no longer works. Seems OpenSuse have had a big redesign/update to their repos, and a lot of older stuff has conveniently been 'lost' in the process. Remember, these guys produce one of the most highly-regarded 'rolling' distros in the Linux ecosphere.....and rolling releases are notorious for always running the very newest, bleeding-edge software ALL THE TIME. And more & more developers seem to prefer building stuff for these types of distro.....the general expectation seems to be that Linux CAN beat Windows at its own game, and require its users to always run the very newest of everything.

I'll try and find out whether Steve is still doing this 'generic' build, but I may be out of luck; apparently, Pale Moon's build environment now requires a sufficiently new gcc that it no longer plays nice with older system's supplied dependencies. I'll keep y'all posted as to what I manage to discover.

Mike.

[mikewalsh]

Now then, gang:-

Here, as promised, is the brand-new, up to date 32-bit build of v31.1.1 from Steve Pusser.

This is based on his Xubuntu 18.04 .deb package. Accordingly, since this is specifically built for Bionic, the portable is now using the glibc 'tweak' developed by watchdog a few years ago; this is the glibc 2.28 from radky's Busterpup32, along with borrowing the libgcc_s.so.1 from peebee's UpupBB......which is required by the internal libmozsqlite dependency.

As with the 64-bit build of this release, CPU usage and temps are now back under control once more.

Posting from it right now in Xenialpup 7.5 (32-bit). YouTube & Auntie Beeb's iPlayer both working OK.

This will run under Tahrpup, but is restricted to non-heavy sites.....like this Forum. As soon as anything intensive is called for - like the above-mentioned two sites - an immediate crash ensues. Others may wish to investigate this further - maybe some additional dependencies need inserting into the glibc228 directory - personally, I'll stick with the older v29.4.6 for Tahr. So for all practical purposes, ATM we'll say Xenialpup is now the base-line Puppy for this build; according to Steve, Pale Moon now requires a minimum of GCC 7.0 or newer to compile, so it may be deps relating to the borrowed libgcc_s.so.1 that are needed.

(For Tahrpup, I may just simply run it from the chroot - I have 32-bit Xenialpup AND 64-bit Fossapup chroots permanently set-up anyway. Quirky April64 runs a lot from the Fossapup chroot, and my older 32-bitzers all use the Xenialpup chroot for various things..... *shrug*)

Download & instructions as in post #1. Enjoy.

Mike.

[geo_c]

@mikewalsh Thanks for this portable. I basically corrupted my built-in Palemoon in my fully loaded and developed jackalpup remaster savefolder, by copying a later version of the /moonchild productions folder into it, and then trying to update. Now I can't update the built-in, it fails every time, so the portable is just fine with me!

31.1.1 seems to run very well.

[xenial]

I spoke too soon.
The cpu usage is adequate but the temperature has shot up to 60 degrees with just the browser open.
I will go back to a normal working version if this browser is required.

[mmmrr]

hi folks,

what does 'sse-build' mean?
i googled it. i'm more informed
but still puzzled.

i see pale moon browsers listed as
sse-builds. i've been using and
enjoying some older laptops.

mikewalsh's portable 32bit
browser(s) are the go-to units.

cheers, mm

[xenial]

hi folks,

what does 'sse-build' mean?
i googled it. i'm more informed
but still puzzled.

i see pale moon browsers listed as
sse-builds. i've been using and
enjoying some older laptops.

mikewalsh's portable 32bit
browser(s) are the go-to units.

cheers, mm

They are builds designed for much older processors...sse2 and sse3 are more modern.

[mmmrr]

thanks xenial,
what do the letters
's s e' stand for?

also, why do the
last words of my post
have lines through them.
and yr reply also?

cheers, mm

[greengeek]

hi folks,

what does 'sse-build' mean?
i googled it. i'm more informed
but still puzzled.

i see pale moon browsers listed as
sse-builds. i've been using and
enjoying some older laptops.

mikewalsh's portable 32bit
browser(s) are the go-to units.

cheers, mm

After the word "browsers" you added an "s" inside square brackets. The forum intreprets this as a "begin strikethrough" command. Try a different type of bracket - square brackets are reserved for special meanings

[mikewalsh]

@mmmrr :-

I've changed the square brackets in the last few posts for round ones. Anything with square brackets in the forum postings is interpreted by the phpBB software as being to do with what's called "BBcode".......basically, any of the wee boxes you see above the editor screen. OK?

Mike.

[mmmrr]

ah, thanks, greengeek & mikewalsh.

when i first sat to a computer keyboard,
about 1998, i (age 47) was a poor typist
rich in friends. email on a library computer
was a revelation.

commitment to lower-case typing from
that first moment has made a real
improvement in efficiency and pleasure
ever since.

i'm happy to commit to round brackets
for puppy linux. for decades it has been
a vital part of my life as living tool and
example of thoughtful computer design.

cheers, mm

[waxman]

Hi guys and girls.

Not been logged in on the forum for quite a while.
Lots of folks here who do tremendous work to keep linux puppy relevant.
Many thanks to everyone.
There is so much information in this forum it can be difficult to keep track of it all.
Already I am drifting off topic.
I am posting this from a dell c640 mobile P4 with 2gb ram, running puppy precise 5.7.1 (updated) using palemoon 31.3.0.1 portable as per @mikewalsh portable version at the start of this topic.
I just want to try to keep on using older 32bit hardware rather than dumping it in a skip.
Palemoon would be my browser of choice so thanks must be due to steve pusser.
The updated precise 5.7.1 details are on @pipdex topic (Firefox 79 (Precise 5.7.1) Updated!) link https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=183.
Off topic.
I have done a further update that runs firefox 91.13esr extracted tarball.
Off topic
I have tried most of the available 32 bit puppies. The debian based ones look interesting. I have a better spec laptop that I also use. Most of the more recent puppies have odd issues. Chimaera pup is not bad. I think Firefox 90x series is buggy on older hardware.

regards
@waxman

[amethyst]

Hi guys and girls.

Not been logged in on the forum for quite a while.
Lots of folks here who do tremendous work to keep linux puppy relevant.
Many thanks to everyone.
There is so much information in this forum it can be difficult to keep track of it all.
Already I am drifting off topic.
I am posting this from a dell c640 mobile P4 with 2gb ram, running puppy precise 5.7.1 (updated) using palemoon 31.3.0.1 portable as per @mikewalsh portable version at the start of this topic.
I just want to try to keep on using older 32bit hardware rather than dumping it in a skip.
Palemoon would be my browser of choice so thanks must be due to steve pusser.
The updated precise 5.7.1 details are on @pipdex topic (Firefox 79 (Precise 5.7.1) Updated!) link https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=183.
Off topic.
I have done a further update that runs firefox 91.13esr extracted tarball.
Off topic
I have tried most of the available 32 bit puppies. The debian based ones look interesting. I have a better spec laptop that I also use. Most of the more recent puppies have odd issues. Chimaera pup is not bad. I think Firefox 90x series is buggy on older hardware.

regards
@waxman

Hi, Waxman. I also did upgrades to Precise and Racy recently, see here: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6968 and https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6885. Palemoon is relatively easy to get going but of interest to me is that you got Firefox 91.13 going. Will it be possible to package into an additional drive like a ydrv only the upgrades necessary to get this Firefox version running with Precise? I wonder if the sound works because Precise don't have Pulse audio? Also - have you tried to get Chromium running, that would also be very useful. Thanks

[mikewalsh]

@amethyst :-

You wouldn't need PulseAudio, Nic. Just use apulse instead, from here:-

Apulse from OscarTalks

Emulates PulseAudio for ALSA-only setups, and for any app that wants PA, it keeps them happy.

Mike.

[waxman]

hi @amethyst

Thanks for your post and the two links to your updated puppies. I will look at those in due course but they are a series of updates.

This is chimaera pup with firefox 98.0.2 running on a core2duo.
I will have to see what i can do about making the upgrades available.
Yes audio works - i have just watched Stoppit and Tidyup on this system before posting this.
I will check precise out later on.

You need Oscartalks pet form earlier in this topic to ibstall first.

I make life difficult for myself. So I keep an archive of firefox extracted tarballs which are all renamed to the correct version number. I place the version of firefox I wish to use in /root/my-applications/ dirctory. I always run puppy as a livecd with various remasters having a certain version of firefox. It is quite easy then to edit the iso and change the firefox folder and burn another cd. Normally I would drag the firefox cog wheel onto the desktop and add the icon. I prefer the convenience .of clicking on the desktop. This will run firefox without apulse.

If you want apulse to work the terminal command would be 'apulse opt/firefox/firefox'. However this does not work for me even with the paths corrcted. I think without knowing the original source of Oscartalks pet it is looking for an executable somewhere else.

So i create a firefox desktop ini file in downloads directory.

copy and paste below text into geany text editor. Note that the names and paths are relevant to this system only.

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Firefox
Exec=apulse /root/my-applications/firefox-98.0.2/firefox
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=X-Internet
Icon=/root/my-applications/firefox-98.0.2/browser/chrome/icons/default/default32.png
GenericName=web browser

Name and save the file as 'firefox.desktop'

Drag into firefox main folder in this case firefox-98.0.2
Drag copy onto desktop.

For good measure I also put a copy into /root/my-applications/bin/
I also copy the 3 extracted apulse files from /usr/lib/apulse/ into the main firefox directory.

The 'firefox.desktop' can be put anywhere you like to suit yourself.

Right click on 'firefox.desktop' and firefox will launch with sound.

Enjoy Stoppit and Tidyup

regards

Waxman

[waxman]

hi @amethst

Bit of a typo above.

The reference to the series of updates refers to my rebuilds not yours. Typed on the wrong line.

regards

waxman

[waxman]

Hi @amethyst

Just double checked precise 5.7.1 (updated) on my dell c640 p4 with firefox 91.9.1esr.
Stoppit and Tidyup on youtube working just fine with audio. In fact the audio is better quality and louder on this setup.
All hail progress.

regards

Waxman

[amethyst]

@waxman
One major upgrade I made was to remove the old glibc completely from the base sfs and load glibc2.30 as a bdrv. I think I also updated libstdc to get the newest Palemoon working (Palemoon is easy to get going). Firefox and Chromium need a lot of extra libs though and I couldn't get it going with my upgrade of Precise, that's why I was asking. Would be nice to get Firefox and Chromium going too.