Vivaldi browser as a replacement for Pale Moon.

[xenial]

Hi forum,
Not sure if this is in the correct section but if not then please move accordingly.

To cut to the chase i have decided to settle on vivaldi browser as a replacement for pale moon browser which will stop linux32bit builds in november.
I have tried chromium,firefox but those don't seem to run as well as vivaldi here on my 32bit xenial pup.

I was just wondering what thoughts and opinions puppy users have on this browser.?
I do understand it has propriatery licences etc and usually i like or prefer to use fully open source browsers but at the moment vivaldi is outshining the rest in terms of speed and efficiency.

Thank you for your time and patience.

[mikewalsh]

@ xenial:-

It's a nice browser.....and one of the few Chromium-based clones to still come in a 32-bit version. I wouldn't like to say just how long that state of affairs will last, though.....

I have a sneaking suspicion that over the next 24-36 months we may see 32-bit disappearing for good, with the sole exception of embedded systems - like ATMs - where it's rather more impractical (and expensive) to just swap 'em over.

Obviously, what with building so many of the 'clones' as portables, after a while they all start to seem much of a "muchness". If it were possible, however, my personal fave for any 32-bit system would have to be a 32-bit version of Opera as it now is.....sadly, however, not to be.

Which leaves Vivaldi; Iron; Firefox (in mainstream & ESR flavours).....and Palemoon. And the latter is, as you say, disappearing off the radar in a few months time.....

Oh; and SeaMonkey, of course.....though that's a bit of an acquired taste.

Mike.

[xenial]

Thanks mike,
i use seamonkey occasionally but vivaldi has pretty much become my main browser now.

hope norfolk is nice and sunny for ya.

kind regards from lincolnshire.

[Geek3579]

I use Vivaldi for gmail. Runs as a sfs. Loads emails FAST.

It leaves other browsers I have tried in the dust, and I find it absolutely indispensable for using gmail on older, slower machines.

OK, everything needs to be saved as a spot download, but thats a small inconvenience. Mind, I also use Palemoon (sfs) for general browsing & viewing youtube, so both have a place.

[xenial]

I use Vivaldi for gmail. Runs as a sfs. Loads emails FAST.

It leaves other browsers I have tried in the dust, and I find it absolutely indispensable for using gmail on older, slower machines.

OK, everything needs to be saved as a spot download, but thats a small inconvenience. Mind, I also use Palemoon (sfs) for general browsing & viewing youtube, so both have a place.

Hi geek,
i have found vivaldi to be the best browser i have used on this 32bit 2gb computer,it runs very fast and smooth.
Like you i have pale moon installed also but seeing as 32bit linux pale moon will be unsupported after november of this year i see vivaldi being the valid replacement.

[mikewalsh]

I use Vivaldi for gmail. Runs as a sfs. Loads emails FAST.

It leaves other browsers I have tried in the dust, and I find it absolutely indispensable for using gmail on older, slower machines.

OK, everything needs to be saved as a spot download, but thats a small inconvenience. Mind, I also use Palemoon (sfs) for general browsing & viewing youtube, so both have a place.

Just so's you know, I built, a couple of years ago, what I call "Spot2Root". It's a series of scripts that simplify the transfer of downloaded material out of, and material for upload into, the /root/spot directory.....along with changing ownership permissions (for browsers that run-as-spot). You can also disable the auto-start mechanism, if you don't want it sitting permanently in the task bar, and start/stop manually if you just want to use it on an as-and-when basis.

All controlled from a nice, easy-to-use YAD-powered GUI, and activated by a button in the notification area.

You can find it here:-

Spot2Root

Help yourself to the version you want. The supplied version of YAD is arch-specific, but that's the only bit that is.


Mike.

[Geek3579]

Thanks Mike,

I will give this a go. Could be quite handy, as I download a lot of files.

[01101001b]

I was just wondering what thoughts and opinions puppy users have on this browser.?

Hi xenial!
I use Palemoon (64bit, since work reasons obligated me to switch to 64bit) and Vivaldi 32bit is my backup browser when PM bumps into some trouble.

I used Opera 12 as my primary browser as long as I could (nowadays I still use it as a mail client). Although Vivaldi poses as a natural Opera 12 succesor, truth is, it doesn't feel that way. It feels like a Chromium wrapper to me. Moreover, I prefer staying away from Google as far as I can.

Long story short: If Vivaldi works ok for you, it's all said Enjoy!

[xenial]

I was just wondering what thoughts and opinions puppy users have on this browser.?

Hi xenial!
I use Palemoon (64bit, since work reasons obligated me to switch to 64bit) and Vivaldi 32bit is my backup browser when PM bumps into some trouble.

I used Opera 12 as my primary browser as long as I could (nowadays I still use it as a mail client). Although Vivaldi poses as a natural Opera 12 succesor, truth is, it doesn't feel that way. It feels like a Chromium wrapper to me. Moreover, I prefer staying away from Google as far as I can.

Long story short: If Vivaldi works ok for you, it's all said Enjoy!

Hi
I am a long term pale moon user too.used it for many years.Unfortunately the 32bit linux builds will be unsupported in november so unless i upgrade to a 64bit machine it will be goodbye palemoon.

Yea just been looking at vivaldi and it seems a viable alternative but in my heart of hearts i like firefox more .

[01101001b]

Yea just been looking at vivaldi and it seems a viable alternative but in my heart of hearts i like firefox more .

Firefox it is then
Regards!

[rburkartjo]

yes imho vivaldi is great. and you can install extensions from the chrome web store

[mikeslr]

May I suggest an alternative, Mike Walsh's portable iron, https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... Zc6bltZlud.

I like its clean GUI. Like vivaldi, it can make use of Chrome-extensions including speed-dials if you want one. I've sometimes used "Speed Dial 2 New tab". As far as I can tell, it functions as quickly as vivaldi.

Mike also packages it as a browser working from a chrooted environment, viewtopic.php?p=4748#p4748. On my desktop that version remained very responsive and Pupsys-Info didn't indicate that a significant amount of RAM was being used. But my desktop is a reasonable powerful system and Mike suggests that on systems with less resources the chrooted environment --practically a whole other operating system-- will take a toll.

That, of course, is not the case with the portable. I mentioned the chrooted version because --interested in how 'locked down' that system was-- I compared its config setting to those used by Ungoolged Chromium. I was pleasantly surprised to find that those 40 +/- settings were almost identical. Ungoogle-chromium is based on chromium 89 and it had 2 or 3 settings not yet available under 88; and one setting where Iron was slightly more permissive which I could change to UG's stricter standard. I have no reason to believe that Mike altered Irons' default setting when he relocated the portable to the chrooted environment.

P.S. I just scanned thru this thread and see Mike 'made an appearance' in which he mentioned Seamonkey but suggested it 'was an acquired taste'. Hopefully those who know how to compile web-browsers will acquire that taste. It actually requires less RAM to function as a browser than palemoon; and throws in an HTML editor and email manager. Like palemoon, it can make use of the ca-archive, https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive in order to install addons which, among other features, will make it appear more 'firefox-like'.

[Gnimmelf]

Im runing fossapup 64bit and i have tried a lot of different browsers. vivaldi 3.4.2066.106 i have found to be the fastest.
its my favorite for the time being! and i would like if Vivaldi could be the default browser in puppy linux.

kindly Gnimmelf

[Grey]

Vivaldi, Basilisk, Brave, Waterfox, Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Iron, Palemoon, SeaMonkey... I think I managed to remember ten of them
What does the Bible say? "My name is Legion, for we are many"
And it still turns out that the Gecko-Goanna or WebKit-Blink engine is used. Probably the age, but since some year I don't care about the name and I just press F11(full screen) in any browser and use keyboard shortcuts.

[tallboy]

I run the latest Vivaldi in tahr64_6.0.6, it is very fast - up almost 50% from previous version, and totally stable. The tab management is incredible. I installed it using the tool https://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/p ... noarch.pet. It takes some time to convert the Vivaldi to a .pet and install it, be patient and just wait. To run it as root, add --no-sandbox to the opening command. I have complained about my PaleMoon versions crashing, when used on certain sites with lots of ad thumbnails. Vivaldi is totally stable on those same sites, and any other sites as well. Not a single crash or problem.
All the engines Gecko, Goanna, Chrome are about 20 years old, but they are only providing the basic code for website rendering. Here are some interesting comments:

https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/

BTW, I saw a comment in an earlier post about not liking Google. Google own the open-source Chrome engine, but that is all that Google has to do with Vivaldi. Vivaldi has a built-in tracker and ad blocker. I use a /etc/hosts file that blocks pretty much all Google addresses, the only problem with that is that an occasional Google captcha doesn't work. I have used PaleMoon for many years, and still do, but I now use Vivaldi more and more. A full screen Vivaldi on a 22" widescreen, with several tabs simultaneously open in panels and tiles; perfect!

https://vivaldi.com/features/tab-management/

tallboy

vivaldi.jpg (241.43 KiB) Viewed 1004 times

[xenial]

I beg to differ with your assertion that vivaldi only has connections with google in regard to the chromium engine.
It uses google services like the chrome web store and crypto token etc as are seen within the settings.

The GUI will always be it's downfall and i found it slow to be honest when compared to the vanilla chromium interface.

Don't get me wrong,the customisation it offers is great if you for example have 100+tabs open etc.
who on earth has that amount of tabs open which requires 2-level tab stacking....??....spend half the time perusing through endless tabs instead of reading content.!.

Dozens of bugs years old even which are never addressed or acknowledged and i don't think the developers give a rat's ass whether they are fixed or not as they are trying to reel in users to be profitable as stated in their forum blogs.

i have tried to like this browser but there are too many niggles with it and they keep adding gimmicks instead of fixing bugs etc.

[Grey]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember that initially it was promised that Vivaldi would be a new Opera. And he became the new Chrome. Therefore, I remember a lot of my friends and acquaintances waiting, waiting for a new Opera, and then switched to other solutions.

[xenial]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember that initially it was promised that Vivaldi would be a new Opera. And he became the new Chrome. Therefore, I remember a lot of my friends and acquaintances waiting, waiting for a new Opera, and then switched to other solutions.

it made good sense for vivaldi to use the chromium engine for pure compatibilty reasons so there is no issue there.

I know they are discussing using their own extension store although i find that a bizarre intent seeing as chrome extensions can simply be added so having their own extension store and adding to their own workload seems a bit puzzling to be honest.

The added features they have in their browser "should" be optional extensions like the word processor etc and adding a silly 80s game was pointless to be honest.
maybe in time they will have to create their own store or bloat the browser out with features nobody asked for.

[gychang]

I use Vivaldi for gmail. Runs as a sfs. Loads emails FAST.

It leaves other browsers I have tried in the dust, and I find it absolutely indispensable for using gmail on older, slower machines.

OK, everything needs to be saved as a spot download, but thats a small inconvenience. Mind, I also use Palemoon (sfs) for general browsing & viewing youtube, so both have a place.

where can I get 32bit vivaldi.sfs? Like to try it on my bionicpup32?

[darry19662018]

May I suggest an alternative, Mike Walsh's portable iron, https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... Zc6bltZlud.

I like its clean GUI. Like vivaldi, it can make use of Chrome-extensions including speed-dials if you want one. I've sometimes used "Speed Dial 2 New tab". As far as I can tell, it functions as quickly as vivaldi.

Mike also packages it as a browser working from a chrooted environment, https://puppylinux.rockedge.org/viewtop ... 4748#p4748. On my desktop that version remained very responsive and Pupsys-Info didn't indicate that a significant amount of RAM was being used. But my desktop is a reasonable powerful system and Mike suggests that on systems with less resources the chrooted environment --practically a whole other operating system-- will take a toll.

That, of course, is not the case with the portable. I mentioned the chrooted version because --interested in how 'locked down' that system was-- I compared its config setting to those used by Ungoolged Chromium. I was pleasantly surprised to find that those 40 +/- settings were almost identical. Ungoogle-chromium is based on chromium 89 and it had 2 or 3 settings not yet available under 88; and one setting where Iron was slightly more permissive which I could change to UG's stricter standard. I have no reason to believe that Mike altered Irons' default setting when he relocated the portable to the chrooted environment.

P.S. I just scanned thru this thread and see Mike 'made an appearance' in which he mentioned Seamonkey but suggested it 'was an acquired taste'. Hopefully those who know how to compile web-browsers will acquire that taste. It actually requires less RAM to function as a browser than palemoon; and throws in an HTML editor and email manager. Like palemoon, it can make use of the ca-archive, https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive in order to install addons which, among other features, will make it appear more 'firefox-like'.

Yep Mike has done great work getting these going - use my self as daily go to Browser - Thanks Mike Walsh.

[Feek]

I use Vivaldi for gmail. Runs as a sfs. Loads emails FAST.

It leaves other browsers I have tried in the dust, and I find it absolutely indispensable for using gmail on older, slower machines.

OK, everything needs to be saved as a spot download, but thats a small inconvenience. Mind, I also use Palemoon (sfs) for general browsing & viewing youtube, so both have a place.

where can I get 32bit vivaldi.sfs? Like to try it on my bionicpup32?

Hi,

try the app for getting latest version of vivaldi in Puppy package manager. It is called "install Vivaldi browser" or "get Vivaldi browser". After install it should appear in internet section. The app will download the latest version and will create a .sfs from it.

Enjoy

[tallboy]

The changes to Vivaldi's speed is very recent, less that two weeks ago:
https://vivaldi.com/blog/how-we-made-vi ... -chromium/
There are some very interesting details to be found here, that explains the relation to Google:
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-different-from-chrome/
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-powerf ... -settings/
https://vivaldi.com/blog/decoding-netwo ... n-vivaldi/
Vivaldi does not use any services from Google that demand that Vivaldi give away user info, simply because Vivaldi don't read or store any user info. They do not have any data to give away, or sell. https://vivaldi.com/privacy/browser/ Whatever details you choose to store, is kept in the Vivaldi profile file on your own PC, and can be cleared as shown below. Vivaldi cannot see what you do. Any syncs with other units are encrypted.

vivaldi-del.jpg (18.64 KiB) Viewed 1002 times

Using DuckDuckGo for searching, in a Vivaldi with active ad and tracker blocker, in a Puppy running from RAM, online via a VPN, may be the most secure way of using the internet.

Don't get me wrong,the customisation it offers is great if you for example have 100+tabs open etc. who on earth has that amount of tabs open which requires 2-level tab stacking....??....spend half the time perusing through endless tabs instead of reading content.!

I have never seen the reason for opening 100's of tabs. But, let us say that you, like I sometimes do, happen to open two forums at the same time, and open all the latest unread posts in tabs. You may even open a wikipedia page or two, to check on somthing you read or write in a post, maybe a .pdf or two, maybe the latest weather and news pages. You will then find it extremely practical to use the function 'Stack tabs by hosts'. Instead of having an endless mix of all tabs in a single line, you have the different hosts in the upper level tabs, and only the currently used host's tabs, visible in the second level. You switch between the hosts to see their tabs, and the function can be activated and deactivated with a mouse click. It is very useful, even with only a few tabs open from each host. Try it, it is very easy to be addicted.
Another use for it, is when you tile the tabs, as I have shown in the post above. Writing this text in this post, while having a clone of the tab open in another tile, is very practical. I don't have to scroll in and out of this text to see what you wrote, your text is open in the other tile.

tallboy

[mikewalsh]

@tallboy :-

In all honesty, Olaf, though I use Vivaldi on occasion - I'm testing out, and packaging SO many different browsers, much of the time! - I've never taken much notice of the "tab-stacking" stuff.

It sounds very similar to what Opera are now doing with their "workspaces". This does much the same thing; allows you to group sets of tabs according to preference, though in their case I find it better laid out.....these are activated from the side panel, rather than having TWO rows of tabs along the top (which I, personally, would find confusing).

IF I have a need for using this kind of layout, it's Opera that I turn to nowadays. "Horses for courses", as the old saying goes; everyone has their preferred way of doing things, which is partly why I maintain so many different browsers.....hopefully there's something there for everyone's tastes, and browsers ARE, after all, the "glue" that hold on-line communities together, and enable them to keep functioning.

But I'm still a Chrome man at heart!

Mike.

[mikeslr]

Hi tallboy, thanks for the post. Although I still prefer Iron's clean GUI, I now have a much higher opinion about what vivaldi is doing. Will run some comparisons when I get a chance.

[xenial]

Hi tallboy, thanks for the post. Although I still prefer Iron's clean GUI, I now have a much higher opinion about what vivaldi is doing. Will run some comparisons when I get a chance.

To be honest i do not see what iron browser's intentions are either...most of the iron "tweaks" can be achieved in vanilla chromium.
that is my opinion fwiw.

[mikeslr]

Yes. You can spend an hour tweaking Chromium to obtain the security and privacy settings which Iron provides OOTB. I compared Iron's default settings to those under ungoogled-chromium and they was almost identical. One I changed to match; and IIRC two others I couldn't change as Iron's about:config didn't have entries. About the only downside to Iron is that its often 2 months behind the most recent version of Chromium.

I haven't examined vivaldi's about:config settings. But appreciating tallboy's recommendations I've re-activated a frugal install of Tahrpup64 and created a vivaldi.sfs By the way, I didn't see where Mike Walsh's portable fails to use any of vivaldi's modules. Other than move the profile folder into /opt/vivaldi, the only arguments starting Mike Walsh's portable has are those in this line:

exec -a "$0" "$HERE/vivaldi-bin" "$@" --no-sandbox --user-data-dir=$HERE/PROFILE --ppapi-flash-path=$HERE/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so --disable-infobars "$@"

in the vivaldi-pup script. No sandbox; no infobars. AFAIK, the former is required to run as root; not sure about the latter.

I forgot how responsive tahrpup64 was.

[step]

From the Vivaldi Blog. Interesting reading for users of chrome-based browsers.
No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FLoC’ed
Why Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC, a new suite of technologies to target ads on the web.
Published on April 13, 2021 – By Jon von Tetzchner

PS. I'm not interested in starting a flame war pro or against any browser make. To each their own.

[tallboy]

...though in their case I find it better laid out.....these are activated from the side panel, rather than having TWO rows of tabs along the top (which I, personally, would find confusing).

Mike, in Vivaldi you can choose which of those methods you prefer, panel or tabs, or, you can use both at the same time!

As far as I know, you have to use the --no-sandbox to run Vivaldi as root. I simply copied Mike's code from the portable version to a script in /root/myapplications/bin/stable-vivaldi, which opens from an icon on the desktop. The wmctrl -s 1 is to open Vivaldi in virtual desktop 2.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
wmctrl -s 1
exec vivaldi-stable --no-sandbox --disable-infobars --disk-cache-size=10000000 --media-cache-size=10000000 --user-data-dir=/root/.config/vivaldi --allow-outdated-plugins --audio-buffer-size=2048 "$@" 

I am one of those guys who read a manual prior to doing some work, it has speared me a lot of trouble! A lot of you guys do the opposite; throw away the manual, and see what happens while you work. Some of you make comments here, which tell me that you have not dived into the Vivaldi pages, or videos, that describes the latest version. You have missed a lot of details, because Vivaldi is made with a different view on what is important. It is in many ways very different from PaleMoon, and you have to read the manuals, and watch the videos, to find the details. I am discovering alternative ways of doing things with Vivaldi, all the time. There are things I would like to change or add, and that I will mention in their forum. There are things I miss, after using PaleMoon for a long time. But, I feel the same enthusiasm now for Vivaldi, as I once felt for PaleMoon.

tallboy

BTW, I'll mention one feature. Vivaldi has a built-in screenshot function, which let you choose between a selection you drag with your mouse, or a full page capture. I seldom use a full page screenshot, and when I do, I always miss a line or two. Vivaldi is different, because if you are at the top of the page, it actually takes a shot of the entire page, top to bottom. If you are at another place in the page, it takes a normal window screenshot.
(I had to shrink the size for this forum, the normal copy is fullsize)

2021-04-16 01.03.19 forum.puppylinux.com 0f1485cacf61.jpg (78.13 KiB) Viewed 906 times

[tallboy]

step, that article about Google FloC should be read by all PC users, it is vital information.

As Vivaldi says: FloC off!

tallboy

[mikewalsh]

@tallboy :-

You have to remember, Olaf, that I'm a bit of a special case as regards browser preferences.

Aside from having a stated liking for Chrome, since I've been using it for the entire 12+ years of its existence, I spend so much time re-packaging a multitude of browsers - and trying to come up with ways to make them even more "easy-to-use" for the community - that I don't really have any specific 'preferences' one way OR the other. I don't spend that much time in any individual browser..!

I AM, however, enjoying seeing you wax so enthusiastic over something other than Pale Moon..! It's wonderful to see.

I daresay the improved hardware helps a lot, doesn't it?

Mike.