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

[mikewalsh]

@mmmrr :-

One question? How big is the ext3 partition for the browsers.......and how full is it? Is the partition nearly full? How much "free space" is left?

I'm thinking the caches are too full.....

Mike.

[mmmrr]

@mikewalsh

sda5: 13 G total, 3683 M used, 8695 M free [71.8 %]
--from Properties--
sda5 also holds four directories of pics/music/texts
totaling 2920 M

recent info.: i booted jammy32 off a different usb
[after shutting down bionic64 & removing that usb]
used jammy's built-in light browser to download
first portable seamonkey i saw, [bigpup's] which
i'm using, runs fine so far.

..mm

[mmmrr]

experiment with jammy pup ended quickly:
light browser could not play youtube & i
could not get audio on seamonkey .

so i tried putting bionic64 on a freshly formatted
usb drive. i used gparted to copy my first install
attempt & paste it to the new usb. gparted found
and corrected 6 or 7 errors. the new usb would not
boot: display is a file folder with a question mark
on it.

6 or 7 items in mnt/initrd/dev_save were not on
the list when i looked at the new usb. i copied/
pasted them. still got question mark on file folder
when i tried booting the fresh bionic64.

i'll try another install on the separate usb then
see if any bootloader added after install works.

mm

[amethyst]

experiment with jammy pup ended quickly:
light browser could not play youtube & i
could not get audio on seamonkey .

so i tried putting bionic64 on a freshly formatted
usb drive. i used gparted to copy my first install
attempt & paste it to the new usb. gparted found
and corrected 6 or 7 errors. the new usb would not
boot: display is a file folder with a question mark
on it.

6 or 7 items in mnt/initrd/dev_save were not on
the list when i looked at the new usb. i copied/
pasted them. still got question mark on file folder
when i tried booting the fresh bionic64.

i'll try another install on the separate usb then
see if any bootloader added after install works.

mm

Light browser will not work on most sites because it is as old as the mountains (a cut down version of Firefox dated back to 2016). For a new browser for Jammy32 look at the browsers peebee provides.

[peebee]

experiment with jammy pup ended quickly:
light browser could not play youtube & i
could not get audio on seamonkey .

/opt/upup/upup-hints.txt

2. adrv web-browser
The web-browser supplied in the adrv is "lightweight" and should be replaced or augmented by a "heavyweight" browser in many scenarios. There is a menu item "Get Web Browser" under Internet that can be used to download a selection of suitable "heavyweight" browsers once internet access has been established.

[mmmrr]

@amethyst, peebee

thanks,
i'll pursue a browser for jammy32
which plays audio out of the box.
i have not found a way to get alsa
to resolve the issue.

jammy32 was/is plan b if i could
not resolve slow browsers on
bionic64.

cheers, mm

edit..i just chose pale moon off the
''internet'' item from main menu.
it opened showing only one bar
on the speaker display.
when i opened youtube it had sound.

[mmmrr]

apologies
my confusion seems to be
part of my life lately.

i'm ending this thread.
it's still unresolved
as far as v slow browsers
on bionic 64 are concerned.

maybe try another os

uncheers, mm

[amethyst]

apologies
my confusion seems to be
part of my life lately.

i'm ending this thread.
it's still unresolved
as far as v slow browsers
on bionic 64 are concerned.

maybe try another os

uncheers, mm

Bionic 64 could be iffy with the newest browsers (not sure if it can actually run all the newest browsers). I've never had problems running the newest Chrome with FossaPup 9.5 (there are also a few puplets of that distribution), Fossa 9.6 CE or SPup64. All tested and good. Try them and see.

[mmmrr]

thanks amethyst

i'll take a look a bit later.
i'm doing a major cleanup,
ahead of a visit from the
property manager.

i've used instructions from
the forum about booting with
an iso. i'll refresh that info.

cheers, mm

[mikeslr]

...
Bionic 64 could be iffy with the newest browsers (not sure if it can actually run all the newest browsers). I've never had problems running the newest Chrome with FossaPup 9.5 (there are also a few puplets of that distribution), Fossa 9.6 CE or SPup64. All tested and good. Try them and see.

Not sure about the original BionicPup64. But my 'Revival' remaster runs the latest portable firefox, Google-Chrome and waterfox-classic web-browsers. Just booted into it to try Google-Chrome. Note, waterfox-classic is published with the warning that it may be a security risk.

The latest palemoon requires glibc of at least 2.28. My 'Revival' has 2.27.

[mikewalsh]

@mmmrr :-

I'll second amethyst's recommendation vis-a-vis Chrome (indeed, any Chromium-based clone).

Where Mozilla decided, several years ago, to tie Firefork (and its many forks) into the massive f**k-up known as PulseAudio, The Chromium Project - and I don't know how they've done this - appear to have wisely decided to make their browser accommodate whatever sound-system it finds on a host OS.

Far more sensible approach, IMO.

Mike.

[mmmrr]

thanks mikeslr

bionic 64 ran very well until a few
weeks ago when browser became
so slow. os tasks like text, image
editing, were speedy as usual.

so happy to try yr remaster.
where do i find it? in the bionic64
thread? after this inspection i'm
prepping for...mm
oh..'which glibc' in console yields 0
response...

[mmmrr]

thanks mikewalsh

i have to check...
is it worth trying a chrome browser
on this existing bionic64 os?
usually i'd say have a go
but not when i'm feeling
this way. i'm making spelling
mistakes every line.
mm

[mmmrr]

hi mikewalsh

download, checksum of yr portable chrome
went okay. when it opened a dozen lines in
cpu monitor appeared. behaved like an anchor.

i'm going to find mikeslr's remaster of bionic64
and make sure i put it on an ext partition.

mm

[mikewalsh]

@mmmrr :-

To check your glibc, open a terminal. Type in

Code: Select all

ldd --version

.....and hit 'Enter'. That'll tell you what's what.

Mike.

[mmmrr]

@mikewalsh

root# ldd --version
ldd (Ubuntu GLIBC 2.27-3ubuntu1) 2.27

mikeslr says:
''the latest palemoon requires glibc of at least 2.28. My 'Revival' has 2.27.''

i still want to try bionic64 revival.
the inspection visit of my place went very well,
according to the inspector. i'm from the pack rat tribe
so i was cleaning desperately. big load off.

now to find mikeslr's remaster of bionic64, revival.

mm

[mikewalsh]

root# ldd --version
ldd (Ubuntu GLIBC 2.27-3ubuntu1) 2.27

mikeslr says:
''the latest palemoon requires glibc of at least 2.28. My 'Revival' has 2.27.''

Well, there's two answers to this.....and both depend on your hardware, and whether your CPU possesses the AVX instruction set. Moonchild is now building mainstream Pale Moon to require this instruction set; without it, the browser won't even pretend to run. It just sulks, and refuses to do anything.

Although the majority of CPUs have had this instruction set for 10-12 years, my Pentium Gold - despite being only 5 yrs old - doesn't have it, because Intel deliberately disabled it!

If your CPU has AVX, you can run the mainstream Pale Moon download, and I can let you have a re-configured Bionicpup64 'base' SFS which has been re-built with Fossapup's glibc 2.31. Alternatively, you can run the portable version I use myself - which has a self-contained glibc 2.31 'tweak' the way watchdog used to do it.

Entirely up to you. It's your choice......whatever "floats your boat".

Mike.

[ozsouth]

The widely available Celeron N4500 (Jasperlake, released early 2021) does not have AVX, so Palemoon 33.2.1 is the last working version for it. Despite having to use apulse, Firefox ESR is the next small, usable option (my latest sfs is 73mb). For me it just works.

[mmmrr]

@mikewalsh
@ozsouth

palemoon is staggering to keep up .
says it's 33.2.1 ,,64 bit,,gtk2
----------------------------------------
sysinfo says:
Product Name: iMac7,1
BIOS Vendor: Apple Inc.
Version: IM71.88Z.007A.B03.0803051705
Release Date: 03/05/08

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7700 @ 2.40GHz
Min/Max Speed: 800/2400 MHz
Current Speed of Core 0:2400 MHz, 1:1200 MHz
Core Count: 2
Min/Max Speed: 800/2400 MHz
Current Speed of Core 0:2400 MHz, 1:1200 MHz
Core Count: 2

Frequency governor : ondemand
Freq. scaling driver : acpi-cpufreq

Total RAM: 3001 MB
Used RAM: 1760 MB
Free RAM: 1241 MB
Buffers: 132 MB
Cached: 1403 MB
Total Swap: 2562 MB
Free Swap: 2562 MB

Actual Used RAM: 225 MB Used - (buffers + cached)
Actual Free RAM: 2776 MB Free + (buffers + cached)
------------------------------------------

is sysinfo the place to ask about the avx instruction set?
by the way, thanks for all the help.

i've been happy with yr portables, mikewalsh, so let me try the one you
use, please. last night i booted the installed bionic64 into ram,
no save file. noticably better browser perfomance. a reboot into
the default bionic was anchor action browsers as before.

it seems to me that i need to get the os off that fat32 file system
before anything. is that sound thinking?

i used the universal installer in the bionic64 [on fat32 partition sda1 of
usb stick.].
to install bionic65 to sda6, an ext2 partition, logical partition
on same usb stick. i could not get it to boot.

a couple of posts ago i proposed moving this booting issue to boot thread.
the browser so slow is real enough. i could hide the save file and
start again without having to sort out booting issue...but i would still running
bionic64 on fat32 . the browers all live on an ext3 storage partition on the same usb stick.

i need some advice on this fat32/ext3 setup.
for interim i'll hide savefile , reboot into existing install.
if that yields better browser speeds then i can look at
better browsers.

[ozsouth]

@mmmrr - PupSysinfo - viewing Mainboard then CPU & scrolling down will show cpu capabilities.
I would make your unallocated partition ext3 (sda7) & put your puppy there & edit your boot config.

[mmmrr]

@ozsouth

happy to do so.

just booted to ram for bionic on sda1],

[hid the savefile. tried google chrome.
flashy opening could not do anything
except make cpu load lines. made it
go away. but palemoon leapt into tasks
while lots of load lines left over.]

to be clear.. i'm running universal installer
from sda1. installing this bionic64 to sda7.

Screenshot.png (11.65 KiB) Viewed 1705 times

this warning shows up the instant i click on
installer. it happened before. i chose 'continue'

extract from sysinfo says
'BIOS Vendor: Apple Inc.'

the directory which bionic on sda1
boots from has directory 'EFI'

'finished. press enter key to continue'.
i press enter , text box goes away,
nothing appears to replace it..period,zipp
sweet nothing, please enlighten me.

mm

[ozsouth]

@mmmrr - from your picture a few posts back, sda3 is the extended partition, in which you have sda5 & sda6, where you made sda6 bootable. If you install to sda3, it wont work. I would use gparted to make sda7 from the unallocated space & install your puppy there.

[mmmrr]

Screenshot(1).png (22.44 KiB) Viewed 1681 times

@ozsouth

my mistake, fortunately just in text
in fact i followed yr words to the letter
bionic64 installed on sda7, made bootable
as described in my post,,,press enter to continue
...continue ???

mm

[mmmrr]

@ozsouth

i just realized that my saying,
'please enlighten me' two posts ago
may have seemed sarcastic.

i am deeply in the dark as to why
the universal installer should say
'press enter to continue' then vanish,
so unlike the careful instructions up
to that point.

i really want enlightening... why does
the installer do that & what do i do next?
edit grub config? where? 15 years ago i knew
how to do this stuff. even understood
some of it.

mm

[ozsouth]

@mmmrr - I didn't take your comments as sarcastic - it was late at night & your setup confuses me. Usually I would expect to see sda1 as the boot partition & later sda's as working ones. I think from here, you need to edit your grub config, adding a new entry for your bionic64 install, otherwise the system can't find it.

[mmmrr]

@ozsouth

here is sda1:

sda1.png (35.52 KiB) Viewed 1551 times

here is contents of grub.config:
--------------
insmod png
background_image /splash.png
set timeout=10

menuentry "Start bionicpup64 8.0" {
linux /vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash
initrd /initrd.gz
}

menuentry "Start bionicpup64 8.0 - RAM only" {
linux /vmlinuz pfix=ram pmedia=usbflash
initrd /initrd.gz
}

menuentry "Start bionicpup64 8.0 - No X" {
linux /vmlinuz pfix=nox pmedia=usbflash
initrd /initrd.gz
}

menuentry "Start bionicpup64 8.0 - check filesystem" {
linux /vmlinuz pfix=fsck pmedia=usbflash
initrd /initrd.gz
}

menuentry "Start bionicpup64 8.0 - No KMS" {
linux /vmlinuz nomodeset pmedia=usbflash
initrd /initrd.gz
}

menuentry "Start bionicpup64 8.0 - Ram Disk SHell" {
linux /vmlinuz pfix=rdsh pmedia=usbflash
initrd /initrd.gz
}

menuentry "Shutdown" {
halt
}

menuentry "Reboot" {
reboot
}
------------------

sda1 is the bionic64 [in ram] that i have been using
since last night. palemoon is working fine so i
just set it to prompt overnight to avoid the savefile
and run with the basic changes ..plain dark green
wallpaper, taskbar on top edge of screen, 4 workspaces,
screen res 1024x768. used since first puppy. [2.1.4.]

please walk me through the grub.config.

cheers, mm

[ozsouth]

@mmmrr - I use syslinux, not grub, so was hoping someine better at grub would jump in, but I think your current grub setup will only load puppies in sda1. You need an entry that points to the sda7 puppy. (is this on a hard disk? If so should probably have pmedia=atahd instead of usbflash, but if it works, I'm reluctant to change it).
Since both sda1 & sda7 have bionic64, at own risk, insert the following as the second menuentry in grub.cfg. Hopefully will work on reboot, if you select it then. (pdrv=sda7 works in syslinux. If it doesn't in grub try /dev/sda7).

menuentry "Start bionicpup64 8.0 sda7" {
linux /vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash pdrv=sda7
initrd /initrd.gz
}

[mmmrr]

@ozsouth

all on large usb,
harddrive on this elderly imac [~2008]
died some years ago. usb works well.

like so:
--------------
insmod png
background_image /splash.png
set timeout=10

menuentry "Start bionicpup64 8.0" {
linux /vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash
initrd /initrd.gz
}

menuentry "Start bionicpup64 8.0 sda7" {
linux /vmlinuz pmedia=usbflash pdrv=sda7
initrd /initrd.gz
}

------------?

looks okay here goes....mm

[mmmrr]

@ozsouth

100% amigo!

actually, 110%, because when i shut
down bionic64 -ram- i was offered a
save option. named it xxx-sda7, put
it in sda7. watched it load. then pow,
perfect recreation of previous bionic.
on ext3 instead of fat32. let's see
if those slow-poke, anchor-emulating
browsers get the lead out.

sweet doings, mr ozsouth.

how do i add 'many thanks'
to yr numbers? mm

[mmmrr]

it was easy for me to forget
that booting bionic64 onto a
linux file system a good thing,

it was also to see if it made a
difference to the super slow
portable browsers.

it did not: portable palemoon,
seamonkey, googlechrome all
are useless, i'm deleting them.

will try fresh others if needed.
the built-in palemoon is working
fine, offering updates, etc.

cheers, mm