Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Which browser is most lightweight for puppy? chromium and firefox are eating ram

maybe you can try vivaldi?

Seamonkey-portable. See my post here, viewtopic.php?p=6798#p6798.

Of course, we've assumed --and you know what they say about that -- that you are looking for a Web-browser capable of handling the graphic rich content of many of today's Websites. Some websites may still tolerate opera 12.16; and your Package Manager may offer Lynx, a text-only web-browser.

I use Palemoon in my ScPups as well as ArchPup. In older Slacko 6.3.2 I use an older Palemoon compiled
for older glib.c (don't have the link at the moment, might be in the old Murga forums). Palemoon is
available in ScPup via "get web browser" from peebee.
Wiz

I use palemoon mainly on my xenaialpup.I do have vivaldi installed for facebook .

It's always saddened me that development of the old Qt-based "QtWeb" got dropped when it did. There was a truly lightweight browser, that would handle 'heavy' websites with aplomb.....but it all started to fall apart when https began to become the standard mode of connection; QtWeb was never built to handle such a thing, and its developer had lost interest in his project somewhere around a year previously.

The trouble with browsers today is that all of 'em are based around either Chrome OR Firefox.....neither of which are exactly 'lightweight'. The only reason Pale Moon is as light as it is stems from the fact that Moonchild Productions have built it around UXP - the Unified XUL Platform - all of which is very firmly based on FF prior to FF29, when Mozilla switched to the 'Australis' interface, and began building parts of it with Rust and other newer languages. Pale Moon uses its own, 'Goanna' rendering engine, and have made it very clear that they haven't the faintest intention of adding DRM support.....necessary for things like NetFlix, or Spotify, to name but two. And WebExtensions are an absolute no-no; you want to see the outrage and sarcasm that arises if you dare to mention such things over on the Pale Moon forums..!


Mike.

mikewalsh wrote: Fri Oct 02, 2020 6:50 pm It's always saddened me that development of the old Qt-based "QtWeb" got dropped when it did. There was a truly lightweight browser, that would handle 'heavy' websites with aplomb.....but it all started to fall apart when https began to become the standard mode of connection; QtWeb was never built to handle such a thing, and its developer had lost interest in his project somewhere around a year previously.

The trouble with browsers today is that all of 'em are based around either Chrome OR Firefox.....neither of which are exactly 'lightweight'. The only reason Pale Moon is as light as it is stems from the fact that Moonchild Productions have built it around UXP - the Unified XUL Platform - all of which is very firmly based on FF prior to FF29, when Mozilla switched to the 'Australis' interface, and began building parts of it with Rust and other newer languages. Pale Moon uses its own, 'Goanna' rendering engine, and have made it very clear that they haven't the faintest intention of adding DRM support.....necessary for things like NetFlix, or Spotify, to name but two. And WebExtensions are an absolute no-no; you want to see the outrage and sarcasm that arises if you dare to mention such things over on the Pale Moon forums..!


Mike.

Yes mike i must haphazardly agree with you in regard to the pale moon forum and one moderator in particular..(tobin) can be downright insulting to users.some users have even offered to help with new builds and subsequently get shot down in flames by tobin.I find it very surprising anyone would wish to help such a toxic team.

The Light Browser provided by peebee in some of his puppies is very light to use. I know some don't like using it, but it works very well for me when I use it in ScPup64. I have no issues when viewing news websites or watching youtube videos. The RAM usage is considerably lighter. Some websites complain about using supported browsers, but still appear to work OK.

Tsla wrote: Fri Oct 02, 2020 1:41 pm Which browser is most lightweight for puppy? chromium and firefox are eating ram

Pale moon 32bit is the least worse of all. I use it even in my 64bit system (Pale moon 64bit uses some noticeable extra amount of ram for exactly the same session I run in Pale moon 32bit).
Only Seamonkey use a little less ram but for some reason I always find it limited, cumbersome and unstable.
Just my two cents

xenial wrote: Fri Oct 02, 2020 7:21 pm Yes mike i must haphazardly agree with you in regard to the pale moon forum and one moderator in particular..(tobin) can be downright insulting to users.some users have even offered to help with new builds and subsequently get shot down in flames by tobin.I find it very surprising anyone would wish to help such a toxic team.

I couldn't agree more. I came across Pale moon's main developer once, this "Moon-something", and he was such a jerk just for the sake of it, that I left that forum for good, utter surprised
So I decided that "if life gives you lemmons, you make lemonade". And here I am, using his browser

mikewalsh wrote: Fri Oct 02, 2020 6:50 pm It's always saddened me that development of the old Qt-based "QtWeb" got dropped when it did. There was a truly lightweight browser, that would handle 'heavy' websites with aplomb.....but it all started to fall apart when https began to become the standard mode of connection; QtWeb was never built to handle such a thing, and its developer had lost interest in his project somewhere around a year previously.

I wouldn't be surprised nor saddened. All things are ephemeral. This kind of things happens all the time. How many of our old Puppy devs are still around today? The QtWeb guy probably found something more interesting to do in his/her life. What's __saddening__ is that nobody else picked up the pieces and continued the development. Where are __those__ people?

The trouble with browsers today is that all of 'em are based around either Chrome OR Firefox.....neither of which are exactly 'lightweight'. The only reason Pale Moon is as light as it is stems from the fact that Moonchild Productions have built it around UXP - the Unified XUL Platform

I respectfully disagree. PaleMoon is built with two main objectives.
a) To stick around with UXP (and never use Australis)
b) To be memory efficient.

(a) has nothing to do with (b). Firefox, even during its UXP days, __was__ a memory hog. PaleMoon being memory efficient is the __hard work__ of its developers to either fix things or shed rarely used features; it doesn't fall to their lap simply because they choose to use UXP. They actually had to strive for it.

all of which is very firmly based on FF prior to FF29, when Mozilla switched to the 'Australis' interface, and began building parts of it with Rust and other newer languages.

Rust certainly doesn't help, but Firefox has always been known as memory hog before Chrome came and took the trophy away.

Pale Moon uses its own, 'Goanna' rendering engine, and have made it very clear that they haven't the faintest intention of adding DRM support.....necessary for things like NetFlix, or Spotify, to name but two.

Their philosophy is to support free web, and those DRM things get in the way. One can either agree or disagree with them, but we certainly can't blame them for sticking to their principles. If one likes NetFlix and Spotify more than free web, then certainly use other browsers who aren't so stiffly-principled.

And WebExtensions are an absolute no-no; you want to see the outrage and sarcasm that arises if you dare to mention such things over on the Pale Moon forums..!

Well, what do you expect. One of the __core__ project objective is to stick with UXP till kingdom come, and people come and harass them about supporting WebExtensions (which requires them to abandone UXP).

It's like expecting Puppy to come with Gnome and KDE support out of the box. Ask once and you get an explanation. Ask twice and you'll get a lecture. Ask thrice and people will start calling you names.

---

One of the thing that PaleMoon doesn't support is WebRTC - the one that allows audio and video conferencing over the web. It's an interesting and exciting feature, but PaleMoon has decided not to support it because of the bloat it creates. I respect their decision and I will certainly not come to demand them to add this feature. I'll just use another browser when I need WebRTC. It's all about the right tool for the job.

---

This is not about PaleMoon defense. I have never spoken to MoonChild at all. But I will argue that PaleMoon developers brings something very interesting to the world; and their presence/competition keep other browser vendors more honest.

Constructive criticism are good but arguing with them over their founding principles really doesn't help, it only encourages them to go the way of the dodo (or QtWeb, for that matter), and I certainly __don't__ want that to happen.

Hence, the clarification. Disclaimer: Yes, I am biased. I use PaleMoon everyday. I am grateful for its developers (who are not my acquaintances) to release it freely, for me. I certainly don't want it to disappear.

I love Palemoon "SSE-only" version. On some sites it stutters for the first few seconds but after that runs well.

Very lean.

@jamesbond :-

Morning, Jim.

Don't get me wrong; I use Pale Moon regularly myself. I use it for general browsing. But since I like my NetFlix, and I have a whole raft of Chromium-based portable 'clones' set-up to run from an externally-mounted partition, I've got NetFlix running as a desktop 'app' from Iron, showing in its own window, and launched from its own separate Menu entry.

Pale Moon on one desktop, the NetFlix app on another.....with 16 GB RAM, I could have half-a-dozen open simultaneously, and barely scratch what's available. (Dear me; I'm becoming a very "atypical" Puppy user these days, aren't I?)

Sometimes, I do.....

And yes; I, too, respect Moonchild Productions for sticking to their principles. It's a very sweet browser, and is indeed very memory-efficient.....certainly, they've improved vastly upon Mozilla's iterations in that respect. Yet, having been a Chrome user right from the beta test program back in Autumn 2008, I very much like my 'clones', as well.....

I'm easy in this respect. I really don't have any strong preferences one way or t'other; a browser is a browser.....as long as it works, and does what you want it to, that's what matters. They're the "glue" that hold on-line communities like ours together, after all.

And that's why I spend as much time on them as I do. I don't want our community to fragment, and I'll do everything I can to help ensure that doesn't happen.

(*shrug*)


Mike.

@mikewalsh Point taken No worries at all, mate.

There's lightweight and there's functionally lightweight.

Dillo is probably the lightest for very basic pages.

My second is Epiphany Web.

Lightest full-featured browser is beyond my experience. They seem similar to me, it's just a matter if they work. I'm typing in Chrome and it's relatively fast, though I also try to avoid it.

Chrome is versatile, so it's difficult. Good luck.