Opinions on lightweight browsers

[Ulysses_]

Just made a list of all lightweight graphical browsers available. Has anyone got experience with any of them or opinions?

dillo
chimera2
arora
links
midori
dooble
netsurf
surf

How do they compare with supposedly fast chrome-based ones below?

iron (chrome minus the tracking)
chromium
chrome

[loopywittgenstein]

Not forgetting  Qt Web Browser - which is (under Windows) makes an excellent second choice i.e. just fireup and loads in seconds.

http://www.qtweb.net/

Portable Qt-based web browser. Customizable GUI. Privacy features.
QtWeb is a fast, lightweight and portable browser with some unique UI and privacy features. QtWeb is an open source project based on Nokia's Qt framework (former Trolltech) and Apple's WebKit rendering engine (the same as being used in Apple Safari and Google Chrome).
Now available for Windows, MacOS X, Linux and Unix for Intel platforms!

There is a linux/unix version that I have not got round to trying.
Will it run under TC? - don't know.

Linux & Unix Application (elf386): QtWeb-elf386.zip   (13.4 MB)
Unzip and change 'QtWeb' file attributes to be able to execute application
Runs on Linux: Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, RedHat, Oracle, OpenSUSE, Fedora, CentOS, ...
Runs on Unix: PC-BSD (Intel platform)

http://www.qtweb.net/downloads/QtWeb-elf386.zip

Open Source
http://code.google.com/p/qtweb/

[hiro]

In my view opera9 (for everything with frames, javascript and flash) and dillo (for everything sane) are the best.
And I hate chrome.

[peterf]

+1 for Dillo

Doesn't work on all sites, but for the many that it does work on, you often get an better version of the page (IMO) than with Firefox, for example.

[u54749]

QTWeb for Linux works absolutely fine with TC.  Also tested it with Flash Player plugin - absolutely no problem.

A nice and fast browser that renders all websites that I've tested perfectly but it is not really small (14 Mb binary).

[tinypoodle]

QTWeb for Linux works absolutely fine with TC.  Also tested it with Flash Player plugin - absolutely no problem.

A nice and fast browser that renders all websites that I've tested perfectly but it is not really small (14 Mb binary).

That's 42MB when un-upx'ed.
Appears to be a fork of arora.

[curaga]

42 is that with all libs static? Still would be huge...

[tinypoodle]

        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xb7efb000)
        libjpeg.so.62 => /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62 (0xb7ed5000)
        libpng12.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 (0xb7eb2000)
        libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/local/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0xb7e76000)
        libSM.so.6 => /usr/lib/libSM.so.6 (0xb7e6f000)
        libICE.so.6 => /usr/lib/libICE.so.6 (0xb7e5a000)
        libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xb7e52000)
        libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/local/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0xb7e24000)
        libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0xb7db6000)
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb7da9000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb7ca8000)
        libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb7c94000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0xb7c90000)
        libgthread-2.0.so.0 => /usr/local/lib/libgthread-2.0.so.0 (0xb7c8c000)
        librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0xb7c84000)
        libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/local/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0xb7ba1000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7b8a000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb7acf000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0xb7aab000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb7aa1000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xb7968000)
        libuuid.so.1 => /lib/libuuid.so.1 (0xb7964000)
        libexpat.so.1 => /usr/local/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0xb7943000)
        libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0xb793e000)
        libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0xb793b000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7efc000)

A bit surprised it is shipped upx'ed but unstripped.
Stripping with sstrip brought it down to 35MB.

[tinypoodle]

Just to get a quick indication of size, I squashed the binary, which results in 18MB of size.
[NOTE: Such is not an optimal working solution, as QtWeb for portability reason by default places all dynamic user profile files into same dir as which the binary is run from, and of course that needs to be writable. It seems otherwise /tmp is used for dynamic files.]

Arora of which QtWeb seems to be a fork is 25MB from repo.
So, from this perspective, it suddenly looks no longer that bad for a binary which must be including at least webkit and QT.

After some more testing, I found following:
Running QtWeb upx'ed as shipped results in 40MB of initial (about:blank) res mem usage.
Running after un-upx'ing results in 11MB.
(Stripping and/or squashing do not seem to influence initial res mem usage).

 

[tinypoodle]

QTWeb for Linux works absolutely fine with TC.  Also tested it with Flash Player plugin - absolutely no problem.

Besides from flashplayer I found it also opened an ogg file out of the box with the mplayerplugin I had already installed from before.   

[tinypoodle]

Just to get a quick indication of size, I squashed the binary, which results in 18MB of size.
[NOTE: Such is not an optimal working solution, as QtWeb for portability reason by default places all dynamic user profile files into same dir as which the binary is run from, and of course that needs to be writable. It seems otherwise /tmp is used for dynamic files.]

On further examination...
If QtWeb is symlinked into $PATH, and then just called by executable name, it seems to place all dynamic user profile files into pwd   

[Ulysses_]

Remains to be seen how fast it is then, this QTWeb browser, compared with opera.

[tinypoodle]

Remains to be seen how fast it is then, this QTWeb browser, compared with opera.

Both feel fast enough for me what concerns speed of operation.
I could not compare initial startup speed, as QtWeb would start with homepage, while when starting opera I would either have to agree to the EULA or continue with last session, so it would depend how many minutes it takes on how many hundreds of tabs open in how many windows   

[ali]

Just made a list of all lightweight graphical browsers available. Has anyone got experience with any of them or opinions?

dillo
chimera2
arora
links
midori
dooble
netsurf
surf

How do they compare with supposedly fast chrome-based ones below?

iron (chrome minus the tracking)
chromium
chrome

off topic, you might want to read the Why no one should use the „Iron“ Chromium fork article

back on topic: i tried dillo, qtbrowser and midori, midori seamed really nice but it was misbehaving
in the end i got so used to the chromium features that i can't live without them
i tried setting up firefox like chromium but it missbehaved so i came back

[mpayne]

Dillo is really nice though there are some issues concerning compatibility with other web sites.  Though the experience could be at par, if not even better, than Firefox and other browsers in my opinion.

I would like to see this as a full blown but still light weight browser. I am not sure though if that would still be light on computing resources.

I do not like Chrome as well.