Comments on: Lightweight Browser Rundown

by: Luke Maciak

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 07:09:23 +0000

@doorknob60 - I didn’t know about this one. Will need to check it out. Thanks for the tip!

by: doorknob60

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:53:55 +0000

You missed a really nice one, skipstone. It’s based on gecko so it can render pretty much anything, and I find it faster than Kasekahaze. I’m running on my laptop wth Fluxbuntu 7.10 with only 64 MB of RAM and a 400 Mhz CPU, so I really need a lightweight browser, and skipstone is my favorite so far.

Home Page: http://www.muhri.net/skipstone/
Ubuntu Packages: http://getdeb.net/app/SkipStone

by: Starhawk

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:24:14 +0000

Yeah you’re right Luke. that is of course the way they intend ya to use it. I recently found out about it and kind of like it because i can play pandora without tying up a tab in FF. Pandora affects FF responsiveness on my system, alot I might add. In windows I use a separate app for it but it still slows FF down. I like prism on buntu because it has a minimal effect on how FF acts. Some effect because of the CPU usage, but it is a good solution to playing pandora in a separate app in linux.

As to the icon thing I would prefer some choice as to where it puts the icon or even the option of not having one, just entering the url as happens when ya open prism by itself. Pretty neat little app tho, gotta love mozilla!

by: Luke Maciak

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:07:43 +0000

I guess it’s not really supposed to be a browser. It’s supposed to be a tool for integrating online apps into your desktop. So for example if you click on a word document it launches prism, uploads the file into Google Docs and loads it there.

I’m guessing this is why it has that weird behavior with the icons.

by: Starhawk

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:59:10 +0000

Have ya heard of prism?

“It’s a stripped down version of Firefox that essentially lets you load a single web page at a time. No tabs, no useful URL or navigation buttons. But Prism can come in handy if you like to keep a single web site like Gmail open all day, since it uses fewer resources than Firefox.”

No problems installing on Linux download the tar file, “unzip” it where ya want and it has a bin in the folder. no installation compiling or nothing. here it is running pandora on buntu. apparently it snatched my pandora cookies from firefox because i didn’t have to login in. Seemingly light memory foot print too, didn’t test it but i keep a system monitor on my desktop and it barely affected memory.

The only thing i don’t like about it is it insist of putting an icon on your desktop for every web site ya open in it. That’s kinda dumb I keep all icons offa my desktop, i use panels and drawers in my panels, and CLI. don’t want bunch icons trashing my desktop. I think i can move the desktop launcher to my menu tho or a panel. still WTF!

by: ernie

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 06:45:05 +0000

you might be able to run FF or sea monkey, but why would you want to?
I used enigma when i was on windows because it was fast and small and worked better than NS5. pretty much since then browsers have bloated and memory leaks are the norm. not to mention the scripts folks keep screwing up. personally i am waiting for Hv3 to come online till then i am still searching for a good small fast browser. thanks for making my search a bit simpler

by: Luke Maciak

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 21:20:09 +0000

@Marti - with a 2GHz machine you might actually be able to run full blown Ubuntu. I’m currently running Kubuntu Dapper on a 1.7 Ghz machine with only 512 MB of RAM. It’s slow but fully functional - on your average day I have Firefox, Kmail and Komodo Edit open at the same time and the machine remains responsive. In fact, I think it’s much faster that it could be if I was running XP on the same hardware.

If you are using Fluxbox I think you can easily run Firefox with this setup. It may start up slowly, but after it loads it should be fine. Add another 256 MB (if you can) and you should be in pretty good shape.

by: Marti

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 21:04:49 +0000

Thank you for the info on Kazehakase. I was afraid to use one of the small linux distros -and, hence, install one on this laptop- because of browser incompatibility with secure login sites (banks, mutual funds, etc.) Good to know that Kazehakase “should” support login.

I want to put fluxbuntu on 2GHz CPU with 256MB RAM emachines M2105 laptop. I did run the qemu VM with DamnSmallLinux 4.2. Nifty that everything works…except logging into JS sites.

I really just want to be free of XP.

by: Jake

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 05:30:30 +0000

@Luke Maciak: My desktop ran Gentoo on one partition for a while before the hard drive died. However, I usually ran a Firefox downloaded straight from ftp.mozilla.org and extracted into my home directory so it never set Gentoo in the user agent string. Honestly though, Gentoo just gets to be a pain. I never got into emerge. apt-get all the way for me now, except for when I’m playing with OS’s in VM’s. I’ve actually been doing this a lot lately now that I have more RAM

by: Luke Maciak

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:59:20 +0000

@Petr - I think you might be my first commenter using Gentoo! I don’t think I saw that icon here before.