Mark Galassi writes:
The result was dreadful: you use firefox and it immediately uses all RAM. Even a 1gig machine cannot work with current versions.
Yes, browsers are possibly the most apt example of Wirth’s Law in action.
Now the standard advice given is "don't use a very old distro for low-RAM machines since it will miss security and other bug fixes; you should instead use a modern distro that's tailored for low resource".
Indeed. While performance is important, security is even more important. I cannot in good conscience ever recommend an out of date browser. Consider: Firefox’s PDF viewer had a severe bug that allowed malicious or compromised ad servers to steal your SSH keys; it was only fixed in August of last year. Every time there’s a CA breach like DigiNotar, its certificates are blacklisted in a browser update (because the state of HTTPS certificate revocation handling is… not good). Fundamental weaknesses in old encryption protocols like SSLv3 and TLS 1.0 keep getting found every few months; usually the most important defensive action you can take is updating to the newest release of your browser. No matter how much faster they would be, using old (and thus *necessarily* insecure) browsers is not an option.
The problem is that people will want a browser that's featureful enough (i.e. not dillo or any other simple html renderer).
Personally I use NetSurf for lightweight browsing. It’s the only browser in my experience that runs at a bearable speed on old PowerPC machines. That said, while it makes a valiant effort at rendering the modern web, its JavaScript support (while improving all the time) is still effectively nil. When I find the time, I’d like to spend some time improving NetSurf’s web compatibility and its security. Personally I see a lot of potential in NetSurf because it keeps a small codebase. Part of the problem with large browsers is they simply have too much code to be manageable. NetSurf builds in under three minutes on my machine; Firefox takes over 70 minutes. Chromium has been building well over an hour and shows no sign of finishing soon. (Using four cores!!!) I don’t use Dillo much. My impression of it is not great. I even saw this email just yesterday: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=146056872032709&w=2 I suspect Mozilla’s new Servo engine will be significantly faster than current (Gecko‐based) Firefox for at least two reasons: deprecating XUL and distributing to multiple cores. Both of those are great steps, but I don’t trust Mozilla to write decent code – they’ve been one of the worst offenders for years, and I fear Servo will be no different. -- Anthony J. Bentley