Linux Lite Forums
General => On Topic => Topic started by: Jerry on September 12, 2016, 12:55:14 AM
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Good to see these kind of polls that target the wider linux community.
Source - https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?pollnumber=67&myaction=SeeVote&issue=20160912#poll
(http://i.imgur.com/r3LPx0A.png)
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Thanks for posting this -- I would have missed it.
Coincidently during the past week I've been testing a bunch of browsers in search of something decent to put on a couple of ancient (2002-03) machines that I'm going to donate. Have been getting more and more fed-up with Firefox over the last couple of years. It kills me to say that because I've been a loyal user since the Netscape days. Don't care much for many of the recent UI changes, but what bothers me more is that it has turned into a major resource hog. About 1 - 1 1/2 years ago I switched to Pale Moon as my go-to browser, which is basically Firefox with old UI and slightly tweaked engine. It's better, but still a pretty heavy browser. That's not a problem on my newer machines, but older ones still struggle.
I'm no fan of Google, so won't use chrome.
Tested Chromium a couple of years ago and didn't think much of it, so haven't bothered this time. However, I did test a Chromium-based browser called Slimjet (http://www.slimjet.com/) and was very impressed. Not crazy about it being close-source, but performance was noticeably better on ancient machines. Youtube videos played pretty well with it (some even in full-screen with minimal choppiness, which was a shock to me), vs. the same videos being almost unplayable with Firefox in standard size. (If they were open-source, they would have won my vote in the poll.)
Midori is light-weight and fast, but is probably too lacking in features and seems prone to crash a lot.
QupZilla is one that I have used as a backup browser for last couple of years. Over that time, my impression is that it keeps getting better. It's a viable go-to browser for under-powered computers and even does a reasonable job with Youtube videos (Slimjet's performance was better though). It uses less resources than Slimjet, is quick and has a reasonable amount of basic features. My main complaint with it is font rendering is not as good as others.
Tested a few others, but none of them were newbie friendly -- so no good for the computers I'm donating.
Long story short, those computers will have Firefox and QupZilla (as light-weight alternative) loaded on them. And I voted for QupZilla in the survey even though I primarily use Pale Moon (and may switch to SlimJet) myself. Wanted to give them some credit for making a pretty decent light-weight alternative. (If SlimJet were open-source, they'd have gotten my vote.)
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You're welcome :) I enjoyed reading your comparisons.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
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Just curious to know when will LL add updated version of Firefox to package manager or is that up to Ubuntu?
Newest version 49. Thanks in advance.
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Hi tomt,
Your assumption is correct. Firefox and therefore updates to it are served via an Ubuntu repository.
Hope that helps :)
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Yes. Thanks. That is what I figured. Ubuntu takes their sweet old time. Should probably do it manually. Cheers.
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They don't take their time on browsers like Firefox. You'll more than likely see the update via the Lite Updates utility within 2-3 days from the release. So I'd say to expect it before week's end.
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Yeah Firefox is definitely overloaded. The thing is video should be separated out altogether, use VLC directly instead, and that should be a direction for the future. Firefox has porting problems with simple systems too. They could use a little rethinking, and a sensible optional version system. Anybody here old enough to remember the beginning of Mozilla? Syncing accounts and devices was always a bad idea too, and still is, and it should really be an optional glob. Not something you use or don't use with the weight still there. In general web browsers have gotten bloated, mostly because of security, video, and android devices. The little woman has four devices synced to her Windows box, and plays games sequentially on all of them, facebooks, and shops too. I think it's a little crazy, and stupidly insecure, but her credit card is her own not joint, so I just chuckle, and play with bash on her machine in the morning before she gets up. I can float her a loan if I have to. She's worn out two tablets and three android phones in three years. I still use an alcatel flip phone bluetoothed via wammu to SMS from my laptop. It's worth remembering, when clouds start to gather there's usually a storm on the way.
TC
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Tried Min, Vivaldi, Slimjet, Midori all 32 bit/ on LL3.0 32 bit All had problems with flash based "videos" on news channels , BBciplayer etc. It is fine to kick 32 bit flash / pepperflash into touch but it leaves a lot of content unplayable. pepperflashnonfree 32bit does not seem to have been hooked up to these browsers by default.
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Chromium has improved since 2 years ago.
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Chromium has improved since 2 years ago.
You're probably right and I will give it another shot, especially since I liked Slimjet which is based on it.
Thanks to Jerry's pointing out of the poll I learned of another browser that I didn't know about before -- Vivaldi. I installed and tested that and really like it. For past couple of weeks I've switched to that as my go-to browser on two of my backup/testing machines that I recently installed new OS on. Purged Firefox completely and just put Vivaldi, Slimjet, Qupzilla and Dillo on those machines. Whenever I get around to upgrading the OS on my main systems I plan to use Vivaldi on them now as well.
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In my opinion Chrome and Chromium should not be lumped together, especially in polls targeting Linux and other free software users, because some may specifically prefer Chromium over Chrome due to licensing and software freedom issues. Others might prefer Chrome because it has more features (such as Netflix capability) and tighter integration to the Googleverse. Regardless of the merits of either side of the case, the point here is that if you're polling people over which browser they use, you should make distinct browsers distinct.
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I am sad to see Opera with only 4%. Opera has always led the pack with new features and innovation. And if you have a question or comment they actually respond. Try that with Google.
All the browsers are memory suckers these days. (At least on the Windows side). I am running LL under VirtualBox right now. Virtualbox is costing 98meg. Nothing! One tab on Opera is 177 meg and one tab on Chrome is 149meg. And I like to keep about 5-15 or more tabs open in Opera and usually a few in Chrome. Adds up,but I don't sweat it with 16 Gig.
Firefox was a sweet,fast browser when they first started,but became to bloated and the addons screwed me one too many times. I would depend on a bunch of addons and then FF would upgrade from ver 2.0.2.05 to ver 2.0.2.06 because someone misspelled a word in the EULA and all of my addons wouldn't work! It could take days to never to get them to work again. Luckily Opera came on the scene and now FF is used occasionally.
BTW,thanks for the post. Interesting.
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Firefox has seen better days, I agree. 10 years ago when I started with FF 2.0, it was quick compared to IE 6 & IE 7 of the day. Now though, it's kinda lost its way. I used to use Pale Moon, which is a lighter, forked unbloated FF. That project is still around I believe, if anyone is interested. It's better than FF in a lot of ways. Hell, even SeaMonkey is less bloated than Firefox, and SeaMonkey has Email, IRC and more features built-in, kinda like Opera used to be in the Presto layout engine.
Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk
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I think it is "horses for courses". Firefox is fine for me on my most powerful machine, but on an old netbook which runs LL 2.8 easily it gobbles up memory to an extent that it freezes the system.
On that Slimjet and Midori are better for simple admin tasks.
I have Chromium on all of them.
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Since Firefox is the default for Linuxlite, I used that
--adding in the extensions I like
- Https everywhere
- Https nowhere
- webrtc (Disable, Control)
- Ublock oriogin
- Download youtube Videos as MP4
--some others..[/list]
However, I have also used Vivaldi (I like their speeddial option and the colored TABS) and Chrome, and did use Midori and Slimjet for a short time..
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always been a fan of firefox, since a few months also using PaleMoon
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used Firefox at first, after updating to 64 bit back to Chrome.
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Heavily tweeked FF as my go-to browser, because it's so easy to set it to my liking. Chromium for videos.
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I've used Slimjet for two years now, and consider it to be the best browser available. But it doesn't do .mp4's on Linux due to licensing, so I've now switched to Vivaldi, which isn't far behind SJ and is coming on strong.
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Been a fan of Firefox for a long time, until I met Slimjet. I really like Slimjet - nice & snappy (unlike Firefox's tendency to lag when adblock is enabled (even on setup1 in sig), very polished look & functionality, and it'll play videos including the BBC weather report in the absence of adobe flashplayer as it apparently comes with its own pepperflash integrated.
I notice that Slimjet is in the current PCLinuxOS repository.
However, as Slimjet is closed source, I'm not quite sure that I wholly believe their claim that they don't sent your online data back to Google - how do you verify that?
Mike
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Regarding Slimjet and privacy, I take a pragmatic view. The company has been around for quite a while, having spawned Slimbrowser and other browsers. It is based in the US, in Texas I believe. And if someone ever did packet tracing and found they were violating their own privacy claims, it would be over for them. Users have long memories. So a) they would have to be lying, and b) they would have to not get caught at it over time. I think that has a slim probability.
But in Linux I find SJ's video problem increasingly severe. Twitter and many news sites now do not play video. And SJ's management has not taken a very involved role in sorting out problems, so a couple of weeks ago I decided to make the switch to Vivaldi, which not only has a robust development pace but also a vibrant online community. I think in about half a year V will be at the very top of the heap.
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I've used Slimjet for two years now, and consider it to be the best browser available. But it doesn't do .mp4's on Linux due to licensing, so I've now switched to Vivaldi, which isn't far behind SJ and is coming on strong.
Nice browser. I use it for about a year alongside FF (for the quick things and media) and I still like it very much.
(Predecessor Opera grew a little obsolete, that's why I tried Vivaldi.)