Preferred Web Browser - Distrowatch Poll

[trinidad]

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

[torreydale]

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.

[tomt]

Yes. Thanks. That is what I figured. Ubuntu takes their sweet old time. Should probably do it manually. Cheers.

[LL-user]

Hi tomt,

Your assumption is correct. Firefox and therefore updates to it are served via an Ubuntu repository.

Hope that helps

[tomt]

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.

[Jerry]

You're welcome I enjoyed reading your comparisons.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

[gold_finger]

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 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.)

[Jerry]

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