Lighter alternative to chromium-browser?
 

Hello, I would like to find a light alternative for a net browser. I have installed dillo, but I would need flash. Would you have a recommended internet browser? thank you.

There is no browser other than Firefox/Iceweasel, Seamonkey, Chrome/Chromium (and maybe other Chromium based ones) that worth anything. Sadly none are light. Midori may be "light" until you load a few tabs.
Also, Flash kills the "light" idea altogether.

I don't know if it's lighter than Chromium, but I use Opera. I've also used Midori: under AntiX Linux, that ran in about 120MB. A quick check shows that a Youtube video adds 27MB to the load on this computer.

Dillo is a waste of time, even if you don't need flash, as so many sites won't work with it.

David, my understanding is that the current Opera version 12.xx uses its own Presto engine, but that Opera is in the process of transitioning to Chromium and the Google Blink engine as its base. So while it remains available as a unique browser today, it will eventually become just another Chromium browser with Opera branding and Opera look-and-feel.

I could be wrong, as I am no expert, but that is what I got from reading the announcements from Opera earlier this year. But my point to the Op is that if he is looking to escape from Chromium, Opera may be a viable alternative for the short term only. Perhaps not worth investing a lot of effort to transition to something that will soon be just another Chromium.

WITH X:

lightest
0) zero, since you cannot use it for linuxquestions.org : dillo but <5-10mb and one file
1)hv3 (25 mb)
2)iceape <---------- I choosed this one since it has much less dependencies and is of 40mb
3)iceweasel 55mb

------------
above 100mb!!! kicked out of competition
opera, chromium-browser, ...

------------
insane:
midora2 (250mb installation)!!!



all kde web apps
heavyest and slow

I love ICEAPE !!

It is quite fast and it remembers NETSCAPE WEBBROWSER!!

Netscape browser was great 10 years ago on Linux!!!

However it is not sufficient lightweight!°

FYI Iceape = very old Seamonkey.

Just use the seamonkey build from their site, unpack and run it. If its run from a user writable location it will auto update itself (only the i386 one, the 64 bit doesnt seem to do it, it can be upgraded manually).
I use it for a long time and these builds run just fine on Debian (as in rock stable) on both i386 and x86_64 (the latter is available at the bottom of the download page, named "contributed build"). These versions use the latest Firefox platform.

Really its the most "light" complete solution out there, with the added bonus of a built in Thunderbird(mostly) mail client. Even with my tens of thousands of google mails, my other 3 imap accounts, 5 rss subscriptions + lightning calendar it has minimal overhead, the whole package uses less memory than equivalent Firefox versions with the same tabs open.

Hi gwydionus,

Most light-weight internet browser i ever used is Midori. You could use it for classical searching but you cannot watch videos because flash player is not supporting it. Everything else should work properly.

Flash works just fine in my Midori. The browser itself is unstable and crashes here and there, but flash works. Even h264 playback is supported in html5 video playback. Now Midori might be a very small executable, but it can grow in the memory quite large (hundreds of MBs) reaching sizes other, "non-light" browsers have usually.

That's weird, my midori won't play any videos. I have integrated flash player with it already but nothing, anyway i am not going to use it xD Firefox is best browser for me.

I'm wondering what the use case is. Why do you need a lighter browser? To use less RAM/CPU? Or is it because you want it to load faster when starting it?

I leave Firefox running all the time, usually with multiple tabs open but even when I close the tabs I leave an empty one open. My laptop is older and I can easily see the difference when I try and start up Chrome later on. Chrome starts up slowly, but since Firefox is already running I don't need to worry about the start up time.

"Light" browsers are usually a euphemism for "feature-incomplete" browswers. I use ~10 year old laptops with the latest Debian and Firefox/Chromium, and I don't have issues with anything. If the computer is that ancient, I suggest a better computer, rather than crippled software.

Netsurf, Kazahakase, are just a few.



I don't accept defeat easily but fight for what I wish to have.

LYNX is about as lightweight as any web browser still in use today. But you won't be playing Flash videos with it.

You will be hard pressed to find a browser that you can describe with "lightweight" and "Flash" in the same sentence.

You might be able to find some old, discontinued, version of a browser that supports Flash and is lighter-ER-weight than current browsers.

You could try downloading the Flash videos (.flv files) rather than streaming them, and playing them locally using "VLC" or some other flv-capable player.

If you want Flash you are going to have to put up with Chromium or Chrome. Flash is not supported for normal version updates (security is another issue altogether) anymore by Adobe.