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Old 13th May 2015
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Default Firefox alternatives for Unix-like OS

We're veering off-topic in the Firefox 38 in multiple permutations thread, so I thought I'd start this one.

Quote:
Originally Posted by fn8t
I guess that there is Icecat and GNUzilla.
Yes. A couple of years ago or so I tried Icecat under Linux and it was a disaster, so I gave up. But things may have changed and it's worth keeping in mind.

Very recently I played a bit with QupZilla. I found it to be stable under Linux, and although it has its quirks, intriguing for my use anyway. But what about BSD? There is a FreeBSD port -- haven't tried it. I compiled it under NetBSD 6.1.5_PATCH i386. The compile went nicely, but it segfaults like a drunken sailor. I don't know about OpenBSD, there appears to be no port of it. So it may have some potential, at least as a mid-range browser, but needs work yet.

Last edited by IdOp; 13th May 2015 at 10:40 PM. Reason: correct FreeBSD info
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Old 13th May 2015
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QupZilla uses WebKit rendering engine. What is the difference between QupZilla and Xobrero, Chromium, Surf and 15 other "web browsers". None if you ask me.
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Old 13th May 2015
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You may be right, I haven't really looked into those other possibilities you mention. So it's good to have a warning that they may not be much better/different. QupZilla was just something I stumbled upon, and decided to give a try, partly because of the growing low-level frustrations with FF.
I do like the fact that a binary package of it is quite small, and yet it is capable of doing Internet banking type of browsing. Stability is more important to me than speed also. But it's not ready to replace SeaMonkey for me anyway.

Last edited by IdOp; 13th May 2015 at 11:06 PM. Reason: clarity
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Old 14th May 2015
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oko View Post
So what do you use if I may ask? WebKit based browser even worse crap IMHO. Opera is dead. Is Konqueror still active? I see some recent releases. Ideally we could use Netsurf but there are quite a few basic features that needs to be added for usability starting with better JavaScript support.
With some caveats, www/xombrero is nice. My morning routine is to check the news, BSD sites and suspect webmail and Xombrero does this quickly and efficiently.

Setup is easy. Copy /usr/local/share/examples/xombrero.conf to ~/.xombrero.conf and edit it to set home page and browser preferences. You can block javascript, flash (-> /dev/null) and autodelete history on closing.

I enabled javascript. I can periodically delete session history with <alt+h> and accumulated cookies with <alt+j>. <ctl+t> opens a new tab and <ctl+r> will refresh. It supports rotating useragents and your choice of search engines. The authors are OpenBSD contributors.

The syntax for Bookmarks ~/.xombrero/favorites <alt+f>is simple
Code:
DaemonForums
http://daemonforums.org/
FreeBSD Forums
https://forums.freebsd.org
OpenBSD Ports
http://www.openports.se
M:tier 5.7 Updates
https://stable.mtier.org/updates?release=57
OpenBSD Mailing Lists
http://marc.info
The only downsides are that it starts but does not finish loading websites on i386 systems with limited memory and the /usr/local/share/xombrero/xombrero.css had a bug that upstream fixed after the ports freeze. The fix is to replace the file with a current one from the projects git repository. On my modest amd64 5.7 system with 4GB ram I can make it core dump watching a long HTML5 video on youtube. This also happens with FF.

I entered this post from Xombrero

Last edited by shep; 14th May 2015 at 02:23 AM. Reason: Moved from prior thread
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Old 14th May 2015
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oko View Post
QupZilla uses WebKit rendering engine. What is the difference between QupZilla and Xobrero, Chromium, Surf and 15 other "web browsers". None if you ask me.
I had Chromium in 5.6 and have Xombrero in 5.7 and there are some differences.
Chromium uses a wrapper script to increase memory limits, xombrero uses the system limits for the users login class. Chromium has lots of Google embellishments to bloat Chromium further just by clicking the App Store icon in the upper right.

Xombrero is very easy to set up with Tor. The developers give the steps in the example xombrero.conf.

It was a PITA to delete history in Chromium and after deleting the history in 5.6, Chromium would immediately crash. My xombrero.conf does not save history at shutdown - no problems, If chromium had the setting to clear history at shutdown I was never able to find it. They may share the rendering engine but the project goals are otherwise very different. I personally could not stand Chromium and only had it as it allowed changing a banking password that FF would not.

Xombrero can still be built with either webkit/gtk2 or webkit/gtk3. Xombrero makefile at Freshports. In OpenBSD 5.7 it is compiled with gtk3.

I'm wondering if xombrero has indirectly benefited from Antoine Jacoutot gnome efforts. www/epiphany is back after being broken - it's webkit is gtk4.

Last edited by shep; 14th May 2015 at 03:48 AM. Reason: added webkit versions
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Old 14th May 2015
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I guess Vimprobable2 is another.
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Old 14th May 2015
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There is also www/vimb.
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Old 15th May 2015
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ibara View Post
There is also www/vimb.
When compared to Vimprobable2, it has a ton of functionality.
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Old 27th October 2015
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Netsurf is looking at an alternative for javascript
Latest News

Quote:
Development builds now using Duktape 12 Aug 2015
We have replaced the old version of SpiderMonkey that we used to use as our JavaScript engine with Duktape, a lightweight engine which is more in keeping with NetSurf's goals. While we're testing our new JavaScript implementation we are forcing it on all the time in development builds. We'll return the "JavaScript Enabled" option to being choices-controlled when we're happy we're back to feature/stability parity.
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Old 8th December 2015
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shep View Post
Netsurf is looking at an alternative for javascript
Latest News
I downloaded the developer snapshot that includes duktape, and it looks promising. When I surf to sites, Netsurf's new javascript is recognized by the sites, although the functionality stops short. This is a project to watch. Duktape is very minimal, just like Netsurf, so will be fast when it's done.
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Old 8th December 2015
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Qutebrowser is nice, imho.

https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser
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Old 8th December 2015
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Otter Browser of course.
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