[GTALUG] All browsers suck: was Google is ruled a monopoly so Firefox is at serious risk

[Nick Accad]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 5:46 PM Steve Litt via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> Evan Leibovitch via talk said on Tue, 13 Aug 2024 12:23:27 -0400
>
> >On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 12:17 PM Karen Lewellen
> ><klewellen at shellworld.net> wrote:
> >
> >The antitrust case is not about browsers.
> >
> >
> >I know that. I was responding to Hugh's comment that the court action
> >on search might affect Firefox funding.
> >Even if Google is forced to change its funding model from "pay to be
> >the default search" to something else, it cannot be seen to remedy one
> >monopoly situation by creating another,
>
> As a Linux user quite able to choose search engines and browsers, what
> I find sad is that today all browsers suck, and Chromium sucks the
> least.
>
> There are two kinds of browsers:
>
> 1) Browsers respecting the html/css/js standards.
>
> 2) Browsers that wing it, delivering something other than what the
>    author of the 100% validated web page desired.
>
> Right off the bat, #2 are useful only for niche activity. Nobody has
> the time to try dillo, figure out if they're seeing the information
> correctly, and if not use a browser in the #1 group. So let's discuss
> group #1:
>
> Firefox is a sluggish, resource gulping pig that can bring a
> well-resourced computer to its knees, and it needs weekly to monthly
> maintenance to prevent its piggity from growing the way windows
> registry piggity grows with time. In my opinion it's total junk.
>
> IMHO Chromium is the best, but it's a pig that sucks and can bring your
> computer to its knees with a few javascript-rich sites.
>
> I used to be a big Qutebrowser fan, with its superior keyboard
> interface, but the fact is it's piggier than Chromium.
>
> Palemoon? I have no idea how good or bad it is, but it doesn't matter
> because https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86 .
> I don't cooperate with that kind of projects.
>
> Otter-browser fails miserably when trying to render the content at
> Buick.Com. Sure, buick.com is a standards-hostile crap website, but
> as a practical day in and day out life matter, we need to be able to
> have a semi reasonable rendering of even these horrible sites.
>
> Eolie seems OK, although the interface is a little bit tough to use (no
> big deal), and it occasionally gets funky in rendering some sites
> (youtube for instance). I haven't used it with tons of tabs though.
>
> Epiphany has a user-hostile interface and from my experimentation can't
> render even the simplest sites. It's broken.
>
> Vivaldi renders OK and is about as piggy as Chromium.
>
> Vimb seems to be a very good browser. It renders well and if you're
> familiar with Vim, you have an excellent foundation for operating Vimb.
> Be aware that Vimb has no tabs, so when you press t to "tabopen",
> you're really creating a new Vimb process. In some situations this can
> lead to a less efficient workflow. I have no data on how piggy or not
> Vimb is.
>
> Luakit is a small-resource browser with an unusual and hard to remember
> user interface. It seems to render well. However, on my Void Linux
> setup it's useless because it intermittently terminates with no message.
>
> Fifteen years ago Midori was a hopeless piece of junk, but it's
> improved steadily until now I'd call it "the little browser that
> could". Not quite as univerally renderable as Chromium, it comes close,
> with a smaller footprint. Its user interface is just like Chromium and
> Firefox, so you'll instantly know how to operate it.
>
> Opera seems like a decent Chromium replacement. I have no idea of its
> resource usage.
>
> The Surf browser doesn't work on my Void Linux setup. I can't input a
> URL.
>
> Netsurf can't render worth a plugged nickel. Useless.
>
> MS Edge seems like a fairly competent browser on my wife's windows
> machine, but it doesn't run under Linux.
>
>
> BOTTOM LINE: You have to look long and hard for a decent browser, and I
> wouldn't call any of them excellent. I'd say that Chromium is the most
> likely to render "correctly" in iffy situations. Midori, Vimb, Vivaldi,
> Opera, and Otter-Browser are all valuable in many situations.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
>
> http://444domains.com
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In my experience, FF (I switch back and forth between FF-Dev, ESR,  and
Librewolf) is way less resource intensive than the Chromimum based
browsers, and as for disk usage, right now, I have 1.8G on disk split
between 4 profiles, not really that much of a piggy.

I have used all the others your mentioned, and I agree, rendering is not
great on most of them, but that is to be expected, the days of devs testing
for every browser/os combo are long gone, right now you test on Chrome, and
if you are halfway competent, on FF ESR and call it a day. Also, the
CSS/HTML/JS/Whatever standards are NEVER fully implemented, and if they
are, the site doing that is more of a labour of love.

FYI, MS Edge is Chromium based, so is Opera and Vivaldi and a LOT of the
others, we literally have 2 major rendering engines right now,  and a
couple of minor ones that no one outside of their dev community uses them.

Also, MS Edge does run on Linux, I use it for some specific corporate
sites, and it works well on my Debian/Sid setup.

-nick
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