Which web browser gives the best compromise for a functional browser that doesn't consume all the memory and compute capacity on a modest laptop?

What do you run and how satisfied are you with the setup?

Increasingly, the modern web looks like a morass of cross-site ad-serving, tracking, user monitoring, and dark patterns. As more and more functionality is stuffed into web browsers and run behind the scenes, we're running lots of unecessary code and consuming resources in ways that are hard to control. As the complexity grows, the ecosystem has shrunk ... just take a look at the browser graveyard here: list of browsers. And then, different browser projects are much the same, since they are built on webkit or gecko.

I guess the "still kicking" list is slightly longer:

WebKit (Apple's engine)
-Safari
-many reskins

Blink (webkit fork)
-Chrome/Chromium
-many reskins

Gecko, et al. (Mozilla's engine)
-Firefox
-a number of reskins

Trident (Microsoft's IE engine)
-Slimbrowser
-QQ and several other chinese projects

Presto (Norwegian project, proprietary)
-Opera 12.18

There are some older threads on browsers:

2016 -- https://nixers.net/Thread-Best-web-browser
2014 -- https://nixers.net/Thread-Qt-web-browser
2013 -- https://nixers.net/Thread-Browser-screen-shots-thread

But a lot has changed recently ... case in point, the recent mozilla layoffs.

I've been hearing some positive comments about http://www.netsurf-browser.org/, but I have never tried it. As for me personally, I've been using firefox for as long as I can remember.

+1 for NetSurf. They develop their own HTML/CSS renderers and use Duktape for JavaScript, so it’s not always up with the latest and greatest HTML bling-bling toys, but it is still an awesome project.

(24-11-2020, 10:11 AM)s0kx Wrote: I've been hearing some positive comments about http://www.netsurf-browser.org/.

Cool project, I played around with it a little, good impressions ... I need to look into some css and how the thing is skinned. I'd really like a low-key dark mode.

I've also been running Firefox for a few years.

Possibly of interest:

• disabling automatic connections in Firefox
  
• performance settings in Firefox
  

I used to run Opera12.15 until I got sick of it nagging me to switch to the newer chrome-clone version. I wish the company that owns the IP would open source Presto.

This reddit thread mentions Presto source code was leaked at some point.

Ahhhh.. I've been forcing myself to use luakit for the past 3-4 months, and while I love it, I hate it.

I will probably just reinstall FF because well, the web sucks!

It does not become better with Firefox though.

(30-11-2020, 04:11 AM)jkl Wrote: It does not become better with Firefox though.

Well, not better.. but easier. Setting up ad blocking etc on webkit browsers requires updating of blocklists etc.. Id' rather just install UBlock and be done with it.
Also, believe it or not, luakit has more dependencies than Firefox. Sure, overall the download size and disk space may be higher, but I'm ok with that.

Someone just needs to fork firefox and sculpt it to be more like qutebrowser. I just want a more minimal interface really.

(30-11-2020, 05:15 AM)Ramiferous Wrote: Setting up ad blocking etc on webkit browsers requires updating of blocklists etc.. Id' rather just install UBlock and be done with it.

Good news:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detai...iagm?hl=de

(30-11-2020, 05:15 AM)Ramiferous Wrote: Someone just needs to fork firefox and sculpt it to be more like qutebrowser. I just want a more minimal interface really.

Good news:
https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl

I don't know lisp, so I can't use it, but the Nyxt seems pretty powerful and well polished.