Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

baslinux - [BL] BL2 browsers

baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Baslinux mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: qwms-avib AT dea.spamcon.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [BL] BL2 browsers
  • Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 09:06:36 +0000

I now have Skipstone and Mozilla running. I had to install
a couple of packages from Slackware 8.1 (not 7.1) to get
them working, but they are now running fine.

Even though Mozilla is large and bulky, I find myself liking
it. It provides everything I want (and more) and has things
organized in a natural way (so I can do things intuitively,
without a lot of instructions and trial & error). I'm running
it on a P166 with 64mb RAM and it is useable, but sluggish.
I would really like to use Mozilla as my every-day browser,
but it's just a bit too slow. With slightly better hardware
(like a 233MMX with 96mb RAM), Mozilla would probably be fine.

I was hoping that Skipstone (which uses Mozilla routines for
rendering) would be faster. Some reports said Skipstone was
three times faster. However, that is not the case. I've
been using Skipstone for less than an hour and I haven't done
any serious testing, but it certainly isn't three times faster.

Skipstone seems slightly faster in some areas, but overall on
my hardware it has a similar sluggish feel. One area where
Skipstone seemed to beat Mozilla by a big margin was in getting
the page displayed. Not the rendering itself, but the actual
acquisition of the data and the output to the screen. Skipstone
seemed to grab the data from the modem quickly and get it up on
the screen right away. Mozilla, on the other hand, seemed to
gather a lot more data and waited longer before putting a proper
display on the screen. Perhaps I just had a slow connection
when I ran Mozilla, but it took much longer. Note: this didn't
happen when I displayed large HTML pages stored on disk --
Skipstone and Mozilla has similar rendering speeds.

There were some things I didn't like about Skipstone. It is
sparse -- almost as sparse as dillo. It is missing several
useful features and is not as intuitive (for me) as Mozilla.
Unfortunately, the configuration options are limited so it
is not possible to rearrange things much. At first glance
it appears that the advantages and disadvantages of Skipstone
balance out, so I see no particular reason to prefer Skipstone.
One thing is clear, though, Skipstone is not fast enough for
my 486 with 16mb RAM. No chance.

Unless Sahara (konq/e) turns out to be viable, it is looking
more and more like links2 for 486/586 and Mozilla for better
hardware. I still haven't tried the latest Opera and it's
possible we could see a better version of dillo sometime, so
don't give up on those yet.

We are still a long way from a final decision, so keep those
browser reports coming in.

Cheers,
Steven




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page