Baslinux mailing list

[qwms-avib AT dea.spamcon.org]

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