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Which Linux Browser Is The Fastest? (zdnet.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the war-of-the-web-browsers dept.

ZDNet's Networking blog calls Firefox "the default web browser for most Linux distributions" and "easily the most popular Linux web browser" (with 51.7% of the vote in a recent survey by LinuxQuestions, followed by Chrome with 15.67%). But is it the fastest? An anonymous reader writes: ZDNet's Networking blog just ran speed tests on seven modern browsers -- Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, Opera (which is also built on Chromium), GNOME Web (formerly Epiphany), and Vivaldi (an open-source fork of the old Opera code for power-users). They subjected each browser to the JavaScript test suites JetStream, Kraken, and Octane, as well as reaction speed-testing by Speedometer and scenarios from WebXPRT, adding one final test for compliance with the HTML5 standard.

The results? Firefox emerged "far above" the other browsers for the everyday tasks measured by WebXPRT, but ranked near the bottom in all of the other tests. "Taken all-in-all, I think Linux users should look to Chrome for their web browser use," concludes ZDNet's contributing editor. "When it's not the fastest, it's close to being the speediest. Firefox, more often than not, really isn't that fast. Of the rest, Opera does reasonably well. Then, Chromium and Vivaldi are still worth looking at. Gnome Web, however, especially with its dreadful HTML 5 compatibility, doesn't merit much attention."
The article also reports some formerly popular Linux browsers are no longer being maintained, linking to a KDE forum discussion that concludes that Konqueror and Rekonq "are both more or less dead."

160 comments

  1. This is what metrics gets you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "It's not fast, but the best at all the things you want to do." -- "So you should be using Chrome instead!"

    Yeah, right.

    1. Re:This is what metrics gets you by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      Firefox syncs book marks in the way that I prefer over Chrome, so no matter how fast Chrome is I won't use it.

      Plus if I just want to look up something fast I tend to use elinks/lynx/w3m.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    2. Re:This is what metrics gets you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The thing about Chrome is that is comes from Google.
      I will not use anything from them directly (VPN rules ok).
      They know so much about each and everyone of us yet still they want more.
      The more Google know, then the more the Ad Agencies and As Slingers know about you, your life, your friends and your universe.
      Google/alphabet == Big Brother 2017.

    3. Re:This is what metrics gets you by infolation · · Score: 1

      Therefore am surprised no one mentioned the Tor browser. It has excellent security performance.

    4. Re:This is what metrics gets you by paulatz · · Score: 1

      "It's not fast, but the best at all the things you want to do." -- "So you should be using Chrome instead!"

      Yeah, right.

      To strengthen you point: if you want to use the same browser on desktop and on your smartphone, Firefox is the only one that has proper ad-blocking on mobile. Many other mobile browsers have ad-blocking, but none of the block those intolerable "related content" fake news bottom-of-the-page spammers. Only Firefox with ublock origin properly blocks invasive ads on Android.

      The other ad-blockers on mobile (integrated in the browser or not) suck so much that I'm beginning to think they are all getting money from advertisers. And of course, google chrome does not block anything at all, which is very bad considered how much android malvertising there is. There is one Android browser called Yandex, that support desktop extensions, but surprise!, ublock and adblock plus are not supported. You are stuck with its built-in adblocker, which does not block anything.

      I've tried so many times to use anything else that firefox on Android, but after two days of surfing the web in a minuscule square in the center of flashing advertisement, after being redirected to the play store to install stupid games, after too many pop-overs with a minuscule x, I always go back to Firefox.

      To sum up: if Firefox is noticeably slow on Android, it is much less noticeably so on any decent desktop or laptop. Also, I like syncing desktop with mobile, to avoid having to retype password on the virtual keyboard, and to quickly find in the history a page I may have visited on my phone. So Firefox be it, on mobile because it is by far the best (even if very slow) and on desktop because it does not really suck that much, and it is the only one that sync with mobile.

      But the day where Chrome or Opera support proper ad-blocking on Android (and Opera can do ffmpeg decode on Linux without going crazy), or Vivaldi releases an Android version, I'm sorry for Firefox, if it has not catch up on performance, its going to be retired.

      --
      this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
  2. X11 vs the world by leenks · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One of these browsers, given it's history, is most likely optimised for X over other screen rendering platforms. Sure, the benchmarks concentrate on JavaScript, but ultimately this is going to result in manipulation of the DOM in any real world test and therefore re-rendering... Does this therefore boil down to how well these browsers optimise their performance on X, as opposed to anything else? Given the changing landscape (Wayland and alternatives) does this have much relevance?

    1. Re:X11 vs the world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      [citation needed]

      I bet you couldn't tell the difference between a slowdown introduced by X and one introduced by poorly optimized drivers anyhow. :>

    2. Re:X11 vs the world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Call it what you will, but X is still as sluggish as it was 25 years ago when I was using SPARC1+ boxes.

    3. Re:X11 vs the world by dbIII · · Score: 2

      Stop using the current gnome stuff and you'll see the speed difference.

    4. Re:X11 vs the world by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Just use something without gtk3 and you'll have something optimised for X.

    5. Re: X11 vs the world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I've yet to find a benchmark that shows Wayland as a winner on speed. So far X11 is faster on almost all tests I've read.

    6. Re:X11 vs the world by Z00L00K · · Score: 2

      And what is really the issue considering the fact that most of the slowness on the web is either the network or the remote server.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    7. Re:X11 vs the world by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      No it isn't.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    8. Re:X11 vs the world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why not both?

      You can afford to have one program being the CPU and memory hog of the system. If two attempts to be that then everything goes to shit.
      Since the purpose of my computer is to run end user programs I can tolerate that some of them are bloated, but if the OS and drivers start to hog resources unnecessarily then the computer becomes sort of useless.

    9. Re:X11 vs the world by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Or get a faster computer and see the speed difference.

      Or just use Wayland.

    10. Re:X11 vs the world by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      We need to get beyond simple "race" style benchmarks. The guys reviewing GPUs for gaming realized that years ago and now look at things like the 99th percentile framerate and micro-stuttering.

      For a browser "speed" as experienced by the user is a combination of things. Rendering performance, network performance, tricks like pre-loading and speculative DNS lookups, JS performance... But also the UI and how quickly it allows things to be done, how responsive it is. A great example is Internet Explorer/Edge. Does well in various benchmarks but the UI lags like hell and makes it feel really, really slow.

      Firefox's big limitation at the moment is that it is basically single threaded. Most other browsers have moved to one thread per tab at least, with Chrome also having separate rendering threads, network threads, a thread of the JS JIT compiler etc.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    11. Re:X11 vs the world by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Or just use Wayland.

      Good idea for some applications, once it's ready for prime time, but all the "X sux" shit from the fanboys and Daniel Stone detracts from it. Those losers (not the main dev community but a loud bunch of fanboys) are actually using the new, slow, buggy piece of shit gtk3 gedit as their "proof" that X is slow, while the gtk2 version of gedit has no trouble at all (and X is not the problem).
      Oh wait - you are just trolling aren't you? Please don't because my point about lazy programmers of toolkits relying on beefy graphics cards to get even average performance is an annoying issue and quite separate to both X and Wayland (and inflicts itself on both).

    12. Re:X11 vs the world by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's irrelevant. The next version of systemd will include its own windowing system.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    13. Re:X11 vs the world by tibit · · Score: 1

      X is largely irrelevant. Today, X is used to do three things:

      1. Push pixmaps from the application to the screen. Notice that nowhere does X get involved in doing any rendering of those pixmaps.

      2. Push UI events from the user to the application, and poorly participate in window management.

      3. Allow applications to open a windowed OpenGl context.

      It's a lot of cruft that does nothing much, only so that some obsolete pure X11 application will still keep on working. Architecturally speaking, it's nonsense. For modern apps you'll get much better performance if you attach a VNC backend to your application and access it that way (Qt allows it, I'd presume GTK should too somehow).

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    14. Re:X11 vs the world by tibit · · Score: 1

      I have no idea what you mean by "poorly optimized drivers". The only things that an X server is expected to do and do well today as far as screen drivers go is to composite pixmaps generated by the painting backends in Chromium, Qt, GTK, etc. An X driver is not meant to do any drawing anymore - yes, the X servers still leave the old code paths around so that some obsolete app might use the X server to actually draw other primitives on screen. Nothing of note uses an X server that way anymore.

      Given this, there's really no sense to X. Wayland with a VNC backend is all you need for remote work.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
  3. Elinks or lynx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nothing can compare in speed

    1. Re: Elinks or lynx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Different AC here. Came here just to say this/agree. Leaving now, bye.

  4. Beyond the threshold of fast enough. by Mr307 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Once robust standards were being followed and browser speed went past some point, I stopped caring about which was the fastest. Care much more about interface features and plugins that I want. Next was the many other annoying things that I was able to customize to my taste, a menu item up or down on a list, a button I could or could not move, maintaining a familiar interface, etc.

    1. Re:Beyond the threshold of fast enough. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      Besides speed, standards, and features, there is also stability. Stability has improved, but at a snails pace and still the main factor in browser choice for me. Firefox still has occasional memory issues for me, and will sometimes try to grab large amounts of memory to the point the whole system crashes because other processes fail to allocate memory on a system with 16 GB (FF: "20 GB of ram please" Linux kernel: "Sure, no problem" Other processes: "10k please" Linux kernel: "Fuck off and die"). Chrome also has issues that seem to cause video problems eventually killing the windowing system (seen this under multiple window managers), but it is far easier to restart the X environment than to reboot.

    2. Re:Beyond the threshold of fast enough. by fisted · · Score: 1

      "10k please" Linux kernel: "Fuck off and die"

      AFAIK, Linux will never say "Fuck off and die" unless you're out of *virtual* address space, for which you'd need to allocate helluva lot more than 20 gig.

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
    3. Re:Beyond the threshold of fast enough. by execthis · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately for me FF is still a bit laggy, but it is still the best browser overall. Vivaldi is the next best and is definitely snappier that FF especially with a resource-intensive site like Twitter. Vivaldi seems a lot faster for sites with video. I generally use both. I've used Konqueror but yes it looks like there's basically not much going on with it and it doesn't even have a lot of basic options one expects in a browser. Opera is ok but I had it blow up on me not long ago. I think Vivaldi is definitely edging out Opera.

    4. Re:Beyond the threshold of fast enough. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you ask for memory and try to use it right away, virtual address space isn't going to cut it.

    5. Re:Beyond the threshold of fast enough. by mysticgoat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've been using FF since it was new. I have occasionally looked at other browsers and several are faster than my FF, at least partially because the plugins and modifications that I use slow FF down somewhat. But FF is fast enough that changing to a faster browser would not improve my productivity. And I've got a nice set of plugins and extensions on it that I would have to put together from scratch if I changed browsers. That is, assuming other browsers offered similar features, which as near as I can tell, they do not.

      Speed isn't the only criterion for measuring a browser's goodness. The ability to tailor it to your personal workload is much more important these days. And once you've got a browser tweaked to your best practices, do you really need to take the massive hit of finding, installing, and configuring the plugins of some other browser that would duplicate what you've already set up in your old FF?

      If you really need a faster browser, most of us who have been around the block would be better off running the same browser and OS on faster hardware. But this doesn't apply to young'uns who have yet to establish productive work habits. Their best approach would be to talk with some older guy who knows what he is doing about which browser he uses, how he has it set up, and what his workflow is.

    6. Re:Beyond the threshold of fast enough. by tgv · · Score: 1

      Precisely. Who cares about the last drops of speed? If a page is really heavily Javascripted, like some of those data browsers, then JS speed matters, but otherwise only plugins like Block, NoScript and Disconnect plugins are a very good reason to stay with Firefox. Chrome is also more of a memory monster.

    7. Re:Beyond the threshold of fast enough. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does it realy matter?
      If something goes really fast, the Ad people will find a way to make it crawl.
      That way their crap is on the screen longer before you delete it.

    8. Re:Beyond the threshold of fast enough. by thejynxed · · Score: 1

      It's amazing how fast a browser actually can run once you ban certain script elements from loading, certain calls and manipulations of the DOM (I don't think it's the business of most websites to check if I have a microphone or webcam installed and enabled nor what type and brand of hard disk I am using, nor do I think they have the right to disable any of my input devices or functions thereof for any reason), and all advertising. Even the "slow" browsers run amazingly well compared to what we had to choose between even 5-10 years ago once you take care of that sort of thing (if you can, some browsers are much more lenient than others in this regard).

      --
      @Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
    9. Re:Beyond the threshold of fast enough. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In related news: get off my lawn!

  5. Isn't is apparent? by msauve · · Score: 5, Funny

    Lynx. It doesn't have to deal with all those bandwidth intensive graphics.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    1. Re:Isn't is apparent? by KiloByte · · Score: 2

      Unless your output goes to a text-to-speech reader, elinks is worlds better. Lynx doesn't even have tabs.

      But indeed, both win over graphical bloatware.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    2. Re:Isn't is apparent? by lucm · · Score: 1

      Lynx. It doesn't have to deal with all those bandwidth intensive graphics.

      That's why I always use data URI in my web pages instead of images. You don't have to look at my graphics, but you're gonna download them anyways.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    3. Re:Isn't is apparent? by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      A black-and-white image? convert trollface.png trollface.ubrl && cat trollface.ubrl
      A colour image? catimg -r2 | ansi2html (package colorized-logs), elinks with use_document_colors=2 only.
      A histogram? braillegraph.

      The first and the last work in plain Unicode text, the second one requires HTML.
      On any site with basic Unicode support I'd include samples, but, you know, Slashdot...

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    4. Re:Isn't is apparent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I use netcat to manually type out the HTTP protocol and interpret the raw HTML + JS code. Get on my level scrub.

    5. Re:Isn't is apparent? by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 1

      Hasn't elinks been abandoned? The last unstable update was 5 years ago, and the last stable version was 3 years before that. Out of curiosity, I just checked the website and almost all the links to user forums, dev forums, etc. are dead. Lynx and Links (the latter having some features of elinks) are at least actively maintained.

  6. Re:Edge by leenks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I was seriously considering moving to a Windows 10 environment with my next hardware change. Seeing the Edge tooltips popup over the Chrome icon in my Windows 10 VM has changed that. I'll now change professions and pick grapes in France rather than continue in this field. Apple have killed the Mac as a serious platform by not releasing pro level hardware since 2010-2011, MS made leaps with Windows 10 and then killed it, and there is still little viable software for *professional* collaboration with non nerds on Linux (yes, I mean the Photoshop / Office / UML / yadda yadda stuff - sure, it works at a basic level but ultimately you need the real thing in a Windows or OSX VM to be compatible at a level that doesn't annoy everyone). Apple used to almost fill the "I need a Unix workstation with compatibility with the big commercial apps" space with OSX and the Macbook Pro and Mac Pro lines, but there's nothing now - Windows and docker/vagrant seems to be the way forward, and with more and more native Unixy support on Windows I suspect things are likely to change yet again. Lesson: don't invest in any particular platform in any significant depth - learn to read properly.

  7. Have to rule out Chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Chrome is Google product. Doesn't it continually report to the mother-ship? That would make *you* the product.

    1. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Use Chromium then. Build it yourself if it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy.

    2. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      People say that but have yet to produce any packet logs showing what it does. So until someone steps forward with proof I will chalk this up to neckbeard paranoia.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    3. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      It keeps coming up because we'd like to understand why Google would spend money developing a web browser.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    4. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by lucm · · Score: 1

      https://www.reddit.com/r/Chrom...

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    5. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 1

      I just block all outgoing traffic to the internet. Then chrome cant communicate with motherbrain

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    6. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      I think it would be obvious why Google would want to provide a free web browser to its products (some might mistakenly call them "users"). They want to ensure their products have safe, secure, and functional access to their services, and controlling the browser means they get to control that experience to a larger degree.

      But I highly doubt Chrome spies on its products. Why? Because there's no need for the browser itself to snoop when 3rd party cookies do the job just as well "legitimately". A huge percentage of the world's websites use Google services in some fashion (like ads, analytics, etc), meaning they all report to Google when a product visits said website. Google then builds an advertising profile from the products collective web browsing habits, and sells targeted advertising based on that profile. Best of all, from Google's perspective, it works equally well with any browser.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    7. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by fnj · · Score: 0

      Good luck doing an HTTP GET, or fetching any kind of data from the internet if you can't transmit packets.

    8. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      Why does Microsoft spend money on Edge?

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    9. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Because they have to - if they give up then they have admitted defeat and their shareholders will see their shares drop.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    10. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by tgv · · Score: 3, Informative

      I run LittleSnitch on my mac, and when I open Chrome, it calls to several of Google's addresses: appspot-preview, gstatic, www, and fonts.. It also does that when opening an empty tab. It gets images and fonts and whathaveyou from those sites, (all unnecessary, BTW: the page functions just as well when all traffic is blocked), and it of course reports URLs for "malware" detection. That should give Google a nice bunch of data to work on.

    11. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      That's the joke.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    12. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      To sell Office 365.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    13. Re:Have to rule out Chrome by thejynxed · · Score: 1

      Well, if you happen to sign in to Chrome (which I do) to use their sync service (because I and my household are all bought into the Android ecosystem), Google flat out admits that unless you encrypt your data with a passphrase so that they can't read it, they will parse any data you keep stored on their servers to sync to your other devices.

      The downside to using a passphrase, is that if you accidentally forget what you used (which in my older age, has happened once now), then your only option is to clear the passphrase, which also blanks out the data and erases it from their servers.

      --
      @Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
  8. Use Google's product! It's closed source! by zedaroca · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Said a marketer who does not understand what Linux users expect from their computing.

    1. Re:Use Google's product! It's closed source! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Man, I just want it to work. I don't care about whatever-source it is.

    2. Re: Use Google's product! It's closed source! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The thing is, not every Linux user expects the same thing.
      Many use whatever works best with least amount of hassle.

  9. Chrome vs Chromium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why are the results sometimes significantly better for chrome?! Is there more optimisation compared to the chromium version? I was under the impression, chrome is chromium+DRM+Flash+x264? Wrong?

  10. Not really measuring what they think they are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Browser benchmarks are well known to not be representative of real websites or webapps, so I'm not sure what value there is in knowing which one is the fastest at any of them.

    Regardless of which browser really is the fastest or uses system resources the most efficiently, you're not getting any idea of the truth from such nonsensical comparisons.

    When even browser vendors themselves have figured this out and started to measure actual site performance, rather than irrelevant benchmarks, you now how little merit they have.

  11. Chrome is fast, but doesn't block ads or scripts by marcel_in_ca · · Score: 5, Informative

    Without AdBlock or NoScript, most websites are unusable to me.

  12. I wonder how Pale Moon would fare.... by gosand · · Score: 4, Informative

    I switched to it a few months ago from FF, and it seems much more responsive to me. It is especially better in startup-to-response time, where FF was taking 30 seconds.(no, I didn't have a ton of add-ons or customizations)

    Speed really is only one piece of the puzzle. I was satisfied with the speed of chromium when I tried it for a while, but FF has the features I use. I much prefer the way FF does bookmarks, the bookmark toolbar, and tabs. That is why I have been very satisfied with Pale Moon... the features of FF I need without the bloat and dog-slow response.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

    1. Re:I wonder how Pale Moon would fare.... by Wolfrider · · Score: 1

      --I've been using Palemoon for the last couple of years now (mainly on Linux, but also on the Win side occasionally) and it definitely uses less memory and crashes less often than Firefox in my experience.

      --Personally I don't care which browser is the fastest, PM has been meeting my needs and is more STABLE.

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    2. Re:I wonder how Pale Moon would fare.... by Doke · · Score: 1

      Pale Moon 27.1.2 got "381 out of 555 points" at https://html5test.com/.

    3. Re:I wonder how Pale Moon would fare.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've just run the same battery of tests from the article against my copy of Pale Moon, results:

      Jetstream = 176.13 (+/- 21.551)
      Kraken = 954.2ms (+/- 4.4%)
      Octane 2 = 28543
      Speedometer = 48.8 (+/- 0.88)
      WebXPRT = 591 (+/- 13)
      HTML 5 feature test = 383 out of 555

      These numbers are likely not directly comparable to those in the article because my computer is different hardware than what was used in the article. I'm running a 3770K @ 4.4ghz, Gtx980, 16 GB ram. I have no other browsers installed against which I can benchmark directly. I am running an unstable alpha Palemoon build 27.2.0a1 (2017-02-22 build date), user agent mode is set to Native, not Goanna / Firefox emulation. Host OS is Gentoo on Linux kernel 4.9.10. XFCE + Compton on Nvidia official drivers.

      Knowing that these scores are not directly comparable, I'm going to compare them anyway :-D
      Jetstream places Pale Moon on my computer just behind Vivaldi, but ahead of Gnome Web and Firefox on his computer.
      Kraken places Pale Moon on my computer faster than all browsers on his computer.
      Octane placed Pale Moon on my computer behind all browsers on his computer other than Gnome Web.
      Speedometer placed Pale Moon on my computer WAY behind most browsers on his computer, only a hair faster than his Firefox.
      WebXPRT placed Pale Moon on my computer WAY ahead of all browsers on his computer.
      HTML5 compatibility puts Pale Moon at the back of the pack, 3 points behind the next least compatible browser, Gnome Web.

      The first four synthetic benchmarks all pegged one core constantly. The WebXPRT test tended to occasionally spike one core, but had plenty of downtime between the individual test steps where the cpu was not being loaded.

      The HTLM5 compatibility test showed these categories as lacking: Streams, Peer to Peer, Payments, Web Applications, Input, Location / Orientation, and Web Components. I'm okay with lacking most of these personally.

      This has been one very unscientific benchmark of Pale Moon on Linux. :)

    4. Re:I wonder how Pale Moon would fare.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How good is the addon support in Pale Moon? Are the bare essentials like NoScript, uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere available?

    5. Re:I wonder how Pale Moon would fare.... by MMC+Monster · · Score: 1

      If any application is taking 30 seconds to load up, you've got issues. Heck, LibreOffice loads up a complex spreadsheet for me in less than 5 seconds.

      Maybe you're using an old hard drive that needs serious defragmenting? Or your configuration files for the app are totally borked?

      I get messed up configuration files slowing down my Banshee startup. I just blow away the config directory and it's good again for a few months.

      --
      Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
    6. Re:I wonder how Pale Moon would fare.... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      That wasn't my experience at all. It would crash a lot more, and there were pages that would render fine in Firefox which would render incorrectly in PM. So I gave up and went back to Firefox, which now has 64 bit builds.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:I wonder how Pale Moon would fare.... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Do you have a load of hidden tabs in Firefox? I was using the old Spaces thing or whatever it was called, and had about 50 tabs saved in there. Turns out that was making it take 30 seconds to start up. Deleted them all and it was down to 1 second to become responsive again.

      It was the UI buggery that made me move to PaleMoon.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    8. Re:I wonder how Pale Moon would fare.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes

    9. Re:I wonder how Pale Moon would fare.... by gosand · · Score: 1

      My hard drive is less than a year old. My install of Mint 18 was a fresh install. I tried a new FF profile, new config files. Plenty of RAM (8 GB, less than 1GB used)

      The issue was that FF would start up in the same time it always would, within a few seconds. However, it would sit and wouldn't take any kind of input for 30 seconds. CPU was quiet, RAM was quiet, disk was quiet. It even did this if I passed it a URL from the command line. It would sit for about 30 seconds, then would become responsive. It wasn't a degenerative thing... it just started doing it one day after a version update. I went through several updates, hoping it would get resolved. I tried everything I could think of to fix it, disabling and removing add-ons, of which I only had about 3 or 4. (Gestures, adblock plus, videodownload helper, may another)

      I had tried Chromium in the past for a while, just didn't like it. Pale Moon to the rescue! I may go back and try FF some day, but as of right now I have no reason to.

      --

      My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  13. what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    guess you never heard of uBlock origin.

    1. Re:what? by KiloByte · · Score: 2

      guess you never heard of uBlock origin.

      Which is useless as it lacks the interface to block crap via URLs. Blocking via DOM is semi-good for visual elements only, what I want is to get rid of trackers first, decrapifying view being only a side effect (as every ad is also a tracker).

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    2. Re:what? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Nonsense, uBlock Origin supports URL based blocking as well as DOM based. In fact URL based is the primary method it uses since that avoids loading the content at all. It also supports importing DNS blocklists with automatic updates, from a long pre-defined list of your own custom URLs.

      uBlock Origin does everything AdBlock Plus does and much, much more, and is faster to boot. It's better, even on Firefox/PaleMoon.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:what? by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      Nonsense, uBlock Origin supports URL based blocking as well as DOM based. In fact URL based is the primary method it uses since that avoids loading the content at all.

      For third-party lists, yeah. But adding your own rules is uncomfortable at best. I might be a doofus, but I can't seem to find a way to provide a list of URLs requested by the page you're on -- ie, an equivalent of Adblock's "Open blockable items". The best approximation in uBlock Origin I managed to find is some "dynamic filtering" that apparently allows blocking by domain only. For that, I already have RequestPolicy which does that so much better, with a "default deny" rule on third-party assets.

      If uBlock Origin has a way to show the full list of URLs referenced, that I have missed, would you mind pointing it out?

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    4. Re:what? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Click on the uBlock icon, and in the window that opens click on the icon next to the dropper. If you hover over it, it will say "open logger". Then you get a new tab where you can click the reload button at the top and see exactly what was loaded and what was blocked and by which rule.

      You can use the dropper to select an element on the page. You can start with a deep one and then use the list it shows to walk up the tree, to find the highest element, or simply edit the rule to just the URL if you want that.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:what? by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      Got it. Looks like that logger window is empty and doesn't even appear like it should have anything in it -- unless you manually reload the page you want to kill parts of, losing dynamically loaded pieces and so on.

      You can't also just click on an entry to make a filter -- unless I'm missing something, on uBlock Origin you need to copy the URL, go to some other place several clicks away, manually write and edit the rule. On the other hand, AdBlock Plus takes you directly to a "new filter" dialog, with a few common variants pre-made ("subdomain.domain.tld/first_dir_part/", "subdomain.domain.tld/", "domain.tld") and editable full URL.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  14. Re: Edge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    wget is about as quick as I can handle. But it lacks some of the features I've come to demand, which slow things down.

  15. Re:Edge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apple told me Safari is the fastest Linux browser.

  16. video on Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder which browser can play html5 video from youtube w/o loading my laptop's CPU 100%? (4 cores I7)

    1. Re:video on Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      youtube-dl

      There's SMTube Player : kind of a mini browser that opens youtube video in an external player. Allows full screen playback on slower than first gen Atom! (VIA C7 1GHz, although I did this under Windows for proper 2D graphics)
      Might be combined with a Firefox extension that kills youtube autoplay if you don't mind a bit of a copy/paste work flow at times.

      There was also a working "open in VLC" kind of extension for Firefox which I lost track of.

  17. Vivaldi is blink based by POWRSURG · · Score: 4, Informative

    Vivaldi is not an open source fork of the old Opera code base. That code base was proprietary. It is blink based. The confusion is that it was founded by the former Opera co-founder/CEO, and aimed to restore features Opera lost when they moved to Blink. It's more a fork in the Opera consumer base and is not a fork of the code base.

    1. Re: Vivaldi is blink based by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You beat me to it. Such a ridiculous claim completely destroyed any credibility the article had.

    2. Re:Vivaldi is blink based by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Vivaldi is actually a fork of Chromium. Their code base tracks Chromium, with their own custom changes to add in Opera like features. The UI is identical to Chrome in many places.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  18. Re:None of the above. by fisted · · Score: 1

    Indeed.

    Sent from my BSD desktop

    --
    CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
  19. Re:None of the above. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Chromebooks are much better web browsing platforms than Windows. But that's all they are good at doing.

  20. This is wrong by TheOuterLinux · · Score: 1

    Dillo or W3M are the fastest web browsers. Dillo is a GUI web browser with only HTML/PHP (not sure about ASPX) & CSS, SSL support, cookies (change Dillo config file), and a simple wget GUI interface as its download manager. It does incredibly well for going to websites you don't need to view videos on. I even got it running on my Mac (couldn't get SSL support to compile). W3M is a web browser that runs in a command line and some terminals (not all) support w3m-img so even images can be shown as the background of the terminal. So, if it's only speed you're worried about, then this is all wrong. He didn't even look at Min or Midori. This review is great for cross-platform, but not if the main focus is for Linux users. He didn't even look at Chromium.

    1. Re: This is wrong by TheOuterLinux · · Score: 1

      Never mind about Chromium. My bad.

    2. Re: This is wrong by TheOuterLinux · · Score: 1

      Pale Moon browser? It's basically the same as Firefox before the 64-bit eye-candy nazis got ahold of it. It's really fast too. 'Member?ðY (South Park joke).

    3. Re:This is wrong by fnj · · Score: 1

      PHP and ASP are server side. Yeah, they can use GET and POST, but they are not necessary to the use GET and POST. Any HTTP client "supports" HTTP generated by PHP and ASP.

      BTW, SSL support in dillo is only an alpha prototype plugin. It does no cert caching or authentication.

    4. Re:This is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree on dillo, I love it, is ludicrously fast.

    5. Re: This is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfit for casual Linus usrs. Non-trivial install from unknown sources for PALE MOON . Grab yo byteboi neckbeard palsy ....

    6. Re:This is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dillo or W3M are the fastest web browsers. Dillo is a GUI web browser with only HTML/PHP (not sure about ASPX) & CSS, SSL support, cookies (change Dillo config file), and a simple wget GUI interface as its download manager. It does incredibly well for going to websites you don't need to view videos on. I even got it running on my Mac (couldn't get SSL support to compile). W3M is a web browser that runs in a command line and some terminals (not all) support w3m-img so even images can be shown as the background of the terminal. So, if it's only speed you're worried about, then this is all wrong. He didn't even look at Min or Midori. This review is great for cross-platform, but not if the main focus is for Linux users. He didn't even look at Chromium.

      Solid choices indeed, w3m-img loads tables andd frames as well. Midori is a bit buggy on my Debian circa 08 laptop. Its the browser! Replaced Midori with Xombrero. My cooling fan sounds less like a radiator fan and sane defaults are integrated. If you use vi you'll be right at home. I use nano but.... My unscientific browser speedtest is to visit nfl.com, nba.com and nhl.com, 3-5 seconds max. Not trying to go deep on the dumb S#!t with the "7" memory hog/cycle wasting, hard drive hogs!

    7. Re:This is wrong by TheOuterLinux · · Score: 1

      They will have SSL built in by 3.1 though, rather than as a plugin; though, not sure how advanced it will be. I think the dpi info for it is somewhere in here: http://www.dillo.org/dpi1.html. In all fairness, I can't get --enable-ssl to work on my Macbook, but that may be an OpenSSL issue. So, I've got HTTPS and HTTP working on Linux, but no HTTPS on my Mac. It's got a few bugs, but it opens instantly and works perfect for looking up information really quick. Using Ctrl+s to search Duckduckgo has issues; you gotta hit the search button on the page itself afterwards. But, they told me they have a fix for it in the next release, so fingers crossed. Wish they would fix webpage copy and pasting; only copy and pasting in the url works, though if there's something I really need that badly, I open the url with midori. I've been told about webkit bugs and exploits, but for what I need it for, who cares. I only use Firefox for heavy work or signing into things.

  21. Better browser than IE = more Google ads served by tepples · · Score: 1

    Google derives income by connecting the publishers of documents on the web with sponsors through services such as AdSense/AdWords and DoubleClick. When people find documents through Google Search, use other Google properties, or view a participating publisher's documents, Google gets a cut of the ad revenue. The more web browsing, the more money for Google. So a better browser is likely to keep people on the web longer.

    Internet Explorer stayed a piece of shit for far too long. Then Microsoft actually got a clue and made IE 9 then IE 10. But by then, Chrome had already become commonplace in certain circles.

  22. Re:Edge by CaptainDork · · Score: 0

    Apple told me, "Safari so goodie."

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  23. Typo by koavf · · Score: 1

    There are six browsers, not seven.

  24. Let's Fix Web Browsing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I want a verifiably secure minimalist browser with fine-grained controls (ability to configure, enable, or disable any sort of component handler - to the point of being able to reduce any website to just the text), interpreted scripting (with control over which scripts are permitted to run, what they may do, what resources scripts may download).

    Rather than attempting to efficiently execute whatever random malware gets spewed up from the 25+ third-party advertisers on some random accidentally [or exploitatively] clicked link (with exposure to everything in the rendering & layout engine, supporting library, and a script handler which marks lots of memory pages as executable), the browser should run fast by simply ignoring all the garbage I don't want on "MY Internet".

  25. Read the benchs by kangsterizer · · Score: 1

    "WebXPRT: This is today's most comprehensive browser benchmark. It uses scenarios created to mirror everyday tasks."
    Basically, Firefox is not the fastest at all things Javascript synthetic performance, but it's the fastest for real world web-browsing.

    Based on that... I would actually recommend using Firefox?

  26. Depends on your CFLAGS by corychristison · · Score: 1

    I can guarantee that if you compile it yourself, with optimized CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, that Firefox and Chromium will come out ahead of the poorly optimized builds that get released by the non-open source browsers.

    Personally I use compiled versions on my Funtoo Laptop and Workstation. Yes they take some time to compile but if you only upgrade twice a year it's not so bad. Upgrading every release would simply be too much. My CFLAGS are nothing crazy: "-march=native -Os -pipe"

    There is also the added benefit that I've never had a build crash on me since I started using builds compiled to my hardware capabilities.

    1. Re:Depends on your CFLAGS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://fun.irq.dk/funroll-loops.org/

    2. Re:Depends on your CFLAGS by corychristison · · Score: 1

      Because I've never seen that before...

      The truth is that binaries packaged to run on a wide range of hardware misses out on many modern day optimizations.

      I use Funtoo/Gentoo because I like the flexibility and the ability to configure everything, the additional performance is simply an added bonus. If I wanted to depend on an OS vendor to make decisions for me, how is that any different from just using Windows?

  27. Re:Edge by aqui · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This solves your problem, but requires some work.

    A Linux install with a virtual box instance running a nicely sandboxed version of Windows is the solution. If you run it in seamless mode you can even set it up to have dedicated VMs for different apps, and have those apps appear and behave on the linux desktop like regular applications. By setting up a shared folder and storing all data on the host (not on the VMs), and allowing clipboard sharing it becomes completely transparent that the app is running in a VM.

    I run the windows apps I require that way, and with VTx the virtualization doesn't really suffer any performance penalty.

    It takes a bit of work to set up but then once its running you realize you have the best of both OS worlds. No more rebooting... etc... all the pains associated with Windows, but windows compatibility. As a bonus you can snapshot the VMs, which means if something gets screwed up due to an update or patch you can just revert to the working snapshot and finish whatever work you need, and leave the patching issue to later.

    Admittedly you need to invest a little time to learn how to use Virtual Box and set it up, but its worth it.

    Plus as you said if the OS goes to pot, you can move your VMs to any OS that runs VirtualBox. I recently switch Linux distros, and migrating was fairly painless (I kept home intact), and used my existing VMs with the new distro without blinking.

    I was a Mac User a long time but once the hardware became shitty (battery problems) and even more expensive, and with the OS only being supported for two cycles eventually forcing a hardware buy (the old hardware doesn't support the newer OS, and the older OS version is no longer patched/supported) I said good bye to Apple. I've used this Linux + VM strategy on several machines now and have never look back or missed my Mac since (in fact its running linux now too).

    --
    ----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
  28. Vivaldi is Blink too by Bronster · · Score: 2

    The summary is wrong that Vivaldi is a fork of old Opera (the Presto engine), it is in fact the same Blink engine that powers Chrome and new Opera, but with brand new chrome (non-capital, aka the interface around the engine) which is recreating the power-user features of old Opera rather than the cut-down interfaces that other browsers are working towards:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  29. Re:Edge by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

    If MS were interested in market share they'd release an Android port.

  30. Re:None of the above. by Pikoro · · Score: 2

    username checks out.

    --
    "Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
  31. Konqueror by StormReaver · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a Web browser, Konqueror has sucked for a long time. While there was a time when I used Konqueror exclusively, its renderer fell increasingly further behind the other browsers. It needs to die as a Web browser.

    As a file manager, though, it is still top dog. Its killer feature (aside from I/O Slaves, which are awesome) is the ability to split the screen into multiple panels. Dolphin is a brain disease that needs to die, just for its inability to do more than two panels, and Konqueror as just a file manager needs to resume its rightful place as the default file manager.

    A second-best would be to have Dolphin be able to split panes like Konqueror does. At least then, Dolphin would no longer be the abomination that it is.

    1. Re:Konqueror by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Why is split panes better than simply being able to do Windows 7-like window snapping? It's not like you can't afford the memory for another window, right? Then the feature doesn't have to be in the app at all.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Konqueror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you know that Dolphin has tabs (middle click on a folder)?
      With those available do you really need more than two panels?

  32. Seamonkey? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My regular browser is "seamonkey". IMO, more pleasant to use.

    It deserves to be included in the test.

  33. Spoken like a non-FOSS writer by markdavis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >""Taken all-in-all, I think Linux users should look to Chrome for their web browser use," concludes ZDNet's contributing editor. "

    And maybe ZDNet doesn't understand Linux users. Many, perhaps even most of us, do not want a closed-source, closed-developed, semi-spyware, anti-configuration-friendly Chrome browser as our preferred browser.

    Oh, and his main benchmarks: Speedometer is a "webkit-designed benchmark" and it surprises him that the webkit based browsers did considerably better than Firefox (the only non-webkit browser in his lineup)? Then a Google (think webkit again) based javascript benchmark, same result. Yet when he used Kraken and Jetstream, miraculously the browsers were just a 10% and 11% spread (with Chrome not winning either). BTW- he never ran Ooort, which Firefox seems to always win (and by a lot), and Peacekeeper, which Firefox usually wins.

    My take: Firefox does just fine with speed. It is not the fastest, but the speed difference isn't as much as one might think, and it certainly isn't the only important factor when choosing a browser.

    1. Re:Spoken like a non-FOSS writer by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Many, perhaps even most

      This is confirmation bias. Linux is getting more and more popular by the day, and a large portion of the user base couldn't give a shit about proprietary vs open debate as long as it fits their use cases.

      A lot of people switched to Linux because it's not MS and they didn't want to buy Apple hardware.

  34. No Palemoon? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

    They have had a Linux build for ages and is in a lot of repos. I've been using it on my netbook (dual boot Win 7 and Puppy) and it works quite nicely in both Windows and Puppy, smooth and pretty solid.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  35. Hosts does more for less & faster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NoScript parses tags. Hosts block ads before noscript by blocking adserver source. Adblock = bribed/crippled http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/ , is SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions/686041/which-leads-to-faster-browsing-an-ad-blocker-or-an-edited-hosts-file/ & eats more (151mb http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg/ & hosts ~6mb)

    APK

    P.S.=> APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

  36. Re:Chrome is fast, but doesn't block ads or script by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Adblock is hardly enough these days.

    Try adding this list to your hosts file. Bonus points if you can write a script to periodically auto-update it.

    http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

  37. UBlock = inferior inefficient imitation vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    UBlock can't do these as well as (or @ all) hosts do 4 speed, security, & reliability:

    Protection vs.:

    1.) Bad sites (past ads)
    2.) Fastflux botnet C&C's
    3.) Dyndns botnet C&C's
    4.) DGA botnet C&C's
    5.) Downed DNS (reliability)
    6.) DNS redirect poisoned dns
    7.) DNSChangers in IP stack OR routers
    8.) DNS requestlog trackers
    9.) Spam payloads
    10.) Phish payloads
    11.) Bandwidth caps

    Additionally:

    12.) Get past dns blocks
    13.) Speed up 2 ways (adblocks/hardcodes)
    14.) Work on anything webbound multiplatform.
    15.) Ez data edit
    16.) Block ads more efficiently in cpu/ram/I-O use

    * UBlock now uses hosts (no DNS benefits vs. dns issues) - poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"

    Hosts = native vs. illogically "Bolting on 'MoAr'" & not ClarityRay blockable like addons.

    APK

    P.S.=> Hosts (1st resolver) do MORE w/ less in fast kernelmode & before slow usermode addons

    Hosts ~3mb vs. UBlock = 64MB -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte...

  38. Hosts files make ANY browser faster & safer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Via NEW APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

    Ads & malware rob speed/security/privacy

    Hosts add speed (via hardcodes/adblocks), security (vs. bad sites/malware/poisoned dns), reliability (vs. dns down), & anonymity (vs. dns requestlogs/trackers).

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus + less security bugs/complexity & faster vs. addons/routers/remote dns!

    Avoids DNSChangers in routers/IP settings & dns redirects (99.999% of ISP DNS != patched vs. it) + lightens DNS load & resolves faster from local system RAM!

    * Via what u NATIVELY have built into the IP stack in FASTER kernelmode!

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/

  39. This does it & 9 more via 32/64-bit GUI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

    Ads & malware rob speed/security/privacy

    Hosts add speed (via hardcodes/adblocks), security (vs. bad sites/malware/poisoned dns), reliability (vs. dns down), & anonymity (vs. dns requestlogs/trackers).

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus + less security bugs/complexity & faster vs. addons/routers/remote dns!

    Avoids DNSChangers in routers/IP settings & dns redirects (99.999% of ISP DNS != patched vs. it) + lightens DNS load & resolves faster from local system RAM!

    * Via what u NATIVELY have built into the IP stack in FASTER kernelmode!

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/

  40. For the best custom hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

    Ads & malware rob speed/security/privacy

    Hosts add speed (via hardcodes/adblocks), security (vs. bad sites/malware/poisoned dns), reliability (vs. dns down), & anonymity (vs. dns requestlogs/trackers).

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus + less security bugs/complexity & faster vs. addons/routers/remote dns!

    Avoids DNSChangers in routers/IP settings & dns redirects (99.999% of ISP DNS != patched vs. it) + lightens DNS load & resolves faster from local system RAM!

    * Via what u NATIVELY have built into the IP stack in FASTER kernelmode!

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/

  41. Only one answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Telnet...

  42. Lynx is the fastest... by newbie_fantod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But who cares. It's security/privacy that I want. All the browsers seem just fine speed-wise.

    1. Re:Lynx is the fastest... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, it's good to have a look around since the security/privacy part is headed for door at Mozilla. Turns out advertisers doesn't like addons which can provide that - hence the bye-bye to those.

    2. Re:Lynx is the fastest... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope. Links is faster than Lynx. However, if you want a browser that is actually usable, then Surf is pretty good.

    3. Re:Lynx is the fastest... by newbie_fantod · · Score: 1

      I believe you're right about links. For usable browsing, I'm giving Palemoon a try right now.

  43. It's the hardware, stupid by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    You'll need a fast CPU anyway (Core 2 Duo and up), gigs of RAM and the patience to live without H264 hardware acceleration if your graphics are too old or unsupported (such as Radeon 5450 under Ubuntu 16.04).

    There's no other way around if feeding your computer with mounds of garbage to be parsed, interpreted, compiled and encabulated.
    Fun fact : didn't PDF files use to be slower than web pages? Now it's the other way around.
    Maybe we could make a "website" out of a PDF document with hyperlinks to other PDF files? (Just need a PDF reader willing to use gigs of RAM to cache rendered pages rather than re-rendering them constantly when you scroll the document). Or the same in ePub or other "ebook" format.

  44. Re:Edge by johannesg · · Score: 4, Funny

    Haven't you heard? The desktop is dead! Everybody works on tablets and mobile phones now. There will not be a new photoshop for desktops, the next version will only be available on Android and iPhone. Because that's where the market is now. You insensitive clod, asking that companies like Apple or Microsoft keep pouring money into the dead desktop ecosystem... They have better things to do with their time.

    I hear that when my company is going to change office later this year, instead of my two large monitors, I will be given an iPhone to run Visual Studio on (it will be running on an emulator, of course). Apparently once you get some experience with that tiny on-screen keyboard, you can work even faster than with a real keyboard and mouse, and compile times only suffer a little when you do it 'in the cloud'. And instead of a desk, I will get a plastic chair to sit on, since I won't need so much space for all that hardware.

    You may not like it, but it's the wave of the future. Why, last night I went to the local IMAX 3D theatre, and we all sat there streaming the movie to two mobile phones (one for each eye). The experience just blew me away, it was so incredibly life like.

    Really, nobody should be investing into desktops. Desktops are dead, and Apple and Microsoft should be applauded for seeing this early and not investing any shareholder value into a deadend.

    BTW, can you tell us more about that grape picking position? It sound interesting.

  45. Trump Supporters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Trump Supporters have small genitalia. Why?

    1. Re:Trump Supporters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      circumcision...
      / ducks

    2. Re: Trump Supporters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because the other side has the market cornered for being huge dicks. Both sides need to grow the fuck up and start working together to solve problems.

  46. Too much Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are criteria beyond performance in some hand-picked microbenchmarks. For me, the most important is independency of too fat a monopoly. Since "the State" has given up on doing its job, it's on us, the consumers.

  47. Re:Chrome is fast, but doesn't block ads or script by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ublock replaces adblock
    umatrix replaces noscript

    both work better (and both also work in firefox , chrome and vivaldi)

  48. Hosts blows redundant ublock away by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    UBlock can't do these as well as (or @ all) hosts do 4 speed, security, & reliability:

    Protection vs.:

    1.) Bad sites (past ads)
    2.) Fastflux botnet C&C's
    3.) Dyndns botnet C&C's
    4.) DGA botnet C&C's
    5.) Downed DNS (reliability)
    6.) DNS redirect poisoned dns
    7.) DNSChangers in IP stack OR routers
    8.) DNS requestlog trackers
    9.) Spam payloads
    10.) Phish payloads
    11.) Bandwidth caps

    Additionally:

    12.) Get past dns blocks
    13.) Speed up 2 ways (adblocks/hardcodes)
    14.) Work on anything webbound multiplatform.
    15.) Ez data edit
    16.) Block ads more efficiently in cpu/ram/I-O use

    * UBlock now uses hosts (no DNS benefits vs. dns issues) - poor imitation = "sincerest form of flattery"

    Hosts = native vs. illogically "Bolting on 'MoAr'" & not ClarityRay blockable like addons.

    APK

    P.S.=> Hosts (1st resolver) do MORE w/ less in fast kernelmode & before slow usermode addons

    Hosts ~3mb vs. UBlock = 64MB -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/adblocker-memory-consumption.jpg

  49. Best custom hosts file creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NEW APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

    Ads & malware rob speed/security/privacy

    Hosts add speed (via hardcodes/adblocks), security (vs. bad sites/malware/poisoned dns), reliability (vs. dns down), & anonymity (vs. dns requestlogs/trackers).

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus + less security bugs/complexity & faster vs. addons/routers/remote dns!

    Avoids DNSChangers in routers/IP settings & dns redirects (99.999% of ISP DNS != patched vs. it) + lightens DNS load & resolves faster from local system RAM!

    * Via what u NATIVELY have built into the IP stack in FASTER kernelmode!

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/

  50. Memory Usage!!! by halfdan+the+black · · Score: 1

    Memory usage, not speed is the killer in modern web browsers. People often have many windows open, and each page could suck up a gig of memory, the system rapidly becomes unstable. Let's see some tests about memory and stability with large numbers of open pages.

  51. Re:None of the above. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I said fucking imbecile, not impotent cuckold.

  52. Re:Edge by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    and with the OS only being supported for two cycles eventually forcing a hardware buy (the old hardware doesn't support the newer OS, and the older OS version is no longer patched/supported) I said good bye to Apple. I've used this Linux + VM strategy on several machines now and have never look back or missed my Mac since (in fact its running linux now too).
    That only happened during the switch from 68k to PowerPC and from PowerPC to intel.
    I doubt there is an Intel Mac out that does not support the most recent macOS.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  53. Re:Chrome is fast, but doesn't block ads or script by Baleet · · Score: 1

    Reading this on Chrome, AdBlock tells me it has blocked 53,805 ads since installed.

  54. Re:Edge by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    and with the OS only being supported for two cycles eventually forcing a hardware buy (the old hardware doesn't support the newer OS, and the older OS version is no longer patched/supported) I said good bye to Apple. I've used this Linux + VM strategy on several machines now and have never look back or missed my Mac since (in fact its running linux now too).
    I tried that too, at the beach. What kind of sun glasses do you wear? Mine where either to dark (to see the screen properly) or to bright (was still blinded by the reflections of the sun on the sea).

    Bright future, indeed!

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  55. Fast isn't everything by Baleet · · Score: 1

    I use Chrome across all devices, because it enables me to take advantage of the Google-Android ecosystem, which is its main advantage for me.

  56. It Depends ... Atom or i7? 512MB or 16G RAM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It Depends ... Atom or i7? 512MB or 16G RAM?

    Lynx is the fastest. I use it whenever possible. No javascript, no images. Brilliant!

    Dillo is next. No javascript, but terrible HTTPS support. It works, but doesn't validate certs.

    After that, it doesn't matter since I don't have 64G of RAM and all the modern browsers that most people run are total memory hogs. I make due with Firefox for daily use and Chromium for financial sites.

    I'll use Chromium with Firejail --private mode to do dangerous things like airline boarding pass printing - often with a VPN, so speed really isn't top of my list. I need to look up how to constrain a firejail to just 512MB of RAM.

    On Android, I still use the "browser" from 2011. Seems that Google and I disagree on when End of Life for $400 devices really happens. It is Android, so I don't login to any accounts with it or have it connected to any online sites I visit on other platforms. I'm done with expensive Android devices. $50 or less from now on if the EoL is just 3 yrs.

  57. Re: Edge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sierra requires 2009 or newer, and with the earliest Intel Macs being from 2006-ish, you'd be wrong.

  58. Re:Edge by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    You're missing the i686 Macs (dual core CPU half-way between a Pentium M and a Core 2 Duo)
    Also, Core 2 Duo systems are old themselves (old graphics, old firmware) so I wouldn't count on them not being deprecated.

  59. Re:Edge by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    Haven't you heard? The desktop is dead! Everybody works on tablets and mobile phones now. There will not be a new photoshop for desktops, the next version will only be available on Android and iPhone. Because that's where the market is now. You insensitive clod, asking that companies like Apple or Microsoft keep pouring money into the dead desktop ecosystem...

    Damn, that was brutal! Well played though.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  60. Presumably x86 -- what about ARM ? by redelm · · Score: 1

    I notice browser slowness much more on my ARM devices than even on Celerons. I think the biggest differentiator is who can multi-thread the best to take advantage of available processors.

  61. Dont matter forced to use chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Chromecast is the shit from linux as I can output all sound to audio chromecaster.
    So my own files and music playes work. Not just from the browser.
    No fucking wires for audio on legacy amp.

  62. Article: -1 Flamebait by allo · · Score: 1

    Actually it doesn't matter which one is the fastest.
    Browsers are optimizing since years and with each release they claim to be 10-30% faster. If it were true, pages would be rendered instantly ... ... and on the other hand, nobody selects browsers by rendering speed. People select them by interface, startup time and addons. This matters a lot more than if the page renders 10ms faster.

  63. Speaking of Chrome... Favorite Chrome Satire Comic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Remember that silly comic that Google put out to hawk their new (at the time) Chrome Browser?

    Here's my favorite Chrome Satire comic. Doesn't use the entire thing, but there are some worthy chuckles to be had.

    https://chromesatire.wordpress.com/

    Six years have gone by so quickly....

  64. Re:None of the above. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ayup, dillo, surf or luakit for me.

  65. Really not that bad. by WorBlux · · Score: 1

    On JavaScript benchmarks, all the browsers are within 5%. Nothing that the end user will really notice.

    The only test where Firefox falls flat was designed by the web-kit team, and suprise, suprise all the other browsers listed are web-kit variants.

    Really though servo is set to knock all the other browsers right out of thier socks.

  66. What was that old DOS game called? Oh yes,... by cleerline2.0 · · Score: 1

    Thief

  67. Firefox is really fast ... by kbahey · · Score: 1

    Firefox is really fast, depending on many factors ...

    I upgraded from Kubuntu 14.04 to 16.04, and Firefox is the fastest I have seen in years. Maybe it is because Canonical have switched to the 64bit version, or something else. This is on an 8 year old laptop.

    Regardless, you have to install the following:

    - uBlock Origin (block ads)
    - NoScript (Disable Javascript and Flash except from white listed sites)
    - Cookie Monster (Don't accept cookies except from white listed sites)
    - Classic Theme Restorer (Makes it look familiar)
    - Auto Unload Tab (reduces memory footprint)

    Optionally, you may also want to install:
    - Session Manager (Never lose track of your open tabs)
    - Add This (for easy content sharing)

    I have Chromium, Opera, Konqueror and Rekonq on the same machine, and it used to be that Chromium and Opera are faster, but the former has a high memory footprint. But with 16.04, Firefox is the fastest.

    Sticking with Firefox for the foreseeable future ...

    --
    2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
  68. dillo by higuita · · Score: 1

    dillo is very fast and it have a GUI also... it do not have javascript, but that is a feature for many people!

    --
    Higuita
  69. Only speed considered? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Having recently tried Chrome Browser, I know it resists me setting Duckduckgo as default search engine & has repeatedly changed back to using google as default search engine. So I must wonder how else Chrome acts against my privacy.
    After cleansing my HDDs, installing different Linux-GNU distro and Chromium, I have not run Chromium because I trust Mozilla more than I trust the people that try to keep google malwares out of Chromium.

  70. firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Firefox? really?

    Funny I use both FF and Chrome, and FF is sluggish as shit.

  71. Obsolete question by NewYork · · Score: 1

    http://arewefastyet.com/

    --
    Casteism
  72. fast browsers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey, what about Slimjet? I use it and I find it to be the fastest browser I've ever used.

  73. What about ones it was paid NOT to? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Adblock's bribed not to work by default http://www.businessinsider.com... & ABP bought out adblock http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

    * Think about that...

    APK

    P.S.=> My work does a MUCH better job doing more for less for greater security, speed, reliability & anonymity online than ANY "so-called 'security solution'" out there, BAR-NONE, that are riddled w/ security issues + bloat (DNS/AntiVirus/Browser addons) via APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/ ... apk