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

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."

Comments

Beyond the threshold of fast enough.

[Mr307]

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.

Re:Beyond the threshold of fast enough.

[mysticgoat]

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.

Isn't is apparent?

[msauve]

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

Chrome is fast, but doesn't block ads or scripts

[marcel_in_ca]

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