Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#1

Post by jessehorne » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

I run a 2012-ish Macbook Pro which has 8gb of ram. I noticed today that Chrome takes up at least a couple of those gigs throughout the day. I'm looking for suggestions for alternatives, preferably extremely lightweight (memory efficient) and open-source. Would love to hear what the community is using.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#2

Post by themodelplumber » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

Not sure if you're running OS X or Linux or something else, but on my 2GB netbook I've had good results using Falkon and Links. The former plays YouTube videos just fine, and the latter is more like using a mainstream browser in reading mode.

https://www.falkon.org/

http://links.twibright.com/

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#3

Post by axaxs » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

Brave and Vivaldi are both Chromium based, but perhaps worth a shot.

There's only two other engines left: firefox and webkit. You may want to look into a webkit based browser?

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#4

Post by jessehorne » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

themodelplumber wrote: post #2

Not sure if you're running OS X or Linux or something else, but on my 2GB netbook I've had good results using Falkon and Links. The former plays YouTube videos just fine, and the latter is more like using a mainstream browser in reading mode. https://www.falkon.org/ http://links.twibright.com/

I'm running OS X. I really wanted to try Falkon though!

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#5

Post by JakeWesorick » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

Firefox? You can also go to "about:memory" and press "Minimize memory usage" to free up memory if you're having issues.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#6

Post by jessehorne » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

JakeWesorick wrote: post #5

Firefox? You can also go to "about:memory" and press "Minimize memory usage" to free up memory if you're having issues.

Looking for something that I haven't tried already! Also wasn't aware that there was "minimize memory usage" functionality.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#7

Post by Y_Y » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

Memory use isn't real though, especially with OSX and Chrome. It is just eating up what's available as an optimisation, not taking only what it needs.

Also, get Firefox.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#8

Post by sydd » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

I'd use FF with an ad blocker like uBlock Origin, ads can hog tons of resources. Here are some other tips too https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-m...

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#9

Post by ulfw » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

Why wouldn't you use Safari on it? When it comes to being optimised for the Mac, that's where it's at. You're on a closed sourced OS, webkit is open.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone suggest an open source lightweight alternative to Chrome?

#10

Post by beervirus » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

Firefox. Block ads. It’ll do fine.