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Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

dillo-browser.github.io

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Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#61

Post by nmz »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #36
krylon wrote: post #19

Given the circumstances, I am happy to read this. I own two ~2009 netbooks with Intel Atom N270 CPUs and 1GB of RAM each - running Firefox on those is ridiculous, whereas dillo will run very well on these. I used to use dillo on my main desktop too, for browsing documentation that wasn't too heavy on CSS - having 20 to 40 tabs open would gobble up a lot of RAM in Firefox, whereas dillo happily stayed around 100MB no…

I also like dillo, but just as an option - have you tried netsurf as well? Likewise very lightweight.

dillo is more lightweight, although it doesn't support html5, while netsurf does support some html5. The website itself of dillo does not render the same in dillo.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#62

Post by krylon »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #36
krylon wrote: post #19

Given the circumstances, I am happy to read this. I own two ~2009 netbooks with Intel Atom N270 CPUs and 1GB of RAM each - running Firefox on those is ridiculous, whereas dillo will run very well on these. I used to use dillo on my main desktop too, for browsing documentation that wasn't too heavy on CSS - having 20 to 40 tabs open would gobble up a lot of RAM in Firefox, whereas dillo happily stayed around 100MB no…

I also like dillo, but just as an option - have you tried netsurf as well? Likewise very lightweight.

I have. I only discovered it about two weeks ago, though. But so far, I do like it. Thank you!

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#63

Post by rodarima »

LikeBeans wrote: post #60

You know what would be really cool? if there is a way to use it as a lightweight alternative to Electron. Is that possible?

Assuming you don't use Javascript, kind of.

Dillo supports XEmbed, so you can run it embedded in another X windows. This is done by Claws Mail to render emails as HTML [1].

[1]: https://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=dillo

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#64

Post by relyks »

LikeBeans wrote: post #60

You know what would be really cool? if there is a way to use it as a lightweight alternative to Electron. Is that possible?

It would, but it's unlikely that the browser implements enough of Javascript or CSS to replace the engine for Electron and to be useful

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#65

Post by heads »

The world of low spec hardware really does need faster, lighter browsers. Too many times now have I configured an SBC, RPi, or even a laptop that’s just a few years old and been disappointed that, while everything else is wonderful and fast and smooth looking, it is browser performance that is the one thing holding me back.

I am resigned to the fact that some of my requirements really do mean I need a Ryzen 7 with 16GB of RAM. Sadly my biggest compute loads are for MS Teams and webmail.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#66

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

nmz wrote: post #61
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also like dillo, but just as an option - have you tried netsurf as well? Likewise very lightweight.

dillo is more lightweight, although it doesn't support html5, while netsurf does support some html5. The website itself of dillo does not render the same in dillo.

Sure; I personally view it as a continuum of lynx..elinks..dillo..netsurf..........firefox is so. Just pointing out that netsurf is close to dillo.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#67

Post by astowaway »

minitech wrote: post #42
krylon wrote: post #19

Given the circumstances, I am happy to read this. I own two ~2009 netbooks with Intel Atom N270 CPUs and 1GB of RAM each - running Firefox on those is ridiculous, whereas dillo will run very well on these. I used to use dillo on my main desktop too, for browsing documentation that wasn't too heavy on CSS - having 20 to 40 tabs open would gobble up a lot of RAM in Firefox, whereas dillo happily stayed around 100MB no…

> Also, the lack of a Javascript engine makes it a very secure browser. Whenever I try to open a link that I am suspicious of, I do so in dillo. I would suggest using a Chromium or Firefox profile with JavaScript and webfonts disabled for this instead of questionably maintained C software that doesn’t have a sandbox for any of the complex and commonly exploited things it does (image decoding, HTML/CSS parsing, networ…

I would say there is a chance that there are fewer vulnerabilities in the 60k~ lines of code contained within dillo than the in the however many million lines of code it takes to do anything with firefox or chromium.

running dillo in a bubblewrap container would probably be fine and not eat all of your available resources.

[i got my 60k loc number from running tokei in the dillo repo, doing the same in the gecko repo took multiple minutes and pegged 8 cores at 100%, might be a bug in tokei or maybe 21 million lines of code is just enormous]

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#68

Post by tecleandor »

rodarima wrote: post #44
foul wrote: post #35

Very nice to hear! Anybody knows what happened to Jorge A. Cid?

I have no news, but I hope HN could reach him :-)

Seems like, at least until 2022, he was still playing tennis tournaments in Club Stadio Italiano, located in Las Condes, Chile.

https://tourtenisquinta.cl/site/perfil?id=763

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#69

Post by rodarima »

astowaway wrote: post #67
minitech wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, the lack of a Javascript engine makes it a very secure browser. Whenever I try to open a link that I am suspicious of, I do so in dillo. I would suggest using a Chromium or Firefox profile with JavaScript and webfonts disabled for this instead of questionably maintained C software that doesn’t have a sandbox for any of the complex and commonly exploited things it does (image decoding, HTML/CSS parsing, networ…

I would say there is a chance that there are fewer vulnerabilities in the 60k~ lines of code contained within dillo than the in the however many million lines of code it takes to do anything with firefox or chromium. running dillo in a bubblewrap container would probably be fine and not eat all of your available resources. [i got my 60k loc number from running tokei in the dillo repo, doing the same in the gecko repo…

I would recommend not opening suspicious pages in any browser at all. If you don't have the choice, then maybe download it with curl(1) and then inspect it with hexdump(1) or more(1), so you can see the content before sending it to an HTML parser.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#70

Post by tentacleuno »

heads wrote: post #65

The world of low spec hardware really does need faster, lighter browsers. Too many times now have I configured an SBC, RPi, or even a laptop that’s just a few years old and been disappointed that, while everything else is wonderful and fast and smooth looking, it is browser performance that is the one thing holding me back. I am resigned to the fact that some of my requirements really do mean I need a Ryzen 7 with 16…

> MS Teams

I really do empathize here, after having to use Teams for around 2 years. It's amazingly slow, confusing, buggy (it would crash the tab quite regularly), and just generally a perfect role model for what software shouldn't be[0].

I'm still quite amazed that Microsoft decided this was acceptable. I'm curious how Slack performs; perhaps they're not trying harder because there's no[t much] competition in this space ...?

[0]: (If I remember correctly, they were using AngularJS at the time, but I'm sure they're now using the regular React stack.)

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