Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

dillo-browser.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 179 posts

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#101

Post by rjzzleep »

niutech wrote: post #79
tentacleuno wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

For a lightweight MS Teams experience, try: https://github.com/fossteams/teams-cli (terminal client), https://github.com/cacticouncil/lounge-lizard (both Slack & Teams) or https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-teams (plugin for Pidgin).

A little reminder from the past eh? I had to sigh when I read that. I guess purple somewhat died when the companies started banning accounts left and right for using third party clients for using their services. In a few cases it also seems like those bans started happening, because companies wanted to shut down third party clients to make sure people can't bypass ads, but also unfortunately to keep them from harvesting data.

I kinda have to ask, what features can you enforce in rate limiting in a first party client that you can't enforce in a third party client?

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#102

Post by userbinator »

rasz wrote: post #91
niutech wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still browse the web using Opera 12.18, which takes a little memory, but the HTML5 support will be poor. The web has evolved since then.

Opera 12 source code leaked, so you could even port it to new platforms. Sadly multiple exploits, html5, and finally licensing make it a dead end :(.

Licensing is the only real problem, but that never stopped people from doing things either.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#103

Post by rjzzleep »

niutech wrote: post #80
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…

Check out more lightweight web browsers: NetSurf, Pale Moon, K-Meleon on Goanna, Otter Browser, Ultralight, as well as terminal apps: Carbonyl, Browsh, Links (it has a graphical mode too).

When you run a chromium in headless mode it doesn't make the browser any lighter. I think what the OP means is that you need to have a browser with the most important JS and CSS functionality to render modern websites, but without all the junk on top of it.

qutebrowser and nyxt would fit the bill better. to be honest I feel like nyxt is really cool, but I'm not sure if choosing a lisp was the right idea.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#104

Post by creesch »

niutech wrote: post #79
tentacleuno wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

For a lightweight MS Teams experience, try: https://github.com/fossteams/teams-cli (terminal client), https://github.com/cacticouncil/lounge-lizard (both Slack & Teams) or https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-teams (plugin for Pidgin).

While it is neat that people work on them, realistically these are not replacements for people wishing to have a lighter teams experience.

- Non of them are close to feature complete. As soon as you have to do more than chat (share files, do meetings, etc) they will let you down.

- In most corporate environments there is some extra layer of authentication involved I highly doubt these clients are able to handle.

The best way I have found to have a lighter teams experience is to simply use the web version as a PWA. This basically offers you all the features without the extended footprint of effectively running a second browser.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#105

Post by creesch »

bombcar wrote: post #76
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…

It’s sad. I have clear memories of browsing the web quite capably with windows 98 and 64MB of RAM (or less!) and now we can’t even do it with gigabytes.

To be fair, that was also a much lighter web. Even if you remove all the heavy javascript overload modern webpages will be heavier simply due to higher resolution images and other media.

It also highly depends on what you want to browse. HN for example will work just fine without much memory. Expecting YouTube to be as light as 90s websites is asking a bit much.

Having said that, I do agree that we have overshot, and many websites are way too heavy for their use case.

Sticking with YouTube as an example, assuming for a moment that whatever device you are using does have hardware decoding, so video playback isn't dragging down performance. It still is an extremely heavy website due to all the tracking shenanigans, interactive elements and the fact that it is an SPA based design. Alternative front-ends like invidious show it is possible and in the past Google did actually provide light versions of many of their web apps specifically for this sort of use case. Sadly that is no longer the case.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#106

Post by barbs »

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…

Which OS are you running on your netbooks? I recently acquired an old netbook with an Intel Atom processor and have been trying to find decent lightweight yet usable OS for it. I'd tried Debian but Firefox was too slow on it, maybe I should try again with Dillo now?

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#107

Post by nicman23 »

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…

firefox with umatrix probably will be better for that hardware.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#108

Post by andrewshadura »

shiomiru wrote: post #32

The extension system[0] seems interesting; it reminds me of w3m's local CGI scripts. (From what I can tell, w3m's local CGI came first, but I don't know if it influenced DPI and/or if w3m's system had a predecessor too...) For a short description of what w3m local CGI scripts can do: * They can be used for implementing a man page viewer, as in w3mman. It seems Dillo has a similar plugin[1]. * w3m's bookmark system is…

As far as I remember, Arachne also did something similar.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#109

Post by reify »

Great

I used this years ago and then forgot about it

Tested on arch first to set it up then installed on my raspberry pi zero w.

Tried all text only browsers on the pi zero and it is a pain. Dillo is far better.

You must create the dillorc file or add the default dillorc from the git page. Change the dillorc as you want, ie, start page, search page, colours etc.

well pleased

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#110

Post by znpy »

After getting my own fair share of nostalgia (anyone remember running dillo on Damn Small Linux? I used to do that because all I had to run Linux in ~2003-2004 was a 486dx) and reading some of the comments, I think that Dillo could be a nice alternative to what Gemini was supposed to be.

If we could agree on some kind of "low-tech web" (a subset of html, a subset of css, a subset of javascript -- or maybe no javascript at all?) then Dillo could be the champion of this.

Post reply on HN