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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

#151

Post by znpy »

rodarima wrote: post #142
znpy wrote: post #110

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 javascri…

> 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. There is a "movement"[1] called the small web (smolweb?) which basically does what you are describing without being so restrictive as Gemini. AFAIK Dillo should be able to render most of those features properly. [1]: https://smolweb.…

Tbh, i just tried dillo again (it’s in the fedora repositories) but was saddened to find out it doesn’t support frames.

I was hoping it could be useful for having a light tool to read the single unix specification. There is a frame-less version, but frames are very handy for navigating those docs.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#152

Post by unwind »

rodarima wrote: post #140
unwind wrote: post #120

Cool, I remember the name Dillo from ... way back when, I guess. Interesting to see a mix of C and C++ in the same codebase, that always makes me curious if there is some internal/mental "pressure" to convert the C code to C++ since that does seem simpler in many ways if you're already using C++. Also, does anyone know why the functions have a (to me, incredibly random) "a_" prefix? Like this, from "dicache.h" [1]: v…

> Interesting to see a mix of C and C++ in the same codebase, that always makes me curious if there is some internal/mental "pressure" to convert the C code to C++ since that does seem simpler in many ways if you're already using C++. The initial Dillo was fully written in C and it used GTK+. As it moved to FLTK it began rewriting parts in C++. > Also, does anyone know why the functions have a (to me, incredibly rand…

Wow! Thanks for responding, and providing such an awesome answer.

Yes, that sounds very much like a lack of "static", which makes it even more confusing. It sounds unlikely that someone would start a browser project in C and not know about static.

I would not agree that it reads "better", it just makes it more random. Adding a letter that at least hinted at what was meant would have been better, if we're for some reason are limited to a single letter (like "p_" for public).

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#153

Post by dewey »

toastal wrote: post #117

I used to test out sites on Dillo a lot to see if the experience was absolutely broken, but Dillo got too rusty so I went to checking Netsurf, w3m & elinks--so a revival is encouraging, especially for underpowered systems. Shame to see a project moving from a self-hosted Mercurial repository to a US-megacorparate-owned Git repository in Microsoft GitHub. …But at least the maintainer is committed to accepting email pa…

> Shame to see a project moving from a self-hosted Mercurial repository to a US-megacorparate-owned Git repository in Microsoft GitHub

I get your point but it’s a bit of an odd complaint when the main reason it went away was that it was self hosted.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#154

Post by anthk »

prmoustache wrote: post #128
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…

This is gross exageration. A fairly decent low end desktop/laptop CPU with 4GB of RAM is enough to run MS Teams, and I don't really understand why one would on purpose use a webmail when there are more practical and efficient MTAs.

Something must be really wrong when you need a 4GB machine to basically run Kopete/Pidgin+inline plugins at HD resolutions.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#155

Post by anthk »

rodarima wrote: post #55
systems_glitch wrote: post #53

Awesome, thanks for keeping it alive! Used it for ages on small live distros, an old Toshiba Libretto 110CT running Linux I used before netbooks became widely available, and on dialup or other slow connections when on-site at remote locations.

I'm collecting some pictures of Dillo on different computers, with the idea of adding them to a gallery. Here are some on the web: [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_HandBook#/media/File:H... [2]: http://damnsmalllinux.org/dmesg-screen-1.jpg It would be nice to see it running in some remote location :-) I also had it running at some point in my old Android phone (running Xorg directly on the framebuffer), but…

I have it running under a n270 netbook with CWM and Hyperbola GNU/Linux :D

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#156

Post by pmontra »

tentacleuno wrote: post #70
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…

> I'm still quite amazed that Microsoft decided this was acceptable

Their customers find it acceptable so it's OK for MS too.

If customers wouldn't find it acceptable they would use something else and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Maybe it helps that it comes with the Office suite and they already paid for it.

By the way, when a customer asks me how I want to do a video chat, almost always with screen sharing, I suggest Meet. If they mandate Teams, OK, I'll do Teams in a browser. Actually the best screen sharing seems to be Skype. It can zoom too. None of them can go full screen with no useless UI around the shared screen, tough luck. None of my customers are using Zoom anymore.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#157

Post by pmontra »

smallerfish wrote: post #147
mrweasel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While Slack isn't perfect either, it's miles better. We switched from HipChat to Google Chat, which in my mind is pretty bad. Customers are often on Teams, which somehow manages to be MUCH MUCH worse. People kept telling me that Slack is much better than either Google Chat or MS Team, but after using it I can't say that I'd agree. Teams is clearly the worst, Slack is awful in its own way and Google Chat manages to…

Twist is better still than Slack - they force everything into threads, so it becomes a reasonably browsable experience, and therefore possible to maintain async comms with. Slack still wins on integrations, though Twist has a few (including Zapier).

How do you find the thread with the conversation you need to carry on? That's the problem with Slack. Slack threads is where information goes to hide and die. "Ah, you did answer that two days ago? Where?"

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#158

Post by pmontra »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #115
creesch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On my Windows 7 throwback computer running an i5 3570K (a damn near top-of-the-line CPU 10 years ago) with iGPU, in Waterfox YouTube stutters when fullscreen in 1080p (even with enhanced-h264ify and hardware video decoding as far as I can tell), both in YouTube and Firefox's pop-out player. Videos play smoothly in Invidious. Enhancer for YouTube™ has a popout/embed button I could test, but it was pulled from addons.m…

My laptop is an i7 4xxx so it's one year newer than yours and intrinsically better specced, i7 vs i5. I have no problems with videos. It could be the NVIDIA card in my laptop or the OS. I'm on Debian 11 now, which is much newer than Windows 7. Drivers, codecs, etc are more recent and possibly more performant.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#159

Post by anthk »

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…

Zramup script:

    #!/bin/sh
    doas /sbin/modprobe zram
    doas /sbin/zramctl --find --size 1024M
    doas /sbin/mkswap /dev/zram0
    doas /sbin/swapon /dev/zram0 --priority -1
Not Firefox, but Luakit might do it fine on single pages where JS is mandatory, such as, sadly, my country's goverment pages to do personal life related tasks.

Re: Show HN: Resurrecting the Dillo browser

#160

Post by smallerfish »

pmontra wrote: post #157
smallerfish wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twist is better still than Slack - they force everything into threads, so it becomes a reasonably browsable experience, and therefore possible to maintain async comms with. Slack still wins on integrations, though Twist has a few (including Zapier).

How do you find the thread with the conversation you need to carry on? That's the problem with Slack. Slack threads is where information goes to hide and die. "Ah, you did answer that two days ago? Where?"

There are two levels of organization - channels and threads, so it's not too bad to browse if reasonably setup. It also gives you an inbox with all of your unread threads, so that you can catch up quickly; and, you can mark a thread unread if you want to punt on it after reading.
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