Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

Who'sThere? · 2011-08-15 01:18:02

Hi.

Could anyone with more experience on Arch, the AUR, or what-not recommend a browser for older PCs that has flash support?

The system probably has enough RAM at 512MB, but the CPU (from the PIII/Celeron era) is pretty slow.

So... any ideas on what a good browser would be? Chromium is a disaster with it's animations. Swiftfox is okay, but has huge delays on opening new tabs/windows.

fsckd · 2011-08-15 01:24:21

A list of lightweight web browsers: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Li … b_Browsers
Flash from Adobe is always a resource hog. I have similar specs (better CPU though) and I use plugins to turn flash off everywhere except for specific sites. Many browsers in that list provide features like that.

x33a · 2011-08-15 04:55:36

opera should work fine. Maybe conkeror, luakit etc would work fine too.

Who'sThere? · 2011-08-15 12:53:02

x33a wrote:

opera should work fine.

Way to heavy on the browser animations (download, open tab, etc), like Chromium.

x33a wrote:

Maybe conkeror,

This is looking like the best so far. I've tried links (great, no flash), and Dillo (okay, no flash), Midori (tad slow, flash slow).

x33a wrote:

luakit etc would work fine too.

I'll give it a test.

So, no recommendations from the AUR by anyone?

On a side note, I also have Windows 98 installed on this old clunker. It runs Youtube great on K-Meleon, with the last Flash 9 series.

Is there any way I could downgrade the flashplugin to the 9 series in Arch, and have it work with 'flash' capable browsers?

Army · 2011-08-15 13:15:47

I say luakit will do what you want. It's pretty lightweight and it has a noscript plugin, which allows you to only allow javascript and plugins for specific sites. But you'll have to do a little bit by yourself to make it work that way, because by default all scripts and plugins are allowed and have to be deactivated manually (kind of like yesscript for firefox).
It's based on lua, but don't be afraid of that, I have no idea how lua works, but am able to configure it the way I want it. I can help you if you need help.

Luakit needs about 10MB of RAM when started (full featured) but it can be stripped down by disabling functions, so it even only needs about 6MB of RAM at startup. Quite lightweight

Last edited by Army (2011-08-15 13:17:46)

x33a · 2011-08-15 16:18:27

Who'sThere? wrote:

Is there any way I could downgrade the flashplugin to the 9 series in Arch, and have it work with 'flash' capable browsers?

You should be able to do that using a custom PKGBUILD, but i wouldn't recommend it, as using an old buggy version of flash is a security nightmare.

Last edited by x33a (2011-08-15 16:19:45)

Who'sThere? · 2011-08-16 00:48:43

Luakit looks a bit too complicated to get into setting up, especially since I wont be using this PC as my primary. I've spent too much time configuring conky in the past to make the time commitment.

x33a wrote:

You should be able to do that using a custom PKGBUILD, but i wouldn't recommend it, as using an old buggy version of flash is a security nightmare.

Would Flash 9 be faster than the current? I really wouldn't care about security.

Gusar · 2011-08-16 01:22:44

Who'sThere? wrote:

Would Flash 9 be faster than the current?

Very likely not. Newer versions possibly have optimizations. Also, with that old version certain flash stuff simply may not work. Flash is simply... flash. No way around the crapiness of it.

As for browsers, you could maybe squeeze a bit more by compiling a custom libwebkit, disabling a few things, cutting down on it's dependencies. Otherwise, maybe jumanji is easier to set up than luakit, I woudn't know, I haven't dabbled yet in these kind of browsers. But those are the lightweights, anything lighter (like Netsurf) will be limited in capabilities. Netsurf has no javascript for example, and no npapi plugin (flash would be one of those) support either.

jasonwryan · 2011-08-16 01:30:30

I use Vimprobable2 as my main browser on all my machines. It handles flash, is lightweight and easy to set up.

In any event, asking for a solution as specialized as you are seeking and expressing an unwillingness to spend any time configuring it is unlikely to yield a result that is satisfactory for you or anyone else contributing to this thread. Army has already generously offered to give you a hand with luakit; perhaps you could repay some of that generosity by at least acknowledging it.

Army · 2011-08-16 05:29:40

jasonwryan wrote:

Army has already generously offered to give you a hand with luakit; perhaps you could repay some of that generosity by at least acknowledging it.

Who'sThere? · 2011-08-16 12:23:29

jasonwryan wrote:

In any event, asking for a solution as specialized as you are seeking and expressing an unwillingness to spend any time configuring it is unlikely to yield a result that is satisfactory for you or anyone else contributing to this thread.

Not really. I asked for people's opinions on the best lightweight, or speedy, browser with flash capability. Since each individual probably hasn't used every single browser, I thought a general (open) question about people's experiences with the ones they tried would be best.

Army wrote:

I can help you if you need help.

Thanks you, but I'll have to pass. For every question I've asked on these forums, I've troubleshooted ~20 of them on my own. Running Arch on 2 PCs, with 2 different hardware/software setups, would consume my entire computer time. Add micro-editing a simple web browser to that, and ...

Well, I'm starting to guess that the most limiting factor here is simply Flash itself. It has become to heavy, and bloated, for basic video playback, instead focusing on delivering interactive content. I remembered using Tiny Core a while back, and they offered an older Flash for this very reason.

Out of all of the browsers I tested, the lightest didn't play flash the best. I personally got the best results out of Midori, but it still wasn't on par with Win98.

In the end If I can't troubleshoot this video issue here, I'll most likely just stick with Win98 for this PC, and relegate Arch to an utility. IE - Shrink the partition to minimal size, remove all programs except... clamav, gparted, wxhexeditor, etc.. The only thing Arch had over Windows on this PC last time was the mplayer video playback, but I guess that'd be expected from an unchanging 13 year old kernel that was built for PCs like this.

Army · 2011-08-16 12:40:18

Just for the fun of it, all you'd have to do to make luakit even smaller is

cp /etc/xdg/luakit/rc.lua ~/.config/luakit
$EDITOR ~/.config/luakit/rc.lua
# and put a -- in front of all require entries, which you don't need, e.g. formfiller, proxy, quickmarks, session, undoclose, tabhistory, userscripts, bookmarks, downloads, downloads_chrome, follow, cmdhist, search, taborder, history, history_chrome, completion, noscript, follow_selected, go_input, go_next_prev, go_up

I bet you don't really need a lot of them, so you could make luakit VERY small.

Sure, luakit is specialized on the vim-user experience transported to a web browser, which not everybody likes. But it's really hard to get any smaller web browsers!

x33a · 2011-08-16 18:21:20

Who'sThere? wrote:

Well, I'm starting to guess that the most limiting factor here is simply Flash itself. It has become to heavy, and bloated, for basic video playback, instead focusing on delivering interactive content.

Well if you need an alternative to In-Browser flash, you can try

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=36168

I use it many a times, and it offers the ability to play the video while it is downloading.

doorknob60 · 2011-08-16 22:55:16

I've noticed that on very old computers (like Pentium 3 and older), Opera easily outperforms both Firefox and Chromium (on really old computers, Chromium is actually the slowest of the three), so give it a shot. And yeah, it supports Flash, but Flash will be slow no matter what on old computers. Try finding things like youtube-dl and other downloading utilities and mplayer for playing videos, it will work much better Opera is still just as fully featured as the "heavy" browsers, but it still runs relatively quickly on old computers.

Last edited by doorknob60 (2011-08-16 22:56:38)

rejoin · 2011-08-17 00:03:18

I'm using the uzbl browser. It is available in the AUR - https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=25972

nXqd · 2011-08-27 09:17:37

I second suggests luakit, I really don't know why it's so small and useful, and damn fast.
I just switch from jumanji, and I wish I had luakit in windows

Arch Linux

#1 2011-08-15 01:18:02

Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#2 2011-08-15 01:24:21

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#3 2011-08-15 04:55:36

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#4 2011-08-15 12:53:02

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#5 2011-08-15 13:15:47

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#6 2011-08-15 16:18:27

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#7 2011-08-16 00:48:43

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#8 2011-08-16 01:22:44

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#9 2011-08-16 01:30:30

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#10 2011-08-16 05:29:40

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#11 2011-08-16 12:23:29

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#12 2011-08-16 12:40:18

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#13 2011-08-16 18:21:20

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#14 2011-08-16 22:55:16

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#15 2011-08-17 00:03:18

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

#16 2011-08-27 09:17:37

Re: Smallest/Fastest Web Browser with Flash?

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