[GLLUG] Web Browsers

[Chick Tower]

I was planning to write a message telling you of my search for a new web 
browser after Firefox began sending so much telemetry that my dial-up 
internet access speed was cut down to a quarter or less.  Then this 
article showed up on LinuxToday.com

http://www.zdnet.com/article/whats-the-fastest-linux-web-browser/

You may recall that I complained about Firefox a few months ago.  Since 
then I've tried several other browsers.  I stayed away from Chrome and 
Chromium, since I'd like to avoid Google's attempts to collect my 
private information.  I tried two privacy-enhanced versions of Chromium, 
Slimjet and Iron, and another modified version of Chromium called 
Vivaldi.  These are pretty much covered in the article.  I also tried 
Midori, Qupzilla, Arora, and Rekonq, which use the webkit library.  I 
even tried some keyboard-driven browsers, Xombrero and dwb, thinking 
that being stripped-down browsers would make them pretty fast.

Speed was my primary criterion, although stability and the proper 
display of web pages was also important.  I didn't use any of the tests 
SJVN did in the linked article, but differences in speed are pretty 
apparent over dial-up.  I'm happy with Firefox on my laptops when I'm 
someplace with a wireless access point, but it sucks over dial-up, even 
with as much of the telemetry turned off as I could figure out.

The webkit browsers were unsatisfactory, either through lack of features 
or instability.  They weren't noticeably faster at displaying web pages, 
either.  The stripped-down browsers weren't faster at displaying pages 
and lacked even more features.  Of the modified Chromium browsers, 
Vivaldi was noticeably faster than any of the other browsers I looked 
at.  It has a lot of nice features I had never seen before.  All of the 
Chromium browsers use Chromium add-ons and extensions, of which I use 
only two, Ghostery and Vanilla Cookie Manager.  So I am a happy Vivaldi 
user now.

I do use the text-based browser links frequently, just to read articles 
that I don't need any graphics for, like news stories.  That is the 
fastest way to browse the web, but there are many sites it doesn't work 
with.  For those interested, some other text-based browsers are lynx, 
links2, elinks, and w3m.  The latter can view images, although the 
layout on the page is messed up.
-- 

                                Chick