[GLLUG] Web Browsers

[Richard Houser]

Chick, do you normally have good cell coverage?      Even GPRS (slower 2g) is dialup speeds, and few areas without cell phone coverage have less than 3g anywhere.

If you are willing to accept the telemetry on some connections, it might just make sense to upgrade to a cell connection.  You might even save some cash, even after possibly needing a cell booster, etc. 

On March 3, 2017 1:41:06 PM EST, Chick Tower <c.e.tower at gmail.com> wrote:
>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
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-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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