Browsers under Linux

[Shaken Angel]

On Wed, 1 Oct 1997, jpapier wrote:

> Greetings List Members,
> 
> I'd like to get an idea of different Internet browsers' performances when
> running under Linux.  In particular I'm interested in speed (with 16 MB of RAM
> or more, preferably) and stability.
> 
> If you have any experience running a browser under Linux, I'd appreciate your
> comments.

Since the effective collapse of the Mosaic project, there are really only
about two WWW browsers I use for Linux; Netscape Communicator (4.03 for
Linux x86) and Lynx (version 2.5 -- I'm probably behind a few versions
here). 

For reference: I'm running a P5-166 with 32megs of RAM.

Netscape Communicator works *reasonably* well -- by this I mean it is by
far the least stable program I've ever used for Linux -- Communicator has
the occasional tendency to crash (but this is Linux; so a crash by
Communicator doesn't mean that Linux bombs.  When Communicator crashes,
just restart it and all should be kosher.  Granted, this doesn't stop
crashes from being really annoying, though.  To their credit, Communicator
for Linux 4.03 doesn't crash as much as earlier versions.

A disadvantage of using Linux for your web browsing needs is that some of
the plug-ins that are used on the Web are not supported.  I'm thinking
Shockwave particularly. 

Communicator for Linux runs pretty comfortably in my 32MB.  However, to
insure compatability, Netscape folks have (quite rightly, in my opinion)
stuffed just about all the libraries that Communicator needs into the
executable so the executable is rather large and ponderous.  But it runs
fairly well besides -- I've got a lot of services running on my machine,
and I don't have significant slowdown when I'm using Communicator (unless
I'm also using a compiler or somesuch; but slowdown with many applications
and a big compile going on... probably unavoidable).

Lynx is what I use about seventy percent of the time for my Web browsing.
Unless I have a pressing need to see pretty graphics, I'm mostly after the
text -- cut out the gristle, I say.  Lynx hasn't ever crashed on me, can
run in minimal memory, and is quick quick quick.

The Mnemonic project sounds promising but I have not yet explored it.
Mnemonic is an effort to produce a quality highly modular source-available
fully-featured web browser.

It's home page is at http://oloon.student.utwente.nl/~mnemonic/ .

-- john f., miami university library systems