Web, Linux: lightweight browsers, part0

Written by

in

,

Especially with Linux on an old computer, one might seek a lightweight browser.

The following is by my understanding.

I loaded Lubuntu onto a Vista-era computer two days back; perhaps I will mention more about that in another post. However, for earlier mention of Lubuntu, there is my post from June 19, 2026.

Lubuntu comes with Firefox. On this Vista-era computer, which runs Lubuntu fine, Firefox takes a few seconds, after clicking, to load, but it does. However, a given web page might take a good deal longer to load – perhaps ten seconds or much more.

I looked into lightweight browsers and loaded Falkon. While I was impressed with its minimal design, the web pages didn’t seem to load faster on it. Falkon seemed to work about as well as Firefox.

It seems to me that a lightweight browser won’t solve the problem of navigating the web on a slow computer, because the web pages typically use a lot more resources than the browser itself does. High-resolution images and JavaScript, both on the page itself and in subframes, can easily bog down an old computer.

-js

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *