OESF Portables Forum

Model Specific Forums => Sharp Zaurus => Zaurus - pdaXrom => Topic started by: Capn_Fish on November 29, 2007, 03:07:55 pm

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: Capn_Fish on November 29, 2007, 03:07:55 pm

I just found the best-looking web browser I've seen in a long time!

http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ (http://www.netsurf-browser.org/)

It's installed on Puppy Linux (what I'm using for now off my USB drive after nuking my HDD), renders really well (just like FF), and seems lightweight.

I'm having trouble building it, though. It appears to be looking for "lemon" Anybody know what that is?

Thanks!

Screenshot from my laptop just now.

EDIT: Found some build instructions. Trying them soon...

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: Capn_Fish on November 29, 2007, 04:45:28 pm

I'm getting a couple of errors (meaning it won't run). I'll post them later if I don't get them sorted out (no time now). I think I saw them mentioned in one of my searches on how to compile it.

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: arnpsyke on November 30, 2007, 09:32:40 am

Quote from: Capn_Fish

I'm getting a couple of errors (meaning it won't run). I'll post them later if I don't get them sorted out (no time now). I think I saw them mentioned in one of my searches on how to compile it.

I am always searching a good alternative for firefox. This browser seems very good. I hope you can compile it

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: 2or0 on November 30, 2007, 10:29:10 am

I tried this webbrower on debian because it is already built in debian. For my experience, the page rendering is too slow to use compared to others such as dillo, epiphany-webkit and epiphany-gecko.

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: Capn_Fish on January 04, 2008, 08:25:48 pm

I'm still working on getting this to work, and it appears that pdaXrom's glibc is to blame for the crashes. I'm looking into building a newer version of it and trying that.

Just trying to keep people informed.

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: Jon_J on February 16, 2008, 12:55:56 pm

Any news on this?
I would love to replace my Firefox/Epiphany combination. (I like epiphany, but it still requires mozilla/firefox files to work).

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: Capn_Fish on February 17, 2008, 12:55:34 am

I got it working on Angstrom, but it loads pages slowly (kind of like elinks does). I don't think it's such a good option anymore.

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: speculatrix on February 17, 2008, 04:26:35 pm

Quote from: Capn_Fish

I got it working on Angstrom, but it loads pages slowly (kind of like elinks does). I don't think it's such a good option anymore.

is there a reason for it to be slow - lack of CPU, memory?

have you set up all the right options for cache?

just speculating that there might be some tweaks to make it faster?

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: Capn_Fish on February 17, 2008, 05:58:50 pm

It doesn't feel like a CPU/memory issue. I think the engine is just inefficient at processing web pages.

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: speculatrix on February 18, 2008, 05:10:36 am

Quote from: Capn_Fish

It doesn't feel like a CPU/memory issue. I think the engine is just inefficient at processing web pages.

yes, but if that were the case it'd be cpu bound. could it be that to save memory it doesn't cache (or not much) so it has to fetch everything from the web server all the time? try installing "iptraf" or doing this:

while [ /bin/true ] ; do netstat -i ; sleep 1 ; done

and see how much traffic you're pushing when browsing, and compare with a better browser?

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: ofels on February 18, 2008, 07:04:51 am

Quote from: Capn_Fish

It doesn't feel like a CPU/memory issue. I think the engine is just inefficient at processing web pages.

Hmm, according to this review here

http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact2191.html (http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact2191.html)

performance should be quite good, at least on RISC OS.

I am wondering which pages you have taken to evaluate performance, there are plenty of reasons why performance under Angstrom might be not so good and most of them are curable (remove debug symbols, other compile options, etc.).

However the lack of JavaScript support is a killer for me anyway ...

Oliver

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: Capn_Fish on February 18, 2008, 10:26:13 am

I didn't use any specific tests, it was all subjective. I'd also have to rebuild it to do more stuff (I was too lazy to make an ipk and deleted the source).

I don't think I left debugging stuff in it, and, IIRC, was using "-O3 -mtune=xscale -mcpu=xscale -fomit-frame-pointer"

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: Capn_Fish on February 23, 2008, 05:27:52 pm

I'm working on getting it recompiled and will do my best to provide more concrete results than last time (this is on Angstrom, though).

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: Capn_Fish on February 24, 2008, 07:43:42 pm

It's done building (no, it wasn't building the whole time). What test results would people like to see?

Title: Good Web Browser!
Post by: ofels on February 25, 2008, 07:12:55 am

Quote from: Capn_Fish

It's done building (no, it wasn't building the whole time). What test results would people like to see?

Suggestion: The link mentioned above includes several tests browing different web sites so you could use this as a starting base running the same tests to compare how it performs under Angstrom.

Oliver