Hi, I recently received my pinephone, and one thing I’ve focused on is getting a web browser working well. Firefox, the default option for my arch_mobile+phosh distro, is a bit too resource intensive and unstable. I like going without javascript to the extent that I can, but I have struggled a bit to find a lightweight web browser that works well and is currently maintained. Has anyone had good luck with alternative web browsers on their Librem 5’s?
What I’ve looked at so far:
Netsurf seems like an amazing project, but I cannot get the keyboard to appear/cannot reliably select text input boxes on a page. Also, Netsurf seems unmaintained for the past two years.
Lynx works great and that is what I have been using most. Unfortunately, no new Lynx release since 2018.
Links browser seems interesting and the most recently maintained. However, I could not find an ARM build.
I could not find any Servo-based web browser.
There are several Qt-based browsers. I don’t like Qt very much, so I didn’t have much incentive to try very hard with these, but the few that I tried (qutebrowser), failed due to lack of dependencies.
Thoughts?
1 Like
One useful thing that has come from this effort is discovering https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite. Seems like a great resource, and it makes me much more likely to use duckduckgo versus alternatives.
2 Likes
The default web browser on the Librem 5 is Gnome Web. It mostly works. Is a little buggy, and quite slow. May be better on byzantium. I’m still on amber.
1 Like
Nice! I like Gnome Web/Epiphany much better than firefox so far. It seems more minimalistic and less clunky. I also never realized that WebKit was open source. Definitely learning a lot recently.
Badwolf looks amazing, but is not adaptive to mobile screen. https://hacktivis.me/projects/badwolf
I want to look into helping add adaptive support, but I’m not sure where to start. I think I remember @dos referring to resources for getting started with libhandy development? Would libhandy be helpful to make a browser adaptive?
If you are using Firefox on the PinePhone, check whether you have also installed the mobile-config-firefox package, which is being developed by postmarketOS and makes Firefox much more usable. Here is a package for Arch.
You can also install chromium.
2 Likes
Yes, Chromium is the graphical browser that is working best for me right now, although I mostly just use lynx, as that works by far the most reliably.
That firefox mobile config did come pre-installed.