Raspberry Pi and internet browsing

[Jayson]

How well does the Raspberry Pi browse the net? Does it have an internet browser i assume it does and what browser does it use.

Any limitations?

I read elsewhere that it currently does not support java are there any other plugins or software that are used while browsing that are not supported?

Thanks

[jamesh]

I tried Iceweasel when I was testing out LXDE, took a while to start but think it worked OK. Firefox probably uses too much memory (well, it does on my desktop...).

Not sure Flash would work, although I have seen Arm ports of it - in fact did one myself a few years back with the Videocore OpenVG backend - worked quite well. Never released as far as I know.

OpenJDK seems to work.

Not much testing been done so far with regard to browsing (by me at least), so more a question of what IS supported, rather than what isn't (assume the latter until its tested)

[pieter]

Basically it's a resource constraint PC (I know it's an embedded device but what is the difference these day's)..

So install a small OS with a lightweight graphical environment (bare X if needed) and run a good browser (Firefox/Iceweasel or Chrome/Chromium or ... ).

Maybe somebody (you?) will port chrome-os to the raspberrypi

[obarthelemy]

The Pi uses a regular Linux OS, on an ARM processor. Anything that has a Linux/ARMv6 versions works.
The official Java version from Oracle requires royalties, so the Pi uses a lower-performance, free implementation instead.
I actually don't know is there is a Flash plugin for Debian-armel. Couldn't google any info either. Flash exists on ARM (android), just not sure about regular Debian-armel.

[pieter]

Quote from jamesh on September 16, 2011, 10:55
I tried Iceweasel when I was testing out LXDE, took a while to start but think it worked OK. Firefox probably uses too much memory (well, it does on my desktop...).

Iceweasel = Firefox

Firefox will use as much memory as it can get. It's memory handeling is much better than it used to be.

[jamesh]

Quote from pieter on September 16, 2011, 11:00
Quote from jamesh on September 16, 2011, 10:55
I tried Iceweasel when I was testing out LXDE, took a while to start but think it worked OK. Firefox probably uses too much memory (well, it does on my desktop...).

Iceweasel = Firefox

Firefox will use as much memory as it can get. It's memory handeling is much better than it used to be.

OK, like I said, didn't spend more than a few seconds on it (just started it up). Think it may have started swapping - which is death when swapping to SD card!

I'm more interested in Chromium as that seems to run much faster on my desktop than Firefox. Not sure that works on Arm though. Another thing for the list.

[anakinpendragon]

Anyone tried Midori? It's a browser with low ram consumed, and have html5, i can use youtube with html5, and all sites work fine if i change the identification of the browser to safari. It's developed for fce team with webkit.

[anakinpendragon]

And about flash we can use gnash with midori, there are packages for arm:
http://packages.debian.org/sid/gnash
http://packages.debian.org/sid/midori

[jamesh]

Midori sounds interesting -I'll see if it installs tonight.

[Tide]

My browser of choice on the Beaglebord is NetSurf. No JS though. Firefox is a bit slow so probably even more so on the Rasp.

[rickyjames]

What web browser Rpi uses strikes me as a key question and the first one that is going to be asked by a LOT of initial users. I am by no means an expert on this topic but I can do research on any topic. I came up with the interesting comprehensive list of potential browser candidates below, which should spark some discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.....b_browsers

Based on the article above, any browser used on Rpi is almost certainly on this list of Linux-compatable web browsers:

Amaya - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.....b_browser)
Arora - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A....._(browser)
Chromium - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.....b_browser)
DocZilla - (no Wikipedia article)
Dillo - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillo
Dooble - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.....b_browser)
ELinks - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELinks
Epiphany - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E....._(browser)
Flock - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....b_browser)
Galeon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galeon
Google Chrome - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.....gle_Chrome
Konqueror - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konqueror
Links - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....b_browser)
Lynx - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....b_browser)
Midori - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.....b_browser)
Mozilla Firefox - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.....la_Firefox
NetSurf - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSurf
Opera - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O.....b_browser)
SeaMonkey - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMonkey
w3m - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3m

For the record, IceWeasel is a Debian rebranding of Mozilla Firefox, just as IceApe is a Debian rebranding of SeaMonkey:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel

I also found this ZDNet review article about the "top ten" Linux browsers:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/de.....-40091669/

The ZDNet ranking:

1.Google Chrome / Chromium
2.Konqueror
3.Firefox
4.Arora
5.Opera
6.Lynx
7.Midori
8.NetSurf
9.Dooble
10.Epiphany

I would strongly urge at the Rpi launch that there be a path to install a web browser to go along with instructions on how to install whatever baseline Linux distro is selected .

[obarthelemy]

mmmm... the foundation will make available ready to run OS images, browser included. IceWeasel by default, I think.

[danh]

just for the record I am using debian stable with lxdeand midori the mem requirements are as follows on my eeepc(1005ha)
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2017 240 1777 0 21 138
-/+ buffers/cache: 80 1937
Swap: 976 0 976

Playing front pi video from youtube
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2017 291 1726 0 21 143
-/+ buffers/cache: 126 1891
Swap: 976 0 976

about 125 M better than iceweasel

Dan

[jamesh]

Just tried Midori on the Raspi, not using a desktop, just startx midori, and it works fine. Better than Iceweasal.

Here's a screenshot as proof!

[mrv321]

Quote from jamesh on September 16, 2011, 21:25
Just tried Midori on the Raspi, not using a desktop, just startx midori, and it works fine. Better than Iceweasal.

Here's a screenshot as proof!



I am using Rasberry Pi in a Virtual machine and by using Iceweasel+Gnash I am getting 720p video to run. HOWEVER that's when the only application is iceweasel with tabs.

[ErvKosch]

I would try Arora if you get a chance. Its a very light weight Webkit browser. There a big push to update it recently. The original creator was doing a lot of work with the browser and then took a job at RIM in which his NDA conflicted with the project. But some people have taken it over and have pushed a lot of updated to the *nix trunks in the last few weeks.

[Jayson]

Thanks for all the updates

Nice to know that this could be used as a small scale web brower which is what i am interested in as a present for a friend.

What would be interesting is to take that list above and do tests and see how each brower works on the raspberry pi including what each brower can do and can not do.

[rickyjames]

@jamesh: Congrats and thank you on your successful test of Midori, nice to know it works without running a desktop too. For what it's worth, "midori" is the Japanese word for "green".

Any chance you might try a quick and dirty test of Arora on the Alpha board, too?

http://code.google.com/p/arora/

[jamesh]

If its in the Arm Debian repos I'll give it a go. Don't have time to recompile.

[rickyjames]

The Debian ARM version of Arora (0.10.2-2) is here (download link at the bottom of the page):

http://packages.debian.org/sid.....rmel/arora

Debian ARM Arora has the following dependencies:

dep: libc6 (>= 2.4)
Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
also a virtual package provided by libc6-udeb

dep: libgcc1 (>= 1:4.4.0)
GCC support library

dep: libqt4-network (>= 4:4.5.3)
Qt 4 network module

dep: libqt4-script (>= 4:4.5.3)
Qt 4 script module

dep: libqt4-sql (>= 4:4.5.3)
Qt 4 SQL module

dep: libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1)
Qt 4 core module

dep: libqtgui4 (>= 4:4.6.1)
Qt 4 GUI module

dep: libqtwebkit4
Web content engine library for Qt

dep: libstdc++6 (>= 4.4.0)
GNU Standard C++ Library v3

[jamesh]

Hmm, posted a while back but it seems to have not made it.

Anyway, tried Arora - runs fines, but rather slow (seemingly slower than Midori.) Might be my network link - been odd the last day or two.

Obligatory photo...

[Jayson]

Thought i would put this here instead of making a new thread but how does a program like http://www.pidgin.im work on the RPi it has a linux verson to download. If it works and works well on the RPi then all the messaging systems are accessable on it as well.

[obarthelemy]

it seems so. The reference page (http://packages.debian.org/en/.....llpackages) does list pidgin for armel (our ARM processor, not x86), and some (not all) add-ons.

officially listed stuff should work out of the box, "someone" (^^) may want to add that to his testing list. Non-lised stuff might work after a simple compile/build, but may require more work.

[rickyjames]

Huh - what's the difference between the "armel" and "arm" packages? I thought we were using the ARM...as in "an ARM Linux box for $25". Why isn't it "an Armel Linux box for $25"?

[obarthelemy]

ARM is a processor family, like x86. (8086, 80286...)
It has several versions, the latest is v7 (also called Cortex), the Pi's is v6 (also called ARM11).
Each successive version is compatible with the previous ones, but not the other way round, because of new features. At some point a while back (v3 I think) ARM added a little-endian architecture and lots of other stuff (EABI...). This "new ARM" has been dubbed -armel in debian (and others) parlance, to make it very clear that debian-armel would NOT work on very old ARM CPUs.
The Pi's ARM core is fairly recent, and is of -armel type, not old ARM.
All current ARM CPUs are of -armel type, but Debian and other linux distros still offer some support for old ARM. Debian-armel and Debian-arm still exist, Debian-armel is better !
http://wiki.debian.org/ArmPort