4 Web Browsers Preinstalled On Raspbian

[TrapdoorSmoke]

Why is there four web browsers on raspberry Pi

There's is four browsers on the raspbian image Netsurf, Midori, Dillo And Epipanny Browser
Net surf , Midori and Dillo are hidden by default they don't show up in application menu.

[sprinkmeier]

Can't remember where I heard it, but "OpenSource gives users freedom of choice, when most users want freedom from choice".

FOSS doesn't pretend to know whats best for you and gives you a choice.
The trouble with being given a choice is that you have to make it.
Most users aren't used to that, they've always been told which browser, email client, office app etc. to use (usually by the guy selling it).

The realisation that you have freedom can be a little jarring (almost as jarring as the realisation that you didn't have it before)

[Heater]

They are all broken or dysfunctional in different ways. Use the one that works best for what you want.

[gkreidl]

As far a I know, Midori is not on the system image any more (replaced by epiphany).
Dillo and Netsurf are "small" Browsers (no Javascript support for example) for simple HTML pages. The do not use one of the big web engines (like epiphany and midori, iceweasel or chromium).
My own browsers (kweb/kweb3) try to be a combination of both: a small, simple and fast browser, but built upon a powerful web engine (webkitgtk).

[tvjon]

FWIW, I use several different web browsers on RPi, sometimes concurrently, according to what I'm interested in reading, & whether I need to download a source file, or perhaps just the technical content of a web page.

Dillo

is most definitely not "broken". Jessie ships with 3.0.4, so I built 3.0.5 in just a few minutes, weeks ago.

So long as there aren't massive amounts of js, thus preventing its use, Dillo is very fast on RPi(2), & allows content to be quickly selected & saved. Its bookmarks approach is simple, effective, & often parses the url field so some relevant text is saved rather than an unintelligible link. It's easy & fast to find text within a web page.

I also use Dillo as a fast (non-fiction) e-book reader. It means decompressing the ebook into a folder first, & finding its html index page, but that's acceptable to me. All the e-book readers I've tried so far are abysmal in performance by comparison.

Luakit

is the browser I've used for the longest time on RPi. Even on RPi 1 its performance is acceptable, with most sites rendering properly. I now have hundreds of bookmarks in its config.


Epiphany

I use when I want to see how long the current iteration runs before an error message "shakes" so it becomes unresponsive, or when I become irritated by the delay reaching a long page's end, & the accompanying cross hatch pattern.


Chromium

for institutions which don't like other browsers.


Minimal Kiosk Browser (kweb3)

which I'm using now, & I suppose gets the most daily use of them all, if I'm just catching up on regular daily browsing, for which I have a couple of dozen bookmarks. It's fast, easily allowing me to turn off cookies or js, & rarely crashes

[gkreidl]

And let me add one more, John:
iceweasel, when a website makes really heavy use of Javascript (and doesn't work without it), because it has the fastest Javascript engine (twice as fast a epiphany & kweb3, 160% faster than chromium, 350% faster than kweb).

[DougieLawson]

Why is there four web browsers on raspberry Pi

Five. The most useful is lynx which doesn't do any of that graphics or audio or video nonsense that we don't need.

[Heater]

Interesting speed comparisons you have there gkreidl. I don't have a Pi to hand at the moment but you prompted me to seek out some Javascript bench marks. I found an extensive set of tests here http://dromaeo.com/ Comparing Chrome to Firefox we get a lot of interesting results to digest. At first glance it looks as if Firefox is faster for many tests but not all and many come out about the same.

A quick performance check on a big junk of my JS gives me an average run time of 430ms in Chrome and only 220ms in Firefox. FF is pretty much twice as fast on that piece of real application code!

[TrapdoorSmoke]

In my opinion I think the best browser for Raspberry Pi 1 is Lynx
And for Raspberry Pi 2 is Chromium Browser
How to get Chromium Browser : viewtopic.php?f=63&t=121195

[gkreidl]

Interesting speed comparisons you have there gkreidl. I don't have a Pi to hand at the moment but you prompted me to seek out some Javascript bench marks. I found an extensive set of tests here http://dromaeo.com/ Comparing Chrome to Firefox we get a lot of interesting results to digest. At first glance it looks as if Firefox is faster for many tests but not all and many come out about the same.

A quick performance check on a big junk of my JS gives me an average run time of 430ms in Chrome and only 220ms in Firefox. FF is pretty much twice as fast on that piece of real application code!

I used: https://www.webkit.org/perf/sunspider/sunspider.html

kweb: Total: 7888.2ms +/- 0.2%
kweb3: Total: 4618.4ms +/- 0.4%
epiphany: Total: 4642.2ms +/- 0.3%
iceweasel: Total: 2247.8ms +/- 2.9%
chromium (old): Total: 3577.1ms +/- 0.4%

[kusti8]

The newer chromium I'm pretty sure is much better with JS. I haven't tried any tests yet, I'll see if I can run a quick test and report the results, but it feels much better.

[kusti8]

Ok, on a Pi2 the results are:
Firefox (ubuntu version not rebranded): 2028.5 ms +/- 1.7%
Chromium v45: 2746.5 ms +/- 3.9%

So with the newer version Chromium got about 800 ms faster, but still not as fast as Firefox.

[Heater]

On my PC there is not much to choose between FF and Chrome. FF is a tad faster.