Web Browser Options and other packages?

[DavidS]

I am going to be doing a fresh install of Raspbian, this time working from the bottom up to strip it down to usable (starting with the desktop distro does not do so well). As such I will begin with Raspbian Lite and remove the extra unwanted packages from that then add only what I actually use. Hence the following questions before I start.

I am looking for what Web browsers available for Raspbian + X11 support HW acceleration for things like youtube, and have decent HTML5 support. Light weight is the primary goal.

Also I would like to know if there is an accelerated version of VLC.

Further what other non-browser youtube viewing options are there for Raspbian that are very light weight.

Then for other packages, is there a complete list of only the packages that are pre-installed on Raspbian Lite? I would like to put together a list of what I need to remove before installing the extras I need.

[kusti8]

Chromium comes pre-installed on Raspbian and includes HW accelerated video including YouTube out of the box. It's not light weight, but since it uses the four cores well, it's usually faster than anything else with more support for video and HTML5

[DavidS]

Chromium comes pre-installed on Raspbian and includes HW accelerated video including YouTube out of the box. It's not light weight, but since it uses the four cores well, it's usually faster than anything else with more support for video and HTML5

I am starting without X, so no Chromium either. Looking for much smaller options, taking less disk space and maybe even a little faster.

I will be installing pretty much everything, except the very basics. That means the web browser is what I choose, the Window Manager is what I chose (TWM), all X based applications are what I choose, etc.

[DavidS]

I should mention that I usually run with the kernel parameter maxcpus=2 or maxcpus=1. So something that is faster do to multi-threading (thus taking advantage of the extra cores) will be slower for me.

[fruitoftheloom]

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/elinks

https://linux.die.net/man/1/elinks


https://packages.debian.org/jessie/netsurf

[DavidS]

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/elinks

https://linux.die.net/man/1/elinks


https://packages.debian.org/jessie/netsurf

LOL. I want something that runs on X and supports HTML5 well enough for youtube.

Though thank you, I had already planned on installing the current version of lynx as a secondary web browser.

As for Netsurf, does not support enough HTML5 to do youtube (at least not yet, every RISC OS user is waiting for it).

[kusti8]

Well your requirements are getting into pretty heavy web browsers. There is kweb, but that doesn't have HW accelerated video in browser, it opens up omxplayer and I'm not sure what the HTML5 score is, but enough to run youtube. Chromium has the highest HTML5 score and has HW accelerated video and can be installed with apt:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install rpi-chromium-mods

[DavidS]

Well your requirements are getting into pretty heavy web browsers. There is kweb, but that doesn't have HW accelerated video in browser, it opens up omxplayer and I'm not sure what the HTML5 score is, but enough to run youtube. Chromium has the highest HTML5 score and has HW accelerated video and can be installed with apt:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install rpi-chromium-mods

I am aware of Chromium, it has been repeated a few times now.

I am looking for Options, preferably lighter than Chromium, by a lot. KWeb is heavier than Chromium once you count all the dependencies that only it would be using (Qt related mostly).

[kusti8]

Nothing else has HW acceleration, but omxplayerGUI has a youtube player. There is Midori which is lightweight, or Dillo. Or you could do it manually. Get youtube-dl, get the download link with -f best and run that link through omxplayer.

[fruitoftheloom]

http://midori-browser.org

https://www.qupzilla.com

http://www.dillo.org

[DavidS]

Nothing else has HW acceleration, but omxplayerGUI has a youtube player. There is Midori which is lightweight, or Dillo. Or you could do it manually. Get youtube-dl, get the download link with -f best and run that link through omxplayer.

Ok on the omxplayerGUI as well as on youtube-dl. Thank you for those.

What is the browser that used to be included in Raspbian before they switched to Chromium? It had HW acceleration support and I would expect it to still be maintained and updated.

[kusti8]

Nothing else has HW acceleration, but omxplayerGUI has a youtube player. There is Midori which is lightweight, or Dillo. Or you could do it manually. Get youtube-dl, get the download link with -f best and run that link through omxplayer.

Ok on the omxplayerGUI as well as on youtube-dl. Thank you for those.

What is the browser that used to be included in Raspbian before they switched to Chromium? It had HW acceleration support and I would expect it to still be maintained and updated.

Epiphany, but it was very buggy and crashed frequently. The HW acceleration is not as good on that. It's not maintained or updated anymore, all development has moved to Chromium. I'm not trying to push you to Chromium, it's just that there isn't a lot of choice that fulfills all of your needs and is lightweight.

[DavidS]

http://midori-browser.org

https://www.qupzilla.com

http://www.dillo.org

Now qupzilla is a good option, its list of dependencies are minimal (a few Qt things, not to much), and the dependencies of its dependencies are things that would already be there for other stuff (XLib, libc, XCB, sockets, not much more).

[fruitoftheloom]

Gnome Web Web Browser aka Epiphany was compiled by a 3rd Party for Raspbian OS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_(web_browser)

[DavidS]

Nothing else has HW acceleration, but omxplayerGUI has a youtube player. There is Midori which is lightweight, or Dillo. Or you could do it manually. Get youtube-dl, get the download link with -f best and run that link through omxplayer.

Ok on the omxplayerGUI as well as on youtube-dl. Thank you for those.

What is the browser that used to be included in Raspbian before they switched to Chromium? It had HW acceleration support and I would expect it to still be maintained and updated.

Epiphany, but it was very buggy and crashed frequently. The HW acceleration is not as good on that. It's not maintained or updated anymore, all development has moved to Chromium. I'm not trying to push you to Chromium, it's just that there isn't a lot of choice that fulfills all of your needs and is lightweight.

Thank you for the input. Though Chromium is definitely off of the list, knowing the big announcement (few years ago) that Qt was updated for HW acceleration on the RPi in WebKit and QupZilla is actually light weight enough (better than the others thus far mentioned). Though I would still like to find some other options.

I did not know that they stopped updating Epiphany, that is to bad, it had a lot more potential than Chromium.

And there is still the option of using an extremely light weight browser with an alternate Youtube viewer (part of my original post question).

Unless there are more good suggestions on the Web Browser, any answers to the other parts of the Original Post (package list, etc).

[DavidS]

Further:

I can not find the omxplayerGUI that was mentioned a few posts ago. Any pointers (does not appear to be in the standard repo).

[kusti8]

Further:

I can not find the omxplayerGUI that was mentioned a few posts ago. Any pointers (does not appear to be in the standard repo).

Not in the repo, it's part of the kweb package.

[DavidS]

Further:

I can not find the omxplayerGUI that was mentioned a few posts ago. Any pointers (does not appear to be in the standard repo).

Not in the repo, it's part of the kweb package.

How do I install it without kweb? kweb is heavier than any of the other options mentioned once all dependencies that would only be used by it on my setup to come are looked at.

[fruitoftheloom]

Further:

I can not find the omxplayerGUI that was mentioned a few posts ago. Any pointers (does not appear to be in the standard repo).

Not in the repo, it's part of the kweb package.

viewtopic.php?t=40860

[DavidS]

Further:

I can not find the omxplayerGUI that was mentioned a few posts ago. Any pointers (does not appear to be in the standard repo).

Not in the repo, it's part of the kweb package.

viewtopic.php?t=40860

OK, that is a different browser named kweb. Why people reuse names of already well known applications.

Interesting.

[fruitoftheloom]

Regards QupZilla it is version 1.6.6 in the Jessie Repositories the latest is 2.1.1 which will need to be built from Source: https://github.com/QupZilla/qupzilla

[DavidS]

Regards QupZilla it is version 1.6.6 in the Jessie Repositories the latest is 2.1.1 which will need to be built from Source: https://github.com/QupZilla/qupzilla

Always a snag. Well I do not want all the needed Qt dev libs, so I guess I will go a different direction, using the youtube-dl app.

[DavidS]

Based on the lack of answers on this thread and the lack of anything from searching:

I am going to assume there is not a list of the preinstalled packages on Raspbian Lite, and that no one knows about weather the VideoCore IV accelerated version of VLC is available for Raspbian in any way (it is not the default VLC package on Raspbian).

[fruitoftheloom]

.....and that no one knows about weather the VideoCore IV accelerated version of VLC is available for Raspbian in any way (it is not the default VLC package on Raspbian).

viewtopic.php?f=66&t=59814&sid=728f868b ... 713fc526c2

[DavidS]

.....and that no one knows about weather the VideoCore IV accelerated version of VLC is available for Raspbian in any way (it is not the default VLC package on Raspbian).

viewtopic.php?f=66&t=59814&sid=728f868b ... 713fc526c2

Thank you, was really looking for the ARMv6 compatible version, as I intend to use my Raspbery Pi Bs and A+'s a lot more.

Though I will still take a close look at that one.