Lean Linux web browsers

How They Compare in Speed

Comparing the speeds of the graphical web browsers discussed here is difficult. It is easier to draw a comparison among those four text browsers that have a -dump command-line option. This option serves to download the parameters of a web page and render it as a STDOUT file.

The following times for this process were recorded for the download of the Ubuntu User homepage on a 1997 Pentium MMX with a 166 MHz clock rate:

Links2: 1.66 Seconds
W3m: 2.21 Seconds
Lynx: 2.43 Seconds

Although Netrik also has dump mode, it shows potential HTML errors before displaying a web page. It was necessary to acknowledge these first via Enter, which prevented accurate measurement.

Conclusion

Almost all of the lean web browsers have developed a niche for themselves that justifies their existence. The current trend favoring the use of HTTPS will probably be the downfall of Netrik. Using this browser purely for viewing documents in local HTML files is still a possibility.

It is a good idea to figure out which of the browsers presented here is suitable for your own purposes by trying them out on live objects. To do this, you can install the entire set via the command in Listing 1.

Listing 1

Install Browsers

$ sudo apt-get install netsurf dillo links2 elinks lynx w3m w3m-img netrik

The author prefers to use the classic Lynx in pure text mode. He relies on Dillo for a Nokia N900. When speed and graphics with minimal resource consumption are the priority, then Links2 under X is his favorite.

Infos