Firefox vs. NetSurf on RISC OS

This was done on an Acorn RiscPC with a 233 MHz StrongARM. Firefox, quite frankly, is useless on the RPC. Nothing against the port, it seems to be a well done port, it's just that it's the wrong browser for these older machines. If you really need to run Firefox on RISC OS, I suspect an Iyonix would work much better. (Or, for that matter, a BeagleBoard, once RISC OS 5 is ported to it.)

Sorry about the video quality. CRTs suck.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• acorn
• riscos
• risc
• os
• riscpc
• pc
• mozilla
• firefox
• bon
• echo
• netsurf
• net
• surf

[martrootamm]

It takes more time to start Firefox for the very first time, and the first time it starts during an OS session; 2.0 also contains advanced features (Session Restore) which must be turned off (in about:config, where necessary) to run even one window decently. Use NoScript; where unavoidably necessary, use its whitelist. How much RAM does the PC have? Guessing by the startup time that it's got only 32 Mb. Even if there's 64M, I still suggest you use Firefox 1.0.x with NoScript 1.1.4.7 for it.

[bhtooefr]

@martrootamm That wasn't the initial startup.

96 MiB RAM, and RISC OS doesn't support swapping to disk (although the Firefox port itself might?)

Also, are you familiar with RISC OS specifically? On RISC OS, the Firefox port was horrendously buggy and unstable in older versions. 2.0 is the only version worth running.

[ZeroViruzz]

What version of ROS do you use?

[bhtooefr]

@ZeroViruzz 6.20 right now, might've been 6.02P when I recorded that video.

[bhtooefr]

Nope, it doesn't - and, yeah, my cheapo $16 webcam does, maybe I should start capturing using it instead of my digicam. But, even if it did, the monitor's running at 61 Hz, not 60. (I'm driving the thing at the fastest refresh rate the motherboard can possibly support at that resolution.)

[martrootamm]

@bhtooefr The size of browser cache is controversial to me. I've run Firefox off a Knoppix LiveCD like that on RAM only, so it was essential to have the browser cache size be at 5 Mb. I've also experienced failures of older hard disks when running a Gecko-based browser, but I'm not sure if it's because Firefox (or K-Meleon) often accessing the hard drive for cache, which has been set to between 5–10 Mb.

[martrootamm]

@bhtooefr I am specifically not familiar with RISC OS, but learned just now that 1.5 was ported, but was buggy. So it seems that support for RISC OS has been poor.

If you still run that system and if Firefox is still there, then cache size should be reduced to 5–10 Mb. System Restore should be turned off. JavaScript, too, or use NoScript 1.10 for the few site domains. For about:config settings, search for "28 Coolest Firefox about:config Tricks" (can't post links here).

[bhtooefr]

@UKRetroGames Mine is a 233 MHz StrongARM, so unless you've got a Kinetic StrongARM board (not nearly as common as the regular ones), it is pretty typical.

[mrmincus]

It should be pointed out that Firefox is running through an emulation layer of sorts and has full javascript support whereas NetSurf is completely native with no javascript.

I suspect the lack of a floating point unit in the machine will be having a detrimental effect as well on Firefox, which is targeted at machines which have them and Netsurf's original target was RISC OS where all but a handful of configurations are without FPUs.

Still a solid port, but not really usable on older machines.

[nytrex2001]

Just goes to show what happens when you try and run modern software on a ancient hardware platform.

But, as you say, once RO5 is fully ported to the Beagleboard and optimised, then we should get a relatively decent harware platform again.

It's only taken almost 20 years!