Searching For The Right Minimal Browser

So I have been wanting to switch away from the big, bloated, full-featured web browsers to something more minimal. Something with fewer features, less clutter on the screen, less distractions, etc. Here are a few browsers that I might try out.
ERRATA:
I mistakenly said that Qutebrowser uses the Webkit engine. Qutebrowser, by default, uses the Chromium engine. But it does have the ability to use Webkit instead, if your prefer.
REFERENCED:
► surf.suckless....
► qutebrowser.org/
► fanglingsu.git...
► minbrowser.git...
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Your support is very much appreciated. Thanks, guys!

[@leroyonlinux283]

IMHO the most important information is missing about the browsers. That question is "is there a adblock tool available" if not that browser is unuseable in the modern, ad infested web.

[@user-ju6zx3rm8d]

true

[@garygranato9164]

+1

[@drinductor8150]

Just use a PiHole

[@leroyonlinux283]

@@drinductor8150using PiHole ist just half of the work. No Script blocking included e.g.

[@darkarie]

qutebrowser haves adblock integrated for default

[@roham4281]

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this but you can hide the top bar in min with ctrl+m. It is shown in the preferences of the browser.

[@shanechitwood4623]

Sometimes the web is so bloat, you need a bloated browser. - Luke Smith

[@JDStone20]

I agree to a point, I would just use the Linux terminal for everything, and a terminal web browser like w3m or lynx if it played KZbin, so I use either Brave or Firefox/IceCat/TorBrowser

[@oscarrzga4615]

@@JDStone20 KZbin with mplayer

[@JDStone20]

@@oscarrzga4615 Yeah, I was using mps-youtube for a while but the I had to do a new install of my system and the new mps-youtube has a bug and won't work. I need to try out mplayer with KZbin and w3m/Lynx

[@lostarts9946]

Jason Daniel Stone try mpv

[@JDStone20]

@@lostarts9946 Thank you. I was able to get everything working in vlc, mpv, and mplayer. I also got mps-youtube to work. I just had to create my own google youtube api number and delete cache_py

[@CasperLabuschagne]

Something critical about Firefox, Linux is the platform on which Firefox is now developed, before it is ported to other platforms. That alone, is reason enough for me to stick with Firefox for a very long time.

[@tc40390]

One thing that I really dislike about minimal browsers is that most of them don't have a built in adblocker and nor do they allow one to be installed.

[@CasperLabuschagne]

This has been a futile quest for years. Every time I return to the one browser that actually works, good old Firefox. Make no mistake, there used to be such a browser that I have been using since the late 1990's - Opera, or rather Opera up to version 9. Alas, we seem to sacrifice so much in the name of progress.

[@viniciusabreu3288]

DT, I became a really big fan of your work! Thanks to you I migrated from Fedora to Arch and I couldn't be happier. Thanks for all the content and keep going! Cheers from Brazil.

[@sujeewa8067]

Man I migrated from arch to fedora lol

[@amongusisdeadstopjokingabo1484]

@@sujeewa8067 Same. Arch broke my GRUB installer with an update and I've lost trust in it ever since. Atleast warn me if a breaking change is going to take place!

[@JLeppert]

Sir, you are amazing. I promise when I get back on my feet from the apocalypse that 2020 has been, I will be a patreon. Until then all I can do is watch the ads. But, you are great. Thanks for sharing your time, talents and knowledge.

[@PanteraPersa]

So... the Suckless browser *does* , in fact, Suck.

[@sohn7767]

Farouk Mokhtari I agree, sometimes you can’t apply the suckless philosophy

[@wallyhackenslacker]

I all honesty, something as naturally complex as a web brower is way to much for the suckless philosophy. Their other software is very good though, specially dmenu.

[@almosthelpless9374]

Suckmore

[@LucyPero]

What a surprise. Tried st. full of bugs. they're not great at what they do

[@coffeedude]

@@LucyPero what bugs? Never had a problem with st

[@legkamran]

Min is written entirely with CSS and JavaScript using Electron... İts boating!

[@jeetadityachatterjee6995]

I wasn't going to switch to it anyway but that seals it for me.

[@librequestpodcast]

@@kirschkern8260 I think a good browser for you may be a proprietary solution called Vivaldi. It has tab grouping and even pausing or pausing by group as well. It's to conserve system resources. I actually did a podcast about the browser. But, everything I talk about is literally just from their website. So, it may be quicker to just jump over there and see if it meets your needs. If you don't have any reservations about using a solution that is not completely free.

[@WhiterockFTP]

Kirsch kern Yeah there an extension calley The great Suspender (I think it is called that, maybe Tab Suspender otherwise just google for it!) :)

[@librequestpodcast]

@@WhiterockFTP I gotta check that one out too. Thanks!

[@tadpolemanswimsagain5005]

Can't really complain about the use of Electron here though. This is pretty much the only situation where using a GUI framework that carries an entire web browsing engine makes sense, lol.

[@Otome_chan311]

The min browser is basically what I've been looking for forever. A very minimal and lightweight browser that has all the modern features, but doesn't clog up the top space (other than tabs and a space for entering url), tab coloring/management, basic stuff like handling userscripts, ad/track blocking, etc. I'm gonna try switching and see if I'm really missing anything from firefox. Firefox is great but there was always problems with fighting with the ui. min so far is pretty great :)

[@markmendozamusic]

How has min browser been? Still using it?

[@odedsayar4345]

I like using Falkon as a medium-tier minimal web browser. Found it capable enough to almost never open Firefox, and it's way lighter (though not as light as the options here)

[@ZaneyOG]

As always top notch informative content. Hope your doing well during this hard time. You've inspired me to make my own content, glad to say that now I will be on the patron list! More than happy to support this fantastic content!

[@estanforth6754]

You can solve some of the issues with loading by setting the WEBKIT_FORCE_COMPOSITING_MODE=1 environment variable

[@balmar3]

I found quebrowser years ago after the n+1st Vim-Firefox extension (vimperator, pentadactly, etc) broke. I never looked back. :-) Purposely-built for Vim-like use instead of forcing a browser to be something it was never intended to be... no-brainer. Stable, fast, super comfortable, flexible (e.g., I'm redirecting "F" = "Open in new tab" into my own document-queuing script to ease load on the machine). Give it a proper try and you'll love it.

[@danamurray735]

Wow! I am kind of blown away by this one. Before viewing this vid I was under the impression that a minimal browser is something like Midori, NetSurf, Dillo, or maybe even rekonq (KDE). There are a few other browsers that are considered lightweight of course but I never knew that there was a difference between lightweight browsers and minimal browsers. It’s a little bit of a surprise for me to see the Min browser in action. Thanks for posting this very informative vid

[@FeelingShred]

I am limited in my CPU to 1.20 KHz for stupid reasons, it's basically because my laptop fan broke... Chromium has been surprisingly functional within this 1.20GHz 2-core limit (with uBlock Origin of course...) But Midori also worked very very fine within that context, even for youtube

[@FeelingShred]

Just to make it clear: Firefox WAS NOT fine at all within this 1.20 GHz limit... Just a FYI

[@danamurray735]

FeelingShred ...Midori is lighter than Firefox. And if I understand correctly, Midori is a lightweight browser. But it’s not considered a minimal browser. You might enjoy the Min browser if you’re interested in a minimal browser as an alternative to chromium

[@FeelingShred]

@@danamurray735 Before this video I would always assume "Minimal" meant the same as "Lightweight"... I see no use in a browser that has minimal interface but has the same hardware requirements as the others. Honestly, since I found out about the "--aggressive-tab-discard" parameter in Chromium I'm having NO issues whatsoever with it. I also manually limit the ammount of cache it uses to 30MB no more than that.

[@anniball]

I'm French and you are the only one I understand correctly. Thx for your super videos!

[@MohamedSobh]

We need to clarify what do we mean by "minimal". Correct me, If I'm wrong. All those browsers are minimal in the UI sens of the word. However, a web browser is as bloated/heavy/inefficient as it's web engine (HTML, and JavaScript). Thus, all of them are considered bloated in terms of performance (i.e. size, speed, and RAM usage). Sure, the qutebrowser is ≈ 7.5MiBs, but it depends on the Qt5 WebEngine which is ≈ 145 MiBs . On the other hand, chromium is about 184 MiBs. Now, speed wise... chromium (i.e. Blink, and V8) is the king of the hill. As for RAM, any of those browser would use more RAM than chromium for the same webpage. A good example of a minimal web browser would be something similar to the NetSurf Web Browser. But such a minimal web browser comes at a cost. Many websites won't render properly. Especially the JavaScript heavy ones.

[@death-disco]

your videos have become a kind of comfort to me during the lockdown, haha! so thanks

[@mohammedmohammed519]

Death Disco keep safe mate

[@PenguinRevolution]

Hey Derek, you might want to take another look at min, they have made some updates to min that you might like. the menu and now they use a current engine that is patched for security. It might be worth a look again.

[@studiokadaver]

Whenever I think about ultra minimalist I’m reminded of back when I regularly used DSL (Damn Small Linux) Knoppix Live discs 50mb!!!

[@川岸柳]

LFS, build kernel from source

[@luimu]

TempleOS lite 2mb.

[@konzer]

I've been regularly in this minimal web browser path and i concluded that Firefox with privacy extensions is the go to browser (since i care about FOSS and privacy) otherwise the minimal option is Gnome-Web/Epiphany by adding another add-block list to replace the default one. All other minimal alternatives like Lynx, Vimb, Min, Midori etc. do not cover the security - privacy concerns in an effective way. Imo of course.

[@aedd3307]

lynx is pretty secure, the fact that it only renders html makes it almost invulnerable to trackers, also, no ads.

[@aedd3307]

@@larry1845 less than that. html supports image and video, links only text.

[@konzer]

@@aedd3307 Yep you are right about the privacy of Lynx. I should mention on my original comment that i concluded to Firefox & Epiphany having in mind also the ease of use and the browser's capabilities in nowadays modern web.

[@aedd3307]

Luakit is another alternative, and also extensible with lua, since you've used awesomewm you'd feel right at home configuring it, although i will say that development has slowed down. But in my opinion using a non-mainstream browser would be a no-go, since they are less secure and make you glow in the dark because of their unique fingerprint, also they lack important extensions like ublock origin, umatrix (or noscript), decentraleyes, etc. But if you don't care about that and just want a non-bloated browser that "just werkz" i think qutebrowser would be the best alternative, since they have the largest community and sane defaults.

[@MrDeejayjfx]

lookup jblock for qutebrowser.

[@aedd3307]

@@MrDeejayjfx still glows in the dark.

[@studiokadaver]

I miss when Phoenix “Firefox” was just a .zip you unpacked & run! It was so small back then.

[@studiokadaver]

monado sir yeah but the bloat it real drastic. Just a example: “Phoenix-0.1win32.zip” is 8.31mb “Firefox Setup 74.0.1.exe” is 48.8mb

[@frataltay4543]

@@studiokadaver You are forgetting that back than PCs had much less storage in them.

[@studiokadaver]

Fırat Altay I didn’t forget that. I still have a house full of classic machines from the 80-90’s I’m constantly aware of older limitations

[@dancorvalan3205]

Netscape generation right here too. Cool subject for a video.

[@u3x922]

Very cool review 👍. Though at first I thought this will be about the software resource wise, but turned out to be UI wise. If this is the case, maybe you should check out how to hide all the unnecessary things from FF ? Personally I don't care that much about resource, as my personal machine is good enough to chew sites and get the latest privacy updates, which might be more important.

[@trapspringer9891]

I have certainly been looking for a browser not based on Google tech. Thank u for the list.

[@mikejackson7230]

How about security of these browsers? Are they patched/updated as frequently as Firefox and Chromium etc?

[@ZaneyOG]

Good question sir! Got me thinking ;D

[@DistroTube]

Stay off of 4chan and PHub and you should be OK.

[@mikejackson7230]

@@DistroTube lol

[@Scratchmex]

SeKuritY Is bLooOaaat

[@bigbraintakes1173]

@@DistroTube DT, you should look into a small vpn called RiseUp vpn. They are free, and to me the only trustable vpn. They have been ordered to release their logs multiple times, but they always respond with the fact that they do not have the logs, they don't keep them at all. Most other VPN companies have revealed that those are just empty promises, but Riseup is the real deal. They are donation based as well, so they are a neat open source project that deserves some attention! Also getting it up and running on an Arch distro is a bit of a hassle, so a video for people to reference I can imagine would help a lot of people using Arch get exposed to them.

[@OlejkaLive]

Hi from Russia. Great channel! Your reviews of linux apps are very useful for me and I think your voice is really well for understanding for non-english people. I’ve just been learning eng. language and can understand 70-80% of what you said)

[@snowcode953]

I just tested the browser Qutebrowser and it is very interresting but I highly regret the adblocker. This is the reason why I like Min, it supports the Chrome plugins. I'll try it more. I was using Brvae but Brave is not enough lightweight for me, even if it's a great software.

[@oliveremmettknox7776]

I have used Mozillia Firefox browser to do my internet surfing for most of my entire life. I have and still used Google Chrome since 2018/19. I have just recently switch to Opera, Brave and Vivaldi browsers in April 2022 because these search browsers are way faster and more secure than Firefox or Chrome. I could not decided which one of them that I should choose, so I decided to install all three them and use them one at a time. I still use Google Chrome to backup my photos in Google Photos, check my emails and backup my documents in Google drive.

[@BanazirGalpsi1968]

I started using waterfox a few weeks ago. I like it.

[@PearComputingDevices]

I love it. I agree that firefox is bloated. I remember switching to Netscape back in the days of IE 4.0 because the IE 4.0 was bloated compared to 3.0, then 4.0 came built in to 98, I liked that the file browser and web browser was so integrated. I remember switching between Netscape and IE bscause I also had a Mac that had Netscape. Then it was Firefox, I really loved the Konquerer browser in K desktop. Like you I don't like bloat and so I have always ran rather trim OS's.. even on my very powerful and beautiful XPS 13 developer's edition I am running lean and mean. Absolutely beautiful, but very lean. I am so picky a swapfile is bloat in my eyes. Invest properly in to hardware, you won't need one anyway. That's just me.

[@user-gi2mn5yf5j]

Good call DT I dig this qutebrowser goes fast and even takes out scroll bar for more real estate I think is great

[@yvrelna]

I used Firefox, but I customise the UI to hide the tab bar. You can't do this using the UI customisation tool that's built into Firefox, but you can with userChrome.css. In my system, I also configure Firefox to not have window decoration, so the top of my Firefox is basically just the URL bar as I've also removed pretty much all the other buttons I don't use from the URL bar. I probably could have also removed the URL bar, but there are security reasons to have the URL bar visible at all times. The reason I removed the tab bar is less about minimalism, but rather because I used a vertical/tree tab extension, which runs like the bookmark sidebar, which can also be hidden by closing the sidebar if you prefer it that way.

[@sed11q]

Brave. Like the add and tracking blocker philosophy.

[@luaumoal]

You can hide the menu bar of Min by pressing Left Alt, if i'm not mistaken.

[@archdoru9935]

Hi Derek, Although I did watch a few of your videos before, I'm a new subscriber to your channel, and so far I really love it. In this video you mentioned a custom web page (start page)... I really liked the idea, as well as the way it looked, and I would love to have something like that myself. I suppose it will work with any browser, right? Like you, I use Firefox, and have never been a big fan of the worldwide spy agency called Google, and its Chrome Browser... So, do you think you can do a video on how to create and use such a custom web page (start page)? I mean like a comprehensive step-by-step guide... Thanks.

[@ade5324]

that min browser for me was like love out of first sight. im using it now to watch this video :D thanks for letting me know about this awesome browser :DD

[@JDStone20]

I have been on the same quest. I used QuteBrowser and got it running, but what I needed to do and didn't was rebuild the qt5 engine to get KZbin to work. I just used MPV to play to KZbin videos that QuteBrowser wouldn't play. Ad Blocking was ok, and I was able to import my bookmarks. I tried Web, but didn't really like that. I have been using Surf this last week, and it seems to be fine, I haven't had any issues with slow page loading. I used it with suckless tabbed and I like it. It takes about the same amount of ram as my main browsers, Brave and Firefox. I haven't tried Min or Vimb yet, but suckless seems to work nice. What I like doing with these minimal browsers is use my OneTab extension shared as a web page as my starting page, as that is how I use Brave and Firefox. I find it faster than bookmarks, and so I mainly use my bookmarks as my research/reference material.

[@techguyteaches789]

Refers to Chrome as proprietary garbage. Chrome: "we work on anything, we're OS agnostic" However, you're not wrong about Firefox. It's great. And you can make it work exactly the way you want a browser to work, and you can count on it patching security holes WAY faster than anything else you're looking at.

[@xijinpingpong4426]

The best Browser I ever used was the Wii U Webbrowser (no joke), because scrolling and navigation with the arrow keys was extreme good.

[@user-pc4i8ege55]

Minimalism is not valuable in itself. Its value is in the fact that you can combine minimalist blocks in a tool of your own. For that a minimalist tool must be programmable, extensible, interoperable. Otherwise, minimalism is just a toy. This is why extensible Firefox fits the suckless philosophy better than any of the browsers you mentioned, IMHO.

[@betoian]

Thank you. I contradict myself because I would like a minimal, non-bloated browser the Linux way. That is adding whatever layer I would want as if it where plugins. Undoing our browsers history that had evolved from a commercial point of view. But keeping all the good things as FFX, but without being bloated... Why having things that already has our OS? I say I contradict because I do not know how to do this, just by piping some already tested command to load Epiphany. And not loosing any feature of a modern browser. I mean the Linux way, because if would probably only work on Linux. But could be done with the help of all our community that know how to make their own version of any plugin.

[@AtomToast]

I have mainly been playing around with qutebrowser and surf next to firefox but honestly vimb looks very interesting and it's curious that I never heart about it. Seems to combine a lot of the qualities of qutebrowser and surf and be a decent middleground. I especially like that it's written in c compared to qutebrowser which is written in python

[@ScottPuopolo]

4:07 sorry my friend, CNN is not a news site. I am enjoying your search for a minimalist browser, thanks.

[@SmileyJack.]

@@kirschkern8260 just close the tabs you can't afford XD

[@yScribblezHD]

@@kirschkern8260 CNN is no more corporate trash than Fox News though, to be sure. Any MSM is bad, and should be avoided in favor of independent media by people who are crowd-funded and wear their bias on their sleeve.

[@erwinjitsu_3706]

Clown News Network really says it all. They are extremely bias compared to other media.

[@yScribblezHD]

raine Well yeah, though the worst part about all of MSM is corporate bias. Having a political bias isn't actually horrible, if you're a small media creator / group of creators whom are forthcoming political bias. I'd rather watch someone I know is of a certain political identity than someone pretending they have none. If you remove corporatism from media, all of a sudden there are fewer disincentives to be authentic.

[@quarteratom]

Non-javascript browsers have use-cases, but for a lot of tasks you have to have a browser with javascript and adblock.

[@halfsourlizard9319]

Minimal browser == `curl`.

[@badwolf8112]

Suckless problem is their subjective definition of simple isn’t simple to many people. You can make a bloated Ram sucking program in a couple lines of code. Many times more code makes for better performance

[@danduby8416]

Not exactly minimal, but I use Epiphany (Gnome Web) exclusively. Epiphany also uses Webkit.

[@kurnma3776]

Just started using qutebrowser, and I like it, it also includes a command to install and update adblock block lists!

[@nasigoreng553]

Well your appealing to my minimalism which is great

[@eddieoconnor4466]

I mean, I can appreciate the wehole "Minimalist" mindset?...but Firefox works just fine for me, its not the super-fastest-lightest-thinnest-frameless etc....but for me? It "Just Works" and with the Add-Ons?...i can block pop-ups and ads, and give it a bit of a customized look. But this is what makes the open source community so great, the act that you can use what best works for YOU, and I can use what best works for ME! Cheers!

[@FeelingShred]

Oh, I thought he was referring to "minimal" in terms of hardware resources. I briefly used Midori when I used Slacko Puppy Linux for a disk rescue procedure. It seemed alright, until it crashed and you would have to reboot for it to work again. But it was surprisingly fast for youtube and such. That was an old version though, I think that build of Slacko Puppy was released 2013, so I imagine it's much better in updated versions. Watching from Un-googled Chromium, one of the few chromium variants that offers an AppImage as download option. Before that, when I used Windows 7 for 8 years I used SRWare Iron, another chromium variant focused on privacy and removal of google features. It must be made clear that Chromium is not Google's property, Chrome is built on top of it, not the opposite. Chrome is only one of the many forks.

[@FeelingShred]

Forgot to add an important aspect: Ungoogled Chromium works fine on my 2-core 1.20GHz laptop, so there's that

[@Aoitori365]

Firefox is easy to use and it works well i don't see any of these browsers being practical for most people

[@danamurray735]

Eolie Browser... it’s not a minimal browser but it is a lightweight browser that’s related to the GNOME Web browser (Epiphany). And the Xombrero browser is an extremely lightweight browser that aims to be a minimal browser.

[@rupankarghosh8296]

Zen mode + vimium in Firefox is my daily go

[@luxucn]

On my system the installation size including dependencies of qutebrowser and firefox are really similar

[@Raptremrum]

I use firefox in kiosk mode, with tridactyl. There is no window decoration, and the config file is very extensive, as I've been able to remove a few other extensions I used before. It can also install natively, so it has access to bash. The only thing to note is that I cannot do a native right click on a website. If the website overrides right click it still works.

[@wassenaar414]

Thanks a lot for the review! Unfortunately, all these browsers missing the synchronization feature. I use firefox on both laptop and android devices and I'm used to get access to my history, tabs and extensions all together at the same time.

[@FeelingShred]

Firefox Sync feature was the only thing still holding me to Firefox until I switched to chromium. Nowadays, I simply use a chromium AppImage (it's not installed in the system) and I make backups of the entire /home/config/chromium directory and it compresses down into a 1.5 MB Tar.Xz archive

[@frataltay4543]

Nice video Derek but I should correct one thing: qutebrowser is based on QtWebEngine not Web Kit.

[@jan_harald]

lmao @ pinned comment webkit is not chrome, chrome uses Blink, which is built ON TOP of webkit...

[@dmsalomon]

I totally agree that surf is not a viable option for a modern browser. But I wouldn't really say that surf is broken. Its more like the web is itself is so bloated and broken that surf struggles on those bloated sites. It works perfectly well designed sites with simple http/css and minimal js.

[@ycombine1053]

I've been using brave with the vimium extension recently. Works really well for me. Although I'm not as obsessed with minimal UIs

[@fuseteam]

*looks at dt's surf repo* >heavily patched build >3 commits me:reeeeeeee

[@ThePressurizer]

I really liked the minimal, personalized start page you were using with surf. Is that a local html page on your machine, some kind of web service or a feature of the surf browser?

[@dromedda6810]

ive mostly used Qutebrowser for about a year now and its just great ( for most things like browsing docs, watching youtube etc ) however for things where the vim mode or the underlying engine cant handle like some certain wasm things and such, i use firefox for when qutebrowser just doesnt seem to work that well for.

[@bigbraintakes1173]

I love surf, I use it for having programming docs up to refference while im programming. I wanna deck it out with tabbed and dmenu, but I wanna look into some of these other options as well.

[@bigbraintakes1173]

@Computationally Invariant Yea I used to use Lynx, and sometimes i still do, but it's a bit hard to navigate through some doc pages with, and I would actually fault the page design rather than Lynx.

[@bigbraintakes1173]

@Computationally Invariant I agree, web devs should consider that alot more. I am actually a web dev as my dayjob, and I think the entire field is over-engineered. I think it stems from the fact that people with CS degrees have always looked down at web devs, since html and css are extremely simple. As a result, everyone now wants to use JS to write full fledged software in the browser. For most cases, that's just not necessary at all. They're afraid that admitting what we do is very simple will lead to a big paycut. I even don't mind JS, I like using it to write cool creative stuff for the web. But for 99% of pages they would be better off as easily navigatable HTML. It would also make the web so much more secure.

[@SimGunther]

@@bigbraintakes1173 Absolutely don't need web browsers to be yet another operating system. Today's computers are more akin to Russian folding dolls than easily hackable circuit boards.

[@riccardodezza1723]

I recommend using colibri

[@MattM888]

Hello, somebody already mentioned it probably and i don't want to nitpick. As far as i know, Qutebrowser doesn't use webkit anymore . Anyways here is part from FAQ on qutebrowser.org/doc/faq.html "When qutebrowser was created, the newer WebKit2 API lacked basic features like proxy support, and almost no projects have started porting to WebKit2. In the meantime, this situation has improved a bit, but there are still only a few projects which have some kind of WebKit2 support (see the list of alternatives). qutebrowser uses Qt and QtWebEngine by default (and supports QtWebKit optionally). QtWebEngine is based on Google’s Chromium. With an up-to-date Qt, it has much more man-power behind it than WebKitGTK+ has, and thus supports more modern web features - it’s also arguably more secure." So unless you have optional version with QtWebKit, it's webengine is based on Chromium. I might have misunderstood what this means of course. Anyway great video, I really like your work :)

[@hen6003]

Never heard of vimb defintly ging to try it out

[@saintjohnny45]

@marv b beautiful bait, 10/10

[@almasabdrazak5089]

Also some concerns 1) what about security , those browsers are really new while Firefox and Chrome are old they spend enormous amount of efforts in order to protect their users 2) Extensions , quete browser doesn't have adblocker and as far as I remember it doesn't support extensions at all

[@brovoice6822]

Chrome might be secure but users sacrifice their privacy. It is also very resource heavy.

[@brovoice6822]

@@SimonWoodburyForget Chrome is bloated as well. There is only few browsers that are truly minimal on resources and functional.

[@brovoice6822]

@@SimonWoodburyForget Yes some distros are bloated. That's why I recommend Debian or Arch. Anything that provides you with just working system and ability to install software you just really need.

[@brovoice6822]

@@SimonWoodburyForget How is arch and debian more bloated than chrome? Distros are running on linux kernel. Dude do you even know what you are talking about?

[@brovoice6822]

@@SimonWoodburyForget Chrome is simple piece of software? Let me correct you right there. Browsers are very complex piece of software. Development of a browser is also thousands hours of work. Browsers are not even maintained by single developer, they have a development team. If browsers were really that simple and easy to develop we would have more options available. Chrome is running at around 100MB ram at idle, which sooner or later increases with extensions, cache, and etc. It can be a whooping 300MB ram idle. Plain Arch linux with tilling manager is running idle at 150MB ram. Fresh install of chrome uses 2/3 ram of what Arch linux with tilling manager is using. Clearly we can see what really is more bloated if your logic is Chrome being simple piece of software and Arch/Debian being very complex.

[@xthebumpx]

Qutebrowser is not a minimal browser just because it has vim bindings. It's bigger than Firefox when you count all the QT webengine stuff.

[@joryllroberttrinidad9889]

This guy is really hard to please ✌️

[@jacobstuckey9221]

I'm using Min right now. While it's a good browser for the most part, it's really annoying how the built-in adblocker doesn't block KZbin ads even on the strictest setting. Even Qutebrowser managed to block those ads sometimes.

[@kouhaiii3182]

i've been using Min browser for its Tasks function a workaround i do is opening the video in a new tab. it stops ads from autoplaying but does it takes a bit more time ads on the youtube homepage aren't blocked by the browser but i can live with it

[@georgesmith3022]

the problem is not the browser, but overbloated pages with javascript. You visit a page, and ten windows open up

[@diegonayalazo]

Thanks DT !

[@PurpleSanz]

Chrome 1.0.154 works like a charm if, like me, you are looking for a very basic, fast startup, extremely low ram usage browser just to control your router settings (DD-WRT in my case) or any other web-based management task.

[@is5714]

do you use chrome 1.0.154 for your daily usage? like youtube, googling or playing browser games?

[@PurpleSanz]

@@is5714 No, it doesn't work for those tasks at all, I only use it to access and control my router. It MIGHT work for googling (in theory) but most websites won't work at all. The only reason why I ended up using it, is because any other browser (even the ones that claim to be minimalistic and stuff) use a lot of ram and have a very slow startup. For daily usage, there is just nothing better than Firefox, in my opinion.

[@kychemclass5850]

Some "bloat" is good. Can view HTML code, Can use add-ons, Can manage security, can save files.... In fact that isn't really bloat! Minimal is not always king.... unless you're on a v. limited hardware machine.

[@xshadow193]

Those browsers don't have adblockers, built-in firewalls, tracking detection, etc. I don't really think Firefox is bloated (maybe the account sync feature)- I think the other browsers are unprepared for the excessive and unrelenting tracking and hacking that is done on the modern web. I'm interested in vimb though. Maybe in the future it will be mature enough for usage

[@kriketedwards6347]

gets a threadripper... goes minimal...

[@SmileyJack.]

02:26 he needs those cores to run two clocks simultaneously =)

[@Berntisso]

Why would you rather use Apple technology with WebKit than Google technology with Chromium?

[@abstractapproach634]

Links for the win, don't even need a window manager.

[@DJ_Cthulhu]

I use a Chromebook for all my bloated browsing, my ThinkPads just have lynx on 'em :)

[@warhawk_yt]

I was looking at the min source code and it doesn’t just use an older version of chromium but it also uses electron as I see it in the dependencies and also that toolbar on top looks like electron. I have used electron a little bit so I have a basic idea on what it looks like.

[@TheOnlyPixelPuncher]

Nice vid! finally bit the bullet and i'm gonna try vimb now Is there a way to get your homepage for oneself somehow? Seems like a really nice starting off pointing to. Couldn't find it on your github but maybe i'm blind.

[@DistroTube]

gitlab.com/dwt1/dotfiles/-/tree/master/.surf/html

[@TheOnlyPixelPuncher]

@@DistroTube thanks! Much appreciated!

[@nasigoreng553]

Yeh but youtube I class as bloat which makes your browser less minimal, browsers and the web are simbiotic in the sense

[@lechsiz1642]

I am interested in RAM usage. It would be nice to be able to edit videos on an older PC and listen to my KZbin playlist of study/work music. Another video said by using a terminal browser you can bypass the article paywalls automatically.

[@Artoooooor]

Surf has some performance problem - at least for me. And not only in loading pages - they also work slow. But the browser itself loads fast - so when I have to open browser, check something and close it I sometimes use it.

[@canal404]

- Doesn't like Google - Has a KZbin channel

[@SmileyJack.]

- Doesn't like "proprietary garbage" - Uses Zoom because "it just works"

[@LaPage]

-Doesn't like Google -"Let's open Google..."

[@oliveremmettknox7776]

I just recently realized that Mozillia Firefox uses a lot of your computer's RAM/CPU which is why it sometimes runs slow.

[@i.8530]

watching on qutebrowser rn

[@computer-love]

>minimal browser >built in electronjs pick one

[@iLiokardo]

Did you try pressing F10 in Min? That's a default CUA shortcut i think. Either way, try it.

[@secwriteups]

Can you make a video about multi-monitoring in dwm? PS: Try Facebook on surf.

[@Yalchin403]

I used to use Firefox, as I couldn't open zoom, teams or Skype calls directly from browser, I again switched to chrome

[@chrisgirvin3396]

I just wanted to stick up for Chrome's Dev Tools. I'm a Firefox user as well, and I don't use Chrome for anything other than it's Dev Tools, but I felt someone needed to point out that their Dev Tools are very good. I would prefer to use Firefox Dev Tools, but Chrome's are just better for my usage.

[@DiscovererAlpha]

There is also the "next browser" which should fit your criteria even though its under a lot of development

[@SimGunther]

It's much improved from even a year ago. However, the big question is why web browse with emacs buffers and all that jazz when you could use eww on emacs?

[@CraigOverend]

FOSDEM 2020 video of the "next" programmable web browser can be found here: fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/next_web_browser/

[@schemerboy1005]

I hope next matures and stops crashing I'm fond of emacs type bindings and Lisp, so I can't wait until its good enough

[@tablettwist5639]

Vimum man! We need a minimal browser that supports vimum.