Re:Firefox 32-bit Linux Support to End in 2026
by zozbot234 on Monday September 08, 2025 @04:03PM
(#45173226)
A lightweight Linux desktop still works fine for very basic tasks with 4GB RAM, and that's without even setting up compressed RAM swap. The older 2GB netbooks and tablets might be at the end of the road, though.
Re:Firefox 32-bit Linux Support to End in 2026
by kstrauser on Monday September 08, 2025 @04:12PM
(#45173333)
I don’t think web browsing is a very basic task anymore, though. A substantial portion of new sites are React SPAs with a lot of client processing demands.
Re:Firefox 32-bit Linux Support to End in 2026
by zozbot234 on Monday September 08, 2025 @04:22PM
(#45173451)
The other issue AIUI and a more pressing one, is that the browser itself is getting a lot heavier wrt. RAM usage, even when simply showing a blank page. That's what ends up being limiting for very-low-RAM setups.
Re:Firefox 32-bit Linux Support to End in 2026
by anthk on Monday September 08, 2025 @04:41PM
(#45173688)
Chromium has a --light switch. And, for the rest, git-clone gopher://bitreich.org/privacy-haters, look up the Unix script for Chrome variables and copy the --arguments stuff for the Chromium launcher under Wndows. Add UBock origin too.
4GB of RAM should be more than enough.
Re:Firefox 32-bit Linux Support to End in 2026
by niutech on Monday September 15, 2025 @03:21AM
(#45247016)
What is this --light switch? I cannot see it at https://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/
Re:Firefox 32-bit Linux Support to End in 2026
by Wowfunhappy on Tuesday September 09, 2025 @08:22AM
(#45180967)
Huh. The reason I'm surprised is that I'm able to comfortably browse the web in virtual machines with only 1 cpu core and 2 gb of memory, even when the VM is simultaneously compiling software. This is only opening 1-2 tabs at a time, mind you.
Re:Firefox 32-bit Linux Support to End in 2026
by niutech on Monday September 15, 2025 @03:17AM
(#45246987)
Why use bloated Chrome? There are much more lightweight web browsers, like Pale Moon, K-Meleon, Otter Browser or Waterfox.
Re:Firefox 32-bit Linux Support to End in 2026
by doubled112 on Monday September 15, 2025 @11:24PM
(#45257715)
At the time, Chrome was actually a lot faster than Firefox at loading the Gmail web interface. Firefox was also faster than Firefox ESR. I've noticed on lower end hardware that newer is often better with browsers, which is not what I would have expected.
Pale Moon and K-Meleon are really just using an old Gecko engine fork, aren't they? I think Waterfox is the same.
Otter Browser is using QtWebEngine, which is Blink, so it's Chromium with a different UI.
At this point, as far as I can tell, if it successfully renders the modern web, it's a Firefox or Chrome fork anyway. None of the lightweight browsers ever seem to improve my life any.
My wife had an HP Stream thing with an Intel N3060 CPU and 4GB of RAM. I warned her but it was cheap enough it almost got the job done.
Gmail's web interface would take almost a minute to load. It uses about 500MB of RAM by itself running Chrome.
Does browsing the web include checking your email? Not if you need web mail, apparently.
Check out the memory usage for yourself one of these days on the things you use daily. Could you still do them?