Browsers for old PCs

[Thaddeus_Pi]

Hi all

I need a list of browsers which can operate decently on old computers. I was using Brave  with widevine for netflix but having recently learned of issues with it I'd like to migrate to another browser. Firefox is my preference but it doesn't work properly as the systems don't have enough RAM.

Can anyone help? I need something that can run netflix and the like. Thanks!

[TheDead]

Try Palemoon.
It's lite-enough but most important, it works and is quite stable.
Not the most popular but it's based on legacy firefox core.
I used Midori in the past, but it's old (2015) and broken. ADD: Seems it is now called Astian released on 2020-05-23... didn't try it though. o.O.
ADD2 : Astian Link goes to a 1.4MB download... which is weirdly small and could be a "downloader". I would say be careful if you try this (like try in a sand box or virtual machine beforehand if you're interested)

[mdiemer]

I'm having good luck with Vivaldi. I have an old Gateway desktop, 64 bits, 6GB ram, and original onboard graphics, as my video card died recently. This system won't run anything later than the 4.4 Linux kernel - the display fails constantly. but it will run Lite 3.8 perfectly (but only with Nvidia driver 304). It did have problems with Firefox, which I uninstalled. I use Vivaldi on it with great success, but I did disable all animations and anything else I thought might cause problems. You didn't mention your computer specs, so this is just a shot in the dark.

[newtusmaximus]

Have you tried MIN https://minbrowser.org/ 

[Thaddeus_Pi]

Specs would help wouldn't they?

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 2GB RAM and a GTX 600 series card...I think 670.

Thanks for the suggestions thus far, do the specs help refine any choices?

[WytWun]

I'm currently supporting 3 machines with only 2GB of RAM (all 3 with intel integrated video, 2 now on LL 5.0 and 1 still on LL 3.8 ) and haven't really seen any problems with Firefox, though I admit I don't try and stress Firefox on those machines (rarely more than 4-5 tabs).  I will however suggest that one thing I've seen make a difference in browser behaviour generally - regardless of available RAM - is adblocking because so many websites now run tarpits full of ad related Javascript on every page.

On low memory/slow CPU systems you probably don't want to run browser plug-ins though as they will consume resources despite saving them, so external solutions such as the adblocking facilities available on some 3rd party router firmware (notably OpenWrt and Gargoyle) and packages such as Pi-hole are likely to be more fruitful if you can use them.

[TheDead]

I will however suggest that one thing I've seen make a difference in browser behaviour generally - regardless of available RAM - is adblocking because so many websites now run tarpits full of ad related Javascript on every page.

So true! I forgot to mention I ALWAYS install uBlock Origin from Raymond Hill (Gorhill). Don't worry Jerry, I whitelisted Linux Lite sites.
For Palemoon though, you have to search for the Legacy version, which can be hard to do.
2G is quite minimum for multi-page browsing. With the current Firefox, you NEED an adblocker yes. Note : uBlock Origin is available in the standard Firefox Extension "store".

[Şerban S.]

Hi!
My machine is old too, it's a ThinkPad T400. The only difference from yours is +2 GB RAM and a SSD.
I use as an alternate to Chrome, Vivaldi and I found it very different from Chrome, FireFox and Chromium, that in my opinion are almost the same thing. They suck some 200 - 400 MB/page (document). And yeah, I admit it, I have an AdBlocker since every page is stuffed with annoying popups and other things like that.
Give it a try, maybe you'll end up using it as the default browser.
As far as I know though, problems start to pop up when viewing videos on videosharing sites. Those eat tons of RAM. Even more than 400 MB per video.
All the best and good luck!