Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 1

I’ve found Falkon to be a good balance of features and light weight for low-end hardware like the PineTab2 and virtual machines. It’s more capable (and compatible!) than NetSurf or Dillo, and faster than Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi or Angelfish. It also runs well under LXQT, which I like to use on that low-spec (and virtual) hardware for the same reason.

It does all the basics you expect of a modern browser, and because it’s built on Chromium (via QtWebEngine), it’s less likely to run into actual incompatibilities than sites that think they’re incompatible.

You can send a page from your phone to your desktop using KDE Connect (which despite its name can also run on Gnome and other desktops), and if Falkon is your default browser, it’ll pick it up. I haven’t found a good way to send tabs from Falkon to a phone, though.

Problems and Workarounds

• It doesn’t run Chromium extensions (or Firefox add-ons for that matter), and there are only a few dozen Falkon extensions at this time.
• There’s no way to connect directly to an external password manager like KeePassXC (or Bitwarden, as OSNews’ article points out). I’ve worked around this by using KeePassXC’s auto-type feature. It’s more cumbersome than auto-detecting in the browser, but still faster than copying and pasting – and much faster than typing manually.
• Bookmarklets (JavaScript bookmarks) aren’t allowed to open new windows by default, which is actually a sensible decision. There’s a preference to allow JavaScript to open pop-up windows, which makes things like my Postmarks bookmarklet actually, y’know, work:

  Preferences → Privacy-General → JavaScript Options → Open popup windows

• There’s no bookmark sync capability, even using extensions. For now I’ve just put the main links for my Nextcloud Bookmarks and Postmarks instances in the toolbar and using them directly, but it would be nice to be able to use the built-in UI. I’ve been contemplating hacking together a script to download from Nextcloud and update the bookmarks file as a one-way sync, but haven’t gotten around to it.
• It can’t install PWAs (portable web applications). Then again, neither can desktop versions of Firefox.

But I can log into Dropbox or Nextcloud (they complain, but let me use it anyway) or any webmail client and it does what I need it to in a reasonable amount of time!

Flatpak Issues

When installed through Flatpak, launchers get confused if Falkon is already running: It opens a new instance of the program, complete with all the windows and tabs you had open the last time you closed it, in addition to the one still running.

On XFCE specifically, I also have trouble setting Falkon as the default browser if it’s been installed through Flatpak: It doesn’t show up in the list of applications for setting a default web browser, so you have to manually add the full flatpak run org.kde.falkon "%s" command as a custom browser. Adding that makes it work as the default browser for opening links, but the “Web Browser” launcher won’t run it.

Haiku

Falkon also runs on Haiku, an alternative operating system inspired by the late, lamented BeOS. The version in Haiku Depot is a bit out of date, and I’ve only experimented a little with the OS as a whole, so take this with a grain of salt. It seems to handle more websites than WebPositive (Haiku’s native web browser), but it’s not quite as stable. Or as stable as Falkon itself on Linux. A few sites just don’t show text. But it mostly works, and I can imagine alternating between the two as needed if I spent more time in Haiku!

Availability on Linux

Fedora and Arch packages seem to be kept reasonably up to date (no surprise), and you don’t have to install too much of KDE if you’re running it on another desktop. Debian stable lags behind (also no surprise), but the current Flatpak runs just fine (there’s also a Snap) unless I try to open way too many tabs.

I’ve been using Vivaldi as my main web browser lately, after several years using Firefox as my primary and Vivaldi as an alternate when something didn’t work.

Why Not Another Chromium Browser?

Mainly because I trust Vivaldi more than Chrome, Opera, Brave or Edge. Chrome has slowly been becoming more and more of a funnel for Google accounts, with the advertising side of the company calling more of the shots. In my opinion, Opera lost its soul when it was bought out by a conglomerate. Brave has some interesting tech, but it’s also wrapped up in the cryptocurrency/venture capitalist investor world. And of course Edge is from Microsoft. (Though I find it hilarious that you can install Edge on Linux these days.)

Vivaldi comes from the small-tech side of things (the company is employee-owned, with no outside investors) and was co-founded by Jon von Tetzchner, one of Opera’s co-founders. It’s basically what Opera would have been today if they’d kept their focus on making a good browser that works for the person using it instead of working to squeeze out more profit for the conglomerate that owns the company.

What About the Software?

It’s a power-user ultra-customizable internet suite including web, mail and news, built on the same “Blink” engine as Chrome and other Chromium browsers.

Downsides:

• The engine still depends on the Google-defined monoculture.
• Vivaldi’s own code isn’t capital-F Free Software.

Upsides:

• You’re a lot less likely to run into a page that doesn’t work than you are with Firefox.
• You can use any Chrome extension.
• Vivaldi isn’t dropping support for older extensions until they have to (which Chrome is doing in favor of an API that makes it a lot harder to run ad blockers).
• Vivaldi isn’t including Google’s “Topics”, in which Chrome tracks your activity for advertising purposes so websites don’t “have” to.

“Topics” was actually the last straw for me, and I uninstalled Chrome everywhere I could. (Sadly, I still have one site that I have to use semi-regularly that won’t work in Vivaldi or Firefox, only in Chrome.)

Vivaldi is available on every platform I use regularly between work and home, including macOS, Linux, Windows and Android (plus iOS), and runs natively on both x86_64 and ARM. Yes, on Windows and Linux too. For Linux they provide DEB, RPM, Flatpak, and Snap packages for both architectures.

Recommended Extensions

• KeePassXC-Browser autofills from KeePass when you have a vault open.
• Floccus Bookmark Sync works across more browsers than just Vivaldi.
• Consent-O-Matic autofills cookie preferences.
• More add-on reviews…

Mobile

The Android app is noticeably faster than Firefox on my phone, and has most of the features of the desktop version. It also supports more capabilities for PWAs (installable web applications). The main thing I miss from Firefox is that Vivaldi’s mobile app doesn’t support extensions.

The only real problem I’ve run into is that the browser’s autofill sometimes crowds out the autofill from KeePass2Android (and possibly other password managers). I worked around it once by switching to KP2A’s keyboard, then deleted the one password I had saved in Vivaldi, but it does the same thing with saved addresses. Sometimes.

Sync

Every browser has a sync service these days. I only recently started using Vivaldi Link, and I turned off bookmark syncing because I’m using Floccus to sync bookmarks across Vivaldi and Firefox. The nice thing about Vivaldi’s is that you set a second password on your local devices for encrypting your data before it even gets sent to their servers, so Vivaldi couldn’t sell your sync data or use it to train AI even if they wanted to!

One thing that’s tripped me up a bit is the way tab sync works: With Firefox, you send the page you’re viewing now to the device you want to switch to. With Vivaldi, you leave the page open on the first device, then look for it in a drop-down list you get from a cloud icon in the tab bar on the device you’re going to. They’re both totally valid, but I was so used to the other way of doing it that I still fumble looking for the share buttons.

Beyond Web Pages

Vivaldi has continued to maintain an actual internet suite, including mail, calendar, and newsfeeds (RSS/Atom). I haven’t used these as much as I have used the web browser, though.

Notes: Sync seamlessly between the sidebar on desktop and their own screen on mobile.

Feeds: Even if you don’t have the full suite enabled, it’ll show a human-readable version of feeds you might click on. If you do, you get a familiar feed reader app similar to NetNewsWire or Liferea.

Mail: Works with any IMAP or POP server, including Gmail. Handles multiple accounts, lets you work with combined inboxes…and combined folders, which can get confusing sometimes. I’ve found I like Vivaldi’s mail client for a pass through new messages, but I still prefer Thunderbird overall, especially for organizing my archives.

Calendars/Tasks: Syncs with Vivaldi, Google, Apple, and standard CalDAV servers so it works with Nextcloud.

Contacts: Only syncs with a Vivaldi account, so it’s a non-starter as far as my Nextcloud setup goes.

Online Community / Services

Vivaldi.net started out as a new home for the Opera community (as in the people who used it) when the company shut down the Opera Community (as in the hosted blogs, forums, and other services) back in 2014. It wasn’t until later, shortly before Opera (the company) broke up, that Vivaldi launched their own browser. Because of this, they still have some services you might not expect a browser company to provide:

Forums for users to talk about Vivaldi and random stuff, and to interact with developers. This is where you’d make a feature request or report a bug, or share tips with other Vivaldi users.

Blogs: Just general blog hosting, like Opera’s used to be! Runs on multi-site WordPress (the software) with plugins including The SEO Framework, ActivityPub (Fediverse compatibility), Akismet (spam filtering), and the Classic Editor for those of us who [prefer it over blocks]/reviews/software/wordpress-block-editor/.

Webmail (yes, webmail!): To cut down on spam and abuse they wait until you’ve been active on your account for a while before giving you access to webmail. It runs on Roundcube, the same software DreamHost uses. It’s got a good set of features and runs well, plus you can also connect to the account with any IMAP mail client (including Vivaldi, of course!)

Vivaldi.Social: A social network site running Mastodon, which interacts with the rest of the Fediverse. Easy to set up and access in the sidebar, making it a good way to check out Mastodon if you’re curious.

Notes

A very lightweight social networking server, with a very clean web interface for viewing public posts. Compatible with Mastodon apps and interacts well with Mastodon and other major ActivityPub platforms on the Fediverse.

You can run it as a semi-private server, so your group can interact locally without the posts leaking, and still share public posts with followers on Mastodon etc. And they’ve been building in safety features like local-only posts, controls on who can reply, and so on.

It’s server-only, though. You can manage settings and your profile on the website, and others can view public posts, but all the interaction has to be done through an app like Elk (what I’m currently using on desktops), Ivory (on iOS), or Tusky (my preferred app on Android).

Hosting

It’s not meant for handling zillions of users. GoToSocial is more for setting up a server for your group or family or friends (or even just yourself) on a spare Raspberry Pi or cheap VPS host. It’s not as small as Snac (which is incredibly tiny!), but I’ve got GTS running quite well on a 1GB Linode.

Admin is a lot simpler than Mastodon. It can be a single binary or a single container, and just uses SQLite instead of running a full DB in a separate container. I’m running it on a 1GB Linode and haven’t had to add storage or (the website)RAM.

Basically the only sysadmin stuff I’ve done aside from setup in two years has been installing updates, which has just been incrementing the version number in docker-compose.

Beta and Compatibility

Interoperability is a lot better now than it was when I started testing it, and these days it interacts well with varieties of Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, Bookwyrm, Pixelfed, Snac, WordPress, etc. Bridgy Fed works with it now, and I’m able to follow Bluesky accounts (and vice versa). Postmarks can be patched to work with GTS. Threads* still won’t talk to GTS, and I still have trouble getting GTS and Lemmy to interact fully.

Right now it’s still in beta. Some of the more noticeable features that haven’t been built yet:

• post editing will be available in version 0.18 (though 0.17 does pick up incoming edits)
• link previews
• search posts (except your own)
• auto-delete (which I could probably hack together as a database script)

But it already handles most of what I need, and I’ve been using a personal server as my primary Fediverse presence since early 2024.

Before we start: Dillo (as in armadillo) is built for the web of documents, not applications. It intentionally doesn’t support JavaScript, and while it can work with server-side web apps, you have to jump through a few hoops to enable cookies on a given site.

That said…

Speed

Dillo is an incredibly fast ultra-minimalist web browser for Linux and other Unix-like systems. This makes it a good first choice on old or low-end hardware, or in a constrained virtual machine. You can keep another browser around as fallback for online apps that need JavaScript, complex styles, or newer features.

The lack of scripting also means that most advertisements and tracking won’t load in the first place, making it even faster (and good for privacy!)

Visuals

CSS support lags behind quite a bit compared to other web browsers, but that’s partly because development stalled for a decade when one of the project leads passed away.

Depending on how complex a site is, it might display just fine, or a little bit off, or be way off but still readable. Or broken. On sites powered by MediaWiki (Wikipedia, Fandom wikis, etc), for instance, the articles themselves are often readable, but the sidebars, headers or footers may look like they’ve been broken up into pieces.

And I keep having trouble getting it to display emoji consistently under Linux, though it displays them fine on macOS.

So whether Dillo works for you depends heavily on what you want to use it for. If you want to connect to Bluesky or read Gmail or anything like that…that’s not going to work. At all. Online shopping would be iffy at best. But if you’re searching for information, or hanging out at Metafilter, or actually reading stuff, it might be worth a look.

Fediversal

Unfortunately Dillo can’t show you the project’s own Mastodon account, because Mastodon requires JavaScript.

But a Snac timeline looks good – which makes sense, because Snac is ultra-minimalist itself – and you can even log into a Snac site and post, because Snac only requires baseline HTML and HTTP(s) to work! The UI is a bit clunky because the browser doesn’t support the HTML5 Details element (yet?), so all the forms and buttons and fields are visible all the time. But it works!

Small Internet and Other Plugins

There are plugins available to support various “small internet” protocols like Gemini and Gopher. And since even the oldest web browsers already support more formatting than Gemtext, plain text, or Gopher menus, they don’t suffer at all. I mean, yeah, Lagrange is prettier, but that’s all in the defaults, not the site support!

There are also plugins to enable IPFS, bookmark sync via Firefox accounts, and a dedicated reading mode.

Availability

Current packages (3.1 and up) are available in various Linux distributions including Fedora, Arch and Alpine, and in Homebrew for macOS.

Debian still has the old 3.0 release from before the multi-year gap, which is unfortunate because it doesn’t handle newer SSL/TLS, and there’s no Flatpak or Snap as far as I know, but you can still install it from source on Debian or an atomic distribution like Fedora Silverblue.

Apparently it works on Windows with Cygwin again, too! (I wrote up how to compile the old GTK+ version on Cygwin, back when I was maintaining RPM packages for installing Dillo on Fedora and a couple of other distributions, but that’s been obsolete since the switch to FLTK in 2008, and I eventually deleted it in one site cleanup or another.)

A convenient browser extension that detects cookie consent pop-ups and automatically fills them out according to your choices in the extension settings. So you only need to say (for example) “preferences are ok, but analytics and ad tracking aren’t” once instead of for every new site you visit.

It’s been a while since I’ve visited a website with a consent banner that it didn’t recognize.

By default it lets the pop-ups show briefly, so you know the site is tracking and you know the add-on is telling it what it can and can’t track, but you can also set it to hide them from the start if you’d rather not be bothered.