Hi. I wasn’t sure where to post this, hopefully this is the right area. In lemmy’s opinion, what’s the best eco/environmentally friendly web browser? Basically low on resources, saves battery, etc. Private and secure is a bonus.

  • ree
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    3 years ago

    The website you visit have bigger impact than the browser itself.

    Website like Facebook use crazy amount of ressources. It use almost a whole thread on my i5-2430M.

    A static page will have almost zero impact.

    Other have recommended an adblocker I would also disable JavaScript.

    • AgreeableLandscape
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      3 years ago

      To this end, installing tracker and script blockers will significantly reduce your browsing energy consumption. Even better if you outright disable JavaScript for any site that doesn’t need it.

  • Helix
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    3 years ago

    Firefox. You can disable most of its features which connect to something, it’s lightweight, truly Open Source and it has many add-ons to make it more accessible for daily browsing.

    I honestly don’t get why it only has a market share of 8% or so. I guess its marketing is just pretty bad…

      • Helix
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        3 years ago

        Sadly a lot of people out there seem to find ease of use and performance more important than privacy and security.

        What is worse is that they take a 50% hit on privacy for a 3% gain of performance and the usability isn’t even any different…

    • quiteStraightEdge
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      3 years ago

      If you read about the company then well… Mozilla foundation and their boss are not amazing, and payed up by google so that’s not ideal. If your own web browser by default uses search engine that promotes products of competitor, and they waste ton of money of some side gigs like AI which for sure doesn’t help. Oh, and also I believe that their ceo, or what is his position called, has one of the highest (or the highest) pay among UK’s non-profits, and it is for sure for some reason going opposite way of precent of users if you thrown that on a chart.

      For me it was also wierd that Firefox is so nice and yet few people use it. Then I started reading and understood a bit better :p Since that time I’m looking for libre (but not orthodoxic) web browser for my mobile and pc. Sadly nothing did catch my eye for now.

      • Helix
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        3 years ago

        I think Mozilla does more good than harm, especially when comparing them with any of their competitors.

  • yxzi
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    3 years ago

    You could consider making use of RSS feed readers more or basically anything that supports text-only version really

    • j0ta
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      3 years ago

      every browser less than 60mb uses chrome webview instead their own rendering so not a good idea

  • rep
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    3 years ago

    Ptobably stuff like lynx, links, w3m. Linx 2 even has a graphical version xlinks2 but it uses comparable amount of ram to firefox.

    • rep
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      3 years ago

      I would say also internet explorer and winexplorer fall under this category too. But they are discontinued by the industry and winexplorer doesn’t have all the features IE has.
      Inb4 free software gang has a problem with me suggesting IE

  • Zerush
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    3 years ago

    It depends on many factors To rule out are browsers that work with Cryptocurrencies, as they need dedicated servers that consume additional energy (Brave) Browsers that do not have an ad and trackerblocker, since these do not impede the bandwidth used by these ads, which is also an extra expense. They don’t use servers for sync and services that run on renewable energy. That increase resources and energy with many tabs open. For the user, preferably use dark themes. In an LED screen, black means all the pixels off, which saves energy, since then only the backlighting and the text and images on the screen use energy, apart better for the eyes. Using search engines like Ecosia, which uses renewable energy and also plants trees with searches, also protects privacy. Apart from SeaMonkey, I use the Vivaldi Browser from Iceland, it use Green Energy, can hibernate tabs and include Ecosia as one of the default search engines and sponsor. I use Seamonkey only occasionally, depending on Mozilla and using the servers of this company, funded by Google and Alphabet Inc, which is far from being ecological. Few alternatives remain.

    • nerdyguy1990OP
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      3 years ago

      What about browser(s) that use the HOSTS file to block ads? The Classic browser does this, and has some nifty features baked in.

      • Zerush
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        3 years ago

        Blocking ads can also be done independent from the browser, a level OS or Router. In Mobile you can use f.Exmple. Blokada, it blocks also the ads in the apps of the Mobile itself… For desktop there are also several alternatives, AdGuard, NextDNS, Hosts by Steven Black, etc.

  • pinknoise
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    3 years ago

    Lynx has the best resource usage to usability ratio imo. Turning your computer off will have a way bigger impact though.