#netsurf

Rate my setup!

First of all - RISC OS is extremely quick and responsive, even on this first gen Pi! I really love how it feels! The main challenge is how different it is from other OSes, but it feels really consistent and well designed. It also needs a 3-button mouse.

NetSurf struggles with many netpages (which is why I pointed it to the custom URL of my blog). However, this is all operating in 196MB of RAM. The original Pi had 256MB of RAM in total and I don't think it's possible to allocate less than 64MB as display RAM unless it's used completely headless (no graphics output at all).

h5 on G4EVER PRESENTS: Netsurf S3E1 - The Slushie Slammer

Another example of furries running the internet? Complete Slushie-struction? AI-generated Squidward dropping some KILLER beats?! Yep, Netsurf's back, aight! Let's Go!

When looking to use an old technology it’s expected that some things won’t work as well as their modern day equivalents, even with modern hardware there will inevitably be limitations an old OS along with a lack of support.

One area where I’ve had to accept the inevitable limitations of using a decades old platform is that of web browsing.

When using my 3.1.4 installation, I’ve found that the only reliable and efficient yet limited browser is iBrowse.

I have tried other browsers with NetSurf 3.1 being a capable alternative. However, capable as NetSurf is (particularly when using in AmiKit), it’s not efficient and can take ten minutes to load some pages that take seconds in a modern browser on a modern system, even on AmiKit.

So, I’m finding more and more that my Go To web browser on AmigaOS is iBrowse. This browser isn’t particularly pretty on most modern websites, but it is quick. It hardly ever crashes and for those websites I most often visit from an Amiga (such as Aminet), it’s very fast and very efficient.

I mentioned at the start of this post that I have had to come to accept that web browsing is and will be very imperfect when using a platform like this and it is only at this point that I can appreciate the benefits of iBrowse - it makes the best of a bad situation.

Other websites which I might want to look at don’t render so pretty but much of the information that I might want to read is usually present after navigating through empty picture outlines and misplaced menu items. There can be some apparent system lockup, but it’s not usually permanent with the slowdown being caused, I believe, by the task of processing large amounts of data on a system not really designed to do so.

The worst thing about iBrowse on the Amiga is the price. That’s right, this is not a free browser and £34.99 is a stinger. I’ll admit that I haven’t yet registered this, I keep putting it off, but I don’t begrudge the developers asking for the money.

We’ve been spolied with an internet where so much is free making us feel entitled to free apps and free services, but especially free web browsers. The bottom line, however, is that there isn’t a big multi-million dollar company behind the Amiga to make a free browser,  earning back its money through slurped and sold browsing data (not that anybody does that), rather it’s being supported by developers who do what they can when they can.

If this browser was rubbish then I might be less positive with my comments here but it’s not and it lets you obtain what you need to keep your Amiga running.