new browser required

[baden.ku...@gmail.com]

I have been watching with skepticism the deteriorating OS/2 browser situation for a few years. I was just contemplating the real stipulating where we are left only with what we have. Currently, major browser tasks for me require operation on different OSes.

I was thinking that the current 'progress' path (Falkon, Simple Browser, Otter, QT.x) is unworkable, as their mirages soon fade. Their moribund promises also almost ironically necessitate a 64 bit OS.

Contemplating . . . all is not lost. Why is it that I can boot up Firefox on Ubuntu, XP, or WIN7 on my same T60? Evidently, hardware, memory and 32 bits are not that significant.

I suggest a fresh OS/2 browser start needs examination. What are the options? It reminds me of back during infancy when hoops had to be jumped through to get 16 bit Mosaic working in WINOS2, and then the crack OS/2 team built the first fast and stable WebExplorer beta in just 4 days.

thanks! Baden

[Dave Yeo]

On 01/29/22 09:56 PM, baden.ku...@gmail.com wrote:
> Contemplating . . . all is not lost. Why is it that I can boot up Firefox on Ubuntu, XP, or WIN7 on my same T60? Evidently, hardware, memory and 32 bits are not that significant.

The problem becomes building Firefox. The Win32 is built on Win64 and
likewise for Linux. Besides missing a Rust compiler on OS/2, linking
becomes close to impossible. It has actually been a problem since FF10
or so where linking xul consumes over 3GB of ram, I even had crashes at
one point due to the swap file over flowing, seems it has a 2GB limit
and at the time I had 1.5 GB of ram.

>
> I suggest a fresh OS/2 browser start needs examination. What are the options? It reminds me of back during infancy when hoops had to be jumped through to get 16 bit Mosaic working in WINOS2, and then the crack OS/2 team built the first fast and stable WebExplorer beta in just 4 days.

Not many options really. Besides development moving to 64 bits and not
worrying about address space, a big problem is just the speed of
development. New versions of the common browsers every month means a
full time job for at least one developer and web sites are just going
down hill using the latest JavaScript libraries that only work on the
latest.
I've been using the Simple Browser, a QT5 example program, it works
until it runs out of memory or crashes for other reasons. Otter I guess
will be similar. Unluckily there's still the problem of soon it being
years out of date.
Dave

[Steve Wendt]

On 2/27/2022 11:19 PM, Dave Yeo wrote:

> I've been using the Simple Browser, a QT5 example program, it works
> until it runs out of memory or crashes for other reasons. Otter I guess
> will be similar. Unluckily there's still the problem of soon it being
> years out of date.

The final Qt5 release was nearly two years ago:
https://endoflife.date/qt

So it's already out of date...

[baden.ku...@gmail.com]

Since there were zero postings here, I went over to OS2World a week or so ago, and read some postings about a 'new' Otter Browser, the latest 'great hope'. I then decided to check it out on Win7 on my T60. The experience was discouraging.

First off, the download page looked like a malware site, and I would never have normally accessed it. A shocking part was that there had only been 500 downloads in the 14 months for the previous version, and the latest version only had 10 downloads, on both 32 and 64 bit versions. The (420 32 bit version) installation was primitive, and there was no desktop object created. The zip was about 64 MB, and the uncompressed files were about 180 MB, containing all the requisite libraries.

The browser worked better than expected, and even accessed my primary bank, which is not accessible now from OS/2. The problem was that many sites were somewhat broken, and OpenStreetMap and Google Mail/Groups would not load at all. That concluded my experiment.

Baden

[Dave Yeo]

My understanding is that the Webengine is still getting updates for now.
Long term, it seems the plan is to release Otter on a subscription basis
to finance newer versions. Whether the community will keep putting up
money is a different question with the speed of development etc.
Dave

[Dave Yeo]

baden.ku...@gmail.com wrote:
> Since there were zero postings here, I went over to OS2World a week or so ago, and read some postings about a 'new' Otter Browser, the latest 'great hope'. I then decided to check it out on Win7 on my T60. The experience was discouraging.
>
> First off, the download page looked like a malware site, and I would never have normally accessed it. A shocking part was that there had only been 500 downloads in the 14 months for the previous version, and the latest version only had 10 downloads, on both 32 and 64 bit versions. The (420 32 bit version) installation was primitive, and there was no desktop object created. The zip was about 64 MB, and the uncompressed files were about 180 MB, containing all the requisite libraries.
>
> The browser worked better than expected, and even accessed my primary bank, which is not accessible now from OS/2. The problem was that many sites were somewhat broken, and OpenStreetMap and Google Mail/Groups would not load at all. That concluded my experiment.

I checked it out on Linux Mint, sudo apt install otter, so won't show up
on their download page. it seemed fine for what it is, a basic browser
that worked on the sites I tried, which wasn't that many.
Dave

[baden.ku...@gmail.com]

Hi Dave, if you're still here (shades of 2001?)

I just read this today:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/10/hobbes_os2_archive_shut_down/
If that was not bad enough, the comment from Lewis Rosenthal sealed my diminished expectation for continued OS/2 feasibility:

=================================================
Hmmm... As a guy who uses ArcaOS as his daily driver, I might take
exception to your comment about being in denial... ;-)

Instead, I use Linux when I have to (web conferencing) and stick to an OS
with no telemetry and a stable, consistent desktop experience.

It all depends upon what one needs to do, I guess.
=================================================

So, that is why there is no WiFi nor functional WWW browser in ArcaOS. The lead guy trying to promote and sell an OS in 2024 doesn't even attempt to have it connect to anything?

Sad!