Dillo, a multi-platform graphical web browser

Maintainer here.

We are currently in the process of moving Dillo away from GitHub:

- New website (nginx): https://dillo-browser.org/

- Repositories (C, cgit): https://git.dillo-browser.org/

- Bug tracker (C, buggy): https://bug.dillo-browser.org/

They should survive HN hug.

The CI runs on git hooks and outputs the logs to the web (private for now).

All services are very simple and work without JS, so Dillo can be developed fully within Dillo itself.

During this testing period I will continue to sync the git repository, but in the future I will probably mark it as archived.

See also:

- https://fosstodon.org/@dillo/114927456382947046

- https://fosstodon.org/@dillo/115307022432139097

Dillo is hands down the best ultra lightweight browser ever developed in my opinion. I had a Toshiba Tecra that I got from Goodwill when I had absolutely no money whatsoever in my college days, And it was at least 15 years out of date as a laptop even when I first got it. I installed Puppy Linux on it, and I had Dillo as the browser. Its ability to bring rapid web browsing to old hardware is without equal.

I still use a modern version of it now on a Pine Tab 2 tablet, which has slow enough hardware that you want something like Dillo to make it feel snappy. I just make sure to bookmark lightweight websites that are most agreeable to Dillo's strip down versions of web pages.

It's one of the reasons I feel like Linux on the desktop in the 00s and 2010s had the superpower of making ancient hardware nearly up to par with modern hardware or at least meaningfully closing the gap.

If anyone is interested in a modern take on a lightweight, embeddable web browser / browser engine (that supports features like Flexbox, CSS Grid, CSS variables, media queries, etc), then I'm building one over at https://github.com/DioxusLabs/blitz

Feature support matrix is here: https://blitz.is/status/css

This month I have been working on support for CSS floats [0] (not yet merged to main), which turn out to still be important for rendering much of the modern web including wikipedia, github, and (old) reddit.

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/P...

I used to use it, like over 20 years ago! Mozilla Suite was too slow for my taste and I only reached for it if Dillo couldn't render a page :)

IIRC I stopped using it when Firefox ("Phoenix" at the time) was released.

Dillo works surprisingly well. I've used it on older systems running new operating systems. It does a web browser should do best: read web pages.

Previous/related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38847613

`brew install dillo` on Macs (and see [0] for other platforms)

and then `dillo` starts up a 1.1Mb executable that is so freaking, shockingly fast.

TIL I also learned that although the Google homepage renders beautifully, I need to "Turn on JavaScript to keep searching" [1]

Wow, Google Maps is even snarky-ish about it: "When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." (that's what appears! for real)

I mean, what was I expecting. U+1F643.

[0] https://github.com/dillo-browser/dillo/blob/master/doc/insta...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1i3njv0/google_begi...

I installed the latest (version 1.4) FreeDOS just now and keeping half an eye on the installer as names of installed packages flashed by I noticed Dillo. Is DOS still a supported platform or is FreeDOS shipping some old version? I hope it is the former.

Was a lifesaver to me back in the day, running my frankenstein machine pieced together from useless spares I cobbled together from the computer store I worked at briefly. Every piece of software I ran was trimmed down to the absolute minimum, and it was a time before the web was completely unusuable without an ad blocker. Fond memories of Dillo.