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Is Firefox tolerable to use on a pi 5 or 500+? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/raspberry_pi@programming.dev
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I've found that my Pi 400's built in web browser is almost unusable with bloaty script-heavy sites, so I'm wondering if the Pi 5 or 500+ is any better. There would be an NVMe SSD present if that helps.

If someone has this setup, could they take a look at homedepot.com ? That's a very slow and obnoxious site that I use sometimes, as I do buy some from there when I can't avoid it. I'm ok if it's a bit sluggish but my Pi 400 was near incapable of navitation or loading the page in a reasonable amount of waiting.

Thanks!

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[–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

It did load homedepot.com when I tried it just now, but I don't have a mouse or keyboard attached, and the monitor isn't touchscreen, so I have no idea how it performs when scrolling. Probably terribly.

IIRC, mine is an earlier version of this one: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-plus/. It has 1GB of RAM, and a 64GB sdcard (which is honestly bigger than it needs), with basic Debian Bookworm installed. It runs essentially nothing except sshd, xwindows, and Openbox configured with the following autostart script:

xset -dpms
xset s off
unclutter -display 0:0 -noevents -grab
export DISPLAY=:0 && firefox-esr --kiosk $URL_TO_VISIT &> /dev/null & disown &> /dev/null

Where $URL_TO_VISIT is a panel on my local Home Assistant.

Granted, it's not exactly doing much other than showing a single page all the time, and sometimes it does freeze and require a manual restart every few weeks (hence why I said it's only "running okay"). It does work though, and I expect that an rPi 5 would be a good experience for actual browsing, especially if you used one of the 4GB or higher versions.

If you aren't already, I recommend running a blocker like adguard on your network. Aside from making the internet more pleasant to look at overall, it might help with making sites more responsive.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 9 months ago

    Thanks, yeah, I've been using Ublock Origin plus some local DNS blackholing when browsing on my laptop, and will do the same on a pi if I use one.

    Maybe I'll now see if I can figure out if something is misconfigured on my 400, instead of buying a 5 or 500. I have some FOMO because of expected further increases in ram and ssd prices, but meh.

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