17

Browsing the web using Midori on the Raspberry Pi feels very slow.

I appreciate that the speed at which a web page will load is determined by a number of factors including: the speed of the network connection, the web browser that I am using and the 'size' (for want of a better word) of individual web pages.

I can't change the speed of my network connection or the 'size' of the web pages that I browse but can I do anything to the Raspberry Pi that will improve the speed at which I can browse the web?

Andrew Fogg
  • 5,913
  • 8
  • 25
  • 28

4 Answers4

12

Change some of the preferences for Midori.

The Midori preferences panel can be found at,

Edit > Preferences

The following preferences should have an effect on the speed of web browsing,

Startup

  • General > Startup > When Midori starts

By default, Midori shows the last open tabs when it starts up. This can mean that you have to wait for the pages from your last session to load before you can begin browsing.

Content settings

  • Behaviour > Features > Load images automatically
  • Behaviour > Features > Enable scripts
  • Behaviour > Features > Enable Netscape plugins

Disabling content (images, scripts and plugins) will speed up browsing, but you won't get the content either.

Local data

  • Privacy > Web Cookies > Enable HTML5 database support
  • Privacy > Web Cookies > Enable HTML5 local storage support
  • Privacy > Web Cookies > Enable offline web application cache

Enabling Midori to store and use local data should speed up browsing, as the data will not need to be retrieved from the Internet every time it is used.

I would suggest playing around with the settings and seeing what works for you. I made a note of the default values, so that it is easy to revert any changes.

Default values

  • General > Startup > When Midori starts = Show last open tabs
  • Behaviour > Features > Load images automatically = TRUE
  • Behaviour > Features > Enable scripts = TRUE
  • Behaviour > Features > Enable Netscape plugins = TRUE
  • Privacy > Web Cookies > Enable HTML5 database support = FALSE
  • Privacy > Web Cookies > Enable HTML5 local storage support = FALSE
  • Privacy > Web Cookies > Enable offline web application cache = FALSE
Andrew Fogg
  • 5,913
  • 8
  • 25
  • 28
4

If you are on Debian Squeeze, install Chromium. It is substantially faster: http://elinux.org/RPi_Chromium

Upgrading to Debian Wheezy (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1435) also gives a significant speed boost.

First choice for speed is to use Raspbian, a Debian Wheezy distribution built with hardware floating point: http://www.raspbian.org/PiscesImages

Currently Chromium is broken in Wheezy, so you will need to use Midori. Whatever you do, don't try Firefox (called Iceweasel on Debian) which is too heavyweight for the Pi.

popcornmix
  • 186
  • 2
1

It seems a bit faster after moving my /tmp directory to an external hard drive. It would be nice to know for sure where chromium is caching content. It does seem to create a bunch of stuff under /tmp so this should help. The default /tmp location is on the root file system which is on the SD card. Not a great place for performance. I've also moved my swap space onto an external hard drive since chromium seems to grab a fair chunk of the available ram.

phbcanada
  • 19
  • 1
0

You can try other lightweight browsers such as Arora, LuaKit and NetSurf.

Eugen
  • 488
  • 3
  • 12
That Brazilian Guy
  • 452
  • 1
  • 8
  • 20