Slimboat Is Better than Chrome

Update: There have been reports of suspicious activity from Slimboat and Slim browsers. At least one user reported a distinct attempt to download malware coming from the running process. My own experience is that using Slimboat brings on a lot of weird entries in my firewall logs on Debian. I will also add my finding that when you tell Slimboat to clean the cache, it still leaves way too much in places you wouldn’t think to look. Finally, I tend to think the forum established for questions and bug reports at the Slimboat website may be at least partly astroturfing, because a couple of reasonable comments were quickly deleted by the admins. Caveat emptor.

Original post follows…

You have to understand something about Google: They are easily some of the biggest liars on the planet. Not in the sense you can’t trust anything they say, but that you can’t trust their motives on anything they do. If Google announces plans to do something, they’ll try to do it. Often enough, they succeed. However, at the same time there is always a bucket load of sneaky and downright hateful crap they do in the background to take advantage of us. Google would sell you into slavery if they could get away with it. Instead, they’ll settle for tracking you to the point they know your habits better than your spouse. And they will sell that information; count on it.

So with full cynicism we proceed to take advantage of them. Instead of using Google Search, I use Startpage.com. Startpage is based in the Netherlands, and uses Google’s search engine without letting Google see anything about you. All Google knows is thousands of search requests coming out of Startpage, and no differentiation from one to the next. That way you always get generic search results, not something supposedly tailored to your known tastes and habits.

We know about Google Chrome browser, and some of you may know it’s built on top of the Webkit framework. Webkit developers are working hard, but they are not nice people. I say that because of how they respond to very reasonable feature requests, even when someone writes to code for them. They’ve gotten pretty ugly at times, I am told. Still, it’s not a totally useless tool for building browsers. But Google Chrome (and the Open Source Chromium version of it) are missing features that would serve better to protect your privacy and improve your user experience. For example, they refuse to encrypt saved passwords, so that anyone with a nifty script can steal them from your browser. Google is not very responsive, either.

So some time back when the EU demanded a certain amount of neutrality for browser choice, some folks came up with a couple of browsers to meet that requirement, giving them away as free downloads. Slim Browser rides on top of Internet Explorer, and handles some issues better. But Slimboat is built on top of Webkit and does a lot of things Google refuses to do.

For example, your passwords are encrypted and you can have them locked behind a master password. Adblocker is built into the browser, and is easier to control if you have a mind to do so. You can download YouTube videos without all the rigamarole I used to go through with scripts and so forth, plus you can install a free plugin and Slimboat will convert the Flash video on-the-fly for you. I’m still not happy with how they handle font choices, but I’m trying to come up with a work-around using CSS — Slimboat does allow you to install your own user CSS file to control some of its display options.

Yes, you might run into some stability issues, but less and less as time goes on. For my Debian Wheezy, I can’t use the installable version they offer. I just grab the generic Linux 64-bit, unzip it and drop it into my home directory. From there I can link to the executable file and run it with ease. Runs just fine, thank you. I’ve not had any trouble with things like JavaScript or page element placement on websites.

Folks, I recommend Slimboat browser.