{"id":10495,"date":"2024-02-20T16:20:42","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T16:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/?p=10495"},"modified":"2025-07-24T19:20:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T19:20:26","slug":"netsurf-installing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/netsurf-installing-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Netsurf, installing it."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I felt I needed a smaller faster browser for my Ubuntu virtual machine. So on the advice of doctor Google I found this page which mentioned seven<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I had a look at Otter<\/a> and Netsurf<\/a>. Is Ubuntu losing mind share? I tried several ways to install Otter and they all failed. They claim there\u2019s a ppa repo, but apt failed to download with fatal errors claiming the repo was corrupted. Maybe it\u2019s because they have abandoned .deb packages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

June 2025<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I had another look, my target was Debian\/Raspian. I found these, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. The netsurf browser<\/a> home page & its Downloads<\/a> page which points at, for Gnome linux builds, <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. https:\/\/www.netsurf-browser.org\/downloads\/gtk\/<\/a> which points at flatpak or source code compilation, or the Debian page.<\/a> My raspian machines won’t install netsurf with apt, but will install netsurf_common which does not come with the program. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. With respect to flatpak, I found its home<\/a>, and a how to install on Debian<\/a>. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Let’s see if netsurf will install on vanilla debian. Not via apt. It works with flatpak, the runes are on the web, how to install flatpak<\/a>, how to install netsurf & run it<\/a>, and here<\/a> , in an unfinished script by me, but no javascript, and so no google. Not much it seems, I tried it with javascript on and it doesn’t seem to work and tried a couple of sites, inc. diigo which also hung. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Feb 2024<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    I had a look at installing from source<\/a>, but got stuck at Qt5. Shame, great logo and name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I have successfully compiled Netsurf although some of the image handling functionality might be a bit underwhelming i.e. I might be missing some image handling software. It’s fast which is good, but it’s functionality is a problem for me. Maybe I should read the documentation but the big problem is that I have compiled from source and thus my regular apt job will not update it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The purpose of this post is to document the missing software that will permit an error free compilation of Netsurf and the apt calls that will pull them down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It needed a bunch of pre-reqs that no longer or do not come as standard with ubuntu 22, which surprises me, but I compiled from source. I have documented the missing programs and libraries in a script, on github<\/a>. (There must be a better way of finding the apt runes.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The required packages are, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    sudo apt install flex bison gperf
    sudo apt install expat expat1-dev libexpat1-dev<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    sudo apt install libcurl4-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    sudo apt install libgtk2.0-dev
    sudo apt install libcanberra-gtk-module<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    I am looking for lightweight because I am running Ubuntu in Virtual Box and I may be short of memory; ayway my preferred browser, Firefox, is slow and hangs. I may report on my usage another day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I felt I needed a smaller faster browser for my Ubuntu virtual machine. So on the advice of doctor Google I found this page which mentioned seven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,916,911,2047],"class_list":["post-10495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-howto","tag-linux","tag-technology","tag-web-browser"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@davelevy_eu\/111964719988563527","error":""},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/surfsup-jeremybishop-unsplash-w1080.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10495"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12683,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10495\/revisions\/12683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}