Linux Web Browsers

Connection Security Protocols
(SSL and TLS)

and attempts to upgrade browsers
with AppImage (or Flatpak
or Snap) packages on an
old Linux distro

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This Linux Web Browsers page
(with discussion of internet connection protocols
and browser upgrade/install attempts with AppImages)

! Note !
The discussions here may be touched up or
revised occasionally, if/when I re-visit this page.

Sections Below:

INTRO     CONNECT-FAILS     CONNECT-PROTOCOLS    

AppImage-PACKAGES     BROWSERS     CONCLUSION    

INTRODUCTION : (2019 Mar)

I run most of my computers (desktops and netbooks) using Linux.

On my main desktop and netbook computers, I used the same release of Linux For about TEN YEARS --- from 2009 to 2019.

I used Ubuntu 9.10 (2009 Oct ; 'Karmic Koala') between 2009 and 2019.

It was actually rather nice when Ubuntu 'support' of that October 2009 release ended in 2011.

I did not have to worry that one of their 'software updates' would cause some of my applications to not work anymore
---
say, because some '/usr/lib' 'shared object' '.so' file was replaced by a newer version of the 'dynamically called binary object' that was not compatible with some of my most used apps --- such as

My Ubuntu 9.10 installations on my desktop and netbook computers remained 'stable' and essentially 'trouble-free' from 2009 to 2017.

From about 2009 to 2017, I was a 'happy camper' --- using Ubuntu 9.10 Linux and those main apps --- for web page development, software development (shell scripts and Tcl-Tk scripts), and for handling email and web browsing.


Web Browsing Problems

But then, around 2018, my old Mozilla Seamonkey web browser (version 2.10, released around 2012) started to have problems connecting to a lot of web sites.

I would get error messages like :


Connection interrupted

The document contains no data.

The network link was interrupted while
negotiating a connection. Please try again.


- AND -


This Connection is Untrusted

You have asked SeaMonkey to connect securely to
www.whatever.com, but we can't confirm that your
connection is secure.

Normally, when you try to connect securely, websites will
present trusted identification to prove that you are going
to the right place. However, this website's identity can't
be verified.


- AND -


Cannot communicate securely with peer:

no common encryption algorithms


For many months, I did not know what the reason was --- or reasonS were --- for these error messages.

I was using a '/etc/hosts' file that blocked communication with many 'despicable' web sites --- as discussed on a Host Blocking web page on this site.

That 'host blocking' could be the cause of some of the error messages --- such as the 'document contains no data' errors.

But, in 2018, as I encountered more and more web sites that I could not connect to, I did more diligent web searching for some answers.


A Likely Culprit
(INTERNET CONNECTION PROTOCOLS)

The likely culprit in many of the 'failure to communicate' situations is a 'secure communications protocol' called TLS (Transfer Layer Security) --- a successor to the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) communication protocol.

In an 'Edit > Preferences > Privacy & Security > SSL' section of my Seamonkey 2.10 web browser, there is a panel that shows two secure communications protocols that were supported by that 2012-era web browser --- SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0.

If you look at similar communications options pages of more modern web browsers (around 2019), you will typically see choices between TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and TLS 1.2.

And, from some web searching, I found that some sites will not communicate on TLS 1.0 or 1.1 --- only 1.2 --- probably because TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are quite old protocols that 'came out' before 2010.

    I even found a note on a Wikipedia page, in 2019, that a TLS 1.3 protocol is in development. But I have not seen it as a connection option in any web browser yet (in March 2019).

I believe this is the likely cause of a lot of the communications error messages that I was getting from that old, 2012-era Seamonkey 2.10 web browser. Namely: It does not support TLS 1.1 or TLS 1.2.


Attempts to upgrade Seamonkey (and Firefox)

A few times in the 2014 to 2018 time period, I had tried to get a newer (32-bit) version of Seamonkey from the 'seamonkey-project.org' web site.

But whenever I would try to run the newer version I would hit problems that I could not overcome --- and I did not try to overcome them, because I was having successful web browsing most of the time.

When the communications failures started occurring quite frequently in 2018 --- with about 50% of the web sites I tried to visit (usually via DuckDuckGo web search 'hits') --- I started looking into the new packaging options that I had been reading about:


To find more info on AppImage, Flatpak, and Snap software packages, You may find it instructive to try some WEB SEARCHES on keywords such as


It seemed that at least one of these package types might avoid problems with incompatibilities with various utility libraries (of 'binary shared objects') --- by bundling the shared objects with the main program --- thus avoiding the typical problems of trying to install a newer version of some application on a system with older utility libraries.

A major downside to these packages is that they may take up a lot of disk space --- containing perhaps hundreds of auxiliary '.so' files.

But nowadays, with one terabyte disk drives being the norm on computers, there is plenty of disk space to accomodate these packages --- even though, if you install many of these packages, you may have many 'duplicates' of shared-object utility-library files.

The description of AppImage packages seemed to be the most likely solution for my web browser update problem, so I set out to find an AppImage package that I could use to upgrade Seamonkey 2.10 --- or my old, 2011-era Firefox 3.6.16 web browser --- or install ANY GUI web browser that might run on my old 32-bit Ubuntu 9.10 operating system.


Experiences with AppImage

Unfortunately, I hit a couple of problems with trying to update Seamonkey with AppImage packages :

  • most of these packages are for 64-bit systems, not 32-bit

  • these packages do not have ALL the '.so' files that are used by the application you are trying to update.

Unfortunately, most of the AppImage web browser packages that I found were 64-bit rather then 32-bit --- and I could not find an AppImage package for Seamonkey.

Some of the AppImage web browser packages that I DID find were as follows.

From appimagehub.com :

  • Falkon-3.0.1_64bit.AppImage

  • otter-browser-0.9.99-rc9-x86_64bit.AppImage

  • sielo-browser-20180701194833_64bit.AppImage

From opendesktop.org :

  • ungoogled-chromium_71.0.3578.98-2_linux_64bit.AppImage

From linux-apps.com :

  • Firefox-63.0.1.glibc2.7-x86_64bit.AppImage

  • Waterfox-0-Buildlp150.4.1.glibc2.17-x86_64bit.AppImage

  • ungoogled-chromium_71.0.3578.98-2_linux_64bit.AppImage

  • wexond-0.3.0-i386_32bit.AppImage

Note that all of these are 64-bit packages --- except for the package for the 'wexond' web browser --- which is/was briefly described at an appimagehub.com downloads page --- along with about 10 other web browsers.

Unfortunately, when I tried to run the 'wexond' web browser AppImage, I got the following error message(s) in the terminal.

    $ ./wexond-0.3.0-i386_32bit.AppImage

    fuse: warning:
    library too old, some operations may not work

    /tmp/.mount_wexondzp6pbW/app/wexond:
    error while loading shared libraries:
    libX11-xcb.so.1: cannot open shared object file:
    No such file or directory

The 'libX11-xcb.so.1' shared-object file was not in my old Ubuntu 9.10 operating system.

    By the way, this 'shared object file not found' error was one of the problems I was hitting when I tried to download and install the newer 'tar.bz2' files from 'seamonky-project.org'.

Even if I found a 32-bit copy of that shared-object file (and managed to put it in the proper location to resolve this error), I suspected that I might hit missing-so file after missing-so file as I attempted to get the 'wexond' browser working.

Furthermore, I mainly wanted to get the Seamonkey web browser working. It has a very robust Bookmarks capability in which I have saved more than a thousand bookmarks over the past 10 years.

Besides, the 'wexond' browser seems to be under aggressive development, according to some comments on 'github', and I do not know if I can count on it to be relatively bug-free.

At this point, I decided it was time to migrate my files from Ubuntu 9.10 on my old home-built PC to a newer Acer desktop PC that I bought to replace this 2009-era PC.

My plan became to install Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS (Long Term Support) on the Acer desktop --- and move my main files from an old Ubuntu 9.10 system to that new Ubuntu MATE 18.04 installation. Namely:

  • Thunderbird mail files
  • Seamonkey bookmark files
  • files for a couple of web sites that I maintain
  • and various documents and pictures that are in other sub-directories of my home directory.

This would involve importing the appropriate files into newer versions of Thunderbird and Seamonkey (and Firefox or some other browser).


In doing the migration to that new computer (with the Ubuntu MATE 18.04 operating system), I will probably install SEVERAL web browsers --- so that, in the future, I will have quite a few alternate options to try if I encounter 'problem web sites' --- in case connecting to them with a different web browser would yield better results.

To that end, I decided to collect some information on the various web browsers that are available on Linux distros. Some of that information is in the 'Linux Web Browsers' section below.

Linux Web Browsers

There are surprisingly many web browsers still being actively developed in 2019 --- around 30 of them available on Linux 'distros'.

The following Wikipedia links give lists of web browsers --- giving an idea of the many web browsers currently available.

There are links to even more Wikipedia links about web browsers --- at the bottom of each of these Wikipedia pages.

Following is a list of many of the web browsers that were available on Linux circa 2019. These are basically in alphabetical order --- along with some Wikipedia and WEB SEARCH links for more information on each of them.

  1. Beaker (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Beaker web browser linux'

  2. Brave (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Brave web browser linux'

  3. Conkeror (Wikipedia link) (defunct ~2016)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Conkeror web browser linux'

  4. Falkon (Wikipedia link)
    (formerly QupZilla)
    (available as an AppImage package at appimagehub.com in 2019)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Falkon web browser linux'

  5. Firefox (Wikipedia link)
    (available as an AppImage package at linux-apps.com in 2019)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Firefox web browser linux'

  6. GNOME Web (Wikipedia link)
    (formerly Epiphany)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'GNOME Web web browser linux'

  7. Google Chrome (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Google Chrome web browser linux'

  8. Google Chromium (Wikipedia link)
    (the Open Source version of Google Chrome)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Google Chromium web browser linux'

  9. Ungoogled Chromium
    (Chromium without some of Google's intrusive bits)
    (available as AppImage packages at
    linux-apps.com and opendesktop.org in 2019)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'ungoogled chromium web browser linux'

  10. Iridium web browser
    (from Germany)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'iridium web browser linux'

  11. Konqueror (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Konqueror web browser linux'

  12. Links (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Links web browser linux'

  13. Links2 (based on 'Links')

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Links2 web browser linux'

  14. Lynx (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Lynx web browser linux'

  15. Midori (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Midori web browser linux'

  16. Netsurf (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Netsurf web browser linux'

  17. Opera (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Opera web browser linux'

  18. Otter (Wikipedia link)
    (available as an AppImage package at appimagehub.com in 2019)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Otter web browser linux'

  19. Pale Moon (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Pale Moon web browser linux'

  20. Sielo
    (available as an AppImage package at appimagehub.com in 2019)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Sielo web browser linux'

  21. Vivaldi (Wikipedia link)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Vivaldi web browser linux'

  22. Waterfox (Wikipedia link)
    (available as an AppImage package at linux-apps.com in 2019)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Waterfox web browser linux'

  23. Wexond
    (available as an AppImage package at linux-apps.com in 2019)

    WEB SEARCH on keywords
    'Wexond web browser linux'


These web browsers are typically based on one or more 'engines' to process the mixture of HTML and CSS and JavaScript languages in web pages --- engines such as

There is information on more web browser 'engines' at the Wikipedia page Comparison of browser engines. See links at the bottom of that page for even more Wikipedia pages on browser engines.

CONCLUSION : (some future plans)

It remains to be seen if AppImage packages (or Flatpak or Snap packages) will be able to accomplish what I was looking for --- that is, a packaging of a new version of a web browser than can successfully be installed and used on an older Linux distro --- say more than 5 years older than the web browser release.

If I have more experiences with such packages (whether successful or unsuccessful), my intent is to report those new experiences on this page (or another page) someday.

Bottom of this
Linux Web Browsers page ---
with comments on Security Protocols
such as SSL and TLS
and comments on package types
such as AppImage, Flatpak, and Snap.

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Page was created 2019 Mar 28.