I installed the latest (version 1.4) FreeDOS just now and keeping half an eye on the installer as names of installed packages flashed by I noticed Dillo. Is DOS still a supported platform or is FreeDOS shipping some old version? I hope it is the former.
If anyone is interested in a modern take on a lightweight, embeddable web browser / browser engine (that supports features like Flexbox, CSS Grid, CSS variables, media queries, etc), then I'm building one over at https://github.com/DioxusLabs/blitz
This month I have been working on support for CSS floats (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/P...) (not yet merged to main), which turn out to still be important for rendering much of the modern web including wikipedia, github, and (old) reddit.
EDIT: I should mention, in case anyone is interested in helping to build a browser engine, additional collaborators / contributors would very welcome!
Was a lifesaver to me back in the day, running my frankenstein machine pieced together from useless spares I cobbled together from the computer store I worked at briefly. Every piece of software I ran was trimmed down to the absolute minimum, and it was a time before the web was completely unusuable without an ad blocker. Fond memories of Dillo.
`brew install dillo` on Macs (and see [0] for other platforms)
and then `dillo` starts up a 1.1Mb executable that is so freaking, shockingly fast.
TIL I also learned that although the Google homepage renders beautifully, I need to "Turn on JavaScript to keep searching" [1]
Wow, Google Maps is even snarky-ish about it: "When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." (that's what appears! for real)
There's Florb, a client for Open Street Maps written in FLTK, almost like a DIllo's cousin in concept.
Pro: as light as Dillo.
Cons: You need OCaml's OMake in order to build it, but DIllo's author it's OFC aware of it and he might migrate the OMakeFile to a single Makefile.
Hi there - love Dillo. I use it on NetBSD and it works great. Once you're off GitHub will there be a way to get notified of releases? I use GitHub's RSS feeds for that now.
Dillo is hands down the best ultra lightweight browser ever developed in my opinion. I had a Toshiba Tecra that I got from Goodwill when I had absolutely no money whatsoever in my college days, And it was at least 15 years out of date as a laptop even when I first got it. I installed Puppy Linux on it, and I had Dillo as the browser. Its ability to bring rapid web browsing to old hardware is without equal.
I still use a modern version of it now on a Pine Tab 2 tablet, which has slow enough hardware that you want something like Dillo to make it feel snappy. I just make sure to bookmark lightweight websites that are most agreeable to Dillo's strip down versions of web pages.
It's one of the reasons I feel like Linux on the desktop in the 00s and 2010s had the superpower of making ancient hardware nearly up to par with modern hardware or at least meaningfully closing the gap.
I may be imagining this, but I'm nearly certain I was running dillo on a PDA (I want to say Palm Treo) around 2001. I remember it feeling revolutionary to open up a webpage on something other than my linux desktop computer at the time. Over Wifi!
Someone mentioned that you could install it using Brew. I was a little surprised how quickly it installed. Installing anything via Brew normally take a while, but apparently that's not the fault of Brew, stuff just have a large number of dependencies and a large package size.
The lack of JavaScript is an issue in terms of what sites work or even render properly, but damn everything is fast without it.
I'm impressed. It runs my dev blog quite well. Some of the CSS alignment is off and it doesn't load web fonts, but it looks basically the same as Chrome. Even the syntax highlighted code snippets work.
Wow, this is something. I recall (decades ago, so who knows how accurate) running Dillo under Enlightenment DR17 on a low-spec Pentium (perhaps) in the old era. Glad to see it's still kicking. The computer was too slow for the rest of the software of the era but Dillo was still fast!
I was very proud that I could call our home phone line and it would boot the computer if it was off. Most pointless feature ever, but I thought I was hot shit when I was a kid getting that to work.
Having never used Dillo before, I just installed it and tried it. And then I found out that it does not support JavaScript at all. There aren’t many or any sites/apps that I regularly use that would work without JavaScript. That limits its usefulness.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 61.0 ms ] threadFeature support matrix is here: https://blitz.is/status/css
This month I have been working on support for CSS floats (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/P...) (not yet merged to main), which turn out to still be important for rendering much of the modern web including wikipedia, github, and (old) reddit.
EDIT: I should mention, in case anyone is interested in helping to build a browser engine, additional collaborators / contributors would very welcome!
IIRC I stopped using it when Firefox ("Phoenix" at the time) was released.
and then `dillo` starts up a 1.1Mb executable that is so freaking, shockingly fast.
TIL I also learned that although the Google homepage renders beautifully, I need to "Turn on JavaScript to keep searching" [1]
Wow, Google Maps is even snarky-ish about it: "When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." (that's what appears! for real)
I mean, what was I expecting. U+1F643.
[0] https://github.com/dillo-browser/dillo/blob/master/doc/insta...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1i3njv0/google_begi...
Pro: as light as Dillo. Cons: You need OCaml's OMake in order to build it, but DIllo's author it's OFC aware of it and he might migrate the OMakeFile to a single Makefile.
https://github.com/shugaa/florb
We are currently in the process of moving Dillo away from GitHub:
- New website (nginx): https://dillo-browser.org/
- Repositories (C, cgit): https://git.dillo-browser.org/
- Bug tracker (C, buggy): https://bug.dillo-browser.org/
They should survive HN hug.
The CI runs on git hooks and outputs the logs to the web (private for now).
All services are very simple and work without JS, so Dillo can be developed fully within Dillo itself.
During this testing period I will continue to sync the GitHub git repository, but in the future I will probably mark it as archived.
See also:
- https://fosstodon.org/@dillo/114927456382947046
- https://fosstodon.org/@dillo/115307022432139097
I still use a modern version of it now on a Pine Tab 2 tablet, which has slow enough hardware that you want something like Dillo to make it feel snappy. I just make sure to bookmark lightweight websites that are most agreeable to Dillo's strip down versions of web pages.
It's one of the reasons I feel like Linux on the desktop in the 00s and 2010s had the superpower of making ancient hardware nearly up to par with modern hardware or at least meaningfully closing the gap.
I hope it survives another 25 years.
Using it shows how rotten the World Wide Web has become, with mandatory JavaScript everywhere, even on google.com, which I was not aware of.
I'm very much looking forward to Ladybird's first alpha release next August.
The lack of JavaScript is an issue in terms of what sites work or even render properly, but damn everything is fast without it.
https://joshondesign.com/2025/09/16/embedded_rust_03
[1] https://damnsmalllinux.org/old-index.html
I've successfully run Dillo on machines with 40-64 MB of RAM before now, and it hasn't changed that much...
I was very proud that I could call our home phone line and it would boot the computer if it was off. Most pointless feature ever, but I thought I was hot shit when I was a kid getting that to work.
That's about it...
[1] - https://www.netsurf-browser.org/projects/hubbub/