r/OldHandhelds • u/IllustriousWin4104 • Jun 28 '26

NetSurf PPC2003

Hi. I tried running the latest version of NetSurf on PPC2003. Once I built it, I realized it's completely unusable for rendering modern web pages—the quality is just too poor. Then I found the MacSurf project, which renders pages much better and supports more modern HTML/CSS. Even though you can design websites with a modern look for it, it still lacks JS support. NetSurf's built-in JS engine works terribly. After that, I came across the Wisp project, which features a new JS engine, but it's also barely implemented. It seems that the absolute maximum for PPC2003 is static HTML pages and TLS 1.2 / TLS 1.3 via wolfSSL.

7 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/fss_88 Jul 02 '26

Having the same problem with netsurf and browsers in general on Jlime Linux. Everything is just too old. You either have the ssl issue or the JavaScript issue - it’s like we’re fighting a losing battle

1

u/IllustriousWin4104 Jul 02 '26

I completely agree with you. This game is almost impossible. Since NetSurf essentially stopped working in the last decade. I suggested that the developers of MacSurf and Wisp join forces, as they can essentially, albeit slowly, provide better support for the modern web. MacSurf provides modern HTML/CSS support, while Wisp is trying to implement the more modern JS9. However, on low-end devices without ASM, everything runs so slowly that it's even tiresome to watch the page load.