Search engine

[Tim Lamb]

Anyone using Opera (Brave)?

Farming group recommendation but doesn't seem to like W8 32bit:-)

[Bev]

I'm not sure if your query is about a web browser, a search engine within the browser oo a problem with installation but there's an answer to the first two:

I use Opera, which is a browser, on Linux. The address bar is configurable as a search engine and can select from a choice of search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo with the latter being the default. You can also specify it to search just Wikipedia and Amazon but I've never used those site specific ones.

[Andy Burns]

There is no *current* version of Opera for Win7 or Win8, only old versions ...

[Joe]

Win 8a went out of security support about four months ago.

[Andy Burns]

Final version to support Win8.x 32bit here

[Andy Burns]

Tim likes trailing edge :-P

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, Joe [e-mail] writes

They still send security upgrades for W8 pro.

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[Tim Lamb]

More the Devil I know:-)

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[Tim Lamb]

Thanks Andy. Duck duck go is now as bad as the others regarding commercial sites heading a search result:-(

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[SH]

that is why I run a pi hole as ad sites are blocked by default so that prompts me to find the original website as the ad referrer links simply don't work.....

[Paul]

Certain software products have gone 64-bit only.

Adobe was the first company, to make this a corporate policy, back when they started their software rental business.

Reducing choice, means half as much testing need be done during QA.

This puts a crimp on the people running 32-bit OSes.

List of excuses:

1) 32-bit versus 64-bit OS. (really, no excuse, either should work) 2) multi-process support. Both Firefox and Chrome use interprocess communications. (Perhaps WinXP makes this hard to do, but Win7 should be just as good at it as Win10.) 3) SSE4.2 requirement (no excuse) SSE2 requirement (used to orchestrate memory block moves) With the proper macros defined, this would be no problem at all. Without SSE, software would run a bit slower. It is up to users, to decide "how slow, is too slow". 4) .NET fork version (compile against .NET 6 so that punters can't use their old OS). A Microsoft browser might have used such a strategy, but it may not be all that common elsewhere.

Opera or Brave, could be based on another browser. Once you determine what that browser is, then apply the restrictions that browser presents (64-bit only, no WinXP please).

The browser is based on Chromium

Starting with the release of version 89, Chrome will only be supported on Intel/Intel x86 and AMD processors with the SSE3 instruction set.

Operating system LatestVer Support status

Windows 10/11 112 2015– [still supported] 7, 8 and 8.1 109 2009–2023 [too lazy to test, not a tech issue] XP SP2+ and Vista 49 2008–2016 [a single process version would have worked]

You can see that the doors are rapidly shutting, on the web browsers and their ecosystems. Soon, the world will be ruled by "Sir Scrolls-A-Lot" and their ilk.

One other piece of trivia. Both Chrome and Firefox have heuristic malware detection in their code.

For example, I got persistent messages in a console, about "stack smashing detected!" from a browser, while visiting a commercial site and trying to get a user manual.

Similarly, Firefox checks the stack for exploits from web malware.

Note that these features are not bulletproof, and a number of AV programs may also be doing this, on their behalf.

The purpose of me quoting that, is to show "how close to being their own OS" the browsers have become. They're snooty enough to think they're good at AV protection of themselves. I doubt they have the chops, or the experts for this kind of thing. Not to have every one of their developers dabbling with features like that (in say, the Print module).

Browsers have huge huge attack surfaces, and are one of the high-runner ways of ruining an OS.

Paul

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not directly on topic, but as an avid follower of F1 with no sky licence, I use the many free sites available.

Because I am historically slightly geeky, my linux machines all have CPU, memory and network activity widgets permanently on. And I build a little website on my server to look at my router traffic to and from the internet.

about half the sites that worked were basically similar, and showed - after I noticed glitchiness and pauses - about 5Mbps download and swiftly rising to 10Mbps *upload* to the internet.

I have no ifdea what they were doing, but DDOS seems likely. If I turned off javascript, the sites didnt work at all.

I managed to find a site that didn't saturate my link.

The problem is, as I discovered, that it doesn't take more then a decent programmer to write a javascript module that does AJAX style calls to any given website over and over again. It may not be able to corrupt your OS, but it is perfectly capable in conjunction with peers, of bringing down someone elses.

I invite you to try and contact

A Brexit supporting site. Currently presumably under attack.

Not so much. Of bringing your (or someone else's) computer to a halt, certainly. Of corrupting your OS, not so much.

The attack surface is of course JavaScript, for anything you DIDN'T click on .

JavaScript however cannot access local files on your machine.

Only YOU can do that.

That is built in.

And in the case of bringing your computer to a halt, even 'legit' websites can do that because they may contain links to a 'advert supplier' whose adverts may contain malware.

One of the worst features of browsers is that they can download content from anywhere. They are not restricted to the site you think you are talking to.

And the site that you think you are talking to can easily include remote content as well.

If you do click on something to download it and open it then all bets are off. With Linux you are probably safe, and to a lesser extent OS/X or IOS, but microsoft is a target everybody aims for.

But to be honest email attachments are far far more a danger.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I can relate to that.

Its why I will never out any information Id be scared to lose on my smart phone Or laptop.

[SteveW]

Could it be a peer to peer system, sending your received stream back out to a couple of other people, sharing the load rather than trying to have a huge server capacity?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Could have been. I never thought of that. Anyway when looking at 'free' streams of copyright material, Caveat Emptor.

And check your router stats

[Andrew]

Isn't Brave based on Chromium, not Opera?

[Tim Lamb]

Pass. I got stuck linking it to Firefox. The search engine options list was 164 long and I failed to find it.

[www.GymRats.uk]

OMG how have you managed to use W8 for all this time? would be my first question!

Slightly drifting away as I use 64 bit Windows 7 Pro, but for a while now Brave has been telling me I need Windows 10 or higher which I won't be doing as long as this computer keeps running. But, in answer to the S.E. question, yes I use Brave search(engine) as default on Brave and DuckDuckGo on FireFox. Haven't used G**gle or Bing for many years now.

"To get future Brave updates, you'll need Windows 10 or later. This computer is using Windows 7. Learn more Version 1.47.186 Chromium: 109.0.5414.119 (Official Build) (64-bit)"

[www.GymRats.uk]

Yes it is, "About Brave" tells me the following:

"To get future Brave updates, you'll need Windows 10 or later. This computer is using Windows 7. Learn more Version 1.47.186 Chromium: 109.0.5414.119 (Official Build) (64-bit)"

[Tim Lamb]

My mistake. W7pro 32. We had W8 on a laptop.

This is a low tech. operation! Sadly I am finding that attachments from Solicitors etc. are not happy with my current set up:-(