Just don't use the internet on those old OS'. You cannot use a modern, "secure" browser and would need an insecure old version on an insecure old OS.
Use those rigs for other stuff than internet. Use internet on a modern machine.

I'd probably just stick to IE 6. Maybe Firefox 2.x for the K6-2. Then again I'd ever use any of them for serious browsing, just maybe looking for a game patch or some old tweak when I'm too lazy to just turn a more modern PC on.

I associate IE 6 with the huge amount of malware infections of that time. Can it get any more insecure?

Latest Firefox does require somewhat snappy hardware. But there is also the derived "Pale Moon optimized for Intel Atom processors and compatible with Windows XP". Also using a javascript whitelist with noscript makes a world of difference for the CPU load (and security).

This though: "k6-3+550, 256m ram, win2000sp4" is below Atom netbook territory. The original Atom CPU is like a Pentium III Celeron 900Mhz

As I said - I'd never use those to really browse the internet, just when I wanna look for something real quick and am too lazy to use a modern PC with a good browser. Also, PaleMoon is XP+, and none of the OPs example systems are running XP anyway.

Of all my retro systems the oldest one I feel Firefox 2.0 + noscript is fast enough to be bearable is my Duron 950. I do have it installed on my K6-2 system, but I only use it if I need to download something and IE6 decides to crap out - it is just too slow to be my first choice.

I used Firefox since its PR versions back in 2006-7 or so, at a K6-2 400MHZ w/ 128MB RAM. But back then sites with dynamic content were very few. Dynamic HTML is OK with older hw. Java and PHP will probably make your browsing experience frustrating.

PHP is server-side... javascript is the main performance killer.
Basically anything older than Pentium 4 (including Athlon XP) is useless for web browsing.

I tend to dump graphical browsers and go with Lynx on low performance hardware. It's still supported for almost everything, and I don't miss the extra features for the tasks I use it for.

I still have Opera 5(? - maybe 4?) on my Thinkpad 365. It's a 5x86/100 with 24MB RAM. I haven't tried to browse with it in a long time but it used to work well enough back when I used it as my every day laptop (early 2000s~2005.)

In other words, the browser itself will run fine with that hardware, but the modern web may not run so well on the browser. Worth giving it a shot to see how it does though. 😀

Opera during that time was known to be very secure - because it just plain didn't run most of the client-side scripting that allowed malware in. No Flash, no ActiveX, no Java, only very limited Javascript. I'd be more concerned with protecting the OS itself than the browser.

gerwin wrote:

I associate IE 6 with the huge amount of malware infections of that time. Can it get any more insecure?

About that : Can a Windows XP virus, work on DOS based Win98 machine ?
Because I really don't think Win98SE or WinME are smart enough for modern viruses/malware to work or do anything other than just sitting there on HDD.
Win 2000... don't know, maybe ?

I actually once got a virus on a 98 system from using IE6- it failed to open, just gave me a random error about missing .net 3.
That was hilarious. In any case, I use Opera 10. It's kinda shit but you're not gonna get far on the modern net anyway with that hardware.

SRQ wrote:

I actually once got a virus on a 98 system from using IE6- it failed to open, just gave me a random error about missing .net 3.
That was hilarious. In any case, I use Opera 10. It's kinda shit but you're not gonna get far on the modern net anyway with that hardware.

U should make a screenshot and add describtion :
"Anti-virus Protection : [PIC]
When viruses are giving U errors upon executing - U R doing it right" 😀

I find Opera 10 to be the best bet on Win98. The vast majority of sites will not display correctly and you may end up missing lots of site features, but its the best graphical browser that I've been able to use on vintage rigs. In all honesty Lynx is the best browser for vintage rigs, but it takes some time getting used to it as its an all text browser. Either one will work and if you have to have a traditional browser then Opera 10 is the way to go, but Lynx can get the job done pretty quickly if you lean how to use it.

Had we already forgotten about Retrozilla? 🙁

leileilol wrote:

Had we already forgotten about Retrozilla? 🙁

yeah but does it perform better than the three? and does it run on 486?

leileilol wrote:

Had we already forgotten about Retrozilla? 🙁

Why have I never heard of it? Please do tell me more.

I find NetSurf to be brilliant on old linux systems, shame the Win32 port is rubbish still.

More usable than dillo but still super lightweight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSurf

noshutdown wrote:

leileilol wrote:

Had we already forgotten about Retrozilla? 🙁

yeah but does it perform better than the three? and does it run on 486?

Surfing on a 486 would be a interesting experience. Very frustrating, but interesting. 🤣

Doesn't anyone else browse via DOS anymore?

gdjacobs wrote:

Doesn't anyone else browse via DOS anymore?

I like firing up Arachne sometimes, but that has a harder time on the modern internet than some old Windows browsers.