I made a prebuilt .deb file for dillo 3.2.0

Amidst the storm of controversy that was the publication and rewording of Firefox's "Terms of Service", I think that the one thing we can all agree on is that more browser diversity is needed. The entire internet simply cannot depend on only two browser vendors, one of which keeps digging itself further in the hole every few weeks.

While I don't have an answer for the question of what browser to switch to now, I have been going back to an old hobby I explored in the last Old Computer Challenge: minimalist browsers. I'm talking browsers like dillo, NetSurf, and even Links2, that can surf the web and show images without the expense of RAM and CPU usage.

Dillo in particular has impressed me a lot over the previous months, with development picking up again fast paced and new releases after an almost 10 year hiatus. Recently, version 3.2.0 has been released, but sadly, Debian and Debian-based users cannot install it directly from the repositories, which are still stuck on 3.0.5. Thankfully, it's very easy to build it from source, which I did, and decided to try something new: building an installable .deb file out of it.

So, if you're on Debian 12 and would like to try the most recent version of Dillo without building it yourself, get the package right here. I'll admit, this is a very amateurish and sloppy DEB file, but I guess it should work provided you have libfltk1.3 and wget installed. I used the following flags in the compilation:

./configure \
    --prefix=/usr/local \
    --enable-ipv6

Otherwise, it's a pretty vanilla build. Install it with:

# dpkg -i dillo_3.2.0-1_amd64.deb

Hopefully this helps you, and happy lightweight browsing!

PS: How can I improve on my package building skills? Experienced maintainers, please let me know on the Fediverse!