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Add to SafariWhen comparing Chromium vs w3m, the Slant community recommends Chromium for most people. In the question“What are the best web browsers for Linux?” Chromium is ranked 13th while w3m is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Chromium is:
Chromium can access the Chrome Web Store and all the extensions hosted there can be installed and used on Chromium.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Access to Chrome's extensions
Chromium can access the Chrome Web Store and all the extensions hosted there can be installed and used on Chromium.
Pro Supports all of Google Chrome features
As Chrome is based on Chromium they overlap in supported features. Chromium syncs between devices, automatically updates, has great built-in developer tools, installs extensions without a restart, includes a combined text bar for entering URLs and searching and has excellent HTML5 compatibility just like Chrome.
Pro Completely Open Source
Both Chromium and and its rendering engine Blink are licensed under the BSD-license which includes no copyleft unlike the GNU or Mozilla Licenses.
Pro Cross-platform
Chrome and Chromium are available on almost every device nowadays
Pro Latest Blink
This is the browser Blink is made for and developed alongside.
Pro Sandboxing
Every tab and plugin runs in its own subprocess so they will never affect the whole browser ,however that consumes more memory than other browsers
Pro Bare
It does not have any extensions preinstalled and focuses to be a web browser.
Pro Does not come with Google
Unlike Chrome it does come wihout any Google account requirement.
Pro Backed by Google
Chromium was first released as a large portion of Chrome's source code as an open source project by Google in september 2008. The idea was to encourage developers to review the underlying code and to contribute in making Chrome cross platform and port it to Mac and Linux as well.
Nowadays Chromium is a large project with a huge community that's standing behind it but still Google continues to take an extremely active role in Chromium development. This ensures the longevity and constant development and improvement of the browser.
Pro Chromium sets the standard for Web Browsing
Since Google Chrome is the most used web browser, and that browser along with many others is based on Chromium, Chromium sets the standards for the internet and for security, and Firefox will always be years behind.
Pro Gets constant updates
While the Chromium-based browser haev to adapt their code to the update before release, original Chromuim doesn't need it so it gets updated more constantly and frequently.
Pro BSD license
You can do almost anything with the code.
Pro Support for several elements not found in terminal browsers
Although w3m is primarily a text-based web browser which runs inside the terminal, it supports and renders several elements which other terminal-based browsers cannot like images, tables, tabs or frames.
Pro Available as emacs plugin
W3m can also be downloaded as an emacs plugins to be used as a fast web browser that runs inside emacs.
Cons
Con Lacks privacy options
Con No official builds
There are no official builds available so you have to rely on a third party distributor
Con High RAM usage
Due the sandboxing, Chromium also eats a lot of RAM , which can be a problem for machines with smaller RAM.
Con Not possible to disable WebRTC
Con Can be dangerous / only available as Source
There are plenty of unofficial Chromium distributors and every one of them can disable specific features (like sandboxing) for their build, so you will never know what you get.
Con Lacks support for certain common media formats
As Chromium avoids bundling any proprietary software, media that requires proprietary codecs or formats such as AAC, H.264, MP3 and Flash will not play by default on Chromium.
Con Fat, slow, and another piece of google spyware
Con Can be dangerous
Because it's completely open source, people can make a fake version and install it when you install other software. And people can add a virus in it.
Con Under BSD License
Con Steep learning curve
Being a terminal web browser w3m has a certain learning curve because you need to learn the keystrokes and different commands.
