furst

A toolset for browsing the modern web on hardware that cannot run a modern browser. Built for a Core2 Duo with 4GB of RAM and a minimal Arch install, where Firefox is the bottleneck.

The idea

A news page is 2–5MB across 80+ requests with 1–3MB of JavaScript to parse and JIT. The same article, extracted, is ~20KB. Choosing a lighter browser engine buys 2–3×. Not loading the payload at all buys considerably more.

So the goal is not a faster browser. It is to keep a browser engine out of the loop wherever possible, and to make the cases where you still need one rare and deliberate.

   link click
        │
   ┌────▼─────┐   video ──────────────► mpv (H.264 forced)
   │  furst   │   pdf / image ────────► zathura / nsxiv
   │  router  │   mailto / magnet ────► xdg-email / transmission
   └────┬─────┘   a short "heavy" list ► firefox
        │
        ▼  everything else
   ┌──────────────┐        ┌──────────────┐
   │ furst-serve  │───────►│  furst-read  │  fetch → extract → render
   │ local reader │        │   library    │
   └──────┬───────┘        └──────────────┘
          │  minimal HTML, no JS/CSS/fonts, links rewritten to stay inside
          ▼
     a light browser (surf, luakit, …)

The pieces

furst	the router. Sits where the default browser used to and dispatches each URL to the cheapest tool that can handle it. Two dependencies, 541K binary.
furst-read	fetch, extract the article, render it as a self-contained document. Library and CLI.
furst-serve	the local reader. Rewrites in-page links so browsing stays in reader mode, caches pages, and handles what extraction cannot: search, feeds, listings, comment threads.

Install

cargo build --release --workspace
install -Dm755 target/release/furst target/release/furst-read \
               target/release/furst-serve -t ~/.local/bin/

furst --init          # rules tuned for low-end hardware
furst --install       # become the system default browser
furst-serve --init    # home page links and feeds

sudo pacman -S mpv yt-dlp zathura zathura-pdf-mupdf nsxiv surf

Then every link click in every application goes through the router, and most of them never reach a browser engine.

Measured

page	raw HTML	scripts	stylesheets	through furst
wiki.archlinux.org/title/Zram	64K	4	2	16K
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_2	207K	5	2	47K
theverge.com	770K	55	71	2.4K
lwn.net headlines (feed)	—	—	—	11K, 15 entries

The HTML column understates it. The script and stylesheet columns are the real story: those become zero, along with every webfont and tracker, which is where an old CPU actually spends its time. A cached revisit is ~0.4ms.

Two details that matter on this hardware

Video is forced to H.264. A Core2 handles 720p avc1 in software but stalls on VP9 and AV1, which is what YouTube serves by default. The format string in the video rule is doing more work than the resolution cap, and playing it in mpv skips the browser entirely.

The reader is the catch-all, not a special case. Rules fall through when their command is missing, so the last rule can be "send it to the reader" while default stays a plain browser. Firefox is left for a short list of sites that genuinely need it — and every reader page has a browser link for the rest.

Limits

• Anything that renders client-side arrives empty. There is no JavaScript here; that is the point, not an oversight.
• Free search endpoints rate-limit repeat visitors. The reader detects a challenge page and tells you which engine refused, rather than showing an empty list. See furst-serve.
• Paywalls and DRM are not defeated, only rendered plainly or handed off.

Development

cargo test --workspace     # note: --workspace, the root package is just furst
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets

License

MIT