On one netbook I am using, there is just 512 MB RAM (it's a Toshiba AC100) and there's not much left after running LXDE there.
The desktop version of Firefox seems to choke and I am looking for something of similar functionality, but perhaps optimized for mobile websites.
Are there any options that would make a real difference?
Midori is a small open-source browser.
It is available for a number of OS, including Ubuntu. It supports HTML5 and CSS3. It runs using the WebKit engine. It is very lightweight, requiring significantly less resources than larger browsers.
Midori has been bundled with Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi for a long time, including on the original model. There it ran on a similar specification to your laptop.
I use Dillo in such environments. Its a very minimalistic web browser and will not support all features larger browsers do.
Its user interface takes some getting used to and its not the prettiest.
But it is quite fast and lightweight. Quote from Wikipedia: "[The creator] designed Dillo to be small, fast, and efficient, capable of performing well even on an Intel 80486 CPU with a dial-up Internet access."
So, it will work on your laptop just fine.
Dillo does not support JavaScript, Java, Flash, etc. So it really depends on what you want to do.
For a really minimalistic solution, you could try a terminal browser such as w3m.
apt-get install w3m
then, navigate to your desired website:
w3m google.com
If you're using a supported terminal emulator (such as xterm), w3m can even display images:
Tabs are also supported (ShiftT)
Granted, this might be slightly overkill and inconvenient for more complicated websites. In that case, consider NetSurf or [surf].(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf_(web_browser))
