[HOWTO] Opening Websites without any risk to your system

[Rava]

Just in case you are unsure about a website and do not want to risk your own system but still want to see what's there, you can use e.g.

https://www.browserling.com/

Unlike what they claim, you do not " Get a browser and start testing in 5 seconds! " - you go into a queue and it can take up to a few minutes, and then the result will be presented to you for max of 3 minutes.
When you use it as free user without anything of a paid premium thingy, that is.

If you want to check out any internet site without risk, you can use it for free - but bring patience with you.

[Kulle]

Alternatively you can also use onworks.net:
https://www.onworks.net/
There you can choose a distribution, for example zorin, ubuntu etc.
and then use the included browser.

[Rava]

https://www.onworks.net/
There you can choose a distribution, for example zorin, ubuntu etc.
and then use the included browser.

(highlighting by me)

That's a nice touch. Thanks for the find.

Added in 6 minutes 12 seconds:
But… it seems onworks.net/ only offers preview runs of their server variants?
Where is the option to have a sandboxed browser opening the URL I specify for me and displaying that URL?
I had tried the kodi one, but it was closed too quick to try anything on it.

[Kulle]

https://www.onworks.net/os-distributions

[Rava]

^
Indeed, I was slow on the uptake.

Works out of the box with midori-9.0-webkit2gtk-2.35.1-x86_64-1.xzm
Preview:

(click for FullHD resolution)

Image size comparison:

Code: Select all

guest@porteus:tmp$ du -k onworks.net.*
308	onworks.net.jpg
352	onworks.net.png
136	onworks.net.webp

PNG lossless, WebP and JPEG 93% (high quality)
Unless it's only GUI elements, when PNG has the smallest size, most of the other times WebP wins by smallest file size.

But sadly, abload.de doesn't support webp.

[Rava]

felt like testing onworks.net a bit more today, so i tried playing a youtube video and it works:

I choose Elementary OS as the host OS.
The restrictions of only having it for 3 minutes is still valid.
While I

* made the above screenshot
* edited the screenshot (resized it from FullHD to 1280x720 and from PNG to JPEG via mtPaint)
* Uploaded it to abload.de
* Beginning to write this post…

All that took me longer than the 3 minutes I get when using onworks.net, so the session is already closed.