Linux Web Browsers Reviewed

juniorboy writes "This is an article reviewing 5 web-browsers that run on Linux. " Really not a lot of surprises, but its itneresting that the number of reviews of this nature focusing on Linux are increasing.

Comments

IE for Linux would be good...

[Skim123]

I use to use Linux quite a bit, but one thing that really bugged me was its web browser support. Netscape in Linux absolutely is the most offending program I've ever used. It's slow to load, having multiple windows open and downloading content is painful, and too often Netscape will crash, just disappearing from X. Using Netscape in Linux is almost as painful as using Netscape on a Mac.

Netscape in a Windows environment is easier to use, although I still prefer IE. I know I would boot into Linux much more often if it had a reasonable browser. (end rant)

lynx and w3m

[Rainy]

Author is quick to dismiss lynx as a browser for text-only terminals. I think he's just plain wrong. Quite a few people assume that lynx is for old 386's that can't handle X + Netscape. Not so. I have p200 64mb ram running X and stand-alone Netscape is perfectly fast and almost never crashes, and yet I choose to use lynx in 99% of cases. The reason is that lynx has a much better UI. First of all, navigation is done with keyboard - which is inherently faster than mouse. Secondly, you can use hjkl vim-style keys to respectively go back/down one link/up one link/follow link. This means you can surf while having your hands on home-row, which is the most reachable and convenient place when it comes to interfacing with the computer. Things that you use all the time while surfing are equally easy:
1. download - hit d, Enter.
2. save rendered page to disk - hit p, enter, enter
3. add current doc to bookmark - a, d, enter
4. add current link to bookmark file - a, l, enter
5. show source - \
6. Next page - space, previous page - b, first page ctrl-A, last page ctrl-E.
7. You can set option to display a number in front of every link - so that when you want to jump to a certain link in the middle of the page, you simply type in that number and hit enter. Works faster than mouse, to be sure.
few misc things - reload is ctrl-R, redraw is ctrl-L, quit is Q.
w3m doesn't display page while loading, and misses some other things like vi style navigation (which can be easily hacked in the code), but can display tables/frames. Note that both have ssl (in lynx you have to apply a patch, that'll take ~5 mins).
How important is all this? Well, now that I use lynx daily, I *can* use Netscape but it feels like a huge slowdown to reach for a mouse every now and then.

Still needs better plugin support

[Fjord]

The thing that keeps me using IE is the fact that can go to a page that has a Flash object on it and IE will say "You don't have Flash, do you want it installed?" and it automagically does so if I say yes. And while Linux has Flash, there's no Shockwave for linux (according to macromedia). While plug-ins are the main force behind web surfin, a lack of plug-ins still makes web surfing on linux second rate.

Have you tried w3m?

[gregstoll]

I used to use Lynx for text-based browsing, but now I use w3m - it renders frames in one window, which I don't think Lynx can do, and other neat stuff. Check it out!

Check out Greg's Bridge Page!