Galeon 1.0 Released
exceed writes: "Finally, after about a year, version one of Galeon -- the GTK+ web browser based on Mozilla's rendering engine, gecko -- has been released. If you plan on installing this for the first time, you might want to read the 'INSTALL' files included within the package for requirements. Head on over to the project's file list at Sourceforge."
1. The compatibility argument here is spurious. Because all of these browsers use the same rendering engine (Gecko), web pages will look the same between all of them. Essentially, they're just UI distinctions which web designers by and large don't need to worry about.
2. The security argument is interesting, but bear in mind that unified platforms are like unified gene pools--a single virus or other agent can target them all. More diverse systems are more difficult to target; a galeon-specific virus won't affect mozilla or k-meleon. Of course, a generic Gecko virus is possible but that doesn't increase vulnerability over a mozilla-only world. And because Galeon is designed to be small, there's much less code to audit.
Choice is good.
Sumner
rage, rage against the dying of the light
I agree with that. For the record, I was just giving CmdrTaco something to think about, and also for the record, I use both KDE and Gnome. My favorite Gnome apps are Galeon, Glade, and Same-gnome, whilst my favorite KDE apps are KPoker, KPoker, and KPoker :)
/usr/local/bin/libxml-config. I had edited the previous (0.11 and 12) versions of galeon to compile correctly. Sadly, this problem has not been ameliorated with 1.0.
Galeon 1.0 still won't compile without my editing the configure script - oaf, glade, and several other dependencies (which exist, with the right versions too) fail. Seems galeon's configure looks for them by calling them from gnome-config, eg gnome-config --blah --blah --libxml, while libxml (correct version mind you) can be found with
At any rate I rpm'ed it. You wouldn't believe the deps I had to force off to get rpm to install it. I honestly didn't expect Gnome to be alive after I restarted X, but here I am, trolling with 1.0.
(A few seconds later)...OK, um I just previewed this comment, and all I have to say is it's a good thing the scroll mouse works in galeon 1.0, because the scrollBAR isn't showing up on the new page.
Was jumping from 0.12.x to 1.0 such a good idea?
Netscape 4.7 crashes all the fucking time. It's really an obscenity. It's bad on Linux, but atrocious on IRIX- which I still use for a number of weird reasons (nice UI, classy computer)- and this is quite unfortunate since I like the way Netscape renders on IRIX. I'll try to buy books online and the browser keeps going down like a transvestite in a subway restroom. If I turn JavaScript off, stability is fine- and pages look like ass or don't even load. Especially if they're made for IE.
Galeon's home page uses DIV and SPAN tags everywhere. I get one column about an inch wide on the left with all text and images. My CPU sounds like it's about to puke. Turn JS off, and I get a 1994-style page with gray background. None of the web pages I create have this problem, but I'm not trying to awe people with my mastery of Dreamweaver. If it can't be done in Vi or Emacs, it's not worth doing.
I'm with Jamie Zawinski on this one. The web has become a giant, soggy mess, and it seems as if the fall of the dotcoms has made everyone even more desperate to prove they've got their shit together by throwing up a huge Flash/Java/DHTML/pop-up-enabled masturbatory home page. My computer used to be used for number crunching and modelling- still makes a great X terminal and molecular graphics workstation- but that 150Mhz MIPS CPU doesn't stand a chance against today's web.
Galeon appears to have some useful features. Perhaps it'll suck less than Netscape 6.1 on Linux. Konqueror is nice, except that running it on anything other than Linux (or perhaps BSD) is rather troublesome, and it's still unstable, and I only get 8bit color running it remotely over X. I would pay cash for a browser that would ignore pop-ups, ignore Flash, ignore Java, and render all pages correctly and quickly. In the meantime, I'm going to have to keep running 'killall netscape' every thirty minutes. I could get a better computer, but this one does almost everything I need. I guess faster 3D would be nice- and compiling can be sluggish- but why should I upgrade my computer to use the Web? This thing blew away any PC on the market when Netscape 1 came out. I refuse to be sucked into the forced-obsolescence cycle. Fuck the economy, I like my computers old and working.
That giant sucking noise you hear is my computer loading msnbc.com.
I fell for that, but looking at their site's FAQ pointed me to SkipStone. (I'm not really a fan of GNOME and I didn't want to install the endless GNOME dependencies.)
Skipstone is great! I just installed it, and I'm using it to make this post. One of my problems with Mozilla is that it takes so long to load or for dialog boxes to pop up. No such problems with Skipstone...it only takes a few seconds to start and dialogs come up instantly.
It doesn't appear to have as many settings as Mozilla (although I don't think I'll need the extra ones), and it doesn't appear to have a menu option to bring a file dialog up, so I have to type in the full pathname to look at files, but this appears to be a very nice browser suited for my resource conservative tastes.