Linux Web Browsers Reviewed

scubacuda writes: "A while back, Slashdot posted a Rob Valliere's Linux vs. Windows review. Since then, he has posted a 2002 Linux Web Browser Review." This is a great , straightforward round-up of current web-browsing options, as shipped with distributions. Note though that none of these browsers are static -- Konqueror's CVS version, for instance, now includes tabs and other goodies. So bear your own downloading and installation habits in mind.

Comments

Galeon is awesome

[diparfitt]

I've been using Galeon for months at work doing web development (Java!), and I don't think life would be sane if I had to use Netscape.

It's fast, and does some cool things like disable popups, etc. I also dig the Google search boxes at the top.

This little browser is just AWESOME!

What no Dillo?

[Ed Avis]

A shame that the very fast and neat Dillo wasn't mentioned.

Somewhat off-topic, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way I've been able to convince Windows IE users to use Mozilla is by introducing them to the pop-up blocking feature. Once they see that, they're in awe, and once you show them things like tabs, they're sold. Try it with your favorite IE user and see what happens!

(And yes, there are extra programs to provide this functionality, but the people I've done this with were happy to dump them.)

Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE?

[Drachemorder]

I can't speak for the reviewer, but even on Windows I prefer Mozilla for two reasons: Pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing. I can't live without either of those features any more.

Slow down, reliability

[Raedwald]

Sayeth the poster:

A review of such software needs to be done almost literally within a week or two, or it will be obsolete

Those of us with dialup connections don't have the time to download the 25 Mb of a new browser every week. I don't want to upgrade my browser more than once a year. Business users can be even more conservative, because 'upgrading' can mean installation on hundreds or thousands of computers distributed over several offices or countries. My current employer, an international logistics company, has offices in most countries in the world. We still have Netscape 4.7x on our desktop computers. For people who are not 'heat seekers', reliability can be important.

Unfortuntely, the review did not really address these non functional concerns. It didn't even mention the significance of the Mozilla version number being less than 1.0. So, how do the browers compare in terms of reliability, performance, etc?

Why are browsers so bloated, anyway? My poor 133 MHz Pentium with 64 Mb RAM (no sniggerring at he back, we're not that uncommon) is barely able to cope with Netscape 6.

Re:Slow down, reliability

[Rick_T]

> Why are browsers so bloated, anyway? My poor
> 133 MHz Pentium with 64 Mb RAM [...] is barely
> able to cope with Netscape 6.

You might want to try a more lightweight browser with the same rendering engine - say, Galeon.

My main workstation is an IBM Thinkpad model 760XD. That's a P166MMX / 80M RAM / 3G HD. Right now I'm running Gnome (minus nautilus), Galeon (to respond to this post), Star Office (to do my actual work), and several smaller apps. I may update to 104M, but my system's quite usable now.

One thing I do is to use Dillo (http://dillo.cipsga.org.br/) for quick browsing. It's very light, depends only on GTK, and loads in a second or so - even with the apps I'm already running.

Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE?

[galaga79]

From personal use of Mozilla I prefer it over Internet Explorer for many reasons but mostly because of the all the features for power users. As has already been mentioned by the reviewer it has tabbed browsing that is great but aside from that it has a plethora of other great features I will list in point form.

• Complete control over Javascript, you can disable it all together, or just popups, the resizing of windows etc
• Powerful search tools, you can choose the search engine of your preference while as far I know in it only uses MSN for searching in the URL bar. On top of that you can also select a bunch of text in a webpage and then bring up a context menu and do 'Websearch for "xxxx"' very handly for looking up things from articles.
• The blocking of images from servers of your choose, get for getting rid of ads
• The blocking off cookies from sites, again great for stopping those Doubleclick and Cnet cookies etc

That's atleast I handful of things that I know Mozilla RC1 has that Internet Explorer version 5 doesn't have. But hey at the end of the day it doesn't come down to features, just personal preference.

Re:Pop-ups will return

[Drachemorder]

I doubt Microsoft will implement pop-up blocking. I don't think they believe users should have that much control over what they see on a website. Microsoft [i]wants[/i] to see the relentless commercialization of the Internet, and pop-up ads are part of that.

Integration with the outside world

[march]

It seems that Galeon (mozilla), the old netscape, Opera, etc. all have problems interfacing with "the outside world", i.e. the monitor and the printer.

It took me forever to configure my RH7.2 box to display fonts in Galeon so I could read them. Opera still doesn't work right.

And printing is another headache - either it's cutting stuff off or setting the wrong zoom level, etc.

What needs to be done here is a better way to interface with the windowing system and the printer subsystem (isn't postscript pretty well understood these days?).

We're so close to having these things kick butt on IE...

These are all X browsers - what about fb?

[00_NOP]

It has always struck me that what Linux really needs is a good framebuffer based browser that handles graphics.

Linux users like to boast of the OS's ability to revive old and low resource hardware, but try running X/GNOME on a 586 with 32MB and you won't get very far.

Sad to say WinNT handles that a lot better.

So, is there a good framebuffer based browser out there?

nytimes pop-ups

[asv108]

I think the pop-up ad killing capabilities are great, but there seem to be workarounds for web developers. Everytime I go to the NY times, I still get Orbitz pop-ups from ad.doubleclick.net. Obviously, I can block ad.doubleclick.net in /etc/hosts, but for less technically minded users, there has to be a better solution. You can test out the specific ad in mozilla, here.