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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.
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!
A shame that the very fast and neat Dillo wasn't mentioned.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
And it looks like even if you remove these web browsers, Linux will still work.
That's the problem with these kind of reviews; Mozilla is at RC1 and Galeon is at 1.2 - I assume the other browsers are similarily updated. A review of such software needs to be done almost literally within a week or two, or it will be obsolete and/or wrong by the time it reaches its readership. Reviewers really should take note of that, and maybe include a small section on what is happening to each product in developer-land.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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.)
While all of the browsers run surprisingly fast on slower CPUs, you need 256MB of RAM for Red Hat 7.2 with the KDE desktop.
This is nonsense.
198 MB is enough to work comforably.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
Personally, I'm happy with IE6 on YOUR Win2000 and XP boxes also....
March 1 story ... duh.
It's not new now also, he's using mozilla 0.9.8
The review was great and all, but did it really say that Galeon was a 20.0mb download? Even with downloading all of the necessary library dependencies shouldn't 20 megs seems a little high. This review stinks of Redhat/Ximian bloat. Although I am happy to see a more update review, even if the test machine may be slightly outdated to what many of us use these days.
-lt
-dr. layyze f. tooth PhD
For a full browser suite, the latest Mozilla was the most impressive and like Netscape, has the best looking interface, is available on multiple platforms and includes a good help system. But unlike Netscape, Mozilla is rapidly developing, is easy to upgrade, is better than Internet Explorer/Outlook Express and includes some great features: it can use Tabs by default and saves complete Web pages perfectly.
Not to be a troll, but it irks me when I hear someone saying "this" is better than "that" cause I said so. It causes me to lose some respect for the reviewer.
As a happy user of IE and OE, I'd love to hear what the reviewer find better in Mozilla over IE/OE. My experience in the past with *nix web browsers hasn't been all that great. I think the IE interface is quite nice, easy to upgrade, and can save complete web pages perfectly as well (.mht).
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
I just read his review. He said Konqueror is faster than mozilla loading, this is because he is running it within KDE! I here use windowmaker and find mozilla to be alot faster (1.0 rc1). Also he is running these browsers on a slow slow machine. (Even slower than the average on the current slashdot poll). Konqueror is a great browser if your IN KDE! Also there is alot of changes since Mozilla 0.9.8 and 1.0 rc1. I find 1.0 rc1 to be about 30% faster then 0.9.9. I really hope next time that they use the lastest browsers.
keanmarine.com
since February, huh?
I can't wait to get the new Redhat 7.1. Anyone have a review?
I was playing with IE6 on XP last night and if it wasn't for the fact that it was MS. I would be using it right now. But here I am safely behind my BSD box browsing with Mozilla 2002050708. Worrying about my own insecurities.
note: I guess if you didn't read the review you will not understand this post...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I was reminded of this while attempting to find a good Gandalf "wallpaper" for my Gnome setup. I notice that Galeon has a "use as background" item under the right-click menu for images, but it does not appear to function (on my setup anyway). Does anyone know how they expect to implement this? Setting the background image is pretty WM-dependent, IIRC.
In conclusion, if anyone has a good Gandalf wallpaper, plz email me or post a response. I'm looking for close-up, where he looks stoned, pipe is a bonus but not a must. A hi-res cap from the scene where he's muttering "riddles in the dark" would be ideal, but I'll try anything. TIA.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I am using Mozilla and it seems that it is the only browser with decent intl (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) display support. But it RC1 still has problem with CJK printing.
My browser is missing!
Even though the rendering engine could use some work, they didn't bother to review
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Sayeth the poster:
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.
Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
Or you can just install gv.
Galeon will embed the pdf into its window. Well, that used to work for me, but currently it doesnot, and I haven't looked into it.
If you use Konqueror, install kghostview, and it will embed it too into a Konqueror window.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
My fiancee, even after switching to win2000, found IE to be too unstable, and performed very poorly on her celery 300. I installed Mozilla on her machine and told her to try it out, and she has been using it ever since.
She particularly likes the tabbed browsing, stability, and blocking popups.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I use Mozilla to disable auto-popups, and I love it. But it occurs to me that if/when IE integrates this feature, it won't be long before it's worked around.
The problem is that many pages create JavaScript popups when you click on a link, and for this reason Mozilla allows you to enable or disable this separately. There are many reasons you would want to enable click-triggered popups, so most folks will want/need to leave this on.
Well, I've written a couple of sites where a user clicks on a link, and JS triggers a popup as well as opening up the desired page. This is done intentionally and for functional reasons; but it's only a matter of time before someone at Geocities or Angelfire figures out how to rewrite a user's page so that every single link triggers a popup in addition to opening the desired hyperlink.
It would only take a few lines of server-side scripting; a Perl regexp could do it in a second. And then we'll all have to contend with unwanted popups again, opening on the second page of a site instead of the first; only this time we'll have to disable the good popups as well as the bad ones.
Towards that end, I dearly hope that MS never, ever decides to add pop-up blocking to their browser. As long as they have over 50% usage 'net-wide and lack this feature, no one will see the need to do any of the above. See, unjust monopolies can be a Good Thing....
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...
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\g
(Default) = http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&sa=Google+Searc
Where %s is automatically substituted with the search keywords you enter.
Using this I just type in the address bar:
g mcdonalds big mac rat found inside
... or whatever, and the search results with Google appear immediately? Can any linux browsers do this or do I need to use a tcsh script with lynx?
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
The "review" provides a remarkably useless screen image of the "preferences" or setup screens for the three browsers of choice.
Regarding Opera, he reviews the "static" build which has a download about twice as large as the "shared." I registered Opera years ago. It has always been superior to IE with multiple pages displayed, speed, and price, since the "adware" ads are pretty much indistinguishable from the eye clutter on the standard web page these days any way. However, for less than $40 you can still let MS know there is web software that is really worth the price. It is worth noting that many of us who use Opera register it. The company has survived in a market where ALL the competition is free, which I believe really speaks to the browser's quality.
The biggest Opera handicap is programmers of secure webpages that test for browser versions rather than available security services and send you messages to "upgrade" to something more secure - like IE.
Regarding IE, there was an article on CNET a couple of months ago where the writer, Robert Vamosi, asserted that IE had an increasingly dated interface due to the appearance of tabbed browing (which was pioneered by Opera.)
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Actually, Galeon has supported gestures natively for a while (since 1.2). Yes, they rock substantially. Also, Galeon has some gestures that I have yet to see elsewhere, like going to a site's homepage (up-right-up) from anywhere in the site, and following next and previous links (right-down and left down, respectively, on sites like /. that have the elements in their html). Give them a try and I think you'll start to appreciate them.
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
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?
Galeon is a great example of the Unix philosophy. Find one thing, web browsing in this case, and do it well. There is no mail client, no instant messenger, or extra stuff to complicate things. Though it does depend on Mozilla libraries, it has a refreshing lightweight "feel" that Mozilla and even old Netscape lack.
Though not the first to implement the feature, Galeon sets the standard for tabbed browsing.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
I am shocked that the authors of Mozilla and Konqueror have not yet been sued by someone claiming that allowing the disabling of popups is intentionally breaking his/her God-given business model.
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.
Find free books.
But really, for most people, a browser that supports no CSS, Javascript, or frames (lynx-style frame support is useless in most cases, for example pages with a framed navbar) is not very useful. If it works for you, that's great. But in most cases, it's not a viable choice.
[1]. I see that a new version of dillo has recently been released, with cookie support. Apparently it hasn't gotten into Debian yet, so I'm not using it.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
...a solution? Maybe you already figured out (it's easy). Just open the pop-ups into tabs. If you haven't called for it, you can close them WITHOUT even taking a look at them. I do it with Galeon.
Besides, they don't know it didn't work. It does harm online ads because they will think it's an uneffective add. They'll figure out one day the must embedd the ads into the page (i an ok with adds as long as they are in-page).
unfinished: (adj.)