Gecko-based K-Meleon 0.9 browser Released

Fylfot writes "After a long time in development, version 0.9 of the Gecko-based K-Meleon web browser for Windows has been released. K-Meleon is the geekier, more configurable, lighter-weight (XULless), speedier twin of Firefox. When 1.0 comes out, Microsoft may have another reason to worry about Internet Explorer marketshare. Also reported on Chip Online and MozillaZine."

Comments

Re:What Niche?

[bonch]

It's shocking how aggressive Slashdotters are being toward the simple idea of there being another choice. It's not like Firefox is some perfect, holy browser that everyone and their mothers are switching to. I hate to tell you this, but Maxthon probably gets more users switching to them then to Firefox.

Re:It's MS only :(

[AstroDrabb]

Since K-Meleon has a native Windows (non-XUL) frontend, it runs faster.

Well, I just tried K-Meleon and it took about 2 seconds to start-up on a 3.06 Ghz P4 w/HT and 1GB ram. It takes about 2 seconds as well for Firefox to start up on this box. I didn't notice K-Meleon to be any faster. The only thing I noticed was a little less memory use.

Oh, and you can get speed optimized Firefox builds. These builds have better 3D-Now, MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 optimizations, so you need to download the one that is right for your processor.

These optimized builds of Firefox run just as fast as K-Meleon IMO and I don't lose all the great Firefox plug-ins. I personally can't work on the net without AdBlock.