A Linux 'Browser War' in the Making?

We all know about Mozilla. It's one of the major 'poster children' for the entire Open Source concept. Build 9, Build 10, Build 11, and so on. Someday there will be a Mozilla that will run without crashing, and we'll love it. Someday. Then there's Opera's Linux - and BeOS, Mac, EPOC and OS/2 - ports. Over the last week we've had 100+ readers submit the news that (proprietary shareware) Opera for Linux is close to beta release. But there's another potentially exciting Linux browser in the works that has hardly gotten any publicity. (continued)

I learned about the new KDE browser project almost by accident. The concept is only a few months old, and active work on it only started a few days ago. Konqueror - "Konq" for short - is not the spotty KFM utility included in the current KDE release, but a whole new code base.

The people working on Konqueror are worried about getting too many people's hopes up too hard and fast; if they do, and if they run into Mozilla-type slowdowns, they'll end up with plenty of egg on their faces. All they're willing to show the world at this point is this screenshot.

It's amazing how far Konqueror has come in almost no time, especially when you realize that this is a purely volunteer project with just a few members, not a big deal with big money from a big company like AOL/Netscape behind it.

Are there other Linux browsers in the works? Good question; if you know of one, please tell us about it.

Another question: Would more volunteers help Konqueror? Perhaps, perhaps not; the KDE developers aren't sure that more bodies would necessarily help.

Should we all get behind Mozilla and push? Yet another good question - and one that's been hashed to death all over the place but hasn't been fully answered yet.

Whatever the answers, I believe most Slashdot readers agree on one thing: that a better Linux browser would be a Good Thing(tm).

We have a little poll about Linux browsers to the right of this story. And, as always, your thoughts on the subject are more than welcome.