Linux Web Browsers Reviewed 348
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.
what?! no lynx!!! (Score:1, Redundant)
Galeon is awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Hear hear! (Score:3, Informative)
Though not the first to implement the feature, Galeon sets the standard for tabbed browsing.
identification string (Score:2)
Re:identification string (Score:2)
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. I've never had any problems accessing my PayPal account (or any other of my secure banking accounts for that matter) using Galeon 1.2. As far as I can tell, the PayPal web site doesn't not check or care what browser you're using.
It is true, however, that faking the browser ID is a feature that Galeon misses.
DZM
Re:Galeon is awesome (Score:2)
Is "skinning" buttons part of CSS, or is it just a weird MS thing? I've not seen any browser implement it exactly the same way as MS does, although Konqueror comes close, but then I don't really care if a web page author can change the colours of buttons on pages I'm reading. I'd rather he/she didn't in fact.
Re:Galeon is awesome (Score:2)
What no Dillo? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What no Dillo? (Score:2)
Re:What no Dillo? (Score:2)
Re:Not true (Score:2)
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.
Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
My two cents: I'm using Galeon with KDE (or, in the words of a fellow LUG member at an InstallFest, "You're doing what?) The reason being, of course, is that I love Galeon's tabs. I mourned the lack of tabs in Konq, but will most definitely go try it out once KDE 3.1 is out.
:Peter
Re:Hmmm... (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Phillip.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Nay, you must be BRILLIANT! You mean you don't need KDE or GNOME? Holy mother of Linus Torvalds, why didn't someone mention this before! Tell me, did you have to hack your system? Are you one of those l334 d00ds that I must f34r? Can mere mortals like me ever hope to achieve such a stunning technological feat?
:)
:Peter
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Anyhow, I say wait for 3.1. I tend to stay away from CVS builds myself, since they sometimes don't work. It's always humorous to see someone post to the kde-devel mailinglist complaining about some moment's CVS not compiling, as if it is some shocking news.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Yes, but of course, if you remove the browser, you will still continue to not work with Windows...
Old software (Score:5, Insightful)
/Janne
Slow down, reliability (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [slashdot.org]) is barely able to cope with Netscape 6.
Re:Slow down, reliability (Score:4, Interesting)
> 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:Slow down, reliability (Score:2)
We still have Netscape 4.7x on our desktop computers. For people who are not 'heat seekers', reliability can be important.
I think that the MTBF for Mozilla exceeded that of NS4.x last year (that was mentioned in mozillazine or something), so on average it should actually be more realiable...
Somewhat off-topic, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
(And yes, there are extra programs to provide this functionality, but the people I've done this with were happy to dump them.)
nytimes pop-ups (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:nytimes pop-ups (Score:2, Informative)
Mozilla
Re:want to try ... (Score:2)
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).
Re:Somewhat off-topic, but... (Score:2)
Re:Somewhat off-topic, but... (Score:2)
256 MB? No way! (Score:4, Funny)
This is nonsense.
198 MB is enough to work comforably.
Re:256 MB? No way! (Score:1)
Re:256 MB? No way! (Score:2)
For those of you who like to run Mozilla, Open Office, Emacs, etc. all a the same time...go for 512MB. You won't regret it.
Re:256 MB? No way! (Score:2)
I do not see a big diff between a PIII 400, 128meg and a PIII 800, 256meg
I have to try it on a PI 166 with 64 to see how bad it gets. But I conssider the 400 an old system. I think any system with 128 meg or more should be fine for a home or work evironment.
Re:256 MB? No way! (Score:2)
That's a dupe (Score:2, Informative)
It's not new now also, he's using mozilla 0.9.8
galeon (Score:2, Insightful)
-lt
Re:galeon (Score:2, Informative)
What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2, Insightful)
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).
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
add to that... (Score:2)
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.
Pop-ups will return (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Re:Pop-ups will return (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pop-ups will return (Score:2)
I see no reason to argue that. Microsoft is interested in what's good for Microsoft, not for Angelfire or DoubleClick or porn peddlers. Their own website doesn't use unwanted popups, and never has.
On the other hand, their software is almost universally designed for ease-of-use and large numbers of features, while also lacking security in implementing those features. So I predict that someday, IE will allow blocking of auto-popups, but they will never advertise it or turn it on by default--or make it difficult to work around.
Re:Pop-ups will return (Score:2)
Re:guestures (Score:2)
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:5, Informative)
2) Scripting security customization. Almost all the annoying aspects of JavaScript can be individually blocked with Mozilla. This includes disabling pop-up ads or pop-under ads or those stupid things that resize your window. The nice thing is that Mozilla is smart enough to differentiate between an action that occurs onLoad or something verses one where you actually click a link.
3) Sidebar. The mozilla sidebar is pretty neat for two reasons. On the one hand, it provides easy access to things like bookmarks, history, and searching. On the other hand though, the sidebar is built on Mozillas XUL technology such that any webpage can install a new sidebar (well, you have to allow the page to install the sidebar). Freshmeat, CNN, and a few other sites have great sidebars that provide headlines and search facilities (in a compact, easy to use manner).
4) Integrated everything. Mozilla has a built in mail client, WYSIWYG editor, and address book. The WYSIWYG editor doesn't get the attention it deserves. Its really evolved from the horrible Composer of Netscape fame into something that rivals any editor that I've ever used. The mail client is really nice too with all sorts of searching and filtering capabilities that I am not aware of in Outlook (although I only use Outlook at work).
A lot of these things are just showing up in the newer releases (in a usable state at least). When the 1.0 milestone is released, I would really recommend checking it out. The release candidates so far definitely have changed the way I use the internet.
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:3, Insightful)
You forgot that it also allows you more non-work time while you wait for the damned thing to load and it increases computer memory sales, helping other geeks out there.
Seriously, Moz is a great browser, but its *bloated*. Horribly so. Opera has a brief loadtime on my Win98SE/AMD 1.33Ghz/256M memory home machine, but Moz takes a relatively long time to load. In fact, I'm guessing if I decouple IE from Explorer [winguides.com], IE would still load faster.
Sure, I'm patient enough to wait for Moz to load, but OTOH, I don't expect bloat from any of my web browsers.
And no, I don't want to use the quick launch. I like to conserve my memory.
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
Horribly so. Opera has a brief loadtime on my Win98SE/AMD 1.33Ghz/256M memory home machine, but Moz takes a relatively long time to load.
Why should I care about the loading time of Mozilla; it's been running since 2nd day of this month, around 7 days now, so the few seconds that starting it are quite much lost in the around 86400*7 seconds that have been passed since ;)
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:3, Insightful)
I use Mozilla on Windows and Linux - and I love tabbed browsing, it is the killer feature for me as I don't tend to visit sites with popups.
However I find one thing lacking in Mozilla's tab browsing - it isn't possible to switch tabs via the keyboard. To switch to a new tab you have to use the mouse. I've downloaded the source to see how hard it would be to add this, but I've not got round to unpacking it yet.
It's all very well to open new tabs with the mouse, or Ctrl+T but until I can cycle through them with Ctrl+Tab, or similar, I'm gonna be a little grumpy ;)
Re: What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:3, Informative)
Try CTRL+Page Up and CTRL+Page Down. I think you'll be happy.
Re: What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
More great shortcuts like this can be found at this link [hmc.edu]. I believe mozilla.org had a similar page aat one time.
Re: What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
I don't remember exactly how I found out about that. I probably read it in a comment here, actually.
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
Yeah it does seem like a strange shortcut to have chosen.
It doesn't appear to be configurable, unless it's one of those things which can only be set in the preferences file; for which there is no UI.
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:3, Insightful)
FrontPage is not free though. I don't care about serious web development. There are many circumstances where it is necessary for a real programmer (note: web page designer are not programmers) to generate HTML for various reasons or another. It's nice to have a WYSIWYG editor that is low bloat, and that allows for complete extension via source modification.
Yeah, and IE has customizeable sidebars as well, including sites like Google (actually a top bar) MSNBC.
These things require programming extensions though. That is insecure and generally not cool. The Mozilla sidebar is based on XUL (which is an HTML-like language) so its pretty safe to install sidebars from any site.
I only reason most folks use IE is because its already there. You would be making the same argument if IE had better features than Mozilla but Mozilla was already installed. Simply put, it's laziness. I don't care if you use it or not, but don't knock it and give people a false impression of it's quality.
If you felt a need to reply, you should of simply said, "I use IE because I'm too lazy to download Mozilla. Mozilla does have better features, but I'm just lazy."
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:3, Interesting)
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:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
Moz also has themes with which you can change the look and its one of the easiest packages on *ix to install IMHO
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
Re:What's Mozilla got over IE/OE? (Score:2)
His tests are crippled (Score:2, Insightful)
How far these browsers have come (Score:3, Funny)
I can't wait to get the new Redhat 7.1. Anyone have a review?
Acrobat plugin with Mozilla/Galeon (Score:4, Informative)
note: I guess if you didn't read the review you will not understand this post...
Gv (was Re:Acrobat plugin with Mozilla/Galeon) (Score:2)
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.
Re:Acrobat plugin with Mozilla/Galeon (Score:2)
This site is great for pointing to Mozilla newbies.
the state of the web under Linux (Score:2)
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.
Intl Support (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Intl Support (Score:2)
TWW
Missing (Score:4, Funny)
My browser is missing!
Even though the rendering engine could use some work, they didn't bother to review
Re:Missing (Score:3, Funny)
Go back in your hole you accademic hack!
PS: It doesn't render CNN.com correctly. Crap, just like I said.
Re:Missing (Score:2)
There's an awful lot of overhead in that one for a protocol you're not even using [isi.edu] when you connect it to an HTTP server! Here's a lighter-weight alternative:
(What's nc?) [freshmeat.net]
Re:Missing (Score:2)
Re:Missing (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Missing (Score:3, Funny)
That's highly inconvenient when you get a VBScript virus. You have to pull out your paper address book manually step through the code to figure out who to forward it to. Then you have to tediously type in the multiple commands to propagate the message. Correctly handling the binary attachment payloads is a bitch, as well.
Computers were invented to automate things and make things easier. Your life would be much easier if you got some modern software!
Incomplete Review! (Score:1)
Come on, be wise, please include lynx next time..
Re:Incomplete Review! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Incomplete Review! (Score:2, Informative)
Printing Problems (Score:3, Informative)
I experienced these issues using the versions of the browsers supplied in Mandrake 8.2. It's possible that these are distro-specific problems, but I doubt it. Reply with your related experiences, if any.
Mozilla bold overlaps (Score:2)
Re:Printing Problems (Score:2)
Its not Open Source
Integration with the outside world (Score:2, Interesting)
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...
Re:Integration with the outside world (Score:2)
Netscape*documentFonts.sizeIncrement: 20
Netscape*documentFonts.xResolution*iso-8859-1
Netscape*documentFonts.yResolution*iso-8859-
This helped the font situation out for me no end.
There are other things you can do, such as importing some of the Microsoft TTF fonts as many pages now specify those fonts in their HTML.
RTFM? (Score:2)
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?
Re:RTFM? (Score:2)
It's not a Linux browser, but OmniWeb [omnigroup.com] for Mac OS X does this..
Re:RTFM? (Score:2)
There are the keywords [mozilla.org] in Mozilla and the Smart bookmark [sourceforge.net] in Galeon.
And in Mozilla the url bar provides a quick way to access you favorite search engine.
Re:RTFM? (Score:2)
The keywords feature is totally customizable and expandable for just about any site that uses forms.
Any site that use GETs will work. The sites with POST actions won't work
And I agree, it is reallu useful once you're used to them
Re:RTFM? (Score:2)
Pointless illustration award (Score:4, Informative)
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.)
These are all X browsers - what about fb? (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Re:These are all X browsers - what about fb? (Score:2)
Disabling popups is immoral! (Score:2)
Re:I'm happy with IE (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I'm happy with IE (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I swore I've seen this before (Score:1, Redundant)
This is a duplicate story from a couple months ago.
Here is the original [slashdot.org].
Re:It's Deja Vu... (Score:2)
Perhaps I was too overcome by that Deja Vu spirit. =)
Re:Bah... (Score:3, Insightful)
I must say it is very hard to install ie 6 on linux so you are very OT.
So you had your opinion. Here is mine.
IE 6 stinks at tabs, java, security, popups, popunders, browser hijacking, etc, etc, etc.
Re:My Review (Score:2)
Another example he's brought up (as have others) is a 'file upload' progress bar. The browser knows the size of the file, and knows how much info it's sent so far - why not have this? NOPE! It's been requested for years in Konqueror and Mozilla, and is rejected. Mark my words, someone will do it AFTER MS puts it in IE. Open source constantly playing catchup. But hey - mozilla has MathML built-in now. *SO USEFUL* to so many people, eh?
The mentatlity of the mozilla developers (and many open source developers, but not all) is that they know best, and these outside 'requests' are seen as petty bs from wannabes who don't know anything. Oh yeah - form POST data 'view source' bug. STILL a problem I think, *years* after the project has started. Why? Arrogance, imo. The mozilla developers certainly aren't web developers who need this kind of stuff, that's for certain. Would you want to buy a car built by people who wouldn't/couldn't drive? Of course not, but we admire a browser from people who aren't web developers.