Where’s My Browser!
This is a topic that’s brought up time and time again, but on Linux it is somewhat ridiculous. The only two browsers you really have a choice with that are functional enough for everyday use. Firefox and Opera.
I realize there is Epiphany, Galeon, Arora, etc. However, they don’t provide certain features that just over time get quite irritating. As a minimalist, I prefer a browser that is light on resources, but still has full functionality and supports things such as flash.
Firefox uses the XULrunner engine, which is basically some knock-off HTML Markup-language to draw its interface. Whether you like it or not it is leaky leaky on the memory. If anything Opera is fairly annoying to browse through all the options, and its dependency on QT isn’t something I’m fond of either since I prefer XFCE.
Arora is somewhat useful, but it doesn’t really even have auto-complete or any of the small features we have grown accustomed to over the years. There is Midori, but it is still a little unstable at the moment seeing it is less than a year or two into maturity.
So I have to ask, why is it when it comes to choice of browsers, Linux gets the “beaten down doom stick”? It’s almost tempting to write my own cross-compatible browser, that is if I had any experience in that field, ha. I sure hope the choices broaden out eventually. There’s always room for one more browser in my book.
~
Justin C. Kinnaird
Programmer
I’m running Linux Mint a Ubuntu spin-off. I can verify someone forgot to put the plug in Firefox memory hole. I’m with you about Opera. I’ve downloaded and installed Google Chrome. I haven’t used it much, but it seams to run OK. It has quite a few plug-in’s and some themes. Unfortunately no one has composed a greasemonkey plug-in witch I love. If I run into any major problems I’ll let you know.