The Best Linux Web Browser?
Anyone on Linux probably has their opinion of their favorite browser. Without the choice of IE, you have much safer browsers to use. But which one is the best? I'll take a look at what I think are the top three: Firefox (and Mozilla), Konqueror, and Opera.
Firefox: This is probably the most popular browser among the Linux world. The advantages of Firefox include good compatibility with most sites, and stability (it hasn't crashed on me yet, but I don't use it that heavily)
Konqueror: Konqueror is probably the most versatile and feature rich browser on Linux. It has tons of great features, complete compatibility with KDE themes and such, a fast loading interface, and arguably the fastest rendering engine out, KHTML. KHTML isn't as widely compatible on the web as Gecko (for example, WYSIWYG doesn't always work, AJAX doesn't work as well) but it's blazing fast
Opera: I haven't used Opera that much, but I do like some of what I see. I really like it's default theme and button styles, and it starts up pretty quick, but I'm not sure if it is actually that good of a browser in general. Some javascripts don't work properly, and is not as compatible with sites as Gecko. One odd thing I noticed was that it was set to identify itself as Internet Explorer by default.
So, which one wins? I think the winners are Konqueror and Firefox. I don't think I'll use Opera until it gets more compatible, but I am already using both Firefox and Konqueror for my normal web browsing. I try to use Konqueror for everything I can, but for things like Netvibes and GMail, Firefox is the next icon on the Kicker.
Firefox: This is probably the most popular browser among the Linux world. The advantages of Firefox include good compatibility with most sites, and stability (it hasn't crashed on me yet, but I don't use it that heavily)
Konqueror: Konqueror is probably the most versatile and feature rich browser on Linux. It has tons of great features, complete compatibility with KDE themes and such, a fast loading interface, and arguably the fastest rendering engine out, KHTML. KHTML isn't as widely compatible on the web as Gecko (for example, WYSIWYG doesn't always work, AJAX doesn't work as well) but it's blazing fast
Opera: I haven't used Opera that much, but I do like some of what I see. I really like it's default theme and button styles, and it starts up pretty quick, but I'm not sure if it is actually that good of a browser in general. Some javascripts don't work properly, and is not as compatible with sites as Gecko. One odd thing I noticed was that it was set to identify itself as Internet Explorer by default.
So, which one wins? I think the winners are Konqueror and Firefox. I don't think I'll use Opera until it gets more compatible, but I am already using both Firefox and Konqueror for my normal web browsing. I try to use Konqueror for everything I can, but for things like Netvibes and GMail, Firefox is the next icon on the Kicker.
Written by Justin @ 10/03/2005 03:28:00 PM | Permalink
2 Comments:
At 10/07/2005 01:50:00 AM,
Anonymous said…
Um, you do know that Opera has better rendering then Konquorer, right? It also has better Javascript support, most wysiwyg interfaces *do* work with it, including Gmail.
It's faster then Konquorer, especially on old machines. It has a built in pop-up blocker, email client, and bittorrent client, notepad, IRC client, RSS reader and more.
Opera also pineered a lot of the stuff we now take for granted, like tabbed browsing. If you type something into a comment box or form, then go back a few pages, Opera will 'remember' what was there. Beat that Firefox!
Opera is one of the most mature browsers out there. It's been around since Windows 3.1. (Konquorer only came out at 1.0 in what, 2000?)
It's set to id as IE because of an incedent where Microsoft was pusposefully breaking their website for Opera users be serving up a borked style sheet. (Opera could display the stylesheet they were sending to IE users fine.)
So, I think you might want to relook into Opera. Its quite a bit better then you seem to think. :-)
At 10/07/2005 03:15:00 PM,
Justin said…
I agree, Opera has many nice features like RSS, bittorrent, etc. I also really like it's default skin. When I first started using FF, I thought it's skin was absolutely ugly, but I have come to put up with it.
About Opera having better rendering enginges, that is more of an opinion. I think that Konqueror has slightly better rendering engines. I'll admit that I haven't used opera as extensively as I have used Konqueror, but I still like KHTML better. Regardless of how well KHTML renders pages, it is still wicked fast. So what if some advanced Javascript doesn't work, I still like it better.
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