Infotaxis Blog

Everyone is used to their wonderfully commercial Windows software, and many are tired of hearing about how wonderful “open source” is. This series was conceived to give you an idea of what exactly is available for use on Linux, specifically what I’ve been using on a regular basis.

This is article one in the series, and covers web browsers.

Browsers

Web/Internet browsers, commonly just called browsers, are pieces of software that simply allow one to navigate and view the Internet. When the typical person thinks “internet”, they think of the blue “E” that is Internet Explorer.

A common assumption by both Linux and Windows users is that they cannot run Internet Explorer (from here “IE”) on anything but Windows.

This is not the case. The windows compatibility layer known as “WINE”, which I will detail later, allows this to work. You could worry about all of this yourself, configuring and tweaking, but a small utility consisting of a GUI and several scripts that can automatically install several versions of the browser - see this page. It’s called IEs4Linux, and works surprisingly well.

The reason you would want to do this (because some of you may be wondering) is twofold. Some people simply enjoy IE6 for it’s speed, regardless of security concerns. IE in general is still the most popular browser on the planet, and thus is useful for a developer or designer to test a web page in. Keep in mind that this isn’t the most stable platform, and for general browsing probably isn’t the best choice. Most “advanced” people tend to favor the most popular open source browser, however, which is Firefox.

Firefox has long been praised for it’s security and extensibility. It has an excellent plugin system, allowing any functionality you can imagine to be added to the browser. The biggest usability difference between vanilla (unmodified) Firefox and IE used to be the tabbed browsing functionality, but with the advent of IE7 this has been duplicated. Firefox has been, and probably will remain one of the most solid browsers available.

It takes a lot to slow it down, much less crash it. IE, on the other hand, is much less stable. Both of these browsers are available on both Linux and Windows, might I add. Firefox tends to perform much better on Linux, while IE6 performs much better on Windows, in my own personal experience. Firefox still retains the edge in security and stability either way, however. There are many browsers that are not available on Windows, such as Konqueror.

Konqueror (which is changing major versions with KDE, new logo shown on the right) is one of my favorite browsers. Keep in mind that performance will probably skyrocket with the new version’s release. It’s current version doesn’t perform in a stunning manner in any particular area, and is a bit annoying to add flash support to. However, it can perform as a file browser, web browser, supports dozens of protocols, and can view documents, movies, and pictures. If you prefer “all-in-one” programs, and don’t mind the slight performance difference between Firefox and Konqueror for web browsing, Konqueror might be for you.

Many other browsers are out there, like Opera, SeaMonkey, etc.. If you use a browser other than the above on a regular basis, and feel it should have been included here, comment! If you justify why it is so different, or worth while, I’ll add it to the article.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 4:38 pm and is filed under articles, linux. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.