I still use Firefox (well, Iceweasel) on Debian, but sometimes I just don’t have the time or the nerves to wait for this add-on-packed conglomerate to load. While there is a noticeable speed improvement with Firefox 3, you still need some time for it to load. So, when I’m in a hurry, I sometimes fire-up an alternative browser.

Notes:

• Opera, Epiphany and Dillo are also available on other operating systems.
• I couldn’t find a nice Oxygen Konqueror icon

1. Konqueror

Konqueror is both file manager and web browser. It uses the same rendering engine (with a few small differences, KHTML vs Webkit) as Apple’s Safari. The new version of Konqueror for KDE 4 still makes it a valuable part of the KDE desktop. The rendering engine is pretty slick - I had no problems with all of the sites I regularly visit. The only thing that bothers me is the tight KDE integration and some quirks, like the usage of KWallet for storing passwords and the fact that it asks you if you want to accept cookies (well, I know it’s a security measure, but Average Joe doesn’ know what cookies are and the new version sometimes forgets you checked you want it to always accept the freaking cookies). Take a look at Konqueror if you want a browser and file manager, with plugin support and great customization options.

2. Opera

Opera has just gotten even better. It is hard to describe what the new Opera browser doesn’t excel at, the Linux version is now very enjoyable to look at and crashes less often. Opera is renowned for its speed and great standards support. The only show-stopper for most people is Opera’s closed source nature.

Håkon Wium Lie, Chief Technology Officer of Opera, says:

At Opera, we believe in open standards, security, speed, performance and features — these are values that we share with the Linux community. The one issue that sets us apart is the source code. We’re very proud of our source code and we’d like to show it to others, but we haven’t found a business model that allows us to do so while still charging for commercial use.

[source: LinuxJournal]

Here are two more posts in which I write about the new Opera 9 and some of its features. We even got some comments from Opera devs there!

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3. Kazehakase

風博士 is a fast little browser which uses components of both GTK + WebKit and Gecko. With the use of GTK+ libraries Kazehakase integrates well with your GTK theme. There is support for RSS, smart bookmarks, importing bookmarks from the most common browsers (FF included) and even mouse gestures. The author promises that future version will enable the users to switch between rendering engines! Awesomesauce!

4. Epiphany

Forking and thus making a descendant of Galeon, the Epiphany project created a browser which also uses the Gecko & GTK combo, although the developer team is thinking of switching to WebKit for future releases. Epiphany sports all of the functionality you would expect from a moder browser: plugins, tabs, cookies. A special feature of Epiphany are categorized bookmarks - unlike most browsers, with Epiphany the same bookmark can be listed under two or more categories (similar to FF’s ‘Places’ feature).

5. Dillo

It’s surprising how often people who list alternatives forget to mention Dillo, the highly secure mini-browser. True, Dillo isn’t a full-fledged browser, but some versions even support tabs and other advanced features (third-party patches). Dillo fires up very quickly and is perfect to quickly check your web-mail or a news site. More importantly, if you own a very old computer with Linux running on it, you absolutely must try Dillo, don’t struggle with text browsers and other Gecko-based browsers which promise speed and simplicity.

Do you know any other cool browsers for Linux? Share it with us in the comments!

Things aren’t looking so good for Sun, claims an article on ostatic.

The company’s profit dipped 73 percent, year over year, for the fiscal quarter ended June 30th. Some observers are blaming the drop in profit on slumping revenues, but revenues were $3.78 billion, down only 1.4 percent from a year ago, and the company has continued with cost-cutting measures as the economy underperforms. The real reason for the slump in profits is that Sun has faced heavy competition from IBM and Hewlett-Packard in the high margin server market. Still, Sun maintains that its many open source initiatives will lead it toward brighter days.