Internetling

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.

HÃ¥kon 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.

For those rare people who don’t know, Canonical’s Ubuntu distribution is basically Debian Sid (the unstable version) plus a few GUI apps and modifications. Debian is one of the most successful community-based distributions.

Don’t get me wrong, I use both Debian and Ubuntu, and they both perform well, but here are some reasons to choose Debian over Ubuntu:

1) Stability and Security

Debian has a slow release cycle, because of heavy stability and security testing. No wonder sites like Digg use Debian (not 100%) for a server. Of course, Ubuntu is becoming very popular on the server, but I’m already hearing some complaints, so for server people I recommend Debian until Ubuntu gets their problems fixed.With Debian, you probably won’t get the bleeding edge, but expect it to work extremely well. If you want to get the newer stuff, just use the testing or experimental repos and you’re up and going in no time.

2) Strictly Free Software

Debian adheres very strictly to free software philosophies. It is composed entirely of Free Software, even to that extent, that they re-branded Firefox to Iceweasel because a certain part of it was copyrighted (artwork.

3) If you’re using a Special Computer Architecture

Debian now runs on eleven different computer architectures, and these ports are still in active development, so your’e sure yo’ll get something good. x86-32, x86-64, PowerPC, SPARC, DEC Alpha, ARM, MIPS, HPPA, S390, IA-64 are currently supported architectures.

4) If you don’t like companies

Canonical is a company. I don’t know about you, but I never trusted companies, even if they’re just the sponsor.  The Debian Project is run by a non-profit Foundation. I like that.

5) Simpler

In the standard Debian distro, you get just what you need and it gives you more config options on its ncurses based installer (just like an Ubuntu alternative install). No fancy stuff, just the rock solid basic Debian, with everything you’ll need to get you started.

What do you prefer? Debian or Ubuntu?

As you may have noticed I started concentrating on long Linux articles a bit more than before.

But now I ask YOU, the readers.

What would you like to see more of on the Internetling?

A few examples

- Linux distribution reviews

- Guides

- Open Source News

- Gadgets

- Lists

- Correct English grammar

I am on vacation so I do not have much time to write.

But if you are wondering which sites I visit often, do take a look at this little list.

Tuxmachines

A great site collecting Linux content from all places. Like the Linux dot com NewsVac, but done better.

Distrowatch

THE AUTHORITY on Linux. You have to check them out, if you still havent. A great search engine for distributions, new releases and a quality weekly newsletter along with a podcast.

OSNews

With the new layout, the OS guys are unbeatable. All the articles of mine that got posted on OSNews got very interesting comments, which tells that OSNews has a pretty tech-savvy community.

Linux.com 

Although it is a bit boring site in general for advanced users it has got a lot of guides a news aggregator of great featured articles.