Ubuntu Browsers
A web browser can be defined as software that offers an interface for surfing the web. Their advancement and development have advanced several folds till the latest stage which we notice today along with an introduction in 1991.
Browsers earlier utilized to be mostly text-based websites with some having graphical and image content, hence just text-based browsers satisfied with a few older browsers being: eww, w3m, and Lynx.
But, with the technology improvement to support images, video, audio, and even flash content, web browsers also require to be that improved for supporting such content. It has pushed the browser improvement to what we notice today.
Our latest browser needs the support of several software which contain: web browser engines such as KHTML, WebKit, Trident, etc, Rendering engines for rendering the website content and show in the correct format.
Ubuntu being an open-source community provides freedom to its developers around the globe for experimenting with aspects they expect through the best browser.
Web Browsers in Ubuntu
Below are mentioned a few ideal web browsers which are perfect to be mentioned here. The features which differentiate a normal to a better browser are: the ability for supporting every type of data including HTML5, HTML, video, audio, memory friendly for completely adjusting to previous and new systems, fast performance, the ability for supporting maximum architectures such as AMD, Intel, and operating systems like: BSD, Unix-like, Mac to name a few.
Google Chrome
Google Chrome accounted as one of the most famous web browsers on PC and smartphones with more than half usage of web browsers share. It is freeware and integrated by Google. It forked through Chromium whose code is changed with some add-ons to frame it. It applies the WebKit layout engine till the 27 version and Blink thereafter. It is available for several operating systems including Linux, Windows OS X, iOS, and Android, and is mostly written in C++.
Features offered by Chrome include synchronization and bookmarking, malware blocking, enhanced security, and external plugins such as AdBlock. It also supports the user tracking aspect which can be activated if needed.
It is fast due to the inbuilt mechanism it applies. Also, it is very stable with incognito (private browsing) mode, speed dials, and tabbed browsing offers custom themes that could be installed as an extension through the web store. It is universally accepted as a single default browser that could be found in most systems.
Firefox
Firefox is one of the famous web browsers and is also open-source and present for major OSes including Android, Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS X, etc. It is mostly written in XBL, XUL, CSS, C, JavaScript, and C++ and published under MPL2.0 License.
It has been appreciated for its security and speed add-ons since its introduction and is often termed as a spiritual Netscape Navigator successor. It applies the Gecko web engine in every supported environment leaving the current one in iOS which does not apply Gecko.
Supported features of Firefox include private browsing, live bookmarking, incremental find, spell checking, tabbed browsing, and add-on support which permits easy integration of several features. It also supports several standards including APNG, SVG, XHTML, XML, and HTML4. It has been one of the famous web browsers in several African and Asian countries with one billion plus users across the world.
Installing Firefox on Ubuntu
Opera
Opera is another famous web browser and one of the older ones along with the starting version published in 1995. It was written in C++ along with availability marked for every operating system including Symbian, OS X, Linux, Windows, and Mobile Phones including iOS and Android. It applies the Blink web engine whereas older versions applied Presto.
This browser has several features including speed dial for faster search, downloads manager, tabbed browsing, Page Zooming which permits SVG, Java, and Flash to be decreased or increased as per the requirements of the user, removal of HTTP browsing history, cookies, and other information on a button click.
Vivaldi
Vivaldi is a fresh cross-platform, feature-rich, and freeware web browser that combines an Opera-like interface along with an open-source Chromium environment, which was officially first published by Vivaldi Technologies on 6 April 2016 and is integrated on web technologies like React.js, Node.js, HTML5, and many NPM modules. Vivaldi contains 1.2M active users as of March 2019.
Vivaldi provides a minimalistic user interface along with simple fonts and icons and a color pattern that modifies based on the design and background of the website being visited. Also, it enables users for customizing the interface elements like the overall theme, tab positioning, start pages, and address bar.
Chromium
Chromium is widely called web browser which structures the base. It is another open-source browser available for Android, OS X, Windows, and LINUX operating systems. Mainly, it is written in C++ along with the latest publication in December 2016. It is developed using a minimalistic user interface so it is fast and lightweight.
Advantages of Chromium contain a tabbed window manager, support for WebM codecs, Theora, Vorbis for HTML5 Video and Audio, Session, History, and Bookmark management. Also, Chromium structures a base for several other web browsers a few of which are still enabled while others have been terminated apart from Google Chrome. A few of them are Rockmelt (discontinued), Flock (discontinued), Yandex Browser, Vivaldi, Epic Browser, Dartium, Opera, and many more.
Installing Chromium on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Debian
Midori
Midori is a web browser that is open-source and developed in C and Vala with WebKit engine, GTK+ 3, and GTK+ 2 interface with a stable initial publication in 2007 and the current stable publication being in July 2019. Currently, Midori is the default browser in several distributions of Linux including SystemRescue CD, Trisqel Mini, Bodhi Linux, Elementary OS, Manjaro Linux, and previous versions of Raspbian.
Several features offered by this web browser include support for HTML5, Bookmark management, Windows, private browsing, session and tab management, extension easy integration, speed dial, and Unity support which can be written in Vala and C. Midori has been listed as an alternative web browser for Linux OSes by LifeHacker and several other sites including Gigaom, ComputerWorld, and TechRadar.
Falkon
Falkon (previously called QupZilla) is another web browser that began as a Research Project merely with the initial publication in December 2010 specified in Python, and later publications in C++ along with an aim to integrate a compact web browser. It is licensed upon GPLv3 and present for FreeBSD, OS X, Windows, and Linux.
QupZilla applies the WebKit engine along with QtWebKit in sync with the latest web standards. It offers every function of the latest browser including bookmark management, built-in Ad Block aspect, speed dial, etc. Extra features that will make us grab Falkon include performance optimization using memory consumption which is lower than almost every popular web browser including Google Chrome and Firefox.
Konqueror
Konqueror is another multi-purpose File Manager and Web Browser. It was developed in C++ and available for several operating systems including Windows and Linux and licensed upon GPLv2. As its name suggests, Konqueror (beginning with K) is the default browser for the desktop environment, i.e., KDE.
It applies KTML acquired web rendering engine as a web browser and also supports jQuery, CSS, Java applets, and JavaScript. The rendering abilities of Konqueror are unquestionable and much better than almost every web browser which represents its performance optimization.
Several other aspects include customizable search services (custom search shortcut is included that can be added as well), ability for showing multimedia content on web pages because of the integrated Kpart, ability for opening PDF, Document, and other particular file types, develops I/O plugin system which permits many protocols including SMB, WebDAV, FTP, HTTP, etc, ability for browsing from user’s local file system. Konqueror Embedded is another Konqueror embedded version that is available as well.
GNOME Web- Web (Epiphany)
Originally, GNOME Web was named Epiphany which is another web browser specified in C (GTK+). It was a Galeon fork and since then has been a segment of the GNOME Project and satisfies the guidelines of GNOME at all stages of its development.
It initially applied the Geeko engine but with the 2.20 version, it began using the WebKitGTK+ engine. This browser offers support for BSD and LINUX operating systems along with source code available upon GPLv2.
Several features include XHTML, CSS1, and HTML4 support including support for CSS3 and HTML5, inbuilt plugins of IcedTea and Adobe Flash, “smart bookmark” and bookmark feature which permits simple search in the find-in-as-you-type form.
Pros
- Open-source
- Minimal
Cons
- Doesn’t support cross-platform
- Lacks several features
Pale Moon
Pale moon is another web browser that is based on Mozilla Firefox. It is an alternative for Firefox on Android, Windows, and Linux. It is integrated into C/C++ along with source code available upon MPL 2.0 License.
It maintains the user interface found in older Firefox versions, concentrating only on the abilities of web browsing. The latest version of Pale Moon will use Gonna which is a Firefox web browser engine and a Geeko fork.
This browser concentrates on speed optimization aspects and uses the auto-parallelization and speed optimization aspects of the Microsoft C Compiler. It also deletes unnecessary add-on aspects that are not needed, i.e., crash reporter, the features of accessibility hardware, and targets Windows Vista and OS because of which it might fail on previous hardware. Some other features include enhanced customization, functional status bar, IP-API geolocation service, and DuckDuckGo default search engine.
Brave
The Brave is a free and open-source web browser based on Chromium. It offers a secure and fast private web browsing experience for mobile, Mac, and PC. It provides website tracking, ad-blocking, and a mode for users to transfer cryptocurrency donations in the Basic Attention Token’s form to content creators and websites.
Pros
- Performance
- Privacy protection aspects
Cons
- No cloud-based (account) sync
Waterfox
It is an open-source web browser that is based on the source code of Mozilla Firefox and is specially developed for a 64-bit operating system. It focuses on power users and provides faster speed for its users.
Waterfox browser provides an option for customizing the browser interface such as selecting a theme, grouping the same tabs, and extending the way we want to. Also, it permits us to change the internal JavaScript and CSS.
Slimjet
It is a fast browser, powered by an industry-leading Blink engine. It is developed on the Chromium Project’s top that provides additional customization and functionality options that let us fine-tune our browser preferences that suit our specific requirements.
Slimjet provides several convenient and powerful features for guiding us in maximizing our online productivity that including web page translation, weather forecast, YouTube video downloader, Instagram photo upload, Facebook integration, customizable toolbar, quick form filter, download manager, ad blocker, and many more.
Min- A Minimal, Fast Browser
Min is a minimal and fast smarter browser that assures our privacy. It contains a user-friendly interface created for decreasing distractions and provides the below notable aspects:
- Dark theme tasks reader view
- Automatic tracker and ad blocking
- Full-text search for frequent pages
- Get quick details from DuckDuckGo within the search bar
- Supports Adobe Flash
- Supports HTML5 on YouTube
- Supports style script
- Reading control
- Easy bookmark management
- Creation of tasks and tabs
- PDF viewer
- Offers a focus mode that permits to concentrate on the current tab by covering every other tab
- Minimalist user interface
- Keyboard shortcuts
- History
Dissenter
It is an open-source browser that can block trackers and advertisements by default and develop our browsing experience more securely and faster. Also, it provides a feature known as Comment Badge that lets users for commenting on every website, see comments posted by any other user, and negotiate with other users in real-time.
Dissenter is a user-oriented software influenced by Brave which enables us to employ a replacement to the large tech products. Also, the browser develops a small extension that enables us to leave comments over a page even when no comment section is available besides the security aspects.
Links
It is an open-source graphical and text browser that is specified in C language and available for Open VMS, DOS, OS/2, OS X, Linux, and Windows systems. It is published upon GPLv2+ license. It’s one of those browsers that have several forks based on it including Elinks (enhanced/experimental links), Hacked Links, etc.
It is the best browser for those who wish to experience GUI components in a text-only platform. Links 2 being the current version was published in September 2015 and it’s an advanced release of Links that provides support for JavaScript which outcomes in a much faster web browser.
The primary highlight aspect of Links is that it can execute in graphics mode even for systems that don’t have an X server due to it supporting Graphics drivers for Atheos GUI, OS/2 PMShell, svgalib, Linux Framebuffer, and X server.