I recently started using Fedora Linux from my Sony VAIO Laptop and was trying to get another browser other then Firefox for my system. I was surprised to know that only Firefox is a decent browser available for Linux users. Its not that I don't like Firefox but I always liked to use multiple browsers on a system. I like to experiment and like different things in different browsers. For example to quickly launch a browser window "Google-Chrome" is best browser as it launches very well. Where as for JavaScript developement I prefer Mozilla Firefox as it has Firebug and other plugins for debugging. Internet explorer still remains one of the most popular browsers so I have always tested my web applications on different versions of this browser.
Linux is such an old operating system and Fedora/Red Hat version have really made it user friendly. But its still not their to the level of dumb user friendliness. I always liked using unix environments, like most developers do, but if I want my father use this this Laptop with Linux installed then its going to be impossible for him to even start using it.
Just a small example, I opened YouTube on Firefox and see a message saying "Either JavaScript is disabled, or you have old version of Flash Player.". So I clicked the link do download the FlashPlayer linux version. Here are the steps I had to do
1. Find the Linux tar file
2. Extract the tar file.
3. Copy the .so library file in ~/.mozila/plugin directory.
For me it was easy to do and understandable, but when I think about my father who doesn't know about how computers/softwares work its going to be almost impossible. I don't know why this can not be done the way its done in Windows systems? Why this great open source stuff can't still do that level of automation.
I have seen google doing great things in different areas, but am disaapointed to see that Chrome doesn't work on Linux.
Here are few browsers I found for Linux systems, but none of them as powerfull as Mozilla Firefox.
1. Amaya: The Amaya software is written in C and is available for Windows, Unix platforms and MacOS X. You can read more about this at http://www.w3.org/Amaya
2. Galeon: Galeon is a GNOME Web browser based on Gecko (the mozilla layout engine).
3. Konqueror: Konqueror is an Open Source web browser with HTML 4.01 compliance.
4. Lynx: Lynx is a text based browser. Certainly not user friendly as text based browsing is not easy for every user.
5. Netscape Navigator: Its one of the oldest Linux supported browsers. I have not seen much of development on this recently.
