What do you think about Epiphany being the default browser for Ubuntu?

[Darkhack]

That's odd. I'm using Metacity with 2.0 Ghz and 512 MB of RAM and 32 MB of that is for integrated graphics (ATI Radeon xpress 200) and I don't have any redraw lagging like in that video. I even tried it with a video playing like you did and it still refreshed fine. I haven't seen that window ghosting effect since Windows 98.

[starcraft.man]

That's odd. I'm using Metacity with 2.0 Ghz and 512 MB of RAM and 32 MB of that is for integrated graphics (ATI Radeon xpress 200) and I don't have any redraw lagging like in that video. I even tried it with a video playing like you did and it still refreshed fine. I haven't seen that window ghosting effect since Windows 98.

Interesting. Maybe it's just an issue with my driver and metacity... I know my card/rig is more powerful than what you listed. I will look into this, I guess I'll revoke my metacity/XUL complaint for now.

[Erik Trybom]

Epiphany may or may not be a better browser than Firefox. Firefox, however, has the advantage of being a well-known name - perhaps the most widely recognised free software application of them all. As long as Firefox retains that position, I don't see Ubuntu switching to any other browser. New users who come from Windows will recognise Firefox and feel more secure in trying Ubuntu.

But to be honest, I don't care much about the default apps. With a package manager like Apt, there's little point in pushing this or that program to be included in the default install. Just apt-get install it and it's there!

[starcraft.man]

New users who come from Windows will recognise Firefox and feel more secure in trying Ubuntu.

Aye, that is one of the most important points. When the whole desktop is foreign to new users it is nice to be completely familiar to the browser, which is arguably one of the most important applications today.

[bruce89]

Firefox is the standard. That's what most folks would expect, and it's what they are getting now. There's no reason to change.

Windows is the standard. That's what most folks would expect, and it's what they are getting now. There's no reason to change.

Seriously, I hate a rendering engine that eats 100MB doing very little, not that Epiphany being compiled with Gecko helps at all.

[happysmileman]

But to be honest, I don't care much about the default apps. With a package manager like Apt, there's little point in pushing this or that program to be included in the default install. Just apt-get install it and it's there!

Exactly, but for users who are new to Ubuntu they'd like to have defaults they're used to, so they should have Firefox, whereas anyone I know who has Epiphany already knows exactly how to install it

[triptoe]

I don't have that problem either. Do you have a 3D driver installed?

I tried Epiphany and I liked it. It was nice and light, and a bit faster than Firefox. Overall it's a nice browser.

Hmmm I don't understand it then..

My machine specs:

Athlon x2 4200 Processor (both cores are properly working)
2 GB ram
Geforce 7900 GS 256 MB of memory

The Proprietary driver is installed and working with the restricted drivers package.

glxinfo | grep direct

direct rendering = enabled

I have no idea why I alone have this problem then

[bruce89]

Exactly, but for users who are new to Ubuntu they'd like to have defaults they're used to, so they should have Firefox, whereas anyone I know who has Epiphany already knows exactly how to install it

Surely IE should be default then?

I don't see the point in having a fat piece of commercial nonsense by default, have you seen the number of bugs in LP about Firefox? People will get the wrong impression and think that the whole of Ubuntu's crap.

[triptoe]

I'm currently a Firefox user but I am really looking forward to seeing Epiphany with Webkit and as people development more extensions, seeing it evolve into a great browser.



For me it is the combination of XUL and Gecko. Both are garbage. If you think about it, Firefox was doomed to failure from the beginning by choosing to build a "light-weight browser" on top of such bloated libraries.



Basically. Webkit is just another rendering engine that was originally based off of KHTML. Apple decided to fork KHTML into Webkit for their Safari browser and recently the two have merged so that now KDE will be using Webkit instead of backporting Apple's patches into KHTML. The backporting proved to be a very difficult process because of the major changes Apple made when they forked it. Now that they are combined though, development should greatly improve. The main reason people like Webkit over Gecko is two-fold. First, it is actually more standards compliant than Gecko, and second, performance tests have shown that it is up to two times faster. Now combine this with a truly light-weight browser like Epiphany that uses a native toolkit instead of XUL, and you have one hell of a browser. Trust me, I'm drooling over it and everyone else should too. You'll be floored when you see the performance difference.



There isn't reason to change yet, but as more people develop Epiphany extensions and Webkit has better integration with Epiphany, you'll be hard to find reasons not to change.

Interesting... can you link any of the performance tests ? I was always under the impression that safari was slightly slower than gecko

[ssam]

there is hope yet for firefox using less memory.
http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/news-2007-09.html

i use epiphany. the bookmarks and search in the location bar is very good. there are a few differences compared to firefox, and i think they are mostly good.