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aysiu
November 9th, 2005, 07:53 PM
Before you started using Linux (Windows, Mac, whatever), what browser did you use? This poll will settle a long-standing debate in another subforum. Thanks.

23meg
November 9th, 2005, 07:55 PM
Opera, from version 1 to 8b. And occasionaly Netscape 4. I started using Firefox with Ubuntu.

Juippisi
November 9th, 2005, 08:01 PM
Opera 6.03 and now using Opera 8.50 ;-).

I really like Firefox and have been using 1.5-rc1 lately. Maybe I change when 1.5 releases.. who knows.

Stormy Eyes
November 9th, 2005, 08:04 PM
Before you started using Linux (Windows, Mac, whatever), what browser did you use? This poll will settle a long-standing debate in another subforum. Thanks.

Netscape 4.x on both Windows and Unix.

ThirdWorld
November 9th, 2005, 08:09 PM
in windows 98 and 2000 i used internet explorer, however in 2004 i switch to firefox after a virus attack that caused windows media player to uninstall (annoying!), i read good reviews about the browser so i decide to try it. since then i used firefox as my default browser with 2000 and later when i upgrade to windowsXP.
The annoying think with windows is that it FORCE you to use internet explorer and that is a security risk. For example one day a business associate's grandson was palying games in my pc at the office on the nickelodeon web page. to my bad luck the kid open the page on IE, after an hour he left the office, later that day i discovered my pc was infected with 6 trojans and he didnt open any email attachments (he was 7 years old), he just play java games on that web page.

So i decide to just make the icon disapear, but even then windows launched IE to upgrade windows software and distribute security patches. So that was the main reason to just ditch windows in my office and isntall ubuntu, now there have been no more incidents, and just for that i have save lot of money and time.

Im a Linux Ubuntu converted... :D

wrtrdood
November 9th, 2005, 08:09 PM
You forgot Mosaic :rolleyes:

Seriously -- that's what I used (only one available for the Amiga at the time -- of course that was many years ago... :P )

foxy123
November 9th, 2005, 08:09 PM
I voted for firefox, though I started with Netscape then switched to IE and then to Firefox which was my last browser I used in Windows, before I have switched to Linux...

Denis
November 9th, 2005, 08:11 PM
I don't think this can represent the entire Ubuntu community. And what if you used an other distro before Ubuntu? Not really a useful poll I think. Anyway, I used Firefox in Windows before.

asimon
November 9th, 2005, 08:20 PM
I think it was NCSA Mosaic.

aysiu
November 9th, 2005, 08:25 PM
I don't think this can represent the entire Ubuntu community. Why not? Explain. It's a sample. Do you think that for some reason the people who are more likely to answer this poll would lean toward a specific browser? Explain the logic behind that.


And what if you used an other distro before Ubuntu? Not really a useful poll I think. That's why both the thread title and the poll title say what browser did you use before Linux, not before Ubuntu.

gray-squirrel
November 9th, 2005, 08:27 PM
Firefox on Windows, from version 0.9 (I think) to 1.0.2. I still use it 90% of the time in Kubuntu, although Konqueror does have its uses.

aysiu, what might this debate be about? I'm just curious.

aysiu
November 9th, 2005, 08:32 PM
aysiu, what might this debate be about? I'm just curious. It's this thread (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=75502), in which there seems to be some debate about what browsers people typically use before switching to Linux.

imagine
November 9th, 2005, 09:06 PM
Why not? Explain. It's a sample. Do you think that for some reason the people who are more likely to answer this poll would lean toward a specific browser? Explain the logic behind that.In general for a survey to be representative, you have to *ask* the people (face to face, phone, mail) and not let everybody who comes by to vote. Just compare polls on websites about elections to the real outcome.

I acknowledge that this is not possible here, so the poll is ok. Just don't take the result of any of the polls in this forum (or any other forum or webpage) and draw conclusions like "Fourm/Ubuntu/Linux users do/think/are <something>" : )

-Rick-
November 9th, 2005, 09:09 PM
Opera, but I was switching between Firefox and Opera from time to time

ThirdWorld
November 9th, 2005, 09:09 PM
In general for a survey to be representative, you have to *ask* the people (face to face, phone, mail) and not let everybody who comes by to vote. Just compare polls on websites about elections to the real outcome.

I acknowledge that this is not possible here, so the poll is ok. Just don't take the result of any of the polls in this forum (or any other forum or webpage) and draw conclusions like "Fourm/Ubuntu/Linux users do/think/are <something>" : )

i dont agree, web polls can reflect the public opinions on that period of time or at least tendencies, there is no such thing as an accurate poll, not even a face to face poll because sometimes people change their mind at the last minute.

aysiu
November 9th, 2005, 09:16 PM
In general for a survey to be representative, you have to *ask* the people (face to face, phone, mail) and not let everybody who comes by to vote. Just compare polls on websites about elections to the real outcome. That only makes sense if there's a reason to think that the people who answer the poll are more likely to use a particular browser (and skew the results) than people who don't answer the poll.

Clearly at the time of this post I'm writing, Firefox is in the lead. Are you going to argue that previous Deepnet Explorer users would somehow be less likely to answer this poll than previous Firefox users for some reason?

That kind of caveat would be appropriate if you were to make an internet poll with the question "How often do you use the internet?" Clearly the people who don't use the internet very often wouldn't be answering an internet poll (duh!), but what browser would prevent or deter you from answering this poll?

You have to make a specific argument for why this community chat poll is not a representative sample. There may be a margin of error, but there's always a margin of error.

xequence
November 9th, 2005, 09:19 PM
IE, then firefox, then a cracked opera (before it was free).

PatrickMay16
November 9th, 2005, 09:29 PM
I've had my own computer since May/June 2001. I used Internet Explorer up to October/November 2002, when I decided to try out Netscape after looking through this site: http://toastytech.com/evil/. After I saw what Netscape could do, I never looked back to IE. This went on up until March/April 2005, when I tried out the beta of Netscape 8. They had given it some horrible unchangeable theme thing and it ran slowly and took a lot more memory than it should have.
That's when I switched to Firefox, and got rid of Netscape. Then In September, I installed Ubuntu Linux 5.04. By October, I had stopped using Windows often.
In case it's important, in Linux I also use Firefox.

As a side note; these days, I barely use Windows. If I ever need to use windows for something (barely ever), I boot into windows and try to get whatever it is done as quickly as possible, and soon as that's done, reboot again, back to Ubuntu.

Lovechild
November 9th, 2005, 09:47 PM
Before using Linux.. I actually used the version of Internet Explorer that came with Windows 98. It wasn't all that bad really, it fit well with the environment and it did roughly what it was supposed to. It did as I recall have a slight tendency to cause system lockups.

matthew
November 9th, 2005, 10:10 PM
In general for a survey to be representative, you have to *ask* the people (face to face, phone, mail) and not let everybody who comes by to vote. Just compare polls on websites about elections to the real outcome.

I acknowledge that this is not possible here, so the poll is ok. Just don't take the result of any of the polls in this forum (or any other forum or webpage) and draw conclusions like "Fourm/Ubuntu/Linux users do/think/are <something>" : ) Point taken, but if a person wanted to get really compulsive with this argument you would then have to compel EVERYONE to answer because most polls have a significant number of "no responses."

Even the polls you are advocating would then be inaccurate as well because of the number of people who were ASKED but chose not to participate (by hanging up the phone, walking past the annoying person with the clipboard, etc.). Soooo...if you want to say that all polls are inaccurate you would be right for this reason. Statisticians will talk about margins of error and deviations and such. They would also (if they are honest) say that even the most "random" sample will have some bias because of how the sample was chosen: random telephone calls? not everyone has a phone, stopping people on the street? what if I chose to walk on a different street, what if there was a convention of psychotics walking down your street that day? Get the idea?

Anyway, ayisu was just conducting a simple, non-scientific informal poll of interested respondants. I can't imagine that anyone here believes differently. In other words, chill out, dude. It's just for fun anyway.

EDIT: Oh, yeah. Firefox was what I used in my pre-linux days.

majikstreet
November 9th, 2005, 10:27 PM
good 'ol firefox.

qalimas
November 9th, 2005, 10:47 PM
Opera then, Opera now

SamH
November 9th, 2005, 10:59 PM
Opera, Mozilla, Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox, NeoPlanet (doesn't really count, it ran on top of IE), IE. I had settled pretty much on Opera. I even paid for it. Version 5 I think.

nrwilk
November 9th, 2005, 11:39 PM
I used both Firefox and Safari, but I voted for Safari as I figured it would be less represented. It's a very solid browser.

psychicdragon
November 9th, 2005, 11:49 PM
Opera. I'd still be using it if it weren't for the terrible file-chooser it uses.

SilentCacophony
November 10th, 2005, 02:11 AM
Firefox was the one I had been using when I first used Linux, and it was (in large part) what led me to linux.

This poll makes me remember the first www browser I used: AMosiac (http://rachael.dyndns.org/amosaic/home.html), an Amiga port of the Mosaic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_%28web_browser%29) browser, the grandpappy of popular www browsers. :)

Kvark
November 10th, 2005, 02:32 AM
This should be multiple choice. I used Mozilla or Firefox whenever I was on a fast connection like at school.

But whenever I was on a slow connection like the dial up connection I had at home I used Internet Explorer because it caches everything like mad in temporary internet files even to the extent that it frequently displays outdated websites. All that caching gives it unbeatable speed on slow connections.

psyguy92
November 10th, 2005, 02:36 AM
Firefox was the one I had been using when I first used Linux, and it was (in large part) what led me to linux.

I knew it! It IS an OSS "gateway drug".

:>

super
November 10th, 2005, 02:42 AM
way back in the day, before linux i used netscape. now i use firefox

but this thread brings back memories of my first linux web browser. it was called chimera and i ran it on muLinux. man, that thing was shyf-ty!

SilentCacophony
November 10th, 2005, 03:01 AM
I knew it! It IS an OSS "gateway drug".

:>

It certainly was for me. ;) My first post (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=62244&page=3#23) in these forums stated much the same sentiment.

GoldBuggie
November 10th, 2005, 03:23 AM
Used firefox before comming to Linux. Not so much that it was fast and such more that I felt I was forced into IE with windows and (this was a major part) I wanted to try out the tabbed browsing. Had tried a plugin with IE before that but it wasn't stable.

After that I felt firefox had given me a whole new experience in webbrowsing. So I started to spread the word.

Then if firefox which was free could deliver this then what couldn't the Linux OpenSource market deliver for me I wondered. So I booted my computer with a Live-CD. Found that my computer went more smooth then my windows(which always works great at start but slows down after some usage).

And now...linux all the way.

TecnoVM64
November 10th, 2005, 03:25 AM
On windows I went from Internet Explorer to Firefox, then came to linux and used Mozilla on Redhat (I was really newbie and didn't knew how to install apps), but when I growed up as Linux user found that Firefox was there, and now, it's the only one. :p

Qrk
November 10th, 2005, 03:30 AM
I used internet explorer and opera. Firefox hadn't come out yet.
I now use firefox and opera.

Pi rules
November 10th, 2005, 03:51 AM
I still use Firefox as my main browser in Windows, along with Internet Explorer, Opera and Netscape (as you can tell, I wanted to try a few different ones).

In KDE distros, I use Firefox and Konqueror equally, and in Gnome distros I use Firefox.

Spark*
November 10th, 2005, 03:59 AM
Clearly at the time of this post I'm writing, Firefox is in the lead. Are you going to argue that previous Deepnet Explorer users would somehow be less likely to answer this poll than previous Firefox users for some reason?.

Yes, because only geeks or at least enthusiasts will regularly read technical forums like this one. And those kind of users are a lot more likely to care enough about their browser to install Firefox on Windows. It could be argued that all current users of Ubuntu are probably geeks anyway, but that would be an assumption. :P And if Ubuntu really aims to be the Linux for all humans, this should not be the goal for the future.

BTW, when I first installed Linux I believe I was still using IE, but it's difficult to remember.

visualkev
November 10th, 2005, 04:05 AM
I am a microsoft babe, but i sure love fire fox. thats all i use in windows and linux.

Denis
November 10th, 2005, 04:44 PM
Why not? Explain. It's a sample. Do you think that for some reason the people who are more likely to answer this poll would lean toward a specific browser? Explain the logic behind that. I thought the link in the other thread would be the problem, but that's not really true. You're right that it's not a factor.


That's why both the thread title and the poll title say what browser did you use before Linux, not before Ubuntu.I think the question could also be "what browser did you use before Ubuntu?". That would give you an idea of which browser people were "used to" before they switched to "the default browser of Ubuntu" let's say.

If we assume that the best default browser is the one that people were used to, that would be the right question to ask.

It's a nice discussion in the other thread. It's good that you guide it a bit.

gabhla
November 10th, 2005, 04:52 PM
Opera...I love it.

tbrownaw
November 13th, 2005, 02:40 AM
Netscape. Or maybe IE, since IIRC I found Netscape about the same time I found Linux.

Then on Linux, I switched from Netscape 4.x (ICK! ICK! ICK!) to mozilla as soon as I figured out how, and then to Phoenix when it came out.

Tim

Malphas
November 13th, 2005, 03:05 AM
I still haven't "switched" to Linux, and probably won't any time in the near future. However when I first dipped my toes into Linux (around 1998 or 1999) I was using Mozilla, up until then I had used Netscape Navigator but that was primarily for reading the documents that came with demo discs and the like, seeing as I don't think I even had an Internet connection until 1998. Then started using Firefox (when it was known as Phoenix) alongside Mozilla until early 2004 when I switched over to Firefox completely, and have been using it almost exclusively ever since on both XP and Ubuntu. I'm currently toying with the idea of using Opera as my default browser on XP.

dosed150
November 13th, 2005, 03:51 AM
i had aol once in the distant past does the aol browser count? then internet explorer then last year i got firefox on windows

lucid
November 13th, 2005, 11:21 AM
Firefox for me. And as others have mentioned, it was what drew my attention to OSS. Here was something that wasn't just good enough, but rather was a massive improvement on what I was using beforehand: IE.

`GooZ´
November 13th, 2005, 12:45 PM
IE (for a short while) -> Mozilla -> Firebird -> Firefox -> Ubuntu Firefox :-)

public_void
November 13th, 2005, 01:46 PM
Yeh I'm one of 8 (when I posted) using IE. I still use it, don't see what is wrong with it. I know there are many secrity threats, but I'm yet to be effected in 3-4 years. I use Firefox in Ubuntu, I like it alot but I'm not gonna change to Firefox in Windows, partly because some sites I visit are IE only (guess who owns them, *sigh* Microsoft).

Malphas
November 13th, 2005, 01:54 PM
I still use it, don't see what is wrong with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_Internet_Explorer

It really is a terrible, terrible browser. Security issues aren't even half of it.

psyguy92
November 13th, 2005, 02:15 PM
...but I'm not gonna change to Firefox in Windows, partly because some sites I visit are IE only (guess who owns them, *sigh* Microsoft).

This is one of the main reasons I don't use IE in Windows. It irritates me to no end that I am forced to use one browser over another with no good technical reason. I'd even change banks if they started requiring access with IE. Of course, I have the liberty of not visiting MS sites - perhaps you do not...

Malphas
November 13th, 2005, 02:24 PM
Doesn't Opera have an option to identify itself to websites as IE?

aysiu
November 13th, 2005, 05:39 PM
Doesn't Opera have an option to identify itself to websites as IE? Yes, but I've never found it to work. Firefox's User Agent Switcher is far more effective. And there are some sites that just plain don't work with another browser, even if you change the user agent. I boycott these stubborn IE-only sites. If it's a bank, I'll switch banks, just as psyguy92 would.

agm642
November 13th, 2005, 06:00 PM
I have been using Firefox since version 0.6 (Firebird). Before that, I had been using IE. As for IE-only sites, Firefox's User Agent Switcher has never worked for me:confused:, so for them I use Konqueror which works most of the time.

fuscia
November 13th, 2005, 06:54 PM
i came across firefox november 2004 and installed it (it was the day after the 1.0 release, i believe). i had asked people about linux before, but was advised i didn't need it. playing with firefox eventually led me to wanting linux. my experience with open source has been most pleasant.

ubnoobie
November 13th, 2005, 10:50 PM
BEFORE i *ever* used linux? that would be (ncsa) mosaic, last half of '93 before taking my first stab at slack the following spring. netscape didn't happen until later that year (released around december '94, iirc).

before *firefox*, it was netscape (or mozilla suite) normally, unless ie was needed for a particular page. i may very well switch back to the suite as the monkey lives on... http://wiki.mozilla.org/SeaMonkey:Home_Page