this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Currently there are 3 browsers available and one of them is only available on overpriced disposable hardware.
If the latter is Safari, then WebKit-based browsers are available for Windows and Unix-likes too.
Actually WebKit is often used in the same role Gecko would be used, until Mozilla decided they don't want alternative browsers on Gecko.
Which are? Please list a few current ones that have reasonable backing and at least a mid-size community.
Here are two on Linux:
Those are the two biggest desktops on Linux. In fact, when I run Tauri (like Electron, but uses your system webview instead of bundling it), it uses GNOME Web on my system.
They still exist? I was under the impression that they are abandoned.
They absolutely do. A lot of distros package Firefox or Chromium or something as the default, but those browsers are default for their respective DEs.
Here are their most recent releases:
They don't move very fast, but they don't need to since they just pull in upstream changes. Their main purpose is to provide a default webview and browser, but most people use a different browser for everyday use.
Konqueror is more or less dead as a browser. I don't even think kwebkitpart is maintained anymore since QtWebkit was abandoned with Qt6.
It had a release this month, that doesn't sound dead...
But yeah, it's unfortunate that Qt WebEngine is Chromium based. I get it though, it's probably less work to maintain and if users complain, you tell them it's the most popular embedded engine.
Maybe you're right though, the last commit on master seems to be 2 months ago. I wonder if it's officially dead or just maintenance only.
If you look at the kwebkitpart commits, it looks like it's been nothing but localization for years.
That's really too bad.
We lost this war with operating systems when Linux ate the BSDs' lunch, and it's happening again with browsers. I hope GNOME Web sticks around.
I wasn't thinking of such and meant
vimborsurf.