42.1 Browsing the Web

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The GNOME web browser is mozilla-firefox and is the default browser used by many free and open source enthusiasts.

A newer fork (2024) of Firefox is the Zen browser which is innovating how a browser should look, with a focus on privacy. The provide a tar file for distribution on Linux and a simple Ubuntu installation can be built from that using https://github.com/sh4r10/zen-browser-debian. A flatpak version is available but due to it running in a sandbox, some of my required plugins, like floccus and keepass did not work.

Galeon and epiphany are alternatives with more features, but are rather dated. They are also based on mozilla to render the web pages.

Through Debian’s aternatives system you can choose from a number of browsers to be the default for x-www-browser:

  $ wajig updatealts x-www-browser

  There are 4 alternatives which provide `x-www-browser'.

    Selection    Alternative
  -----------------------------------------------
        1        /usr/bin/epiphany
   +    2        /usr/bin/konqueror
        3        /usr/bin/mozilla
  *     4        /usr/bin/mozilla-firefox

  Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number:

From the GNOME Preferred Applications configuration window (-, gnome - default - applications, properties) you can choose Sensible Browser which runs the command -, sensible, browser, which attempts to do the right thing, depending on context and environment variables (including BROWSER), and will fall back to -, x - www, browser if required.



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