4 ms·

I dream about a fully integrated, state-of-the-art web browser for KDE. Even I've been saying this for years, but always am replied with "we already have Firefo

I dream about a fully integrated, state-of-the-art web browser for KDE. Even I've been saying this for years, but always am replied with "we already have Firefox/Chrome" argument. But it seems they actually don't care about it. From 4.x on, every web browser they touch is just left to die for some reason (Konqueror, reKonq which was allegedly being supported by Blue Systems, now Qupzilla/Falkon)... Even the noise about Ken Vermette's "Fiber" at the early days of "KDE5" ended being only that, just noise.

badsectoracula 5y ago
I never used KDE for a very long time, but my first Linux distro (Caldera OpenLinux -IIRC- version 2.3, which i still consider the best put together distro in terms of how things worked with each other, especially considering it came out in late 1999) used KDE1 and i used KDE3 via Slax in some school computers years ago. One of my favorite aspects of KDE was Konqueror and how well integrated it felt with the rest of the desktop. I was disappointed when i learned that KDE decided to replace Konqueror with Dolphin.
- guessbest 5y ago
  They just replaced konqueror with dolphin for file management. Konqueror is still for web browsing
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    Yes, but what i liked back then was how integrated it felt. Opening any html file opened inside Konqueror, opening a folder with an index.html file showed the page (with a toolbar button to toggle it), back/forward buttons worked seamlessly, being able to drag-and-drop files seamlessly, etc. Not even Win98/ME (which introduced those features) felt that integrated.
    - guessbest 5y ago
      Well, you're in luck because it is still there
      - badsectoracula 5y ago
        It isn't part of KDE/Plasma ever since KDE4 AFAIK. It is "there" in the sense that you can find it in KDE's website and some distributions provide it, but it isn't the KDE file/web/whatever manager anymore. Also the functionality i described above doesn't exist anymore in current Konqueror - doubleclicking on an .html file doesn't open it inside Konqueror (not even selecting "open in tab" does - even though it does open an empty tab that does nothing :-P), it opens it in Firefox (or whatever browser you have installed i guess). Index.html in folders is not handled anymore and the option to toggle/enable it is also gone. This is from a quick test i just did with Konqueror available from openSUSE Tumbleweed's repository right now. Also it crashed twice and the settings window had some missing icons and other weird glitches, both of which basically show that it barely receives any attention nowadays.
    - Asooka 5y ago
      And not just that, Konqueror (still) handles a lot of protocols. man://foobar will show you the man page for foobar with links to other man pages actually working. smb:// will browse a samba share. fish:// and sftp:// for remote ssh access. It really felt like a perfectly integrated everything viewer.
qudat 5y ago
Reinventing Firefox or chromium is a fools errand. These are codebases with millions of lines of code added every year. What we need is a new specification for the web that is small and limited. Maybe we need to break apart the current specs into smaller specs so it is more feasible to build competing products. Things like Gemini are making such an attempt to focus on document reading. The modern browser is an operating system and it takes millions upon millions of dollars to build and maintain.

badsectoracula 5y ago

I never used KDE for a very long time, but my first Linux distro (Caldera OpenLinux -IIRC- version 2.3, which i still consider the best put together distro in terms of how things worked with each other, especially considering it came out in late 1999) used KDE1 and i used KDE3 via Slax in some school computers years ago. One of my favorite aspects of KDE was Konqueror and how well integrated it felt with the rest of the desktop. I was disappointed when i learned that KDE decided to replace Konqueror with Dolphin.

guessbest 5y ago
They just replaced konqueror with dolphin for file management. Konqueror is still for web browsing
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  Yes, but what i liked back then was how integrated it felt. Opening any html file opened inside Konqueror, opening a folder with an index.html file showed the page (with a toolbar button to toggle it), back/forward buttons worked seamlessly, being able to drag-and-drop files seamlessly, etc. Not even Win98/ME (which introduced those features) felt that integrated.
  - guessbest 5y ago
    Well, you're in luck because it is still there
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      It isn't part of KDE/Plasma ever since KDE4 AFAIK. It is "there" in the sense that you can find it in KDE's website and some distributions provide it, but it isn't the KDE file/web/whatever manager anymore. Also the functionality i described above doesn't exist anymore in current Konqueror - doubleclicking on an .html file doesn't open it inside Konqueror (not even selecting "open in tab" does - even though it does open an empty tab that does nothing :-P), it opens it in Firefox (or whatever browser you have installed i guess). Index.html in folders is not handled anymore and the option to toggle/enable it is also gone. This is from a quick test i just did with Konqueror available from openSUSE Tumbleweed's repository right now. Also it crashed twice and the settings window had some missing icons and other weird glitches, both of which basically show that it barely receives any attention nowadays.
  - Asooka 5y ago
    And not just that, Konqueror (still) handles a lot of protocols. man://foobar will show you the man page for foobar with links to other man pages actually working. smb:// will browse a samba share. fish:// and sftp:// for remote ssh access. It really felt like a perfectly integrated everything viewer.

qudat 5y ago

Reinventing Firefox or chromium is a fools errand. These are codebases with millions of lines of code added every year. What we need is a new specification for the web that is small and limited. Maybe we need to break apart the current specs into smaller specs so it is more feasible to build competing products. Things like Gemini are making such an attempt to focus on document reading. The modern browser is an operating system and it takes millions upon millions of dollars to build and maintain.