falkon web-browser: Not firefox and almost not Chromium

[mikeslr]

Edited after reading Mike Walsh's post:

If you're looking for a web-browser which is not based on firefox and has little to do with chromium project see this post, viewtopic.php?p=16903#p16903. It's relationship to chromium is explained here, https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine/Rebase_on_New_Chromium and https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebengine-overview.html

Although that post pertains to Bionicpup64, https://pkgs.org/search/?q=falkon reveals that versions are available in Focal Fossa, Slackware and debian repositories, even some 32-bit versions. However, unless your Puppies Package Manager has access to a repo containing it, or you are familiar with pkg-cli, http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=112927 obtaining a functioning version will be an up-hill battle. The Bionicpup64 version had 96 dependencies --all of which, however, PPM automatically downloaded and PaDS, viewtopic.php?p=6355#p6355 combined, in a couple of minutes, into a 52 Mb SFS which played Youtube Music OOTB.

[rockedge]

Successfully installed Falkon v3.0.0 on a Bionic64-8.0 using Pkg

Code: Select all

pkg add falkon

Completed the installation of all the dependencies and created a .desktop file menu entry in Menu->Internet->Falkon

Started from the menu on first attempt.

Screenshot(46).png (83.87 KiB) Viewed 717 times

[mikeslr]

Falkon's builtin search engines include Duckduckgo & startpage. Others can be added, but I don't know how to configure their settings so that you are presented with the results of your query rather than just the 'Home' Page of the search engine. However, one of your choices for falkon's 'Home Page' is a primitive Speed Dial.

falkon speed-dial.png (124.99 KiB) Viewed 715 times

. Primitive in that it doesn't display distinct graphics for each dial. But you can load your own wallpaper and choose websites and how many rows and columns to display.

[mikewalsh]

@mikeslr :-

Strictly speaking, that title is not entirely accurate, y'know....

This is what was formerly known as QupZilla. Earlier versions used a QtWebKit graphical wrapper; I don't know what the browser base was in those days. The current incarnation, however - now known as 'Falkon" - has moved from QtWebKit to QtWebEngine for the GUI......and this is 'wrapped' around a CHROMIUM 'core'.

Sorry to be the bearer of unwelcome news.....but what would YOU do, as an independent browser developer, if there was a comprehensive, modern, up-to-date, open-source browser framework there for the taking? You wouldn't even be remotely interested in making use of it, hmm..?

I guess the KDE community must have thought long & hard about that one, too. Building your own browser from scratch is no small undertaking; what better than to take advantage of an existing set-up where someone else has done all the hard work FOR you..?

(*shrug*)

Mike.

[mikeslr]

Well, Mike, that's somewhat disappointing. I've edited the firs post on this thread. Still, unless the devs are kidding themselves, the webpages I've now linked to in that post suggest that it should be as free of the 'call home to google' stuff as ungoogled-chromium. And it works under Bionicpup.

I haven't tried running it under Xenial. Since my first post --the one linked to from this thread-- I've used the same technique --PPM then PaDS then mount/copy, edit desktop files then dir2sfs-- to create a fossapup64 SFS. It wouldn't run under Bionicpup64 complaining, among other things, that Bionicpup64's glibc is too old.

As a falkon directory was created during that process it was easy to use fredx181's create portable which, as you pointed out, publishes not only an AppImage, but leaves a portable folder. Within the portable folder is an AppRun file, a bash script. If I'm not mistaken, it's the execution of that file which opens the application. Around Line 28 of that file is the argument:

$EXEC "$@"

I was wondering how difficult it would be to modify so that the portable would 'run-as-spot'.

I'll pay around with it. But, now I've got to take a break.

[mikewalsh]

@mikeslr :-

Hallo, Mike.

That link you've added to post #1 explains a lot, and clarifies things further.

Remember; KDE was always intended to be entirely built with the Qt library framework, right from its very first release. Their own, original home-grown browser, Konqueror, was built using WebKit.....although they made the daft mistake of trying to do the same with it as MyCrudSoft did with Internet Exploder, i.e., integrating it with the file manager. God knows why.... On the few occasions I was able to try it, I was lucky to get more than 2 or 3 pages out of the thing before it crashed. Every time, it was the same.

WebKit has been deprecated for a while, and WebEngine was the replacement. If the Qt devs have decided to base its browser functionality around a minimalist implementation of the Chromium code-base, I don't see there's much the KDE crew can do about it, short of completely re-writing WebEngine from scratch, to suit themselves.....quite an undertaking, even for a bunch as innovative as they seem to be!

I've tried Falkon myself; it's different, I'll give it that. Unfortunately, it reminds me rather too much of Midori.....another Qt-based browser I simply cannot get on with..!

Mike.

[geo_c]

I've been using it. It's set as the default browser because it's fast and it works. For an enjoyable experience I like LibreWolf better, mostly because of the look, but it's slower and seems to interact with websites in an unpredictable manner, maybe because of all the security. Falkon is nice in that it doesn't try to do everything for everyone, just acts like a browser.