When the Maverick Meerkat, better known as Ubuntu 10.10, debuts in October, it will bring with it a new default browser for Kubuntu users in the form of rekonq. If you’re a KDE user dissatisfied with Konqueror and Firefox, here’s what you can look forward to next fall.
rekonq is a relatively new project aimed at creating a native KDE browser that addresses some of the perceived shortcomings in Konqueror, which has served as KDE’s main file browser–and sometime-file browser–for many years.
A look
So how well does rekonq fulfill the ambitions behind it? To get an idea, I installed rekonq version 0.4.95 from a Launchpad PPA and gave it a go.
Like Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari, rekonq is based on WebKit, which is itself a derivative of KHTML, the engine behind Konqueror. I’ve always admired WebKit-based browsers for the speed at which they render HTML. To my disappointment, rekonq wasn’t quite able to live up to the performance of Konqueror or even Firefox 3.5 in the speed test at scragz.com, but it was still certainly acceptable.
rekonq’s interface, on the other hand, definitely felt smoother and more responsive than Firefox’s. New tabs opened very quickly, and the page previews available by holding the cursor over a tab appeared almost instantaneously.
As the image above demonstrates, rekonq also sets itself apart from Firefox with its simplified interface. Like Chrome–or too much like Chrome, perhaps–rekonq limits its toolbar to the bare essentials necessary for browsing, and uses a drop-down menu in the upper-right corner for accessing other tools:
Another similarity to Chrome are the web-development tools that ship with rekonq:
rekonq also offers a built-in “speed dial” feature similar to those of many other modern browsers.
Konqueror killer?
The big question, of course, is whether rekonq will prove capable of displacing Konqueror as the KDE browser par-excellence. I like Konqueror well enough, and from my viewpoint, I’m not sure there’s a compelling reason to give it up.
From what I’ve seen, however, rekonq is a solid browser with an impressive range of features, given that it remains under development. It doesn’t function as a file browser, which may be a problem for some users who rely on Konqueror for that feature. Otherwise, however, there’s no good reason not to use rekonq, and I look forward to seeing the project’s final product as development continues.
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Does it work with GNOME too? Looks more like an alternative to Chrome than FF to me. Chrome still has that fugly blue Vista Basic skin on every GUI platform. Ew, ew, ew ew ew!
jellydonut: yes, it works fine in Gnome–that’s where I was running, actually. But since it depends on a lot of Qt stuff, it’s not really optimized for running in Gnome.
I agree about Chrome–although you can make it use the system theme or install custom themes, you know.
Another reason to use it: it works with sites such as gmail(full) and facebook, owing to its webkit core. Konqueror does have the webkit kpart, but I’ve had significant problems with the svn build. Maybe once it ships stable in 4.5…
I hope they still ship Konqueror with 10.10 I’ve installed the daily builds and the `stable` version and neither was impressive lots of crashes and very slow web page loading and maybe I missed but there doesn’t seem to be a split view mode like in Konqueror which is extremely useful especially when using it with a web page open and quick access to your files. I hope KHTML sticks around to if webkit is the child of Khtml theres no reason Khtml can be as good or better considering its still in active development I have high hopes for Konqueror and Khtml. rekonq on the other hand feels like a pre-alpha version of chrome with a near identical appearance but nowhere near the performance of chrome. To sum it up though I love Konqueror and I’m a fan of Khtml so I really hope it sticks around and continues to improve.
-Ryan Wdzieczny
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really, how well does it perform as a file browser? Konqueror’s great strength is that it’s both for web and filesystem browsing.. I’m curious if i’ll work with fish:// too..
I’ve got rekonq installed, and it seems pretty decent. I really don’t like Konqueror, it’s flaky and KHTML is just a poor engine. Far from it being a strength that it’s a file browser and a web browser, it’s a weakness. The UNIX philosphy is that a program does one thing, and does it well, Konqueror tries to do half a dozen things, and I’ve never liked it.
Of course it’s different stroke for different folks, I like Dolphin as a file browser and anything as a web browser more than Konqueror, so feel free to disregard
.
I thought Konqueror as a file browser had been replaced by Dolphin?