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Initially, this article was to be tooth-and-nail battle between browsers under the Linux operating system, but as I ran tests, made measurements, and evaluated features, it became apparent there was a clear cut winner - Netscape 4.7.3. So if your interest was to find the best browser, read no further.

But if you are curious about those other browsers, and gleam a little into the future, then please continue.

Four browsers were compared. I installed the latest versions available for LinuxPPC:

• Netscape 4.7.3
• Sun's Hotjava
• Gnome's Galeon
• Mozilla M17

The only one that had any special install requirement was Hotjava, which needed the Java rpms, and an additional library. If you are going to run Hotjava, you better have an 'always on' internet connection, because rather than put up an error, the browser stalls if you have your home page set to an off site URL. At that point, the only way to quit the application, is to kill the process in Linux.

Hotjava: click for a larger image.

The browser did a great job of rendering the pages, with one small exception. The single-lined grey box that runs around this article (a table within a table) in not visible in Hotjava.

Another test involved resizing the browser window. Many browsers force a reload of the window when it is resized even the slightest bit. While Hotjava does this, but the screen redraws are very fast. The page is not reloaded from the internet, but is redrawn.

One missing item was a cache setting. Apparently, Hotjava caches everything to memory, there is not a preference for a disk cache. Caching from memory makes the "Back" and "Forward" functions quite snappy.

In speed tests, Hotjava ranked last in rendering web pages, and particularly slow when a large page contained complex tables.

The built in emailer is bare bones, allowing you to reply to mailto links, but little else. There is no address book, no filing system, in fact, it can only send mail, not receive.

For day to day use, one of the most annoying aspects of Hotjava is the way in it manages bookmarks. Selecting a site means painfully working your way down the menu list. If you edit your bookmarks, you have to quit and relaunch for the changes to take effect.

Galeon is a Gnome web browser that uses the Gecko rendering engine from Mozilla. In fact, Mozilla M17 needs to be installed in order for Galeon to work. Because of its integration with Gnome, this browser is the only one that accepts the window manager's theme settings.

Galeon: click for a larger image.

Galeon flawlessly imports Netscape's bookmarks. Bookmark menu layout is similar to Netscape, so you'll feel immediately comfortable running this browser. Galeon doesn't require you to be connected to the net to use it, so if you're like me and create web pages on the train ride home, you can preview them in Galeon.

To keep it lean and mean, the browser doesn't have an integrated email client. Clicking on a mailto link launches the helper application for that mime type, ironically, on my computer that is Netscape!

Galeon does a great job of rendering pages. While not as fast, Galeon is the one browser tested that could replace Netscape 4.7 for your daily browsing. The ability to accept the desktop theme easily make it the most beautiful.

Mozilla: click for a larger image.

An annoying drawback, is that it won't load documents off the local hard drive. It also reloads a page when you resize the browser window. This is odd because Mozilla doesn't do this, and Galeon uses the Gecko engine.

The Open Source Mozilla M17 proved to be the biggest disappointment.

While it's very fast at rendering pages and moving back and forth through your History, drawing artifacts in the user interface makes it almost impossible to make a menu selection or set a preference in a dialog box.

Typical M17 Menu

These visual drawbacks are unfortunate because it's the only browser that doesn't reload or redraw the window after a resizing.

Other than the older Netscape, it's the only browser tested that comes with fully integrated news and mail clients. Both perform well, but again, testing was limited due to visual interface glitches.

Since Mozilla and Galeon both use the same rendering engine, it's embarrassing that M17 lags so far behind the gnome newcomer. It seems the end user experience rates low on the list for Mozilla developers (this shouldn't be a surprise to Mac users who are still waiting for an updated Menu Definition for Platinum Menus).

Netscape 4.7.3 was by far the most stable of the browsers tested. It was also the speediest. It's comforting to move between Windows, MacOS, and Linux and use the same browser interface.

Netscape: click for a larger image.

While it's not theme compliant like Galeon, Netscape will pick up the KDE color scheme for it's windows and menus (see the image on the right).

In the very near future, the KDE group will release version 2 of their desktop environment. Included will be Konqueror, a web browser. This browser is rumored to be the second coming. Already Kmail was chosen as the best Linux email client by LinuxFORMAT magazine (7/00), it will be interesting to see what that group of programmers can do for web browsers under Linux.

When initially interested in sampling the browser pickings under Linux, I expected most offerings to run on Intel hardware. I was pleased to see rpm's for four different programs. If you're running Linux, that means you already love to experiment. Try these browsers, they are continually updated, and make your own decisions.

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Links to LinuxPPC software mentioned in this article:

< Hotjava: Java Runtime Environment. Java Developer Kit. Open Motif,>

Galeon. Netscape 4.7.3. Mozilla M17.