Hello All, Well seems like this topic has more than just me interested. Thanks to all for replying..(too long a list) So here goes. 1. Opera -> Almost everyone seemed to have good things to say about this product, so i downloaded and installed it(installation is a breeze) Most people find it fast, fewer crashes, nicer UI etc Problems: Been in Beta for 8 months now(canned ?) No Java, no integrated mail client for solaris. Commercial license $30 odd. :( 2. IE -> I was surprised to get 2 emails from people saying that they liked them and that it worked great for them. I have used IE once on Solaris 7/Ultra 10, and it was very,very slow(i wouldnt use it, even if it wasnt) 3. Netscape 4.x -> Most people seem to be using this, and hate it! Problems: random crashes, speed etc. 4. Mozilla -> Most anticipated, but those running on nightly builds, seemed to have a mixed reaction of sorts. 5. Netscape 6 -> Personally, i find it extremely slow(esp to start up) and even though it has a mail and news client, i dont like it much. Not many complained about Netscape 6. 6. Konqueror -> One guy running KDE liked it. (will try this tonite) 7. Galeon -> One guy liked this.(will try this soon too) Below are all the replies that i got. Once again, thanks to those who replied. Regards, Dev Null. From: "McCaffity, Ray (Contractor)" <McCaffityR@epg.lewis.army.mil> To: "'devnull@adc.idt.com'" <devnull@adc.idt.com> Subject: RE: Choice of Browser on Solaris [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] We use IE5, it works just fine. http://www.microsoft.com/Unix/ie/downloads/recommended/ie5/default.asp From: Thomas Anders <anders@hmi.de> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris devnull@adc.idt.com wrote: > Currently, we use Netscape 4.76/4.79 as our browser, and i am not terribly > pleased with the way it behaves some(most) of the times. Randomly crashes, > freezes up etc. Has anyone had good luck with Mozilla/Opera/Galeon/Konqueror > or IE(just kidding). We prefer Mozilla and it works fine, but it needs much more resources (cpu, memory) than Netscape 4.x. Although Galeon is based on Mozilla, it has problems with X.509 certificates which Mozilla handles fine. My $0.02, Thomas -- Thomas Anders <anders@hmi.de> Hahn-Meitner-Institut Berlin, Germany From: Justin Stringfellow <js70062@twinkie.uk.sun.com> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris >People use Netscape to browse and for email also. Opera is no good then since it doesn't include a mail client, unless you're OK with installing a seperate mail client to go with it. Actually I'd say opera looks very promising - although it's been a beta product for a good nine months now, I'm wondering when the real thing will be available. It certainly feels quicker than Netscape. However, Netscape 4.x seems to be the de facto standard here... -- ______ /_____/\ Justin Stringfellow /____ \\ \ Senior Support Engineer /_____\ \\ / Sun Microsystems /_____/ \/ / / Guillemont Park /_____/ / \//\ \_____\//\ / / Tel. : +44 (0)870 6003222 \_____/ / /\ / \_____/ \\ \ \_____\ \\ \_____\/ From: Lars Hecking <lhecking@nmrc.ie> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris devnull@adc.idt.com writes: > Hello Managers, > > Not a solaris question, but i was hoping on getting some valuable insight > from ya'll. > > Currently, we use Netscape 4.76/4.79 as our browser, and i am not terribly > pleased with the way it behaves some(most) of the times. Randomly crashes, > freezes up etc. Has anyone had good luck with Mozilla/Opera/Galeon/Konqueror > or IE(just kidding). netscape 4.79 works fine for me, no crashes, but I don't use it much. I'm tracking mozilla cvs, but that's sort of a rollercoaster ride as stability/bugs changes almost daily. I run it directly from the build directory, and when it doesn't properly, I do a make distclean and wait for the next day's cvs updates. If it works fine, I build a package and install it somwehere else, always keeping the installed version before that, and sometime keeping another version around that proved exceptionally stable. mozilla from yesterday's cvs, and possibly going back two weeks or so, is unable to show me the web pages of the Iris Times - I get an info box with "Document contains no data", whereas netscape shows everything just fine. However, you can assume that stability usually peaks at or around milestone release time. Not really helpful, just my experiences with mozilla. -l From: ed.rolison@itc.alstom.com To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris Lynx! From: John Martinez <john@mtbiker.net> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris devnull@adc.idt.com wrote: > Hello Managers, > > Not a solaris question, but i was hoping on getting some valuable insight > from ya'll. > > Currently, we use Netscape 4.76/4.79 as our browser, and i am not terribly > pleased with the way it behaves some(most) of the times. Randomly crashes, > freezes up etc. Has anyone had good luck with Mozilla/Opera/Galeon/Konqueror > or IE(just kidding). > > There are a plethora of new browsers out there, and i am trying decide > what to go with. > > People use Netscape to browse and for email also. > > Thanks, > > Regards, > Dev I've been using the Mozilla nightly builds on Solaris 8 for about two weeks now. They work great. The latest nightly build I tried (20020415) doesn't run for some reason, though. There are bugs, so if you want more stability, I would stick with the milestone releases or with Netscape 6. Since Netscape 6 is based on Mozilla, the features are almost the same, except that Netscape 6 offers the "AOL"isms like AIM and such. Mozilla supports mail and news like Netscape 6. My next choices are Netscape 6 (download from Sun), and Konqueror since I use KDE. Of the three, Konqueror seems the fastest on my Ultra 10. -john From: "Connolly, Michael" <Michael.Connolly@itt.com> To: "'devnull@adc.idt.com'" <devnull@adc.idt.com> Subject: RE: Choice of Browser on Solaris You would think the Sun-AOL Alliance would have addressed these issues with Netscape on Solaris :-( Please be sure to summarize - I'd be most interested in what you hear. Regards, Michael J. Connolly North/South American CAD/CAM/PDM Systems Mgr ITT Cannon/C&K Switch Products 617-926-6400 x8302 From: Ric Anderson <ric@opus1.com> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] When (if) ms releeases IE 6 for Unix, we might have a decent browser. I (like you) and growing more disenchanted with netscape 4.x, and the beta 6.x Sun made available was even worse. Mozilla wouldn't work because it died trying to convert netscape bits (that might have been fixed by now). Where I work, most Sun users now use sylpheed for mail and news, and limp with netscape or i.e. 5.5 for a browser. I got so frustrated with the Sun desktop mess (not enough video memory in a 1 year old system to run 1280x1024 with 24 bit color, no decent browser,...) that I traded my UltraSparc-10 for a Windows 2000 box. I use Xwin-32 from starnet.com to administer the Solaris machines. Win2k has proven to be a rock solid stable platform for mys desktop use. It scares me (as a Sun lover) to know ms has an OS this good. Cheers, Ric Anderson (ric@Opus1.com) From: David M. Spreitzer <dspreitzer@hscil.com> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris I've experienced the same problems as you have with Netscape 4.x and upgraded to 6.2.1 and the crashes/hangs have minimize but performance seems to be a bit slower. From: Mike Bruno <isentropic@lycos.com> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris Dev, I've had very good luck with Opera. Its well written and well thought out. It will, however, crash every now and again (not nearly as often as Netscape) but the software handles this very cleanly. On the next invocation, a popup will appear stating that Opera has exiting uncleanly and gives you the option of continuing browsing where you were when it crashed. If you had ten windows open, then all ten come right back. I think this bodes very well for Opera. The developers have recognized a problem and, while they haven't been able to eliminate it, they have provided an acceptable way around it. You can see this type of thoroughness throughout the program. Not to mention a plethora of options. Unfortunately, the Unix versions of Opera don't come with a mail client. Opera will, however, interface nicely to whatever mail client you specify. Mike -- From: Gerard Henry <Gerard.Henry@cmi.univ-mrs.fr> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris i use mozilla 0.9.9 and i m very happy with it on solaris 8. -- Gerard HENRY From: Tim Chipman <chipman@ecopiabio.com> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris I'll be very interested to hear what your summary reveals on this topic :-) since I'm also very curious about this topic. My observations so far, -netscape 4.X lineage has real stability problems when java, javascripts are enabled. we use a lot of applets developed in-house on our intranet site here, and netscape-solaris crashes with insane frequency. (in contrast, netscape-Win or IE-win or Netscape/IE on MacOS work just fine for the same content). -netscape 6 lineage including mozilla core seems to be signficantly slower / more bloated than the old 4.X netscape, and still appears as crash-prone for our java applets in general. Possibly the newest netscape 6.2X (?) rev is a bit less slow though ? -Opera seems very snappy but the solaris (beta) version doesn't yet support java plugin. For basic HTML rendering it is fast and stable in my testing. Alas the project hasn't moved out of beta in over 8 months, so I suspect it is orphaned. Sigh. (the linux version, in contrast, has moved forward a lot since then and also has java plugin support...) -I have used IE5 on solaris (initially I was even amazed it existed) and found it behaved "fairly well" for basic content. Java plugin support was a bit of a mess and I was also not thrilled with memory / CPU footprint of IE. -No experience with the other browsers (is there a konquerer solaris sparc port?) on solaris so can't really comment, sorry. As far as I'm concerned, Sun is really in trouble if they can't get a decent / stable browser working on solaris - that is, assuming they still want to pretend being semi-serious about providing a halfway decent desktop work environment / OS. Right now, the Netcape browser solutions stink if you need lots of java integration, which seems particularly ironic given that sun is sort-of -supposedly interested in promoting java in general :-) Just my 2 cents ... --Tim From: Andrew J Caines <Andrew.J.Caines@wcom.com> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Warning: opinionated response ahead. > Currently, we use Netscape 4.76/4.79 as our browser, and i am not terribly > pleased with the way it behaves some(most) of the times. Same with everyone else since around 4.0 (or 3.0 depending on your view). > Has anyone had good luck with Mozilla/Opera/Galeon/Konqueror > or IE(just kidding). I use Mozilla primarily. It's probably the best browser that runs with no large baggage on Solaris. It works well, is very functional and is also being actively improved and should make a good 1.0. Disadvantages are that it's a pig to build and release binaries are only available for Solaris 8. Snapshots work on 7 (and maybe 2.6), but are often less reliable. Java is iffy. I haven't tried Opera on Solaris, but though many folks like it, I didn't enjoy the UI when I tried it some time back. Galeon is the best browser out there. I'd love to run it on my Solaris box, but there is no way I am going to track all the dependencies. I use it on FreeBSD where the ports collection does all the work for me. The moment there's a package (with deps) or OpenPKG, I'll switch. I've never used Konqueror because I've never tried KDE. The KDE users seem to like it. IE is available for Solaris and does "run". I haven't tried it since 5.0, when I found it to be unbearably slow - mainly due to the API layer which (as I understand) is used to run the app. I also don't like MS UIs. Netscape 6 should be avoided since it combines the worst of old Mozilla with the worst of Netscape junk. There is at least one other browser worth adding to your system: w3m. w3m is a terminal based browser which can do just about everything - frames, tables, cookies, SSL, ... and images. It can even handle mouse input - you can double-click on links in a terminal! See http://w3m.sourceforge.net/ for details. You may want to dig on Slashdot, as there have been a couple of good browser reviews in the last few months. -Andrew- -- From: David Foster <foster@dim.ucsd.edu> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris I had tried to install the Netscape 6.2.1 beta version from Sun's site but the installation script failed. Haven't had time to track it down. I've heard 6.2 is a big improvement over 4.7x. Dave Foster From: Greg Polanski <greg_polanski@adc.com> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris Netscape 4.76 and 4.78 on solaris 7 has been very good for me. Netscape 6.2.1 is good too. 4.7* is nicer for copy paste than 6.2.1 I also used opera and it is fine. greg From: Jay Lessert <jayl@accelerant.net> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris On Wed, Apr 17, 2002 at 09:49:12AM -0400, devnull@adc.idt.com wrote: > Hello Managers, > > Not a solaris question, but i was hoping on getting some valuable insight > from ya'll. > > Currently, we use Netscape 4.76/4.79 as our browser, and i am not terribly > pleased with the way it behaves some(most) of the times. Randomly crashes, > freezes up etc. Has anyone had good luck with Mozilla/Opera/Galeon/Konqueror > or IE(just kidding). I've been using the Solaris/SPARC Opera beta for almost a year now. Compared to Netscape, Plus: Much faster. Plus: Much fewer crashes. Plus: Works on *almost* every website I need. Plus: Superior UI. Minus: No Java. Minus: Been in beta almost a year, with no revisions. Minus: View source just plain doesn't work. Minus: Some websites plain don't work and you either have to fire up Netscape for that site, or never visit that site. I do about half and half. Even with the minuses, Opera is still my daily browser. I still end up using Netscape 2-3 times/week, but there is no temptation to leave it up, Opera is that much faster and more stable. Haven't tried Mozilla/Galeon/Konqueror. From: Farouk Khawaja <cresentmoon@khawaja.ws> To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris I used mozilla and liked it, but the 'tabs' feature kept causing it to crash on my Sol8 box. The problem with some of the other browser options is that they don't or have limited support for flash and other such technologies. I'm using Netscape 6 from sun and it works pretty well. You can find it @: http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/netscape/getnetscape621.html good luck. From: Bertrand_Hutin@notes.amdahl.com To: devnull@adc.idt.com Subject: Re: Choice of Browser on Solaris Opera works fine. I use the 5.11 Beta. /dev/null devnull@adc.idt.com _______________________________________________ sunmanagers mailing list sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagersReceived on Wed Apr 17 18:30:02 2002
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