A working web browser for Ubuntu?

[Jaggie]

Firefox is extremely unstable; crashes, freezes for several seconds, flash works only partly. Also, annoingly, every time I wake up my computer I'll have to restart Firefox if I want it to give me suggestions from page history when I'm writing on the address bar.

Opera seems to work fine otherwise, but if I try to scroll in any direction with the trackpoint, it throws me to the previous page. This is a MAJOR flaw.

So the question is a) can either of the above problems be fixed somehow or b) does a another, working web browser exist for Ubuntu?

I'm using T400 with GMA 4500MHD/Radeon 3470, Ubuntu 9.04 (cannot update to 9.10 since the support for Huawei E169 USB modem has been removed).

[tylerwylie]

There's Arora, Epiphany, Midori...

[maciejs]

If firefox is acting up like that try to use Opera. That scrolling issue can easily be fixed - try googling around but it's basically that horizontal scrolling is mapped to back/forward in Opera (vertical scrolling is... well, scrolling), you just need to disable that.

Also, are you sure you cannot use that USB modem in 9.10? Karmic is quite an improvement over Jaunty...

[GomJabbar]

To fix scrolling in Opera, edit the file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi as root with the following content:

Code: Select all

<match key="info.product" string="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"> 
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge> 
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge> 
 <merge key="input.x11_options.YAxisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge> 
 <merge key="input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons" type="string">true</merge> 
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelTimeout" type="string">200</merge> 
</match>

There is another line that you can put in there to enable horizontal scrolling, but it did not work well on my T42 - too jumpy.

Code: Select all

<merge key="input.x11_options.XAxisMapping" type="string">6 7</merge>

For horizontal scrolling you also need to edit /usr/share/opera/ui/standard_mouse.ini and comment out Button 6 and Button 7 thus:

Code: Select all

;Button6                                                        = Back 
;Button7                                                        = Forward

[caramerdo]

You can give a try to the latest Google Chrome. I did, and never looked back.
Of course, its a development preview, a bit unstable (but no more than Firefox), and way way faster.

http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel
Just download the .deb at the end. Remember to check every month or so for an update... or official release!

[madcow]

I think firefox 3.6 beta is pretty fast.. loads almost as fast as chrome (I'm using SSD).

google for "ppa firefox 3.6"