I usually have an automatic hostile reaction to allegations that Firefox on Linux is dead slow compared to the Windows version; however, I have to admit that I don’t have any point of reference, since it’s the only browser/OS combo I use.
However, Ovid’s mention of Midori, and Israel’s geekalicious demo of uzbl last night, made me pay attention. Midori is lightning fast, but when I try to visit youtube or facebook, it crashes. However, Epiphany is available in the Ubuntu repositories, just a sudo apt-get install epiphany away, and it’s also based on webkit.
So far, Facebook (with its SSL login, heavy Javascript and Flash videos, I think it makes a fine usability benchmark) and Dokuwiki (where Google Chrome had issues) work fine. The address bar completion isn’t as useful, and typing something that isn’t a url takes you to a google search instead of to an “I feel lucky” result; also, the address bar isn’t focused when you open a new tab, there isn’t spellchecking and firebug. But otherwise… very cool.

Update: so apparently I am an idiot. In the comment thread (below the blog post where I read about Midori, someone mentioned Epiphany. I typed sudo apt-get install epiphany, and something got installed. I typed “epiphany” at the command prompt, and a web browser ran. But the package “epiphany” actually installs something else. To install the epiphany web browser, you actually need to install either the package epiphany-browser or the still not-quite-ready epiphany-webkit. The program I ran is apparently is the current version of the epiphany browser (default part of Ubuntu?), which as Tal notes is still based on Mozilla. No wonder that it works as well as Firefox – is the same browser.

At home I just tried Arora, which is a Qt4 webkit-based browser.Has no Flash and is not that fast, which I guess just shows that a browser is only as fast as your internet connection allows.

No more zombie 32 bit plugin wrapper processes thrashing in gasps of mad memory consumption?

The big thing to make KDE4 prettier is it’s new desktop, called “plasma”, which can embed all sorts of pretty widgets. These are mostly pretty, but not quite well thought out. For example, instead of showing files scattered about the desktop, they now appear in a sort of folder, which looks like a pretty file browser window, with pretty icons – except this isn’t – if you click a folder icon inside it, the real file browser program opens. My favorite widget is a picture slideshow thing, and there’s a pretty weather report widget I downloaded (it requires compiling, but is very pretty).

Kubuntu default colors

It’s kind of jarring that the default look of plasma widgets is all glassy black and dark blues, while the default look of all the new KDE applications is light grey – so when the real file browser opens up, it looks completely different than the Plasma file folder widget (or the file menu in the task bar or whatever). Apparently, plasma uses its own themes, and the default theme, called Oxygen, doesn’t at all match the default theme of all the rest of the KDE applications (called also, confusingly, Oxygen). Also, Firefox (and Thunderbird) aren’t KDE applications, so they really don’t match the way all the other programs look. Luckily, there’s a Firefox theme for KDE4, KFirefox.

To match the l33t blackness of Plasma, I switched to a dark KDE theme called Wonton Soup (for no reason I can understand); then I recalled Zenburn, the lovely dark vim color scheme I really liked when I first saw it in Cream, but which I has forgotten about until Tal mentioned it in his LJ. So I installed zenburn for vim and for Konsole (the KDE terminal). Andf then I noticed that KFireffox didn’t really pick up all the system colors, so I switched back to the default Firefox theme, which did use all the dark Wonton soup theme colors.

And finally I discovered that there is a Plasma theme, called Aya, which does use your system colors (that is, the same colors as every other program).

But by then, I’d already grown rather fond of all the dark grey on my desktop.

KDE4 Aya + Wonton Soup + Zenburn

Also, there’s the issue of transfering stuff between the phone and my computer. There’s a USB cable, but the phone doesn’t simply mount as another drive, like any USB drive should. There’s actually some ornate synchronization protocol and some remarkably user-unfriendly tools for using it, which I haven’t managed to get to work. Also, many tools expect you to use a Bluetooth-enabled computer.

I found a good step-by-step tutorial on setting something up here: Nokia PC Suite for Linux with ObexTool on Ubuntu Gutsy. It’s actually not equivalent to the PC Suite thing, because it doesn’t synchronize calenders and contacts, which are hidden away on the phone in some arcane corner. But it works for transfering files (MP3s, photos). So, whatever.