Linux Browser Turns to Webkit for Relief

The boys at Mozilla have already taken notice, so you might as well also. The people who work on the Gnome environment have decided that perhaps it’s time for a change, and are dropping the Mozilla browser guts to make Epiphany.

Instead, the new versions will use Webkit, so speed will be increased, and it’s anyone’s guess whether the new browser will behave more like Chrome or Safari. (My money is on a safari look-alike, and work-alike.)

as reported on Download Squad

Gnome 2.28 was released this week, and one of the more interesting changes was the switch taking place in Epiphany, Gnome’s default web browser. There’s been a change under the hood, with Mozilla Gecko being replaced by Webkit.

Webkit has made some serious gains this year in terms of browser market share. Already providing the powerplant for Safari, Google Chrome, and Maxthon 3 (as well as numerous others), the open source project continues to win converts — due in no small part to its speediness.

No, gaining Epiphany doesn’t mean Webkit-based browsers are going to overtake Firefox for second place overall in browser share any time soon. But when you consider the large number of Gnome-based Linux distributions out there, this is still an interesting development for the Webkit project.

The story was originally in Linux magazine, so the word is definitely out in the community. Perhaps someone in the KDE camp will wake up, because their offerings are nothing to write home about, and Webkit has to be an improvement on K-Meleon.

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Opera, it’s still the one!