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There has been a lot of talk lately about Google’s Chrome coming to Linux. Chrome on Windows is a light weight and fast browser and having this browser available on Linux is desirable to many people. Me, I don’t care as much because I already use a fast and lean browser. It’s called Epiphany.
Epiphany, according to their website, is the web browser for the Gnome desktop. If it doesn’t already come packaged with your Gnome distro, it can easily be picked up from the repositories. Epiphany has some advantages over other browsers, so I would recommend others to install and use this browser as their primary or secondary browser.
While some web browsers are competing with each other for the top rank in the speed category, Epiphany is largely ignored in this area. That is a shame, as it is quite fast. I don’t have any benchmark tests to validate my points, but user experience will trump technical data every time.
Try comparing the start-up times for Firefox and Epiphany. Notice how much faster Epiphany is? It takes a couple seconds for Firefox to load up for me while Epiphany loads up almost instantly. The elapsed time is less than a second from the time I click on the Epiphany icon on my panel, Epiphany starts up and my home page is rendered. That is extremely fast if you ask me.
Web browsing speed is faster in Epiphany as compared to Firefox. Again, I have no benchmarks to prove this but my personal experience (or bias?) has proven this. I leave this to you to try out as well. Go to some heavy loading websites and compare the loading times to other browsers that you use and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with Epiphany’s performance.
While no other browser can compare to Firefox when it comes to customization, Epiphany does have some extensions available. An ad blocker and greasemonkey can easily be incorporated into this browser and there are many other useful extensions as well.
Overall, Epiphany is a light weight and speedy browser that has been largely ignored in the browser speed wars. It has been overlooked by many, but in my house Epiphany is respected as the speed king!
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I use epiphany in Gentoo. (I also use firefox) Epiphany is faster on my system.
I use Epiphany in Arch as well as FF and just like you, Epiphany is faster on my system as well.
I can confirm Epiphany is very fast browser. On my system (PIII 1 Ghz, 768 Mb Ram) I use it as a primary browser because Firefox 2 is almost unusable. Epiphany is warmly to recommend. The new Epiphany will use Webkit instead of Gecko – it is very possible that it will get even faster.
I honestly can’t wait till Epiphany (and by extension, Gnome) officially uses Webkit. It’s a great engine, and I love how its being opened up to just about every platform.
@Tervel @Sean Tilley – I too look forward to when Epiphany switches to Webkit. I think the gains in speed will be quite noticeable and maybe, just maybe, Epiphany will no longer just be some form of an alternate browser but will become a browser of choice.
This is soo true.. I am amazed as to why it is being ignored. Javascript rendering is just amazing and it’s cold start is just absolutely amazing.
Great blog, I couldn’t agree much more. Underrated, speedy, and blessedly simple-looking (nowhere near as busy as Firefox 3). Like the other blog participants, I find Epiphany to be very useful not only in a GNOME environment. For example, I just rebuilt a 1999 Compaq laptop with an Ubuntu base install and ICEWm window manager. Epiphany is an absolutely perfect fit on this machine – much more usable than anything else I tried. (In the underrated-browser category, I’d also like to put in a vote for SeaMonkey).
I second Epiphany as a grrrrrrrreat web browser for old rigs. On my Athlon 1.4Ghz w/512 MB of RAM, Epiphany really flies. I also tried FireFox and Arora, and Epiphany won hands down. Simple to use, instant start up, no bloat… it’s a winner.