Linux browser smackdown!

Although there's more to it, it's hard to shake the feeling that Epiphany is just a pretty good theme for Firefox; a kind of retro look back to the heady days of Netscape Navigator. That being the case, there may be a question over the point of the project and, as it stands, the browser doesn't offer any compelling reasons to abandon the innovations of Firefox 3. Which is a shame, because Epiphany isn't bad – it's just dated.

Verdict: A good browser rapidly being eclipsed by Firefox. It's not bad, but you can certainly run better. 7/10

Lynx

Pure browsing, or a pointless endeavour? Browsing with Lynx is certainly different.

As the web becomes more visually sophisticated, is there still a niche for a text-only browser? Lynx thinks so, eschewing graphics in favour of displaying web pages through a standard Linux terminal.

This means changing everything about the way you approach the internet - even basic web navigation - is unfamiliar. In fact, after a few seconds the novelty totally wore off and we began to long for some comforting visual cues.

However, Lynx is essential for anybody involved in building websites. Lynx accurately displays pages as a blind person would experience them with speech synthesis software, making it invaluable for accessibility optimisation.

It's also useful to view sites in the browser as a check, because it shows up 'badly' designed sites - making them near unreadable - and issues pop up that would pass many graphical browsers by. You'll find out how many cookies a site tries to put on your machine, for instance, because Lynx will demand explicit approval for each of them.

It might seem a bit impenetrable, but websites that have been designed with accessibility in mind – such as the BBC's low-graphics news site – are surprisingly easy to read.

Once a story is displayed, the text is broken down into easy-to-manage pages, obviating the need for mouse scrolling. Hitting the Space bar takes you to the next page, the left cursor key goes back one page in your history and the right key goes forward.

Attempt to view something like Facebook or YouTube and you'll be out of luck, but with blogs and news sites… it's OK. If you're looking for upsides, running Lynx consumed approximately 2.6MB per tab which, compared with Firefox's 76MB average, is pretty good. Still, unless you need it, it's hard to recommend Lynx in the year 2008.

Verdict: Pretty good for a text browser but, er, it's a text browser, so it's still fundamentally limited. 4/10

Dillo

Dillo's purpose in life is to put a spring in the step of your older computers. It's small, fast and wouldn't trouble even a low-spec laptop.

To that end, it comes in a small package and has a memory footprint (averaging 1.6MB) that makes Lynx look like a resource hog. Using Synaptic on Ubuntu, Dillo downloaded and installed in just under 10 seconds. Booting up the application is also swift, appearing on our desktop in under a second.

Dillo is due for a refresh shortly, where the ageing interface will be replaced with an FLTK equivalent. This is good, because the current interface is definitely old-school. The interface buttons have natural language tooltips which wouldn't sound out of place in a 1950s public information film and even the tabs look like they've been hewn from Welsh bluestone.

The browser itself follows the standard design of having a toolbar at the top of the window and a large portal designed for the viewing of pages themselves. Like the most recent offerings from Microsoft and Google, there's no room for a menu bar, meaning options for configuring the browser are accessible via the unintuitive V menu.