A poster child for the bastard stepchild (Was: What is Epiphany's role now?)

[Albert Hopkins <marduk+gnome letterboxes org>]

On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 10:57 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> Unfortunately, I think we have lost the battle to get Epiphany installed
> as the default browser on popular Linux distributions. The Firefox brand
> was just something that they couldn't do without.
> 
Perhaps with some Linux distributions.  Unless you consider wget to be a
browser, I use a (major) Linux distro that doesn't have a default
browser.  When you install/use GNOME you get Epiphany as the default.
In fact my GNOME desktop doesn't even have Firefox installed.

The fact that Firefox appears on most desktop Linux distros is simply a
matter of marketing.  Linux and Firefox are poster children of OSS.  Put
them together and it's an Unbeatable Combo[TM].

[question to developers deleted]

> Personally, I think it's time instead to fix Firefox as much as
> possible, as difficult as that is.
> 

I don't know what's perceived to be "broken" with Firefox (I don't use
it much except on the rare occasion I'm in Windows), but my feeling is
that Firefox and Epiphany have entirely different philosophies.
Epiphany appears to be "browser for the GNOME desktop" and probably
"fits in" more naturally then Firefox or other browsers with the general
GNOME user experience.  OTOH Firefox appears to be the "open source
alternative" to Internet Explorer, with Linux, GNOME, etc just happening
to get pulled in because they're open source.  I've always considered
the Linux/GNOME user to be the bastard stepchild of Firefox. To that
end, it's hardly different than running Konquerer on GNOME: it works,
but it doesn't fit in with the GNOME user experience.

But if you're looking to "fix" Firefox by making it fit the GNOME
better, it appears that's what Epiphany is trying to do.  So why not
instead "fix" Epiphany?

--
Albert W. Hopkins