Pinderkent

I felt the need to clarify some things with this article that discusses so-called "Ubuntu Web Browsers". The fact of the matter is that those browsers are in no way tied to Ubuntu. Likewise, Ubuntu supports browsers other than those.

Browsers like Firefox and Opera run on many different operating systems, from Windows, to Linux, to Mac OS X, to Solaris, to FreeBSD. Check out the Opera FTP site for proof of this. Look at the wide range of platforms they support. And don't forget that some of those directories, like the "unix" directory, themselves contain several platforms.

As for the rendering problems you mentioned, you may want to give Konqueror a try. It's a browser put out by the KDE project, and should be quite easily installed on your Ubuntu system. It uses the KHTML rendering engine, which is different from the engines used by Opera, Firefox, and the other browsers you mentioned.

Konqueror is a web browser developed as part of the KDE project. KDE is, of course, one of the major open source desktop environments. Over time, Konqueror has become well-known for its high quality and standards-compliance. So I really wasn't surprised when today I read an article stating that KHTML 3.5.6 is the most CSS3-compliant browser. The article does make one comment that I would like to address, however: It really is a shame that only a tiny proportion of web users have access to this excellent browser.

I would consider that statement to be incorrect. Virtually every web user can use Konqueror. All they would need to do is install an operating system like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, or Mac OS X. For most people, at least one of those operating systems will run on some piece of hardware they have available. And easily enough they'll be able to install KDE, and be able to experience the full benefit of Konqueror for themselves. Of course, that will change once KDE 4, which will likely offer native support for Windows systems, is released.

It's often the most flashy and rapidly-developed open source applications that get the most attention. Most people focus on projects like Beryl, Metisse, Firefox, OpenOffice.org and Ubuntu. But we can't forget the importance of the open source software an average user doesn't see every day. This is a list of nine such programs and libraries.

9. GNU GDB
As any C or C++ developer knows, a good debugger is an essential tool. On many open source operating systems, GNU GDB plays that role. The innards of applications can be examined using GDB, allowing one to determine where in a program a bug exists, and what may need to change to fix the problem. It is without doubt that GDB has contributed greatly to the high degree of stability we experience when using systems like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD.

8. X Window Server
The command line is all that is needed for many tasks. But others, including web browsing, image editing and video manipulation, benefit greatly from the use of a graphical environment. This is where an X Window implementation comes in. Some of the most popular implementations today include X.org and XFree86.

7. GNU Binutils
The tools of the GNU Binutils package may be among the most unknown to non-developers. But those who do implement software know the importance of tools like ld, as, and ar. Without linkers, assemblers and library archivers we likely wouldn't be able to produce the large scale systems we have today.

6. GNU Bash
To truly make use of an open source UNIX-like system, one needs to have a good shell. GNU Bash is just such a shell. The default shell of many Linux distributions, Bash draws features from existing shells such as sh, ksh and csh, in addition to adding useful functionality of its own.

While system like FreeBSD, NetBSD and Solaris offer their own shell implementations, many users and administrators on those systems still choose to use Bash, just because it has a large feature set and is widely portable. They can learn how to use it on one system, and will be able to bring that knowledge to any other system they use that has Bash installed.

5. tar, gzip and bzip2
A major aspect of open source software is how it is distributed. In source form, a popular distribution method is that of a tar archive compressed using either bzip2 or gzip. To create and extract the actual tar files, a number of applications exist, including GNU tar, FreeBSD tar, OpenSolaris tar, and star. Without these utilities, it would be difficult and costly to share our open source software.

4. GNU GRUB
While not all open source operating systems use GNU GRUB as their bootloader, it has become a major player because it so easily allows a single PC to boot operating systems as diverse as Linux, Windows and FreeBSD.

3. C Library
The C library is one of the most essential libraries on a UNIX-like system. Without this library, the vast majority of open source applications will not run. Even applications written in languages like Python or Perl depend on a C library being present, as the standard interpreters for those languages are themselves written in C.

Being somewhat system-specific, a number of C library implementations exist. Most Linux distributions use Glibc or uClibc. FreeBSD libc, OpenBSD libc, NetBSD libc and OpenSolaris libc are also well-known C libraries used by many people every day. Thanks to these libraries, we are able to write portable C code with relative ease.

2. Open Source Operating System Kernel
The kernel of an operating system provides the basis upon which we can implement higher level functionality. For most of the major open source operating systems, the kernel provides the basic infrastructure needed for us to build device drivers, filesystems, networking support, and also the userland applications and libraries we directly interact with.

Linux distributions are clearly built around the Linux kernel. As with the C libraries mentioned above, the FreeBSD kernel, OpenBSD kernel, NetBSD kernel and OpenSolaris kernel are also frequently used by many. They form what may be among the most essential parts of an open source operating system.

1. GCC: The GNU Compiler Collection
Without a good compiler for various high level languages, it's quite difficult to write the large scale applications that we depend on today. That's why GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, is listed here as the most essential open source application. Even software as essential as the Linux or FreeBSD kernels would not be usable without the presence of GCC.

GCC is truly a remarkable compiler system. It supports languages like Ada, C, C++, Fortran, Objective-C and even Java. It also includes the runtime and class libraries needed for such languages. Even more remarkable is the number of platforms that GCC not only runs on, but can generate code for. When we consider that even some of the major open source operating system kernels are useless without GCC, we can truly see how important of an application it is.

Ubuntu has really become a popular Linux distribution these days. This is a mixed blessing. On one hand, there are users who want it to get as close as possible to the bleeding edge. On the other hand, there are those who seek a high degree of stability. Most users are somewhere in the middle of those two extremes, where they want a system that is up to date, but also reliable. The difficult of finding this balance is shown quite well by this article that points out some of Ubuntu's recent quality control problems.

John, I'd like to recommend that you try FreeBSD. It is well-known for its prowess as a high-quality server operating system. But it also offers exactly what is needed for a stable, modern workstation OS. And thanks to the excellent FreeBSD Ports collection, basically every open source application you were using on Ubuntu is available on FreeBSD. For those Linux-specific applications that you can't recompile on FreeBSD, you can always try the Linux binary compatibility, which I have found to work quite well most of the time.

I have been a user of FreeBSD for many years now, and it has never let me down. And I think it may be just the sort of operating system you're looking for. It's a powerful modern system, but whose developers put a great degree of focus on quality, reliability, stability, and performance.

I feel lucky that I do not really have to deal with Windows on a regular basis. Unfortunately, most other people are not so lucky. Those who have to fix malware-infested Windows computers are perhaps the worst off of us all. Windows computers are notorious for getting infected quite easily, and then being a major hassle to clean up. I'm talking about a scenario like the one described in an article at Slashdot.

But I'm uncertain about one particular portion of that post, however. Specifically, it's this part of that post: I spent two frickin' hours cleaning and protecting my sister's and niece's XP laptops over xmas. Pain in the ass, but at least they're running clean and happy now.

My uncertainty comes from the part concerning them "running clean". When dealing with Windows installations suffering from a severe case of malware infestation, it can be virtually impossible to ensure that the system is actually "clean". Even applications that appear to be completely legitimate can end up best being described as malware.

One of the main reasons I like to use systems like FreeBSD, Solaris and Linux is that they're far more resistant to such malware infestation. Part of this is because they aren't targeted as much as Windows computers are. The higher quality of such systems, in terms of implementation and security considerations, also no doubt has some effect on their lack of vulnerability to malware.

While an experienced administrator can usually tell if a Solaris, Linux or FreeBSD installation has any suspicious processes running, I don't know if this is necessarily the case with Windows. In the past I've seen audio, printer and video drivers that come bundled with other applications that are run on the startup of the system. These processes usually allow for the control of some aspect of some particular piece of hardware. And one thing I've noticed is that many of these processes have obscure or unusual names. At least some vendors tend to prefix these processes in some way. The process names for some HP printer software that I've seen in the past start with the prefix 'hp'. But often it's difficult to tell if these unusually-named processes are legitimate or malicious.

I'd imagine it's possible to search around online to find out more information about some of those processes. But then again, maybe it'd just be easier to not use Windows, and use one of the many alternative operating systems instead. At least then one usually doesn't have to worry so much about their system becoming easily compromised.