Web browsers in Linux: life beyond Chromium and Firefox

Mozilla Firefox and Chromium (or Google Chrome) are the most popular browsers in Linux and Windows, but there are less known browsers that worth it.

Vivaldi
Brave
Midori
Opera
NetSurf

Vivaldi

Default browser in Manjaro Cinnamon, based in Chromium and not open-source. It’s focused on privacy and modularity. It doesn’t track you and it has a built-in Ad and Tracker blocker. It has a lot of extras (notes, calendar, mail, feeds,..) but if you don’t need them, you can choose between three “modes”:

Essentials: only basic features.
Classic: includes extra panels, a status bar and a “fast forward/rewind” feature that allows you to jump to the next page or back to the first page you’ve visited at a site.
Fully Loaded: all of the above and mail, calendar and feeds.

Brave

This Chromium-based browser has a modern look and a few extras like “Brave Shield” (to block ads and trackers), “Brave Rewards” (to earn BAT [a cryptocurrency] by viewing ads), or a crypto wallet for several cryptocurrencies.

Install (in Ubuntu):

sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl

sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main"|sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list

sudo apt update
sudo apt install brave-browser

Midori

This simple software is a lightweight alternative to other web browsers (it consumes 200MB of RAM less than Firefox and 400MB less than Brave in my tests). You can install some extensions (to block ads, for example).

Opera

This web browser is more widely known than previous ones. It has shortcuts for web-based Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, a dark theme, options to block ads and trackers, and it has a modern look.

NetSurf

This lightweight browser is one of the fastest and smallest web browser you can find, but it’s not compatible with modern CSS standards. It’s perfect for offline browsing and when you don’t need the extra features of the “main” web browsers.