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I found that I got a single, simple response if I asked "When was EOL for Internet Explorer?" Curiously enough, the query, that I asked, "When was EOL for MSIE?" ... Returned many obscure and rather confusing results. In any case the answer appears to be June 15, 2022. There were some Long Term Support agreements for MSIE that offered extended support, but let's take that date, 2022-06-15 as the official end of "The Browser Wars". It was a long time coming, but it was worth waiting for. Cynics among you might say that MSIE was Not really dead in 2022 ... It just smelled funny. But I find it hard to believe that anyone prone to cynicism would be reading this blog, let alone be familiar with source of that aphorism [Frank Zappa].
So, if the Browser Wars are officially over, what browser gives us the best value for money in this brave new post Browser War era of peace and prospeerity? The leading browser today seems to be Chrome. Recently I went through an evaluation of browsers that I am familiar with. This was Opera, Chrome and Firefox. Although while on the topic of bravery, the new kid on the block, Brave Browser, is worth a mention. Brave is another Chrome clone. It claims to offer better security as far as your online privacy goes, and it is the default browser for some Linux distros such as Zorin. And full disclaimer here ... Most of the research I did for this blog entry was done with Brave browser.
I should say at the outset, that it is difficult to do an objective analysis. And so this comparison consists mostly of my own biases and reflects my personal browsing habits. And I have to say, there was very little difference between the top four. And my list of top browsers should have included Safari. However Safari is no longer available on Linux, so I was not able to include it in this comparison. And if there are any KDE fans left in the world, I have to confess that I left Konqueror off the list. Even though I still run a Kubuntu system, and there may be some components of it left in that particular desktop, the only two browsers on my Kubuntu machine are Firefox and Chrome. The thought of installing Konqueror on a non-KDE Ubuntu desktop wouldn't even cross my mind.
And I have to admit, that if I am going to do a deep dive into the browser rabbit hole, I shouldn't ignore Edge. I tried searching for Edge in APT and SNAP and I got no results. However I did find an online DEB package, which possibly means that there may be a future APT package?
I was surprised at how good the Edge DEB package appeared at first glance. It was fast, clean and didn't make too many assumptions about how I might want to setup my preferences. Not only that but Edge appeared to be neat and responsive, and stacked up well against the leader, Chrome. Although I should also say that I have rarely used Edge in Windows. As outlined in the assessment I made of W11, Edge and co-pilot have been more-or-less been baked in to the OS. And I have become increasingly critical and suspicious of both of these features. Generally speaking, my most frequent use of Edge in Windows, over the past decade, has been to enter the query: Download Chrome.
So, since I was attempting to evaluate the leading contenders, I took Edge for a test drive in Ubuntu. I used the default settings which predictably enough specified Bing and co-pilot ... Since I don't have a local version of co-pilot, I assumed that the co-pilot functions were some type of external AI based system linked to Bing search. However I soon discovered that the performance in Google Maps was poor. Also some of the searches I tried were sluggish and at the risk of seeming a little picky here ... I have to say I found the overall quality didn't match what I had seen from Chrome, using Google search and/or Brave (which used Leo).
So in the interest of being fair and impartial, I tried to switch Edge to use "Google search". And here is where I noticed something odd. I found it difficult to work out how to do this. Admittedly I tried searching for it using Bing search in Edge. But the results were obscure at best. Maybe this search works better in Windows [Or Firefox in Ubuntu]?
Eventually I worked it out. Here is how I achieved it using Edge Version 147.0.3912.7 in Ubuntu 24.04.
- Settings -> Privacy, Search, and services -> Search and connected experiences
- Address bar and search
- Select "Google" from the drop-down menu.
When I did this, I noticed an improvement in the performance of Google maps. However searches slowed to a crawl that would have made your average snail seem lightning fast. Each letter I typed would take at best 3 seconds to appear in the search window. Eventually a red notification alert popped up informing that I should change the search engine to the recommended setting of "Bing".
I solved this by quitting Edge and re-booting the desktop machine ... After which Edge seemed much more responsive. Google maps and Google searches were as quick as Chrome or Brave and Edge had given up on nagging me to switch to back to Bing search.
The comparisons were carried out on an Ubuntu 24.04 desktop using an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U CPU with an AMD ATI Radeon RX GPU. My entirely subjective ranking was, as follows:
- Chrome
- Brave
- Firefox
- Opera
- Edge
This ranking has been based mostly on my impression of ease-of-use and compatibility with various Web based sources. Chrome wins out because it is the market leader and there are a lot of sites that have tailored their content for Chrome. It is the browser that I am most familiar with, so I didn't have to learn new navigation key stokes or mouse clicks. Also chromecast compatibility was high on my list. So to a certain extent the above list represents how difficult I found it to get it working. To be fair, I think Edge might have been a lot higher for over all simplicity and performance. I have marked Edge down for the poor performance of the Bing search engine and to what seemed to me, to be gratuitous impediments, included primarily to dissuade me from switching to another search engine. I placed Brave second because it seems to be the most compatible with Chrome and the default search engine/AI, Leo, came close to matching Google search for performance and results.
Out of curiousity I did try changing the default search engine for Brave. I set it to Bing and ran a few simple searches. It seemed to behave better than Edge did using Bing search ... So I'm not really sure what was going on with Edge, when I first tested it. It may have been some caching issue ... Or an unfortunate coincidence of networking and server architecture,
I should also add that even though I have ranked Firefox at number 3, if I was evaluating a browser to use for testing and/or running applications developed to run on a private network, then Firefox would be number 1. This is because of its reliability and stability. It is still the default browser for LTS desktop distributions of Ubuntu and unless my application is using some fancy new features that are Chrome specific, it will continue to be my choice for security, reliability and versatility. Yes, out-of-the-box, Firefox may not have adopted the newest, flashiest features, but more important for development, it can be relied upon to not break, and to continue to support existing features. Now that the browser wars appear to be over, if there is one thing I can be fairly confident about, it is: ... "If it works in Firefox, it works everywhere". So as far as I am concerned Firefox remains as ground zero amongst browsers. If you are a developer, I urge you to to have Firefox on your check-list for testing (and maybe consider making a donation to the Mozilla foundation --- Because we do need Mozilla on the playing field to Keep the bastards honest, if for nothing else).
But like I said that is all subjective. Firefox may not be the best browser for navigating the wonderful new AI driven landscape of social media, but it works well enough for YouTube and most modern web sites. Although if our would-be AI overlords succeed in persuading us to stop reading text based knowledge systems and to instead sit, drooling, in front of screens filled with AI-generated video slop, reminding us that "War is peace", "Freedom is slavery", "Ignorance is strength" and other mindless Orwellian double-think drivel ... Then maybe this will be the new paradigm? Far be it for me think otherwise. ... If I did, I might be in serious jeopardy of committing Thought Crime ... Or worse still the lowest form of wit ... Sarcasm ... In which case you, dear reader, should consider reporting me to the Thought Police.