FOSSwire

There are a couple of others (Konqueror, Epiphany), but the primary open source browser that you're likely to be using on Linux is Firefox.

Now don't get me wrong, Firefox is great for a lot of things. It is endlessly customisable and has ubiquitous support from website developers. It does have disadvantages too, however, including not exactly being the quickest beast out there.

WebKit is an open source browser engine (the code that does the heavy lifting inside your browser) that Apple made for its Safari browser. It is derived from the KHTML engine that was developed for Konqueror, but was reworked quite a bit by Apple and now various other third parties.

A lot of people prefer WebKit to Gecko (the engine behind Firefox). It's clean, fast and has a lot of different companies and organisations behind it. It's not just limited to Safari - it's in lots of mobile phone browsers, powers Google's Chrome browser and lots more.

Midori is a lightweight web browser for Linux built on top of WebKit. It doesn't have a load of features right now, but if you're looking for something that's quick, but has good compatibility with websites that don't play well in other alternative browsers like Konqueror, it's worth a look.

Despite some of its limitations, Midori does have built in support for User Scripts (which you might know as Greasemonkey), a bookmark manager, a customisable search box and a few other features.

It won't be suitable for everyone, however, or perhaps for all your browsing needs. I didn't find a way to run Flash inside, which might put some people off. Despite that, if you want a browser that's very quick and very light, even if you don't use it full-time, seriously take a look at Midori.

If you're running the latest Ubuntu version, Intrepid Ibex, you'll be able to install Midori by searching in Add/Remove Programs. Alternatively, still trying searching in your package manager, or you can get the source code.

[found via]

Peter shows you how to program a very simple graphical "Hello World" application using Gambas 2. Gambas 2 is a visual development environment for Linux/Unix with many similarities to Microsoft Visual Basic.

Gambas is a development environment and platform for Linux and Unix systems. It uses a custom programming language, similar to (but not the same as and not compatible with) Microsoft's Visual Basic.

Gambas allows you to put together Qt and GTK+ interfaces with drag and drop ease and connect them to code, in a very similar way to Visual Basic on the Windows platform.

While something similar to VB as a language and platform will probably be unpopular with many Linux and open source enthusiasts, using the Gambas environment is one of the easiest ways to rapidly develop a graphical application for deployment on Linux/Unix systems.

The Gambas IDE bears a striking resemblance, again, to the Visual Basic IDE and brings together source editing, drag and drop GUI design and project compilation and debugging from a single interface.

One of the major attractions to this platform is its support for Rapid Application Development (RAD) and its visual approach to programming. Even if you have only a little programming experience, you can quickly put together a graphical program for almost any desktop environment.

Obviously, a development platform like Gambas isn't suitable for all projects. What I think this certainly has utility for is for very quickly building graphical applications to automate certain tasks, for example.

Gambas offers probably one of the quickest and simplest ways to build a graphical application for Linux. Anyone with a little Visual Basic experience will very quickly be able to pick it up and start developing simple applications.