More and more, I have problems dealing with Firefox’s bloat. I gave epiphany a try as a replacement for a week, to see if it’s actually a valid replacement.
Part 0: installing
On Debian/Ubuntu, don’t forget to install epiphany-extensions as well.
Part 1: making the switch
- System -> Preferences -> Preferred Applications : select epiphany instead.
- That’s all for now. (What about update-alternatives ? Is it necessary ? Seems it isn’t.)
Part 2: Configuring
I just added my language preferences. Why doesn’t it follow my session’s defaults ? (It seems that this waits for a localization configuration applet inside Gnome)
Part 3: Importing Bookmarks
Bookmarks -> Edit bookmarks -> File -> Import bookmarks -> Firefox
Bookmarks toolbar handling in epiphany is a bit strange. It seems that you have to add Quick bookmark buttons for each bookmark you want in it. (related bugs: 116726, 112660)
After one week of use …
- Epiphany isn’t faster than Firefox. It might slightly faster to start up, but switching between tabs feels slower. (I reported bug 347225 about this, but it’s non-conclusive ATM.)
- Tabs are fixed-size in epiphany, not variable size like it firefox. It makes it difficult to have a large number of tabs open (in 1280×1024, you can only have 7 open tabs before small arrows appear to let you move the tab bar left/right). It’s actually not an epiphany problem, but a gtk+ one (330676).
Looks like I’m going back to Firefox…
Update :
Frederic Peters posted a comment mentionning unofficial Epiphany extensions which solve the fixed-size tabs problem. Thanks a lot :-)