from Hacker News

Falkon: A KDE Web Browser

by 0x54MUR41 on 3/8/25, 4:51 AM with 117 comments

  • by Gualdrapo on 3/8/25, 11:36 AM

    Been using as my sole web browser on a daily basis since it was called Qupzilla, maybe for 10+ years as I switched to it from reKonq.

    I really like it because it's fully and truly integrated with KDE, not needed a whole sort of patchs to integrate to it like Firefox needs to.

    It's actually great. Not sure about the "Qt doesn't upgrade WebEngine often enough" in other comment (what is "ofteh enough"? I got several updates for it over the year) and of course it can be lagging from stuff from mainstream, but I think for 99% of users it's just fine.

    Granted, you can't use Chrome/Firefox plugins, which may it seem not worthy to some people, but there's a basic adblock and greasemonkey extensions shipped with it with default which blocks most of stuff and even you can install a script to speed up youtube ads so that annoying ad will run out in a sec or less. Apparently you can write your own plugins for it but last time I wrote to one of its devs the api wasn't even documented.

    There are some quirks on it, though, like the user agent thing - I set up as the latest chrome user agent for every website except accounts.google.com where I left it as the one shipped with Falkon so it lets me sign in, and yet it shows a warning about "upgrading" to another browser.

    Ironically, such "warning" also shows up when browsing discuss.kde.org. Yes, the very KDE discussion board warns you against using KDE's own web browser.

    Since some years ago I have a silly idea about a plugin that transforms tabs into some sort of Vim buffer list thing that can be filtered by the url bar, but am too incompetent about C++.

  • by Y_Y on 3/8/25, 10:28 AM

    > Falkon is a KDE web browser using QtWebEngine rendering engine, previously known as QupZilla. It aims to be a lightweight web browser available through all major platforms. This project has been originally started only for educational purposes. But from its start, Falkon has grown into a feature-rich browser.

    While I applaud competition among browsers, I think that the renderer/webengine is such a big external component nowadays (especially if you lump in the JavaScript engine) that it might be more accurate to say that you're providing a skin, rather than a new browser.

    Anyway I miss Konqueror and am happy to see any of its descendants carry on its legacy.

    (QtWebEngine is derived from Chromium - https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qtwebengine-overview.html )

  • by sdsd on 3/8/25, 6:19 PM

    I feel so trapped in this current computing paradigm where we're all running Chromium and Firefox is bad. I don't think it's substantially better than the days when sites were built to run in IE, since the solution to incompatibility has apparently involved moving the "browser" is really just a VM now.

    On mobile it's even worse, with computing largely being removed entirely, replaced by "apps" that just deliver "content" and monetize their control over the algorithm. Or even worse, don't monetize it, but leverage it as a source of power. Zuck and Elon openly say govs were doing that with their platforms, but they hardly seem reliable. Maybe it's much much worse, maybe they exaggerated.

    Urbit is more fun in theory but the community is just a bunch of rw chuds trying to get thiel bucks. Maybe computers just aren't that interesting now. At least, you have to be more creative than before. I've been doing some fun stuff. Anyway, /rant

  • by butz on 3/8/25, 2:04 PM

    There is another web browser build on KDE libraries - Angelfish. While it is marketed as "webbrowser for mobile devices", it has a desktop interface too. This one could be more easy to get into and help with development, as it is quite recent and does not have a lot of legacy features.
  • by seba_dos1 on 3/8/25, 12:05 PM

    Falkon's fine, but it's important to remember that it's just Chromium with KDE/Qt UI on top.
  • by thom on 3/8/25, 11:45 AM

    Can I open a KWord document in a tab though?
  • by Sunspark on 3/8/25, 3:46 PM

    I took a look at Falkon, it's not for me. The autoscroll is not as smooth as the regular browsers and their adblock isn't as good either.
  • by amelius on 3/8/25, 2:37 PM

    Question. What modern browser gets containers right?

    (Firefox was almost there, but the containers don't sync over multiple devices.)

  • by cardanome on 3/8/25, 2:08 PM

    I still remember fondly the KDE 3.5 times when we had Konqueror. The best browser AND file manager in one. It was amazing.

    Then the KDE 4 enshittification came and they had to have a separate file manager with half the features. Bad times.

  • by IYasha on 3/9/25, 2:56 PM

    Can't install it due to outdated glibc now. How's the download manager today? Can it at least pause and resume (+from different source)?
  • by holowoodman on 3/8/25, 4:54 PM

    I'd like that with a portion of vimperator please :)
  • by snvzz on 3/9/25, 8:12 AM

    From wikipedia, the missing important bit of information in falkon.org:

    >It is built on the QtWebEngine, which is a wrapper for the Chromium browser core.

  • by ksec on 3/8/25, 1:32 PM

    From Wiki

    Falkon (formerly QupZilla[5]) is a free and open-source web browser developed by KDE. It is built on the QtWebEngine,[6][7] which is a wrapper for the Chromium browser core.[8]

  • by franze on 3/8/25, 1:39 PM

    What I want: I want a browser without security restrictions, that can run node.js code as well as not CORS restricted fetch.

    Wanted to code my own via electron, but damn, it was slow.

  • by pabs3 on 3/9/25, 8:54 AM

    Does QtWebEngine have security support?