Gnome installing Mozilla by default

[Bill Moran]

Bruce Hunter <freebsd at solisix.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> When I install the Gnome port, it installs Mozilla 1.6 as default. I
> guess Epiphany 1.2.6 uses it. 
> 
> I have a few questions:
> 
> 1) How do I get Epiphany to not use Mozilla and what performance hit
> will I take for doing this, if any?

I think the performance hit will be that Epiphany won't work at all.  It
seems to me that Epiphany is using Mozilla's rendering engine, without
it, Epiphany is nothing more than a text viewer (it probably won't work
at all ... Ephiphany lists Mozilla as a "dependency")

> 2) If Epiphany doesn't use mozilla, then what does it use?

It uses Mozilla, period.

> 3) Mozilla seems to be a system resource hog. At least this version that
> is installed. I just need a browser that is fasssttt, doesn't mess up
> the fonts, and is capable of viewing flash? I don't need all that other
> stuff mozilla installs, such as, the email client, etc..

Not gonna happen.  The complex part of a modern browser is the rendering
engine that has to take the convoluted HTML/CSS standards and turn them
into something pretty on the screen.  You could install something like
Firefox ... which is the minimum pieces of Mozilla necessary to be a
browser, but you probably wouldn't save much as resources go.  You could
install something like dillo ... which is incredibly small and fast, but
it won't support all that fancy stuff like flash and "perfect fonts".

Simple fact is that HTML has been bastardized to be far more complex than
there's any need for, thus you need a huge program, powerful processor and
gigs of RAM to "surf the web" these days.

However, I would surf through all the browsers in the ports until you find
something as close to what you want as possible ... there's lots of choices,
and one of them is bound to be reasonably close to what you're looking for.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com