Ok, here's a real noob question... but i'm tired of searching for some sort of configuration setting :

I've read that galeon and mozilla both run off the netscape engine.. so, could someone explain exactly what that means and what is supposed to be similar about them?

My problem is that mozilla and galeon seem faster that netscape, but they draw text really tiny on the pages and i can't seem to find a way to change that . However, netscape shows text and images just fine... except that it's slow and the browser is full of candy that i dont need.

Could someone offer suggestions on getting the best of both worlds here.. or perhaps offereing other suggestions for a lean, powerful web browser? I've had bad experiences with Opera under Windows. How is it for Linux? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

to help you font problem you can go into the fonts section of the preferences for mozilla and set the minimum font size. mine is set to 9 and it seems to work well.

I use Opera and it's excellent, but my favourite is Konqueror.

Mozilla, Galeon and Netscape share the same Rendering Engine, called Gecko. Gecko draws teh text, pictures and other such things that actually appear on the web page.

They all have different interfaces - the buttons and extras which control the browsers. Netscape and Mozilla are very similar, they both use XUL, which is a kind of XML language for drawing user interfaces. Galeon uses GTK, which is the same stuff used in GNOME.

Oh, ok... hmm...

Well, i've tried to simply change the font size in Galeon, for instance, and it still just doesnt look right. So far, Netscape seems to still render the pages best... but it's still too slow.

I downloaded Dillo yesterday and was really impressed with how fast and simple it is. Unfortunately, it doesnt support frames or java.. and it wont display certain images.

I think maybe i'll give Opera a try under Linux and see how well i like it. Anyone know of any ultra-light, yet powerful browsers... maybe like Dillo except with better support?

I use Opera, and it's smokin'! Fast and lean. You can disable popups too. I have used it in Windows, and didn't like it. In Linux, it's very nice. If you're going to go to hotmail or any other MS website, you need to set it to identify as IE or Mozilla and not Opera as MS will give you problems about your browser. With hotmail it tells me that I need to upgrade my browser to IE 5.0 or higher. When I go to hotmail identifying as Mozilla or IE, I get no error messages or anything. Very bizarre.

Try Phoenix, an offshoot of Mozilla(available on Mozilla page). Best one so far, overall, in my opinion.

I'd second that. I used Galeon for a while, but it seemed kinda flaky. Opera is my favorite for Windows, but the Linux version is pretty ugly. Mozilla had weird problems. Finally tried Phoenix and have stuck with it ever since - aside from a minor issue with GTK themes (which Mozilla and Galeon seem to have too), it is speedy, stable, and looks great!

I just downloaded phoenix and I'm liking it so far... a few questions, though...

How is it compiled and installed?? All i did was untar and then sh phoenix

It seems to run, ok... but i think i'm missing a few steps.

Ok, i'm answering my own question here, but hopefully this contributes to the vast body of info that is linuxquestions.org

I found this at http://texturizer.net/phoenix/faq.html#1.3

1.5 How do I install Phoenix?

Strictly speaking, you don't install Phoenix. You just unzip/untar the compressed file and place it in a folder of your choice. Windows users: just run phoenix.exe. Linux users: just run the phoenix script. If you want shortcuts for Phoenix, you will have to create them manually.

So, there we have it... so how does not installing it effect the program itself? I really don't know much about compiling and installing but does it mean that the libraries are not dynamically linked? So the actually program is larger since it's not installed?