Over the past few years, like lots of Linux users, I have become increasingly frustrated with the performance of Firefox in Linux. Though I haven't been as vocal as others of the state of Firefox, it was clear that most of us were just sick and tired of Firefox being a "good Windows browser that happened to run in Linux."
I was not alone. Over the past year I've noticed that a good number of people I know have switched over to Epiphany. Epiphany is a great browser to begin with. Native controls, quick, and very GNOME-y. Epiphany was rocking an "Awesomebar" long before it was cool. But still, there's something about Mozilla as a whole that was always close to me.
First off, is the influence that Mozilla people have had over other open source projects. I know plenty of people who can directly point to Asa Dotzler and say "He was the guy that got me into open source". I'm one of them. And he's just one guy. Think of the other heroes that gutted it out, like Blizzard, roc, scc, caillon, etc...
The second is pure, unadulterated perseverence. I remember around M18/Netscape6 when it was the bleakest of the bleak. When we were all doomed. The engineering team had been laid off, and as far as we knew, the concept of the free web was almost dead.
Then Firefox came around, and all of a sudden, it was cool to be open, and free, and usable. Awesome. However, those of us using the Linux desktop didn't get to share the same success. All of a sudden our "gateway drug" had become a full blown coke addiction; the idea that if people loved an open browser that they would naturally love a full blown open operating system died a quick death. But that's another story...
Fast forward to last year, and all indications point to Firefox being a Windows browser. On the Mozilla side you have the expected "Hey, if you want to fix it, send patches, we develop for our biggest user base." Novell and Red Hat really did lots of heavy lifting for us over the years by sponsoring upstream work (thanks guys). The rest of us, those of us who have supported and evangelized Mozilla during the "dark times" (read: Linux users), got the short end of the stick, despite the excellent work from the fulltime Linux guys. Eventually, Firefox's market share dictated that they should prioritize Windows features, and since (not suprisingly), us Linux users are better at bitching than actually contributing, Firefox on Linux got worse, and worse, and worse. Anyone ever having to stick a custom crap lpr command in that dialog box to get Firefox/Mozilla to print in Linux knows how painful this is.
In fact, it got so bad, that people seem to think that a webkit-based browser is the future. Somehow, we got to the point where the poster-child of what's good about Open Source takes a back seat to the poster-child of everything wrong with computing. (Nothing against the KDE khtml folks and other people working on WebKit, I respect your work, but, come on, are our relations with Mozilla so bad that Apple is considered a viable alternative? Because, you know, they're really open source friendly. (... and I'm going to quit smoking and drinking too!)
Luckily all this hand-waving crap is behind us. I used to make fun of Ryan Paul for tracking Firefox 3 features. "Dude, they don't give a shit, stop trying ...." He even did an article about the new Linux features coming up. At the same time, I would spend night after night on IM bitching to Dave Camp about how Mozilla had deserted us, and goddamn it, someone owed me some printing/GTK fixes, and oh, "I know your sleeping in all that Google cash, come on dude!" Dave, being a good sport, always told me that patches would be accepted. (See above note about us being better bitchers than contributors.)
So then, in an effort to get Ryan to shut up about Firefox3, I tried the beta, and I realized that ...
Firefox 3 beta 1 is totally, freaking, awesome.
There are some bugs. The font work still needs some loving, and there are a few instances where the memory gets out of control, but overall, for a beta .... wow. Just wow. Alexander Sack (the Ubuntu Firefox maintainer) had told me it was really shaping up. But I didn't believe him. I didn't want to believe Ryan either. I haven't been this excited about Firefox since 1.0. Seriously. I feel like an unbeaten step-child.
PS - There are issues with FF3, but given that it's a beta and considering how terrible FF2 is in Linux, I'm willing to forgive and forget ... when it's final. :)
PSS - Epiphany is still awesome. GNOME ftw.
