Bonum Certa Men Certa

Why You Should Give Falkon (the Web Browser) a Chance on GNU/Linux, BSD, or Windows

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Summary: In this crazy new world where advertisers are the real customers and Web users ("audiences") have been reduced to mere products we need a browser that isn't controlled by a company; try Falkon

THE World Wide Web is a very wild place, but it takes some effort to see the wildness because it is mostly hidden away from sight. Browsers are spying on their users, Web sites spy on visitors, ISPs are selling personal data in bulk, and so-called 'search' engines are just espionage operations with a "simple" front that that gives a few lousy search results in exchange (or compensation) for the espionage, which also extends to psychological manipulation and censorship. As of recent years, I can no longer recommend the World Wide Web to anybody, let alone the toxic hate machine that is social control media (no matter if it's Free software-based and/or decentralised because it's inherently problematic as a construct).



"Free software (such as KDE) puts the user in charge of the computer/computing."When I use or enter the World Wide Web (which isn't much to be frank, as I mostly read my news of interest in Kate, the plain text editor, or through RSS feeds) I typically use Konqueror and Falkon. Seeing where Mozilla is trying to sway the World Wide Web (censorship, DRM and so on), I cannot recommend Firefox but I still keep it around for sites that are highly restrictive in the browser support sense/spectrum.

Falkon logoIn this short video (limited time available for recording because of work around the house) I show some basic features of Falkon and say a few words on the status of the project/World Wide Web browser. It's nothing too fancy, but it generally works and typically works very well, probably best among KDE/Qt browsers (and I've used or tried almost all of them over the years!).

Falkon does not want or care about your browsing history. There's no "clown storage" for Falkon and it won't ask you to log in or check out some (dis)service. The ad blocking is a built-in feature. With Falkon it's always you, the user, in control of the Web browser (in a world where the World Wide Web increasingly controls the user).

I warmly recommend Falkon to anyone who feels tired of proprietary browsers like Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Edge/MSIE, Safari and so on. Give it a go. What have you got to lose? Let's take the Web back.

Regarding Brave and Firefox, I have mixed feelings about the companies behind them. I fear that this suspicion and distrust will be justified more and more over time (more 'accidents' or gaffes, which they will 'correct' after public outcry and media backlash).

Free software (such as KDE) puts the user in charge of the computer/computing. Nothing is going to change that. Falkon is GPLv3-licensed, which reaffirms its commitment to true freedom, unlike many other Web browsers. It's built using Qt and Qt may be going proprietary (Qt5 LTS and Qt6+), but we keep hearing forks of Qt are on the way, imminently, so that oughtn't be a reason for concern. By default Falkon uses QtWebEngine. Remember that WebKit and many of today's rendering engines actually came from KDE (KHTML/Konqueror). A lot of people, certainly those influenced by the mainstream media, will never publicly acknowledge this.

I've used Falkon (or QupZilla prior to the rename) for nearly half a decade. It's mostly the work of one single individual. Thank you, David Rosca!

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