The lack of a web browser that works well with Linux is one of my (and many other peoples) big complaints. For those network administrators out there contemplating a migration to GNU/Linux on the desktop, the traditionally buggy performance and lack of features of web browsers for Linux is a huge stumbling block. I have several particularly troublesome sites that have either not worked or crashed for some reason or another with every single browser I use with Linux. I kid you not. The final straw was that cnn.com crashed Netscape 4.78 50% of the time. That changed this evening. I can use flash, Java, RealPlayer, and log on to a particularly nasty site that has never worked with Mozilla before.

I used the RPM of Mozilla, available here. I’m running Red Hat 7.1.

To get the java plugin to work, I used the latest Blackdown J2SDK available here. The only other two plugins that I’ve had problems with in the past are Flash and Realplayer, which are easy to get from Macromedia and Real. Turns out configuring all of the above is simply a matter of copying files and one symlink. On my system all of my plugins are in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins. For Java to work, I made a symbolic link in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins:
javaplugin_oji.so -> /usr/local/j2sdk1.3.1/jre/plugin/i386/mozilla/javaplugin_oji.so

For the other apps, I just had to copy the plugins into /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins. For RealPlayer, I copied raclass.zip and rpnp.so. For Flash, I copied ShockwaveFlash.class and libflashplayer.so.

So far, I’m very happy with the work Mozilla.org has done on this browser. Give it a try.