FreeBSD does not come with a particular browser pre-installed. Instead, the www directory of the Ports Collection contains a lot of browsers ready to be installed. If you do not have time to compile everything (this can take a very long time in some cases) many of them are available as packages.
KDE and GNOME already provide HTML browsers. Please refer to Section 5.7 for more information on how to set up these complete desktops.
If you are looking for light-weight browsers, you should investigate the Ports Collection for www/dillo, www/links, or www/w3m.
This section covers these applications:
| Application Name | Resources Needed | Installation from Ports | Major Dependencies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mozilla | heavy | heavy | Gtk+ |
| Opera | light | light | FreeBSD and Linux versions available. The Linux version depends on the Linux Binary Compatibility and linux-openmotif. |
| Firefox | medium | heavy | Gtk+ |
| Konqueror | medium | heavy | KDE Libraries |
Mozilla is a modern, stable browser that is fully ported to FreeBSD. It features a very standards-compliant HTML display engine. It provides a mail and news reader. It even has a HTML composer if you plan to write some web pages yourself. Users of Netscape® will recognize the similarities with Communicator suite, as both browsers shared the same basis.
On slow machines, with a CPU speed less than 233MHz or with less than 64MB of RAM, Mozilla can be too resource-consuming to be fully usable. You may want to look at the Opera browser instead, described a little later in this chapter.
If you cannot or do not want to compile Mozilla for any reason, the FreeBSD GNOME team has already done this for you. Just install the package from the network by:
# pkg_add -r mozilla
If the package is not available, and you have enough time and disk space, you can get the source for Mozilla, compile it and install it on your system. This is accomplished by:
# cd /usr/ports/www/mozilla # make install clean
The Mozilla port ensures a correct initialization by running the chrome registry setup with root privileges. However, if you want to fetch some add-ons like mouse gestures, you must run Mozilla as root to get them properly installed.
Once you have completed the installation of Mozilla, you do not need to be root any longer. You can start Mozilla as a browser by typing:
% mozilla
You can start it directly as a mail and news reader as shown below:
% mozilla -mail
Installing Mozilla is simple, but unfortunately installing Mozilla with support for add-ons like Java™ and Macromedia® Flash™ consumes both time and disk space.
The first thing is to download the files which will be used with Mozilla. Take your current web browser up to http://www.sun.com/software/java2/download.html and create an account on their website. Remember to save the username and password from here as it may be needed in the future. Download the jdk-1_5_0-bin-scsl.zip (JDK 5.0 SCSL Binaries) and jdk-1_5_0-src-scsl.zip (JDK 5.0 SCSL Source) files and place them in /usr/ports/distfiles as the port will not fetch them automatically. This is due to license restrictions. While we are here, download the “java environment” from http://javashoplm.sun.com/ECom/docs/Welcome.jsp?StoreId=22&PartDetailId=j2sdk-1.4.2_08-oth-JPR&SiteId=JSC&TransactionId=noreg. The filename is j2sdk-1_4_2_08-linux-i586.bin. Like before, this file must be placed into /usr/ports/distfiles. Download a copy of the “java patchkit” from http://www.eyesbeyond.com/freebsddom/java/jdk15.html and place it into /usr/ports/distfiles. Finally, install the java/jdk15 port with the standard make install clean.
Start Mozilla and access the About Plug-ins option from the Help menu. Java plugin should be listed there now.
Macromedia Flash plugin is not available for FreeBSD. However, a software layer (wrapper) for running the Linux version of the plugin exists. This wrapper also supports Adobe® Acrobat® plugin, RealPlayer plugin and more.
Install the www/linuxpluginwrapper port. This port requires emulators/linux_base which is a large port. Follow the instructions displayed by the port to set up your /etc/libmap.conf correctly! Example configurations are installed into /usr/local/share/examples/linuxpluginwrapper/ directory.
Install the www/mozilla port, if Mozilla is not already installed.
Now just start Mozilla with:
% mozilla &
And access the About Plug-ins option from the Help menu. A list should appear with all the currently available plugins.
Note: The linuxpluginwrapper only works on the i386™ system architecture.
Opera is a full-featured and standards-compliant browser. It also comes with a built-in mail and news reader, an IRC client, an RSS/Atom feeds reader and much more. Despite this, Opera is relatively lightweight and very fast. It comes in two flavors: a “native” FreeBSD version and a version that runs under Linux emulation.
To browse the Web with the FreeBSD version of Opera, install the package:
# pkg_add -r opera
Some FTP sites do not have all the packages, but the same result can be obtained with the Ports Collection by typing:
# cd /usr/ports/www/opera # make install clean
To install the Linux version of Opera, substitute linux-opera in place of opera in the examples above. The Linux version is useful in situations requiring the use of plug-ins that are only available for Linux, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader®. In all other respects, the FreeBSD and Linux versions appear to be functionally identical.
Firefox is the next-generation browser based on the Mozilla codebase. Mozilla is a complete suite of applications, such as a browser, a mail client, a chat client and much more. Firefox is just a browser, which makes it smaller and faster.
Install the package by typing:
# pkg_add -r firefox
You can also use the Ports Collection if you prefer to compile from source code:
# cd /usr/ports/www/firefox # make install clean
Konqueror is part of KDE but it can also be used outside of KDE by installing x11/kdebase3. Konqueror is much more than a browser, it is also a file manager and a multimedia viewer.
Konqueror also comes with a set of plugins, available in misc/konq-plugins.
Konqueror also supports Flash and a How To is available at http://freebsd.kde.org/howto.php.
This, and other documents, can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/.
For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <[email protected]>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <[email protected]>.