Falkon (formerly QupZilla) is a free and

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

developed by

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

. It is built on the QtWebEngine, which is a wrapper for the

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6 element, group 6. It is a steely-grey, Luster (mineralogy), lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium ...

browser core. Both KaOS and

openMandriva Lx OpenMandriva Lx is a general-purpose Linux distribution maintained by the OpenMandriva Association for x86 (32/64-bit) and ARM (architecture), ARM computers. It is a community-supported continuation of Mandriva Linux, which was active from 1998 (a ...

use Falkon as their default browser.

Features

Falkon provides several icon sets and other elements to match the native look and feel of users' desktop operating systems. Some additional features of the browser include the integration of history,

web feed On the World Wide Web, a web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors ''syndicate'' a web feed, thereby allowing users to ''subscribe'' a channel to it by adding the fee ...

s and bookmarks in a single location, the ability to take a

screenshot A screenshot (also known as screen capture or screen grab) is an analog or digital image that shows the contents of a computer display. A screenshot is created by a (film) camera shooting the screen or the operating system An operating sys ...

of the entire page, and an

Opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

-like "''Speed dial''" home page. It is reported to consume fewer system resources than the major general purpose browsers like

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

and

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

. Falkon uses the Qt

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

application framework In computer programming, an application framework consists of a software framework used by software developers to implement the standard structure of application software. Application frameworks became popular with the rise of graphical user inte ...

and offers a built-in

AdBlock AdBlock is an ad-blocking browser extension for Google Chrome, Apple Safari (desktop and mobile), Firefox, Samsung Internet, Microsoft Edge and Opera. AdBlock allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being displaye ...

. By default this adblocker whitelists the web page of Falkon's main search engine,

DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo is an American software company focused on online privacy whose flagship product is a search engine named DuckDuckGo. Founded by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008, its later products include browser extensions and a custom DuckDuckGo web ...

. A "portable" (no installation) version for Windows platforms exists. Falkon is also distributed in the PortableApps format.

History

The project was started as a

research project Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

in 2010. The first preview release, written in Python (using

PyQt PyQt is a Python binding of the cross-platform GUI toolkit Qt, implemented as a Python plug-in. PyQt is free software developed by the British firm Riverbank Computing. It is available under similar terms to Qt versions older than 4.5; this ...

library), was ready by December 2010. In 2011 the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

was rewritten in C++ with a goal to create a full-featured general purpose

portable Portable may refer to: General * Portable building, a manufactured structure that is built off site and moved in upon completion of site and utility work * Portable classroom, a temporary building installed on the grounds of a school to provide a ...

web browser based on QtWebKit, with the initial target being visual integration with the look and feel of multiple

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

s including

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

, and

KDE Plasma KDE Plasma is a Shell (computing), graphical shell developed by the KDE community for Unix-like operating systems. It serves as the interface layer between the user and the operating system, providing a graphical user interface (GUI) and workspa ...

. Version 1.6.6 (May 2014) still supported

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

. On 30 March 2016, QupZilla 2.0 was released. It marked the transition from QtWebKit to Qt WebEngine. On 10 August 2017, QupZilla's developer David Rosca announced in a blog post that QupZilla had become a

project. After the release of Qupzilla 2.2 the project was renamed to ''Falkon''. KDE Falkon 3.0 was released on 27 February 2018. Falkon 3.0.1 was included in Lubuntu 18.10 beta but replaced with Firefox in the actual Lubuntu 18.10 release. Falkon 3.2.0 was released on 31 January 2022. On 14 February 2022, Falkon started transitioning to

KDE Gear The KDE Gear is a set of applications and supporting libraries that are developed by the KDE community, primarily used on Linux-based operating systems but mostly multiplatform, and released on a common release schedule. The bundle is compos ...

by adopting the same version number. Starting with version 22.04 on 21 April 2022, the first version of Falkon as part of KDE Gear was released. Official releases are thus announced on the KDE news website rather than the official Falkon website.

References

External links

* * (old website, now deprecated)
Falkon Add-ons

Falkon's source code repository
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Falkon Free software programmed in C++ Free software projects Free web browsers Portable software POSIX web browsers Software based on WebKit Software that was rewritten in C++ Web browsers that use Qt

Features

History

See also

References

External links