Everyone's familiar with Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Vivaldi, and it's tempting to use one of these well-known apps as your go-to window on the web.

But browser development in the Linux space isn't limited to the big four, and you have the freedom to use whatever browser you choose.

Here are six lesser-known and alternative Linux browsers you should consider:

1. Suckless surf

suckless surf showing the MUO homepage

Suckless is the team behind the dwm window manager, and its development philosophy is that software should suck less.

Suckless tools adhere to the Linux philosophy that a particular tool should do one thing and do it well, and its surf browser is no different.

surf isn't a typical browser and doesn't come with a URL bar. Instead, you add the URL you want as an argument when you first open the browser. For instance, if you want to visit the MUO homepage with surf, you would open a terminal and enter:

        surf makeuseof.com
    

Once the browser is open, you can click on links to navigate, but there's no way of entering a new URL and no way to open a new tab either.

You should regard this as a feature rather than a bug, as surf is exceptionally lightweight, and keeps you from getting distracted.

If you plan to use surf as your default browser, you may want to consider opening it with duckduckgo.com as the argument.

surf is available in most distros' default repositories. To install Suckless surf on Ubuntu, open a terminal and enter:

        sudo apt install surf
    

2. SeaMonkey

seamonkey on ubuntu

SeaMonkey has a rich and storied heritage as the successor to the late, lamented Mozilla Application Suite which itself evolved from Netscape Communicator and ceased development in 2006. SeaMonkey took up the mantle, and development is still ongoing today.

Rather than being a simple browser, SeaMonkey is also an email client, HTML editor, IRC, and news client.

Looks-wise, SeaMonkey takes some strong design hints from its Netscape roots, although you can skin the app to make it look a little more modern.

3. Carbonyl

MUO story as viewed through carbonyl

If you like to browse the net without leaving your Linux terminal, you're probably already familiar with the handful of text-based browsers available for Linux.

Carbonyl is the best of these and is a fork of the Chromium project. It offers blazingly fast connections and great looks, and you can even view (somewhat blocky) images, and watch YouTube videos in your terminal.

Carbonyl is also surprisingly light on resources, and you can SSH (Secure Shell) into a remote, low-specced machine and use Carbonyl to experience the web at full speed.

Unlike with other terminal-based browsers, it's easy to sign into your Gmail, Slack, Asana, and OpenAI accounts using Carbonyl, and should you wish, you also have the luxury of using your mouse, rather than relying on keyboard navigation.

4. Konqueror

konqueror showing bbc story on ubuntu

Konqueror is a surprisingly competent web browser, from KDE. More than that, it's also a file manager and document viewer.

You can jump straight from creating a new directory in the deepest depths of your filesystem to reading an article on using ChatGPT as a fortune teller, without moving to a different window!

But just because Konqueror is a KDE product, it doesn't mean you need to be using KDE to run it. You can install Konqueror on Ubuntu and Debian-based distros by opening a terminal and entering:

        sudo apt install konqueror 
    

5. GNOME Web (Formerly Epiphany)

gnome web on ubuntu

GNOME Web is the web browser for the GNOME desktop and was formerly known as Epiphany. So it might surprise you that you won't find GNOME Web on stock Ubuntu, despite it using GNOME as a base for the default desktop.

GNOME Web is based on the GTK port of Apple's WebKit engine and is designed to run on any Unix-like system whether it runs GNOME or not.

Unlike the most common browsers, GNOME Web is fast and optimized to run on low-powered systems.

GNOME Web is available for all distros, and can be installed as a Flatpak with:

        flatpak install flathub org.gnome.Epiphany
    

6. Microsoft Edge

Laptop screen with Microsoft Edge browser logo

Believe it or not, Microsoft's Edge browser is available on Linux. While it's based on Chrome rather than Internet Explorer these days, it's still Microsoft's philosophy to the core.

A 2020 report from Trinity College, Dublin, revealed Edge to be among the worst offenders with regard to privacy—on a par with Yandex, and worse than Google Chrome.

If you miss the good old days of Microsoft's market dominance and want to take Edge out for a spin, you can download DEB and RPM packages from the official download page and install Microsoft Edge on your Linux PC.

Download: Microsoft Edge

Using Alternative Browsers on Linux Is Fun!

While it's great to explore and use lesser-known browsers as part of your Linux workflow, you may want to stick with more established offerings.

Mozilla Firefox is a stalwart and reliable web browser and comes preinstalled on most popular distros. If you'd like to stick with the standard, there are many ways you can tweak Firefox to speed up your browsing and improve your privacy.