Making the switch

So a few days ago fiefox-3 was pulled in during the regular system updates, and after a few hours of using it I must say: it sucks even more than firefox-2, which IMHO was already a regression from earlier versions. Actually I think that since they changed the name from phoenix [i]my[/i] user experience has gotten worse with each new version. Now I have to admit I’m probably not a typical user, so firefox-3 might be an improvement for the majority, but I’m really fed up with it.
As neither konqueror (kde-centric) nor opera (binary-only) are alternatives for me I looked out for other broswers out there today and noticed Arora, a new qt-webkit based browser and decided to try it out. And I must say I really like it so far, though I’ve only used it for a few hours so far. It feels a lot like older firefox versions, just without much of the “user-friendly” bloat they’ve added over time (e.g. the new fancy addressbar in firefox-3). It’s still a very early version, so obviously it’s lacking some features (like no flash support, though I consider that more as a feature :>) and probably has a few bugs, but at the moment I like it (much) better than what has become of firefox.

important portage update

If you’re using portage-2.2_pre6, portage-2.2_pre7 or trunk you must install portage-2.2_pre7-r1 ASAP to rebuild the NEEDED.ELF.2 files that were corrupted by some subtle bug in the pre6 and pre7 ebuild.