Falkon (formerly QupZilla) is a free and open-source

web browser A web browser is application software 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 screen. Browsers are used o ...

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 allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

. It is built on the

QtWebEngine Blink is a browser engine developed as part of the Chromium project with contributions from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Opera Software, Adobe, Intel, IBM, Samsung, and others. It was first announced in April 2013. Naming Blink's naming was ...

, which is a wrapper for the Chromium browser core. Both KaOS and

openMandriva Lx OpenMandriva Lx is a Linux distribution forked from Mandriva Linux. It is maintained by the OpenMandriva Association. History Origin of the distribution OpenMandriva Lx is a community Linux distribution. Originally an offering of Mandriva Linux ...

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 feed ...

s and bookmarks in a single location, the ability to take a screenshot of the entire page, and an

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

-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 current ...

and Google Chrome. Falkon uses the Qt

cross-platform In 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 platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

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 inter ...

and offers a built-in

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

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

DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo (DDG) is an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo does not show search results from content farms. It uses various APIs o ...

. 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 t ...

in 2010. The first preview release, written in

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

(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 m ...

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

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

was rewritten in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

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 ...

web browser based on

QtWebKit WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple Inc., Apple and primarily used in its Safari (web browser), Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation ...

, 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 graphica ...

s including Microsoft Windows, GNOME, and KDE Plasma. 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 and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officiall ...

. 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 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. The most recent version is 22.12, released on 8 December 2022.

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