How to configure Epiphany in Fedora: GSettings, Flash and extensions

Alejandro (a.k.a KZKG^Gaara)

3 minutes

 Learn some tricks to configure this excellent browser and improve the user experience, which will help you familiarize yourself with the GSettings tool.


I suppose that in each case it may be different, but in mine, since I discovered Epiphany (the official browser of GNOME), I am starting to abandon my dear Firefox.

I know that many of you have abandoned it long ago for Chromium/Google Chrome, but I was looking for an alternative that didn't eat up all my RAM and was found in the official Fedora repositories, and It is not the case.

After trying Epiphany I was delighted by its low memory consumption (in my case between 2 and 6 times less than Firefox 7), but the truth is that it is not very usable at first, so let's learn how to configure it.

In this case we are going to use Fedora 15 64-bit.

Configuration

Epiphany (at least version 3) uses GSettings to save your settings. It is an abstraction layer for this purpose, which in GNU / Linux uses the system dconf as a low-level data warehouse.

We can use the graphical dconf editor. We will find the Epiphany keys in the schematic org.gnome.epiphany. To install it on Fedora:

sudo yum install dconf-editor

For those who want to use the tool by command line, you can look at the help with the typical commands:

gsettings --help
man gsettings

For example, to consult all the keys of Epiphany we will use:

gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.Epiphany

Now we will see how to activate some features that seem quite practical:

gsettings set org.gnome.Epiphany middle-click-opens-url true
gsettings set org.gnome.Epiphany new-windows-in-tabs true
gsettings set org.gnome.Epiphany.web enable-popups false
gsettings set org.gnome.Epiphany.web min-font-size 10

I think they are pretty self-explanatory ...

Installing Flash

We already have Flash 11 at our disposal, with native support for 64-bit GNU / Linux. Flash is a proprietary technology that I don't like very much, but unfortunately today it is quite necessary to enjoy the web.

I was using gnash It's been clear to me for a while that he's not yet mature enough to replace Flash. At least the FSF has noticed, and has it as high priority software project.

To install it in Fedora we have an official Adobe repository. We install this repository by going to flash install page and downloading it with the option YUM for Linux.

With this we download an RPM package that installs the Flash repository. We will have to install this package and then the plugin:

sudo yum localinstall ~ / Downloads / adobe-release-x86_64-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
sudo yum install flash-plugin

Of course, we can also use the graphical tools ...

Anyway, this installs Flash in Firefox and others, but not Epiphany. To activate it, we will simply create a symlink to the plugin in the Epiphany directory:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so / usr / lib64 / epiphany / plugins /

Using the extensions

One of the main features of Firefox is its extensive library of extensions. Epiphany is not compatible with them, but at least has a few that can be very practical. We install them with:

sudo yum install epiphany-extensions

Then we can configure them from the menu Tools> Extensions by Epiphany. The ones that seem especially practical to me are:

  • Actions
  • Autoload tab
  • Ad blocker
  • RSS subscription
Specifically, Actions is very useful. Send the URL of the element that you are selecting as STDIN to the program or script that you tell it. For example, to download content with the download manager gwget. Steps to follow:

  1. Make sure you have Gwget installed. 
    sudo yum install gwget
  2. In Epiphany, Edit> Actions> Add.
  3. In the window, put a name and description that describes the action well, and in command simply write gwget.
  4. Mark the options to apply to images and pages.

Now right-click on any link, page, or image. You will have the option to download with Gwget, and it will.

There is an official extension in the repositories called gwget-epiphany-extension, but they haven't made it compatible with Epiphany version 3 yet.

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    1.   rafuru said
      ago 11 years

      I have a problem in which pages that do not apply a font style look very bad without antialiasing and very small.

      I have tried to set the default font from gnome and from gsettings but it remains the same: /

      Reply to rafuru
    2.   Ernest Acosta said
      ago 11 years

      Excellent. In Debian Testing with version 3.0.x the System Proxy does not catch me. Is there a trick for that?

      Reply to Ernesto Acosta
    3.   Courage said
      ago 11 years

      The same is not the same the process for your dear Debian haha

      Reply to Courage
    4.   Rodrigo said
      ago 9 years

      Hello, I have a problem with this browser. I have Fedora 18… But youtube does not work .. and I tried everything .. and I have adobe flash player installed and it works for me in chrome and firefox, except in this one, can you please help me ..

      Reply to Rodrigo
      1.    let's use linux said
        ago 9 years

        Hello Rodrigo!

        I think it would be better if you ask this question in our question and answer service called Ask DesdeLinux so that the whole community can help you with your problem.

        A hug, Pablo.

        Reply to usemoslinux