Rekonq Web Browser Hits 1.0 Release Milestone, More To Come

The string of new releases in July just keeps coming. Yesterday it was announced that the WebKit-based rekonq web browser for KDE has finally hit the 1.0 milestone, just in time for the upcoming 4.9 release of KDE. Mainly a bug-fix release, the 1.0 version has seen a lot of activity since the last beta. We've been following rekonq for a while now, so it's feels good to use a product that has been come so far, so fast (at least in software development terms).

An extract from the announcement sums it up nicely:

"I just wanna say that I personally spent this month checking ALL the over 300 bugs opened in kde bugzilla against rekonq, we fixed more than 40 REAL bugs (i.e. NOT duplicates) and tried reproducing all remaining 46 crash bugs: an impressive work I hope you’ll appreciate in your smoothest and fastest rekonq browsing experience"

The announcement goes on to say to stay tuned for more announcements that will be soon to follow, making us wonder what it could be. Perhaps Chrome Extension support or a better plug-in API? We'll have to wait and see.

Installing

Having only been released yesterday, as of today the only way to get rekonq 1.0 is to be running Kubuntu's 12.10 Quantal Quetzal Alpha release, and subsequently adding the PPA found here. Note the warning that is shown on the PPA's webpage that installing packages from there can nuke your system and eat your cats. Being a stable release with rekonq, it should be OK to use, but we have not had time as of yet to test. Once we are able to, we'll post the results here. Feel free to share your results from running rekonq in 12.10 if you have had the opportunity to try it out. 


I am assuming that the release will eventually trickle down into the 12.04. When it does, we'll be sure to let you know. 


Source: rekonq 1.0!!!

Edit 07/23/12: According to a post by Johnathan Riddell, rekonq packages are now available for 12.10 in the standard repositories, and in the precise-backports repository for current 12.04 version users.