Web browsers are like surfboards for internet users. Internet Explorer is still the most widely distributed browser, but it doesn't take much scratching beneath the surface to discover that other programs provide better protection from phishers and other cyber-criminals.

I must say that I think Opera is doing a great job supporting its browser on Linux. Even though it's closed-source, it's still one of the most powerful web browsers out there, and each release comes with packages for every major distribution out there.

Although you'll occasionally come across someone who uses Opera, the world of browser users consists largely of people using Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. However, for niche applications, fast performance, and for other reasons, many free spirits use some of the unusual open source browsers out there. Here, you'll find four of them, and what they're good at.

For web browsing, most of us would prefer Firefox or Opera because of their speed, security, stability, and overall features. While a handful of people may like surfing the web with some of those terminal-based browsers. For a change, why not try some web browsers that would perhaps cater to a few of your specific needs and would serve as an alternative to your existing browser.

These days, you have a broader choice of Internet browsers, despite the attempts by Microsoft to drive all the other browsers out of the space over the past decade. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer remains the most popular browser with a 65.9 percent share, but Mozilla’s open source Firefox has been showing a lot of strength in the past two years.

Web developers know the importance of testing web sites and blogs on the different web browsers available. A site/blog can look great on one browser, but if you try to access it on another one, it can probably look garbled. It’s a hassle checking a web site/blog on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.

A panel discussion among browser executives Thursday shed a little light on the philosophical differences between four major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera), but more than anything showed how all these products are moving in the same direction.

Internet browsers Firefox and Opera have experienced a massive surge in downloads since the security flaw in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) was exposed.

After Microsoft killed Netscape, there was no serious competitor to Internet Explorer in the browser wars. For years, Microsoft lorded its dominance of the web browser market. Then along came Firefox, the open source web browser that took the world by storm.