Here’s the Deal

K-Meleon vs GNOME Web

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When comparing K-Meleon vs GNOME Web, the Slant community recommends GNOME Web for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop web browsers?” GNOME Web is ranked 19th while K-Meleon is ranked 31st. The most important reason people chose GNOME Web is:

Since it is a GNOME app, you get all the benefits of the GNOME desktop. It's easy to use, Epiphany just works out of the box. It stores your web site passwords in the secure GNOME keyring, and uses your existing desktop settings to launch applications and access the network, so you don't need to configure everything twice.

Specs

Based OnMozilla Firefox ESR

Browser EngineGoanna (Gecko-fork)

Based OnEpiphany

Browser EngineWebKit

Default Search EngineDuckDuckGo

LicenseOpenSource (GPLv3)

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best desktop web browsers?

Pros

Pro
Secure and fully under user control

No malware/adware toolbars/extensions can be injected. You can switch off Java, JS, Flash, popups, and Ads from the toolbar or with a hotkey.

Pro
Extremely customizable

Almost every detail can be personalized:

skin
buttons (icon theme and on/off state)
toolbar placement
menus
number of settings and preferences
proxies (add and switch with ease)
locale (switch on the fly without downloads and restarts)
etc.

Pro
Fast and lightweight

Light on memory footprint: the smallest RAM amount used among all the modern browsers. Fastest application startup. Very responsive. Invaluable on the older and low-end hardware.

Pro
Highly extensible

Has hundreds of its native extensions written on its own macrolanguage.
Supports dozens of XPI-extensions for Firefox.

Pro
Native

Pro
Fits in perfectly with the GNOME desktop

Pro
Excellent alternative to the most popular web browsers

Sometimes my workflow involves using separate browsers. I like mail in app tabs, but some jobs are well suited to a lighter, simpler web browser.

Pro
GNOME integrated

Includes features specific to GNOME like turning sites into apps that are managed with GNOME software and the ability to install GNOME extensions.

Pro
For Linux and Windows

Available for Linux and Windows 10 with WSL, see here.

Pro
Lightweight

Epiphany is pretty lightweight and doesn't require much memory to start up.

Pro
Best touchpad navigation

Pinch to zoom, smooth bidirectional scrolling are still far beyond other browsers.

Pro
Default in many GNOME versions

Epiphany has been the default browsers for many distributions that use stock GNOME for a long time now (although it's being replaced by the much more popular Firefox lately).

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Cons

Con
Dead

Ended in 2016.

Con
Stability issues

Con
Extremely dated interface

The UI is ugly, which is forgivable, but sticking to a setup from the early 00s makes using it clunky.

Con
Windows only

K-meleon is only available on Windows. It was previously available on Android and Linux, but now the both discontinued.

Con
Uses Goanna

Its one of the oldest gecko forks which was made by one man.

Con
Not secure

Con
Crashes often

Epiphany can crash on a heavy load or when closing/opening tabs. While this only happens every few days, it still happens more often than in most other browsers.

Con
Not much room for configuration

The choice for extensions is very limited, although there are decent extensions for the most useful activities and features it still cannot compare to the extensive collections that other browsers may have access to.

The number of tweaks that can be done to the browser from the options menu is also very limited since Epiphany follows a philosophy of "less is more". While this can be enjoyable for some it still hinders a lot of functionality and removes the ability to personalize the browser the way you want it to be.

Con
Becomes messy on highly graphical pages

Sometimes struggles to handle complex graphical pages such as Facebook. In these circumstances, it becomes 'messy' - text and graphics get mixed up - and will eventually crash. Even so, this is a light and useful browser.