Galeon's creator left over UI simplification disputes and founded Epiphany. The remaining Galeon developers couldn't keep up with Mozilla platform changes, and the browser was discontinued in 2008 after merging features back into Epiphany.
Galeon was a Gecko-based browser using GTK for its interface, tightly integrated with the GNOME desktop. Its feature set included tabbed browsing, session management, smart bookmarks, and extensive per-site configuration — features that were advanced for 2002 but became standard in Firefox.
Galeon was one of the most popular Linux browsers in the early 2000s, known for its speed and configurability. Created by Marco Pesenti Gritti, it was built on Mozilla's Gecko engine and designed to integrate tightly with the GNOME desktop environment. But in 2002, a philosophical schism tore the project apart.
The dispute centered on GNOME's Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). Gritti believed Galeon should follow the HIG and adopt a simpler, more streamlined interface. The other developers wanted to keep Galeon's extensive configuration options and power-user features. Unable to resolve the disagreement, Gritti left the project in November 2002 and created Epiphany — a new browser built from scratch following HIG principles.
This was an unusual fork because the creator left and started fresh rather than taking the codebase. Galeon continued under the remaining developers, but it was fighting a losing battle on multiple fronts. The Mozilla platform's Gecko engine was changing rapidly, requiring constant adaptation work. Firefox was rising as the dominant Linux browser, absorbing most of the developer and user attention. And without Gritti, Galeon lacked its most experienced developer.
In 2005, the Galeon developers acknowledged reality and began porting Galeon's advanced features as extensions to Epiphany, effectively merging the projects. The last release of Galeon was version 2.0.7 in September 2008. The browser that once rivaled Firefox on Linux desktops was gone, absorbed back into the project its creator had started.
Galeon's story is the inverse of the usual fork narrative: the fork (Epiphany) won by being simpler, and the original project died because complexity is expensive to maintain, especially when your rendering engine keeps changing under you.
Galeon 0.6 released, first public version
Gritti leaves Galeon over HIG dispute, creates Epiphany
Epiphany becomes the official GNOME browser
Galeon developers begin porting features to Epiphany as extensions
Galeon 2.0.7 released — the final version
Galeon's decline demonstrated that in the browser world, maintaining compatibility with a rapidly evolving rendering engine is a full-time job. Without sufficient developer resources, even a popular browser will fall behind. Epiphany (now GNOME Web) continues as the GNOME browser, carrying some of Galeon's DNA.