Microsoft Releases Chromium-Based Edge Preview For Linux (zdnet.com) 97
Last month, Microsoft officials said they'd release a preview of the new Chromium-based Edge browser for Linux some time in October. On October 20, Microsoft made good on the promise, making available the Edge Dev Channel build for Linux. ZDNet reports: The new release supports Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and openSUSE Linux distributions. Microsoft is planning to release weekly builds, like it does with the Dev Channel builds for other platforms. To get started, users can download and install a .deb or .rpm package directly from the Edge Insider site, which will configure a system to get future automatic updates. Or users can install Edge from Microsoft's Linux Software Repository. More detailed instructions are available on Microsoft's Chredge-on-Linux blog post.
ugh (Score:3, Funny)
I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Re:ugh (Score:4, Interesting)
After seeing no sources (despite the base being free) and the "Data Collection" sections in the Evil EULA, I did that too.
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Like Google Chrome, Edge contains some closed source DRM components. They could make source available minus those parts, as Firefox does. The open source Chromium base does not contain the DRM components.
What is really lacking for me is any compelling reason to use it. If they offered ARM builds I might change my mind.
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That still wouldn't be a compelling reason to use it over Chromium, as Chromium already does amd64 arm64 armhf i386 (only).
For the rest of release archs (but armel) there's Firefox. And for everything, eLinks...
But, with even ARM on keyboard-equipped machines being extremely niche (said with a PineBook Pro and a Gemini on my desk), much less ppc/mips/s390, I don't quite see what's the reason to care about a naive-normal-people-only browser in situations you'd use a non-x86 piece of hardware. Edge is just
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good luck (Score:4, Interesting)
Where was the love for Linux 10 or 20 years ago, when Internet Explorer was dominant? Too late now.
Edge might be good, but I've had so many annoying nags to use it on Windows that Edge is now a dirty word.
No I still do not want Edge as my default browser, same as when you asked 5 minutes ago!!
Microsoft is worse than kids.
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Where was the love for Linux 10 or 20 years ago, when Internet Explorer was dominant? Too late now.
There was an Internet Explorer from Microsoft for Unix that ran on Linux. As soon as IE was the dominant standard they dropped it. No need to keep it up once Netscape was moribund.
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It never ran on Linux. It only supported Solaris and HP-UX. It wasn't even compiled for x86. In general wine was the better option, although it's always been tricky with IE.
Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
"I sure wish I could run IE on my Linux box" ... said nobody ever.
Re: Obvious (Score:3)
Actually I said it quite a bit, working on software that generated HTML for a variety of different browsers and devices. Resorted to WINE sometimes, but it was incredibly flaky at the time. I care a lot less now, but suspect there are probably developers out there for whom it would be useful still.
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Resorted to WINE sometimes, but it was incredibly flaky at the time.
Are you sure that wasn't just Aieeee!? I used to use it under wine for testing and found it to be about as stable as on Windows.
Re: Obvious (Score:2)
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If the IE on Linux renders pages identically as IE on Windows, then yes this would be great for testing.
And what would be the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
When it's just a reskinned Chrome anyways, it seems silly, if you ask me.
I'm still choked about chakracore being orphaned by MS's decision to base Edge on Chrome, and it's not likely something I'll get over until it becomes possible to embed v8 in an application such that badly behaved javascript can't crash the entire process that it is embedded in by doing things like just taking up too much memory (Chakracore had a far more sane reaction for embedders of just aborting the javascript interpreter and returning the appropriate error to the caller).
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It *could* make a twisted kind of sense in a corporate setting. Consistency between Windows and Linux boxes/desktops. I know, I know, Chrome also has this consistency. However Edge is the default browser, and like it or not, many orgs will therefore use it in preference.
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The point is escaping Google (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the reasons is just to escape the [businessinsider.com.au] shit [cnet.com] Google heaps on Chrome users. Even Chromium users have to put up with Google preventing you from stopping their sites from tracking you.
I escape it by using Firefox myself. But if you are a die-hard Chrome user, this might just be the ticket.
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Article from May 2019 saying the end is neigh... *looks* . Nope Adblocker is still working. Half of your post actually contains serious information. It's a shame you mixed it in with FUD.
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Re: The point is escaping Google (Score:2)
Re: The point is escaping Google (Score:2)
Re: The point is escaping Google (Score:2)
* I'm no HTML fan!
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it's not just reskinned Chrome though. I've found it to be more responsive than Chrome on the same machine.
You can add most Chrome extensions to it. It has a screen reader built in. Native PWA support. The collections function is interesting. Everything can be sync'd with your Microsoft Account (just like your Google Account in Chrome). If you use Office 365 (and MFA in Azure) it integrates really well, obviously being an MS product.
I think most people who knock Chromium based Edge either haven't even
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Re: And what would be the point? (Score:2)
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I think most people who knock Chromium based Edge either haven't even tried it out,
Why would I?
or they still think it's cool to bag everything Microsoft does.
It is. Microsoft is still the same old thing: A corporation that doesn't give two shits about anything but profit.
Re: And what would be the point? (Score:2)
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When it's just a reskinned Chrome anyways, it seems silly, if you ask me.
Chrome on IOS is "just a reskinned Safari (webkit)" but I still find it useful, so I image Windows-users might find Edge useful on Linux.
Re: And what would be the point? (Score:2)
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"chrome on iOS is just reskinned Safari": is that true?
All browsers must be based on Apple's webkit browser engine, to be allowed in the Apple store.
So the rendering is the same, just the "skin" (UI) and syncing to external data differ.
So the reason for using Chome on IOS is that it syncs with Chrome on other platforms. The pages still look like on Safari.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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#AppleSuxMoreThanIThink
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The same was said of IE, because big chunks of it were already preloaded by the OS so weren't counted as memory usage of the browser process (and was wasted resources if you used another browser). They wouldn't be able to do that on linux.
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IMHO, this is just a platform for MS to advertise the 'wonderful world of windows' to Linux users.
With Google AND MS slurping going on why would anyone in their right mind want this POS?
There will be some from the 'No one got fired for buying MS stuff' camp but almost zero takeup from the Linux diehards.
[disclaimer] All software from the likes of MS and Google is banned in my home. The same goes for Facebook, twitter, whatsapp etc. most of them are blocked at my firewall.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Also because Edge integrates with their Linux development tools. If you want to build Linux based web apps, perhaps for deployment to Azure, you can do it with Visual Studio Code and Edge.
Aside from the integration they probably don't want to be in a position where they are reliant on a third party tool for their ecosystem either.
Re: And what would be the point? (Score:2)
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Re: And what would be the point? (Score:2)
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Re: And what would be the point? (Score:2)
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When it's just a reskinned Chrome anyways, it seems silly, if you ask me.
But is it? The Windows version of edge is a re-skinned Chrome with a great IE rendering engine built in for fallback purposes, and an actual PDF editor, not just a viewer as well as integration with Microsoft accoutns. That makes Edge for windows significantly more useful in a workplace than Chrome ever was. If they port this functionality over to Linux, it's yet another thing that the Windows users can no longer hold up as an example of not using Linux.
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If they port this functionality over to Linux, it's yet another thing that the Windows users can no longer hold up as an example of not using Linux.
People still don't appear to understand why majority don't use Linux - it's simply because there's no responsibility or unity behind it, everyone bickering and in the end, forking to create yet-another-distro or whatever for no apparent reason except that they don't agree on the style of the scrollbar or whatever.
Imagine what Linux on desktop could have accomplished by now if there was One Unified Organisation behind it, all that talent brought together to iron out problems, to come to a common conclusion t
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People still don't appear to understand why majority don't use Linux - it's simply because there's no responsibility or unity behind it, everyone bickering and in the end, forking to create yet-another-distro
Sorry but that's not even remotely the case. The only people complaining about bickering are the tech heads who ironically (for your argument) already use Linux. Windows is a world of defaults. A windows user isn't going to jump over to Linux and over analyse the exact details of which fork does what and is run by whom. They would just install Ubuntu or some distro someone recommends and that's it. Is Firefox the browser? Yes they'll use it, no, they'll use whatever is. Got an office suite? Does it edit a w
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The point is simple: Microsoft wants to collect as much data as they can from all, regardless of what operating system they're running.
Now, the only point that would ever be relevant from a user perspective would be if you were a web developer and needed to test functionality across browsers, but since the renderer is based on chromium, I really don't see the reason to allow Microsoft a foothold on my system just to test their wrappers and telemetry.
ummm....thanks???? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about giving us things we actually want, like Outlook, so my employer can switch us off MacOS and we can use Linux instead! My company wants to switch laptops to Linux to match our deployment environments, but can't because we rely on Outlook for meeting scheduling and you can't do everything from the web client. I don't like to complain about free software...but this does nothing for me nor any other desktop Linux user I know.
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Are there no mail clients for Linux that will work with Exchange servers? I presume you are using Outlook to access Exchange. I use Mac's Mail to do it.
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Ummm. Did you even read what your replied to? His outfit is trying to move away from Macs.
Filter error. Your post looks lok ASCII art. I used three dots FFS!
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Yes, I realize that. My only point was one needn't use Outlook to talk to Exchange servers, hence my question, "Are there no mail clients for Linux that will work with Exchange servers?"
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Yes, I realize that. My only point was one needn't use Outlook to talk to Exchange servers, hence my question, "Are there no mail clients for Linux that will work with Exchange servers?"
Can you book a conference room with one? Can you reschedule an invite? Can you look up a distribution list? There's a LOT more to Exchange and Outlook than e-mail. Last I checked, a few of the features around the scheduling system weren't available in the webapp, hence why we were stuck on macs...good machines overall, but I am sick of those 1% of situations where things behave differently between mac and linux and scripts break.
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but I am not sure why I want to abandon my perfectly good Linux browsers for this one.
If it works as well as on Windows then I would abandon my not so perfectly good Windows OS for a Linux one given the ability to actually display webpages optimised for IE is horribly broken in Chrome and Firefox.
Speaking of why it is "better" that depends on users. You're currently not using it so you probably won't miss anything when it's gone. Quite different from the Windows users (admittedly low in count) who have their browsing experience linked with their MS accounts, who rely on it as a PDF editor, w
Fat chance (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Ever since I switched from Windows to Linux I have always felt like I was missing something. It wasn't until I tried the Edge preview that I realized that what I had been missing all these years was the experience of using Microsoft's shitty browser to download a better browser. The experience is complete and now this is truly the year of the Linux desktop.
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The experience is complete and now this is truly the year of the Linux desktop.
I'm not sure about that. When Edge crashes does it take down the whole desktop with it, like IEeee does? If not, it's not truly a replacement and I'll be waiting for this must-have feature before installing.
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that I realized that what I had been missing all these years
The ability to use a browser identical to Chrome that includes a functional PDF editor rather than Chrome's garbage and the ability to stream Netflix in Full HD with surround sound?
Yep, up until now there *have* been things missing from Linux. ... I assume up until now. I haven't bothered to check if they actually included this stuff from their Windows version.
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Yes, what I want in my microsoft browser is a PDF editor so that when it gets taken over by malicious javascript like every microsoft browser ever it can send out fully completed official forms in my name.
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Oh? PDF = taken over by malicious Javascript? Because a web browser can't do that? Because you think MS wrote a different javascript engine specifically to display PDF? My dear friend drinkypoo, I enjoy a case of beer as much as the next person, I probably like beer even more than
Brett Kavanaugh, and he even told the senate about how much he likes beer (a man after my own heart). But please don't drink and Slashdot.
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Your reading comprehension is shit.
I'm talking about the consequences of a security hole, not what causes it.
Learn to read.
It's a trick. (Score:1)
Get an axe.
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Get an axe.
And start making wooden stakes. This Microsoft thing just won't die!
toilet bowl logo (Score:2)
Is it just me or does the Edge logo look like water circling the toilet bowl?
Widevine (Score:1)
The main reason I use Edge over Chrome (in Windows) is 4K support in Netflix. Last I checked Chrome didn't have the required Widevine protection level.
Perhaps the Linux Edge browser will have it?
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I suspect you wont get 4k netflix on Linux at all because Linux doesn't have the full "protected media path" (combination of kernel, graphics drivers, browser and other bits) that Windows gives you.
I look forward to trying it out (Score:3)
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Because I trust Microsoft (Score:2)
Is source code available for it? Because without it, I can see Linux users at the minimum being, well, incredgeulous about adopting it.
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Is source code available for it? Because without it, I can see Linux users at the minimum being, well, incredgeulous about adopting it.
I don't know what incredgeulous means, though it has a nice sound. If source code is not available I would worry that the Microsoft blob might be sending information back to Microsoft, or might in the future become a vector for ransomware.
Calc.exe (Score:2)
They should have quit while they were ahead when they released Windows Calculator for Linux a week ago. I mean, if you're into bad math, that covered the niche of calculators that don't understand order of operations (it thinks 1+2*3=9). What niche does Edge cover?
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Whether this is exactly what you wanted, or infuriatingly inconsistent is a matter of taste, I suppose.
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It wasn't Microsoft that ported their Calculator. They just open sourced it. It was the Uno Platform folks who ported it as a demo of how they can run UWP/WinUI apps on any platform.
What the Uno folks are doing is pretty interesting for C# developers. They took a UI framework that was designed to be specific to Windows and used it to target more platforms than the frameworks that were designed to be cross-platform (Avalonia, Maui/Xamarin Forms, Eto, GTK, etc). A small Canadian company got there ahead of the
Hardware video acceleration on linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Did they enable the hardware video decoding on linux thatâ(TM)s in the chromium source but that google keeps refusing to enable in chrome? If so, I might just switch.
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Did they enable the hardware video decoding on linux thatÃ(TM)s in the chromium source but that google keeps refusing to enable in chrome? If so, I might just switch.
So it's in the Chromium source... is it enabled in Chromium?
Re: Hardware video acceleration on linux (Score:2)
It depends what build...
Just-because-we-can department. (Score:2)
With this and the previous story about the Windows calculator running on Linux, I'm starting to think MS are ramping up their just-because-we-can department and am looking forward to seeing them run Halo on an IOT toaster.
No Microsoft no! (Score:1)
Why MS did it? (Score:1)
First they made Calculator run on Linux (Score:1)
... and now Edge. What's next, Notepad?
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VS Code integration (Score:2)
MS Edge Chromium is a good thing (Score:1)
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Synchronization of tabs/bookmarks/etc does not require a Google account.
You can create your own sync server for Firefox.
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But synchronization requires a Microsoft account. Tweedledee, tweedledum.
If you're using Windows you probably already have a Microsoft account because the company really really wants you to log into Windows that way, and if you want them to give you an accessible record of your Windows licenses you have to. So it's perhaps a net gain. If you're a Linux user, you're just getting to choose which big corporation you want to give your data to.
Sooo... I moved to Linux... (Score:2)
Silly but.... (Score:1)
Resistance is essential! (Score:1)
Geez Louise! Hasn't Microsoft already ruined everyone's life enough? After you shake hands with the devil, count your fingers.
Acquisition (Score:2)
Am I reading this correctly? I have to DO SOMETHING to get this installed on my PC? No wonder Linux isn't popular on the desktop. This is why people use Windows, where Microsoft just puts it on your computer without asking you.
Won't work (Score:1)
Footage: https://i.imgur.com/hZn3mhE.mp... [imgur.com]
I'd file a bug with Microsoft, but the repos seem to just be readmes without issue trackers.
If someone knows what the hell is going on, email me at tres@tresf.io. <3. Despite the hatred this browser is getting, some of us need to learn it for compulsory reasons.
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