Edge on Linux: Thoughts from a Linux user

[Ruarí]

If you just want to try it for a few minutes without actually installing, you can quickly test it standalone (as I did) on Slackware.

P.S. I am not too worried about providing these instructions because I don't see many Vivaldi users sticking with Edge for very long!

[Steffie]

@Ruarí My root account just desperately emailed my user account & begged her to not install Edge. I promised her that she need have no fear; neither Edge [nor Bono] shall ever land in my SSD, til the day that snowshoes become de rigueur in Hades.

[Chas4]

I guessed a few years ago Microsoft was switching to Chromium for Edge when a lot of the Chrome security reports were from Microsoft. A bit later I learned that they had already been using Chromium for Skype and Microsoft Teams. Only in the past few years has Microsoft been playing publicly with Linux. Recent builds of Windows 10 can have Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 installed. Wonder how their test version of Edge runs in that.

[LonM]

@Hadden89 They are currently working on Sysinternals for Linux, recently releasing ProcDump: https://github.com/microsoft/procdump-for-linux

[luetage]

My opinion: Why would anyone in their right mind use a Microsoft program on Linux? Utter madness.

[ultravio1et]

It's a excellent browser. I heard very good things about its memory management as well
I was actually listening to this blog with Edge's read aloud option

This browser has now overtaken Firefox in the global user stats

I never thought I'd be saying this but Microsoft has got a lot better in recent years

[Catweazle]

Edge is certainly not the worst choice in the Chromium arena. In general MS seems to have a good relationship with Linux, even offering distros in the MS Store which quite astonished me.

[luetage]

@Catweazle A good relationship!? You are blind to the motives. Microsoft still dominates the desktop market, by incorporating the subsystem for Linux, there is less incentive for people to either switch to Linux, or run it as 2nd operating system. That’s all.

@ultravio1et As for Edge, it still does quite poorly. Better than Firefox says little these days. First of all we shouldn’t forget it was Firefox which cut into the dominance of Internet Explorer first before Chrome took over. Secondly Firefox is the only major browser which doesn’t come preinstalled on any major OS. Safari is on iOS and macOS, Edge is on Windows and Chrome is on Android and ChromeOS. Hard to compete in this environment.

So why would Microsoft release a version of its browser for Linux? Simply to bolster its standing in the browser wars. These days your browser got to have Sync and it needs to sync to all operating systems, which in turn requires you to release a version of your browser to all of them, unless you want people to switch to a different browser altogether. Microsoft doesn’t embrace Linux, it wants to reduce it to absurdity in the desktop market. More so than it already is…

[matsbtegner]

Interesting article. You can easily convert RPM-packages on Slackware using the rpm2tgz (rpm2txz) utilities if you want to list them using pkgtools. RPM is also included with Slackware so you can force-install RPMs using rpm -ivh --force --nodeps <package-name>

[Ruarí]

@matsbtegner: Using rpm to install directly on Slackware is generally a bad idea but in this case even more so as the cron jobs that setup an YUM repo will get setup. I have always considered rpm to be present to help with repacking but it should not really be used directly IMHO.

Yeah rpm2tgz exists but it is just as easy converting a deb. You can just unpack with ar and tar and then use makepkg on the extracted directly.

P.S. If you want to test Edge without install, it is super easy.

[matsbtegner]

@ruarí: Thanks for the tip regarding DEBs. I guess that's what you use in the SlackBuild-script for Vivaldi on SlackBuilds.org.

[Priest72]

@ultravio1et Those edge stats are meaningless as edge will come preinstalled with the windows operating system.

[RattleheadM]

On the PC I use Vivaldi and Edge and right now on Solus Linux I use Vivaldi and Brave. I think when Edge becomes mature, I'll use Edge instead of Brave. I have 2 monitors and I use one browser for each monitor.

I'm guessing the Linux version of Edge doesn't have the built in web page reader?

If I had to choose between Vivaldi and Edge, I'd probably pick Vivaldi too because of the features. Edge is a great browser as well and would be my second pick, Brave being third.

Have you heard about the browser Whale? It's a browser from South Korea that looks a lot like Vivaldi.

[Steffie]

Threads like this, comprising such astounding posts from some, simply compound my conviction that humans are weird.

[faust82]

@luetage: to be honest, Microsoft doesn't need to do anything to scuttle Linux as a viable desktop option. The Linux community manages to do that all on their own.
I used to be a dedicated Linux user, keeping only one Windows install for gaming, but preferring Linux for everything else due to it's stability and far superior UI. Then over the past 15 years, things changed. Or, more precisely, they didn't. Once again, Linux forked and fragmented, while Microsoft got their act sort of together with Windows 7. Another opportunity was wasted when Microsoft were fumbling about with Windows 8, but then the streaming revolution started to happen and Linux was left behind since DRM was an ideological no-no.
Windows 10.. a jumbled and fragmented mess at first, with it's settings spread across two different control panels. Frustrating, infuriating, but then again nothing I wasn't already familiar with from Gentoo, Debian and others. Remarkably, people forgave them that one too, because they still had better support for online services than Linux, and didn't carry the hefty entry costs that MacOS did.

Now, with Windows 10 in it's fifth year, things falling more and more into place (though still with two control panels) and ways to gimp the telemetry well documented, I don't see how Linux is going to pose any credible threat to the Windows ecosystem.

Also, Microsoft no longer cares. They're back to their initial business model. "We don't care what hardware or OS you run, the apps and services will be from Microsoft".

Edge is merely them testing the waters. Their presence on Android is already substantial, with their own launchers and lockscreens available. Sure, companies run Linux servers, but as long as they're in Azure instead of AWS it's all the same to MS. It's also why they're contributing code to the Linux kernel, to make it work better on their platforms than anywhere else.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a Linux version of Office 365 in the future.

Microsoft doesn't care about Linux in the desktop market. The desktop is merely the gateway to the cloud, and that is where the battle currently stands. MS, Amazon and Google duking it out, and remarkably MS looking as the lesser evil.

[faust82]

This article fails to address the single greatest feature of Edge, though it is unsurprisingly not too relevant for Linux-centric users.
Where Edge comes to life is if you work in a company that uses Office 365. Signing in with your AzureAD account instead of some other arbitrary account of your own gives you a fairly decent integration of the browser into the rest of your digital workplace. It also gives you a bit of separation between work and personal, since it'll be in it's own profile on Edge, while you do personal browsing either in a different profile or a different browser.

[Catweazle]

@RattleheadM , Whale certainly has many Vivaldi functions (Mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, screenshot, webpanel, clock, timer, etc). Not bad, but the translation is dire and many descriptions are only in Korean. But I'll give him a try.

[Hadden89]

@Catweazle Same. Is interesting to see projects clearly inspired from Vivaldi UI and feature sets.

[ngp]

Totally negative, if you're in Vietnam and you was using IE11 so longer since Windows XP or 7. But through, it's a good news when Netflix says no PlayReady for Edge, MS did it.

[ngp]

@catweazle: This would be negative to existing Vivaldi users since Microsoft was brutally made enemies from 1980s then no longer enemies since Windows 10 initial release (2015) and got became friends today. But as I was starting playing with a Windows XP PC too young, Edge, is totally not a wrost choice, while Vivaldi is so bloated to being. I would think Windows experience will just be better with a set full MS, Windows+Office+Edge.