Microsoft Edge Beta for Linux | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Edge Beta for Linux

microsoftedgeinsider.com

40 pointsvdfs28 comments

Not gonna lie, I was shocked to find this out: It’s proprietary.

History teaches us that trusting proprietary Microsoft products tends to be a bad idea.

Other than that it’s a pretty okay browser. A bit better than Chrome because of its stacked tabs.

Where does it say it’s proprietary? I looked (albeit while on my phone) and count find it. Is that on another site?

The reason I ask is because I wonder if it’s truly proprietary or just fell under their early release license and someone missed something while prepping the release.

Not just this release, all of Edge. I looked up the source code out of curiosity, found the Github repo (https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdge) ... which contains an MIT License.txt for that repository and a Readme.md with hits such as „Our new mobile browser has been based on open source from its beginnings over a year ago“ and „While we’ve been consumers of Chromium open source“.

I was pretty baffled and continue to be. Why the f** would they make it proprietary? It’s sad because Edge really is the nicest spin of Chrome I know, but I‘d have liked to use a version with some features removed.

Serious question - why?

Broswer compatibility testing

Why not? I tried it and it seemed a good browser. I think it’s a good option for those who hate Google.

Does it needs root to install ?

Serious reply, why not?

Why would you not want people to produce software for Linux?

Pride? Too much respect for a long standing feud?

What I mean is, why would Microsoft do this? If Edge is a nice piece of software that's in demand, why make it easier for people to run it on a rival OS? Conversely, if Edge is shovelware that directly benefits Microsoft in some way, why would anyone go out of their way to run it? Especially anyone who cares enough to go out of their way to install Linux? I'm just struggling to understand the target audience.

Although, from some of the sibling comments, perhaps I've underestimated its popularity?

> Why would Microsoft do this?

Probably because Google already did all the hard work -- it's a Chrome fork -- and it's good press in tech circles.

why what? It's a genuinely good browser: vertical tabs, built-in coupon finder, built-in add blocker etc. At worst you have your telemetry, that is otherwise sent to Google, sent to MS

So you can run Edge Linux on WSLg. /s

This makes sense to me. Moreover, soon enough you won’t be able to have a Linux running on WSL without Edge being preinstalled or injected - just as has been the case with Windows for a while now.

It’s a decent browser. Some don’t mind it being proprietary.

As a web front-end developer who develop on linux, i can finally ditch a VM with windows for edge tests.

Unlikely IE, edge its been a widely used browser since its good as chrome so people don't have the need to switch browser, so it have to be tested

Now we can expect apple release safari to linux? I don't expect this so soon.

I'd feel more comfortable keeping the VM personally.

Does it make Amazon work at 4k?

Or better than 480p? Let's not get too carried away here.

well his comment was serious. most 4k content needs a widevine plugin that you can't get for windows. only widevine l3 that only supports full hd content.

Nope, tested it last winter. Somehow, there was no way to watch in better than SD on Linux, even with the WideVine plugin in Firefox. It's okay, there are... other options. Very budget-friendly, too.

> Make Amazon work

I guess you mean showing prime video content in 4k, and not whether general amazon.com has issues working with this browser?

It'd be interesting to see if edge on Linux tries special tricks to force itself on the user, though they'd definitely have less sucess with that. Maybe it'll rewrite my bash profile and desktop entries

I have edge installed as a flatpak from flathub-beta and haven't seen any 'ads'. The sandbox capabilities of flatpak also help reduce potential attack surface.

Flatpack will be the death of Linux's software ecosystem.

Why?

Flatpak is a boon to Linux’s software ecosystem. It provides model of software delivery that makes sense for “pet apps” maintained directly by upstreams who want to make their software work across many distros and push updates outside the cadence of distro packaging.

Maybe it'll rewrite your ~/.config/mimeapps.list.

Privacy on Linux, invaded.

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