Microsoft will release a web browser for Linux next month. Repeat, Microsoft will release a browser for Linux – and it uses Google's technology Microsoft will release its Edge browser for Linux next month, initially through the browser's Dev preview channel. The Windows giant, which has warmed to Linux in recent years, made the announcement at its Ignite 2020 conference, conducted virtually this week on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. "Our mission to bring …
It's a Dominant Linux browser.
Webkit was a kde project. It was written for Linux and took over the world when Apple and Google based their browsers on it.
Naturally it has morphed a fair bit since then, but I thinks its fair to call it a dominant linux browser.
This is clearly newsworthy but Microsoft have done fsck all to make chromium work on Linux.
I'm sure microsoft are devastated with their 78% desktop market share. (Apparently Macos is next with around 17%) They mostly seem to make their money from Office these days, and have done for a very long time.
source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/ (Ignore the title, its actually all desktop os not windows 7. I suspect its an old article that gets updated every few months. the last being june.)
Errr. no it doesn't, it means Microsoft are playing a different game. They are selling services now, even the Xbox and game playing is a service from them, offered as a subscription service.
Windows is no longer offering any income from sales as such, it is like the hardware Apple sells, it is self sustaining but does not support the company, Azure and subscriptions for Office 365 do.
Edge with chormium does this as well, it provides users with an opportunity to use Microsoft's services in the background and thus allows them to slurp your data, they unpicked 30+ Google services from the browser before releasing it as Edge, something none of the other Chromium based browsers have been able to do. It would be interesting to see if MS offers 3rd parties a chice of Chromium browsers, one that uses Google and one that uses MS services, or even one with none, but I would assume that woudl break the browser.
I strongly beg to differ on "M$ are playing a different game. They are selling services now"
The last time I checked the racketeering model is still there. Even if they might want to transition to a service/subscription model, that has not stop the racketeering so far, and you MUST still pay the M$ tax anytime you buy a PC, whether you intend to use the pre-installed W$ or not.
And don't tell me "it's because hardware vendors sell only that"... you perfectly know they have their arms twisted to do so by M$ despicable commercial practices.
Once the racketeering model will end, I'll respectfully write again Microsoft in full instead of the M$ abbreviation they continue to deserve!
You must live in a cave somewhere, there numerous devices sold without Windows from all the major vendors.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystems
https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/search?text=Linux&fsid=9
You can also buy all the components yourself and install any OS you want and many system builders offer a choice of OS. There is no MS tax other than in your head.
Perhaps you should target your ire at the here and now Apple and Google taxes on things sold through their stores rather Microsoft for practices it engaged in 20 years ago and is no longer a thing.
If you're looking for absolutely budget range computer, then Palicomp will send you an OS-less computer
Also handy for saving 85 quid if you know where to get grey market Windows 10 licences for $15 online.
(They're trypically resold windows keys from large organisations who bought PCs in bulk with included licences but already had a site-licence agreement with MS)
"keep your friends close and your enemies closer"
I was actually thinking "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" but yours will do, too.
Even though it's based on open source technology, will the Micros~1 browser for Linux be OPEN SOURCE? Will it PHONE HOME? will it (eventually) REQUIRE A Micros~1 logon so you can be more easily TRACKED? Will it even WORK on FreeBSD? Will it require MONO and/or ".Not Core" ???
And I ~shudder~ to consider the implications of what a Micros~1 browser for Linux might haul in with its dependency tree... (and many of us REALLY hated it when Debian's gnome included 'tomboy' and hauled in ALL of mono, a decade or so ago - imagine what the Micros~1 browser will "need")
I think you have missed the point. Microsoft are a co contributor to Chromimum.They have their own agenda and may stop Google dominating the Open Source project as they do at the moment, as in we want this Google benefiting feature and you will all have it too.
Now on Linux you can chose between giving all your data to the Devil (all Chromimum based browsers except edge) or his brother (Microsoft New Edge) and use their associated services in the background or use Firefox. That is the choice.
There are no added extras it is otherwise the same bar Google services, but including all extensions which are now a case of pick your store.
The relaxing thing about using Linux (Mint) full time is the fact that I don't have to worry about the evilness of Microsoft and Google, so why would I choose to invite either of them across the threshold? I choose neither: Palemoon, with not even the merest hint of deviltry, is good enough for me.
"Mint [ for now --- until I replace with a KDE distro ]"
Try Slackware ... which also gives you a systemd-cancer free experience.
Yes, there is a Slackbuild for PaleMoon ... but I'm pretty happy with the as-shipped Firefox 68.12.xESR (in -stable) and 78.3.xESR (in -current).
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The missing link is Office/Calendar-ing.
Edge on linux is just silly. But, read below, probably soon to be a requirement for (er) web tools. This way we can get back to web sites that only work with IE 6.15, ... release 7.14256a4 x 10^24.but not with the august patch. There were two other releases that mostly work but we forgot which ones they were.
Teams was mostly working on linux, now not so much.with the microphone.anymore.
And if you are 'collaborating' you can only have one group active at a time. So when i switch from my company team to the developer group not part of my company, nothing works with my company, and it resets when you switch back and forth. Not a linux specific issue. I can't evrer find sh*t in the thing. Shoot anyone in the head if the sentence starts with "All you gotta do is ..." And Skype is gone soon.
Apparently teams cannot operate in a defined manner. Teams seems to require constant tweaking on my PA's to work. I'm not blindly opening RTSP to servers anywhere on the planet. Why my Teams client in PHX,AZ needs to talk to an MS server in Sri Lanka, so I can meet with someone in Denver is beyond me.
I Run UBU18 on my desktop. Zoom 'just works'. Occasionally i have to toggle between audio devices, it has crashed, but I use it constantly > 4hours a day (unfortunately).. Bluejeans also generally just works, and the audio has improved dramatically. Webex used to work in chrome just fine. Not so much on the audio side anymore. Vonage has a web platform that seems to be stable under chrome, but has issues around audio quality.
Microsoft is still resting on Office and Outlook. They are going to force users into the ecosystem, like android/apple, or enterprise with Azure & AD / SSO. MS will continually make the API's into their infrastructure / software a moving target. (Can you say 'modern auth'?) to force the issue and enterprise will put up with it because it's the horse we know, Nobody ever got fired for ...
Our CIO could give a care, because if O365 is puking, everyone is puking, and the C-suiter's all know it already, we deal with it. If something else craps the bed, regardless if it's 1/10th as often as MS, they want to know why we didn't go with Microsoft.
I installed Teams on Mint
I don't know about Mint, but no issues with either video or sound in Teams on Fedora (KDE) which is my main desktop. Teams itself is shite, which is an issue, of course. Even Skype is better as a communications tool, despite the same (foster) parentage.
Someone mentioned Office/Calendar - these days people just use Office365 in a browser. Again, it's shite, but so is Outlook that has a ton of additional configuration quirks.
Actually, I suspect the main reason I have a Windows VM on my laptop is vSphere client - not even its browser-based incarnation works on Linux. Can't blame it on MSFT, really - more is the pity.
" Palemoon, with not even the merest hint of deviltry,"
Ah, watch your spelling here. I just got bollocked on the Pale Moon forums for calling it Palemoon, which is incidentally how it is spelled in the url for the site.
It does seem as if there is a strain of the fundamentalist in some Pale Moon users. Having said that I find the browser excellent and have no wish to use any other. It's a pity that the members of forum aren't a bit friendlier though.
Yes, I realised after the fact that my spelling was off. Fortunately it wasn't on the Pale Moon forum.
On your point about unfriendliness on the forum, I did notice some unusually hostile responses to genuine comments recently. Oddly-enough, they weren't from 'The Management'.
I think you have missed the point. Microsoft are a co contributor to Chromimum.They have their own agenda and may stop Google dominating the Open Source project as they do at the moment,
If Microsoft had wanted to stop Google's domination in the browser arena, they should have teamed up with Firefox/Mozilla instead. All they do by pushing <u>yet another</u> Chromium-based browser is to increase the dangerous monoculture in the browserspace (kind of like we had when MSIE was the dominant browser).
But I expect the irony of teaming up with Mozilla years after they made every effort to destroy them would have made their heads explode.
>> Almost all Office users are using the online version
I find that highly unlikely. If anything because there is no crack for the cloud stuff. Unless of course you mean Outlook and Teams opens up pdf / word documents in an annoying "word-like" viewer before you can download and open them in a proper program.
Because IE is dead. MS even killed IE8, so any OS using it for Windows or MS Update, say reinstalled X-Ray machine, can no longer connect to MS Servers. Fails on HTTPS and FTP. VMware ends IE11 support next year. MS has even killed their own Edge, and is using the guts of Chrome (Chromium?) in it now.
I was trying to get updates and converters for Office 2003 and Office 2007. MS's site search is now useless for that, you have to search cnet instead. MS wants to rent you Office 365. Not office as you know it. But then The Ribbon (Office 2007 and later?) isn't Office as you know it. Easier to find the third party "Recreate the Traditional Menus" plugin than any MS service pack or plugin for real versions of Office (i.e. ones that came on CD and didn't need the Internet, even the phone activation still works, though you may need to search the Internet to find the phone numbers).
1-800-930-031 to activate all MS Products in Ireland. No quiz any more on why you are reinstalling, fully automated.
@"You were trying to get updates for 13 year old software and seem surprised you can't find it?"
I am surpirised since I found them fine, also once WU is set for apps as well as OS then it still finds them fine too.
Good software just works forever, just because MS keep fking up the reinvention of the wheel doesn't mean you have to go along with them. Just wait until they release a version where all the good stuff works and the new stuff is actually useful.
Hence why I am waiting for windows21
You were trying to get updates for 13 year old software and seem surprised you can't find it?
I've been doing a WSUSoffline pull for any MSWin version just before the updates support for that particular version gets removed. Not that I've ever had much reason to use them.
"You were trying to get updates for 13 year old software and seem surprised you can't find it?"
I just today got an update for Samba and Vim. Both are 28 years old. Also one for sudo, which is about 4 decades old, and one for cmake, which is a youngster at a mere 20 years old.
::shrugs::
I knew of many companies running their whole Internet platform on Linux back in 1999, with entire dev teams using it on the desktop as well. First commercial system I saw running on Linux was 1996, at the factory of a certain large Japanese car manufacturer in Swindon. It was definitely beyond just student and hobbyist use by then.
they did'nt port IE to linux....
Many years ago my best friend from High School was a team lead on MSIE. I jokingly asked when they were porting MSIE to Linux. His comment was "I expect that will be over Bill Gates' dead body."
(also, way back when I would be asking "who's responsible for this piece of crap?" in regards to MSIE. Then I found my friend was working on MSIE, and I was the person who first got him into computers. So in an indirect way...)
Sounds like Google has won?
I believe MS has scrapped IE and their previous in house Edge on Windows for an Edge Branded Chromium.
Google has what percentage on each platform and what with Chrome and what % of what's left is based on Chromium?
I had to switch to Brave on Android, because Mozilla made Firefox nearly unusable. I've been using firefox derived Waterfox so as to have Classic Theme Restorer. I wonder how long that will last before I have to use Chromium.
So more about the total failure of IE and Firefox vs Google than Windows vs Linux. Firefox was a market leader and strangled themselves with copying Google.
I started using Bromite on Android given all the problems I've had with Firefox. I've been a long time Mozilla user, but a this point would have a hard time recommending Firefox to people. Sticking with FF for now on Windows and Linux, but I can't say a future switch is off the table. Honestly, my choice to use FF over Chromium is really just ideological.
«Try Fennec F-Droid if you prefer the previous version of Firefox for Android. Because it actually is the previous version of Firefox for Android with a few of the more annoying bits removed.»
I was also unhappy with the new Firefox for Android, but I've grown to like it a lot. There is simply no way that I switch to a chrome-based browser or stay stuck in the past with a Firefox clone that is not properly being updated.
"Sounds like Google has won"
The same thought crossed my mind when I was reading the article.
What I still find somewhere between amusing and bemusing is the number of comments I'm seeing along the lines "Oh NO it's Micros~1 how much DATA will they SLURP?!?!?!!111!", while little to no mention is made of the fact that this is based on Google's technology - and they certainly have the leading market share in the tracking/slurping department...
Firefox is working reasonably well for me on Linux (with one annoying bug, it's spell checking against South African English rather than the UK English it is actually set to in preferences).
That aside, I can't see me ever using an MS browser on Linux. The concept sounds rather disturbing, rather like inviting a door to door Window salesman into your home.
... rather like inviting a door to door Window salesman into your home.
It is much worse than that.
Can't believe that anyone could possibly consider being so reckless. ie: downright stupid.
I've said it once and will keep saying it:
Install/run MS software/code inside my Linux box?
Not till hell freezes over.
Twice.
O.
Well, sort of. But, as the code MS is submitting to Linux is open, there is hope that non-MS people are checking it thoroughly before it's accepted. Conversely, that's something no one outside MS can do to the code that runs Windows.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Have you read the modified Slackware-based source that I use to compile my system? If not, how can you make that statement?
However, just to play Devil's Advocate, let's say I am.
At least it has been thoroughly vetted by Linus & the rest of the Kernel dev folks ... and by a bunch of fanboi hangers-on, each eager to make a name for themselves finding bugs/holes/backdoors in MS submitted code. Can't say the same of anything else that Microsoft inflicts on the world.
Not really the case...the large majority of m$'s Linux contribution has been self-serving: it's own Hyper-V virtualization hypervisor drivers. I exclude them from my kernels.
Let's be clear...m$ isn't about embracing Open Source...it's about keeping people inside a windoze ecosystem, even if they want to use Linux. Plus Azure won't run without Linux....that's all you need to know.
@"That aside, I can't see me ever using an MS browser on Linux" when MS start paying distributors to include it and set as default browser.
MS are doing their sneaky "let me just help you with that" before they grab it and make everything based upon MS versions of existing standards SEE MS v Sun
it's spell checking against South African English rather than the UK English it is actually set to in preferences
.
Can't speak for modern neoChrome Firefox, but on Pale Moon one can install, or reinstall * language packs
https://addons.palemoon.org/language-packs/
Firefox Modern no doubt has the same thing.
.
*
Reinstall, because I had to add this excellent add-on to get it stuck
https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/locale-switcher/
It's all very odd. It has English GB language pack installed in Firefox and also Canadian English for some unknown reason. Preferences is set to UK English for spell checking but if I right click this text box > languages, the spell checker is using English (South Africa). It really has lost the plot. I've tried Chrome and Opera and both default automatically to spell checking in UK English.
Just added the locale switcher add-on as suggested but it is still defaulting to South African English which isn't even an installed language pack on Firefox.
I also did a complete de-install of Firefox and manually deleted its data profile folder and re-installed and the same problem came back again. I'm at a total loss. I guess I'll just have to move from the UK to South Africa.
That aside, I can't see me ever using an MS browser on Linux. The concept sounds rather disturbing, rather like inviting a door to door Window salesman into your home.
Or worse, JW missionaries. (they have a Watchtower indoctrination centre the next town over, so they like to do their practice runs here.)
Invite them in straight away with no hesitation and see what happens. I have done this, what happens next is they hesitate, as no one ever invites them in they are not sure what to do. They then explain again that they are JW and you say you know and come on in.
They then mumble some apologies about disturbing you and leave. They can't seem to get away fast enough pussies.
On the rare occasion that JWs brave the brood mares & dawgs and manage to find my front door, I keep a copy of Marx's Manifesto (in original pamphlet form) nearby to offer them in return for their publications ... They usually look like they've seen a ghost and scurry away, never to be seen again.
No, I'm not a communist. It's just a tool.
Pale Moon dropped things like fine-grained cookie control as well.
.
Perhaps, for all I know.
I just use its add-on Cookie Exterminator, the Angel of Death, which by default destroys all cookies on site exit, allows whitelisting trusted sites --- also has a Greylist and a Redlist which I haven't bothered to explore.
And very best of all, whilst looking at a site enables Remove individual cookies, which means whilst looking at those rummy American magazine sites etc., with 'You are reading the first of 3 articles' --- one just hits that and destroys the cookies before leaving; and instanter one can continue reading more and more articles.
I gave up with Chrome a while ago, and I'm an Xoogler! I mostly use Firefox on my KDE Neon desktop setup, but FF leaks memory, and after a while (a few days) has to be restarted.
I also use Vivaldi, which seems to work pretty well.
On my Android phone, I use the Free Adblock Browser...never Chrome.
As for this M$ overture, it's a waste of time....I gave up using M$ software (for Linux) in 2001, and I have zero intention of going back. And why swap Google digesting your data, and let M$ do it instead?
Does Edge do the Chrome stupidity of automatically adding www or m and automatically changing even clicked links to https, because yesterday the top level of the site you were testing DID support HTTPS, but for various reasons it doesn't now and you really really want to load the http:// version?
Also a wildcard *.<mydomain>.<tld> isn't a true subdomain wildcard as https://www.<myssubdomain>.<mydomain>.<tld> will fail. Though Chrome is sure that's what you mean by http://<myssubdomain>.<mydomain>.<tld>
You can fix it with a rewrite rule AND totally clearing Chrome's Cache. Sometimes.
Had to buy a MS Win10 box a few weeks ago. Installed Firefox for reasons too obvious ... but it had an older version of Edge, which duly installed the newer version of Edge, which then arrogated to itself the task of opening my PDFs.
Mostly harmless, except for the boganosity of not even asking me ...
Haha *Falls over*
Like when Microsoft released Internet Explorer for Solaris on SUN SPARC. I RUSHED to install their shit code on my vastly superior architecture (had a Sparc 25, two Ultra 5s and an Ultra 10 in my spare bedroom). Not.
I'll install Edge on my Linux box about the heat death of the fucking Universe.
While I haven't tried the Chromium based Edge, I can see that it maybe useful for environment of mixed Windows, Macs and Linux machines to all have the same browsers but you don't want to go with Chrome, but you want maximum compatibly with badly written site that only usually work properly in the Google browser.
Personally though I would just go with pure Chromium before Google or Microsoft fiddled around with it, Brave or Vivaldi as they are also multi platform and use the same rendering engine.
I don't know the point for the Linux version, but for Windows it's part of the MS ecosystem with GPO configuration, somewhat tighter security controls (PUA blocking/SmartScreen, etc.) and IE mode because we cannot dump the need for Java in the browser (thanks Oracle EBS). So for us, it's a way to force people off IE, add some additional configuration control and security, and keep running legacy crap. A better Chrome than Chrome - just barely.
It's an update of the update of "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM" - which as we know, was at one point, "No-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft", and has been for the past few years "No-one ever got fired for buying Google" ...
Think of all the dog trials you've ever watched, and you'll gain an understanding of corporate behaviour. (Better of course if you've actually helped round up sheep yourself - I once helped round up some lambs to get docked.)
Microsoft. They want this.
They can see a shift to Linux, and want to make sure they can still keep getting their eye-watering licence fees for Windows. Hence WSL etc.
"Oh, $bigcorp, you're thinking of moving to Linux. Well how about you run all those nice Linux apps on Windows instead, for a very unreasonable fee, and we'll let you keep your MS partner status..."
No, you seem to think that my sensibilities must follow yours.
They don't.
Hopefully you have NO binary blobs on any of your systems? Fully open source firmwares for your motherboards, network interfaces, video cards and any other DMA capable devices?
Mint is not Ubuntu. As you say, a derivative. Meanwhile, the official stance from Ubuntu, is that hibernate is not supported.
I know you can wrestle with Ubuntu to make it hibernate, but then you have a good chance at being confronted with a non-booting system after you perform a system update.
As it stands, I'm happy with RHEL8. Hibernate with FDE has been working just fine, including after performing numerous updates.
Two of the top five companies that can go rot in Hell as far as I'm concerned.
I ditched my last bit of MS branded software in 2016 and I have no intention of going back.
As for google... there is a reason that I have over 500 rules in my firewall that block google owned domains.
I simply don't see ads these days and every so often I search for myself (using someone else's computer) and my name while common, there is no specific reference to me. Long may that remain.
Microsoft is clearly on a mission to take over Linux. I am sort of coming around to the idea that IBM buying RedHat was a good move.
Sorry. No thanks Ms I'm not gonna bite on your poisoned chalice.
I have a real, genuine, honest, totally-not-trolling-i-promise question about this:
* Is there anybody anywhere out there who uses any flavour of Linux on the desktop who cares about this at all?
Sub-question: If so, why?
I am genuinely interested in hearing from anybody who has a use-case for this.
Out ot curiosity, I might give it a try to see if they made Teams work on Linux with Edgium (or wait for someone to try it!)
That is because, although C-level believe M$ marketing BS that "Teams work on any platform even on a browser", that is completely false and completely fails to work on Linux on any recent browser (Firefox/Chromium), even when changing their UserAgent to pretend to be a M$ browser. In fact it does not even work on the current Edge on W$10...
Not that I like Teams, of course it's a complete piece of crap, but they make us use it at work...
But it they make it work with Edgium on Linux, it would mean that it works on Chromium too, and instead of choosing a browser with 2 evil, I'll use Chromium instead...
And I might turn up the largest gold nugget ever found by humanity next time I plow the South 40. I'm not holding my breath, though. In fact, after typing this I'll probably forget the notion ever even crossed my mind because the odds in it's favo(u)r are ludicrously absurd.
1) Vivaldi don't have an FTP site.
2) Windows doesn't include FTP or Telnet by default anymore.
3) FTP.exe is so old it doesn't include passive mode; only works behind NAT/firewall if you have a FTP proxy properly configured.
4) If you mean an FTP site hosted on your internal network, Samba is a much better choice for that sort of thing.
Now, if you could download your browser of choice from an HTTP site with nothing but telnet.exe, I'd be impressed.
You have to realise that this is not a technical question, because these big companies are ruled by shareholders and finance, not by technique.
What is the point in 2020 to write a core browser engine from scratch when you can use an open source Chromium base.
Does it bring your company such an added value that businesses (the only one that accept to pay for anything) would prefer to use your browser or choose your O.S. because of the browser?
I guess the answer to that question is obviously no.
Chromium being mainly under BSD licence, you don't even strictly have to submit your own changes to the core engine if you don't wish to... Although contribution gives a "good image" and avoids having to re-apply changes when the core evolves (rebasing hell!) which is also good to reduce costs.
Since there is no financial interest, why bother, anyway the project won't be funded because that would be contrary to shareholders' interest.
So you end up with "marketing", since a proprietary O.S. is expected to come with a browser, you only develop some "decoration" on top of an existing code: behold edgium.
There is also a "big company issue" and globalisation. Most of the initial technical geniuses got promoted to "manager", and again to save cost, subcontracting all the I.T. to India is the rules. In the end, nobody in-house has any clue of what a line of code is, so Microsoft is being realistic doing only "decoration": the only skill they can hope to use successfully!
The same reasons work for the core of the O.S., but there is a transition issue between the racketeering model and the "service" model that Microsoft is now embracing. In the end, why continue to develop the core of an O.S. when a Linux kernel + "Windows D.E." (instead of Gnome/KDE/LXDE/You-name-it) + Office would be perfectly fine for all end users!..
(Of course "developers" would have to adapt, but those not already Linux-fluent are being trained with WSL1/2!)
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