I’m a Firefox user and have been for many, many years. Had very little interest in Google’s browser Chrome when it first came out, partly because I was uncomfortable with what I’d read about how they’d treated Mozilla. As for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and it’s awful adherence to standards back when it was their main offering, I only look back thankful it’s finally gone. Then the failure of their newer updated “Edge” before they made it a version of Chrome, again, I never have nor do I plan to touch it at all - unless a time comes when industry requirements force me to in certain contexts, such as when MS Office or other proprietary software is needed.
Anybody here interested in giving Microsoft Edge a run on their Linux system? I’d be interested in hearing why or why not?
Also Microsoft will apparently be bringing their anti-virus to Linux soon too…
No thanks. Had MS chosen firefox engine instead, i would have been more curious. That would be ironic though. Adopting the browser that they tried to kill back then. That would be the equivalent of Russia joining NATO…
Edit: This is more against google than against MS.
As a WebDev, I’d probably use it for the same reason I use it now - to test web pages. Otherwise, I’d only use it if I came across a websites that I strongly need/want to use that has a better experience in it vs. Firefox, then Vivaldi, then Chromium, then Chrome (which, if it’s based on Chromium, I wouldn’t think that something would work better in Edge vs base Chromium or Chrome)…
I’m taking a wait and see approach. I highly doubt it will ever replace Firefox as my day to day browser of choice but I need to use a Chromium-based browser for testing websites and don’t really love installing Chrome. If it comes down to who I trust more, Google or Microsoft, I can’t say I’ve formed a solid opinion at this point. Like anything though, I prefer to keep an open mind rather than just dismissing something without having done my own research.
Probably. I’m on Ubuntu so I would say more likely if it happened to be a snap. Sometimes I like having a totally different browser, profile, environment for checking something related to compatibility or rendering.
If you need a chromium-based browser at all costs and don’t trust Google nor Microsoft, there’s still the Brave Browser.
It’s privacy-oriented (despite it’s opt-in ad-based rewards model) and at least is open source.
But since I work for a corporation and we need to test things I’ll throw it on my test box and see how our software stack works on it…not that any of our users are on Linux anymore.
Dear MS, if you decide to do a snap (which I feel is the best way, personally), please don’t make a “classic” snap, but rather a proper snap which has proper app containment (which the classic snaps don’t do right). Without any such trustworthy-looking containment, I’m highly confident that you’ll alienate most potential linux users, who won’t want your browser looking around in places where it shouldn’t.
For a second I thought it might be nice if they brought over legacy Edge and IE as well, but given the grossness of the latter, they are probably better left inside the VMs Microsoft already freely provide for testing.
My workplace, which is Windows-heavy, is using IE for some of the applications (I work at a hotel as their IT). Having Edge on Linux would most likely decrease the barrier of using Linux, and maybe even let me use it (I have to use Windows there).
