We are pleased to announce the availability of the Microsoft Edge Dev Channel for Linux!
[…]Today’s release supports Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and openSUSE distributions. Going forward, we plan to release weekly builds following our typical Dev Channel cadence alongside our other supported platforms. In this post, we’ll walk you through how to install Microsoft Edge on your distribution, what to expect from the Dev Channel, and how to share your feedback.
I’m not entirely sure who, exactly, Edge for Linux is for – but there’s no denying the fact Microsoft feels that it’s necessary to have their browser on Linux means the company is definitely taking desktop Linux seriously.
Probably Linux-using web developers who weren’t wooed over to Windows by WSL and see the extra friction of modern.ie testing VMs as a reason to test their creations on Edge less thoroughly and less often.
Thom Holwerda,
As a web developer coincidentally just today I was debugging a problem in the edge browser and that meant I had to boot up windows. With a linux version I could skip windows.
However as a user I concur, I have no interest in running edge. I am not aware of any benefits over chromium, which it is based off of. And personally I don’t trust microsoft more than google and neither are fully open source. I’d opt for an open source fork instead like brave.
https://brave.com/
It might not be there Yet but modern Microsoft understands that it needs to be on the power user’s radar.
Google are no angels, so people look for alternatives.
Firefox is going through another shambles phase.
If it can be good enough, or better yet, offer the Best developer tools built in. It’ll gain traction.
I use it quite happily on Windows in a multi os household. An additional familiar app won’t go amiss
Will this Edge play Netflix on Linux in 1080p and 4k without shenanigans?
Old timers remember this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX
Once dominant, it disappeared.
You talking about IE or Solaris
mksoft,
Adurbe,
Haha, good one.
I’ve used IE for unix. Unsurprisingly the unix port looked identical to the windows version. I believe it was IE4. I’m not really sure what a page with active-x controls would have done though. I can’t imagine microsoft ported that technology over.
IE of course – the Unix version disappeared.
Another Chromium fork (how many we have already, 150?) – no.
Microsoft Office -hell, YES.
I am pretty sure Microsoft Office is dead and O365 already works on Linux?
Dead in what way? You mean vs. a browser-based office? I don’t think so.
Microsoft Office for desktop is very much alive and kicking:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/get-started-with-office-2019
@leech
By “O365” you mean “Office Online”, right ?
O365 is the licencing system for Office, while Office Online is… well… an online and limited version of (some of) Office softwares.
This is why I posed it as a question. 🙂 I haven’t used Office since… ’97. I thought the last version of Office was like 2010, but looked up after I posted and apparently it’s 2019.. So I guess it isn’t dead, but should be. Sorry, still bitter that there wasn’t any upgrade a month after I bought the Home Essentials (I think that’s what it was called) to Office ’97, as all I wanted was Word. Like they still to this day won’t sell just Word…
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/word/cfq7ttc0k7c7/?activetab=pivot%3aoverviewtab
Yes they do.. And I don’t remember a time they didnt
@ultrabill @leech
After having largely been away from Microsoft Office for almost 2 decades now, their naming scheme is pretty confusing to me as well, and they don’t do a good job of explaining on their website which versions are available and on which platforms. I’ve briefly used whatever they call their free web suite for personal accounts, and I occasionally use the web versions of Word and Excel through a corporate account and Sharepoint. I’m not sure if those both have the same (limited) functionality? Or are there any other pay-for options for users that want the highest amount of “Office” functionality via a web browser?
“… the company is definitely taking desktop Linux seriously.”
Well, that would make one.
Exactly. Their second most recent incursion into the Linux desktop space was with Teams, and it’s still a total joke, not even close to feature parity with the Windows version. Just a quick Electron app they threw over the fence that works even more poorly than Teams on a regular Chromium-based browser.
Don’t forget Visual Studio Code and Skype.
While VSC isn’t something the typical home desktop user would use, it is extremely feature-rich and integrates nicely with Github (of course) and has a plethora of extensions made for it already.
But I digress.
I think MS is hoping to woo people already using O365 on Windows that maybe have dual-environments and have a named application to do it. Let’s face it – names do still mean something to the end user and there should be no difference in experience between the systems.
They’ve seen how Chrome and Docs work between multiple OS’s and you really can’t blame them for wanting to cash in on it.
The ubiquity of signing in from a cloud service and receiving alerts from your calendar is also rather appealing.
This could be an option for those working in companies with browser-based Office 365. Outlook works in several browsers, but Teams with all features only works in Google Chrome (not even Chromium) in my experience. Google is not necessarily a “nicer” company than Microsoft for me, by now.
What about hardware graphics acceleration on Linux? If it could do accelerated WebRTC meetings with vp8, h264, and opus so that my CPU doesn’t burn up I’d switch in a heartbeat.