EbonJaeger I use firefox as default browser everywhere but on my professional laptop not all the extensions I need are whitelisted so I also use chrome (don't ask why a same extension can be whitelisted for a browser but not for the other, that's the mystery of "well managed" company policies), but of course on the intranet, there are still applications designed for internet explorer and now microsoft is making edge mandatory... Haven't found any exclusive use for it yet but soon or late someone will manage to make something that will absolutely require this browser.

Conclusion: I currently have 3 browsers running in parallel, soon I'll have 4 of them... I don't call this performant nor less resource hungry. Of course this isn't edge's fault just a "professional" usage of a computer.

I feel so much better on my home computer 😃

EbonJaeger I agree, from my experience, no other Chromium-based browser comes close to Edge's performance and stability, regardless of OS and hardware (I have been testing it on Windows (installed the enterprise version) for a very long time). It also hands-down beat Chromium in every way possible, and for places where Chrome was installed (not by me), it also made Chrome feel like a sloth.

That said, while there are hiccups here and there (certain websites fail to properly load, though that could be a result of my strict privacy settings), my time with the Edge preview is simply fantastic.

No issues scrolling, that's for one, and the performance is way better than both Firefox Nightly and Vivaldi Dev, over here, plus, overall, less issues with websites (Firefox Nightly has CSS bugs the past two cycles, though, other than that, I have always had less website breakage with my strict privacy settings on Firefox than Vivaldi).

Hardware acceleration is working great here, though I had to toggle a few flags as a result of my old hardware (Radeon HD 6950). Only hardware acceleration for video is currently unavailable.

As for system resource utilization, I was astounded to see Edge using much less system resources (CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage (on a 7200RPM HDD) than either Firefox or Vivaldi (and I have more extensions on Edge than on Vivaldi), and keeping it that way, even with a few tens of tabs open at the same time (80MB of RAM at startup, and between 80-140MB after extended usage, depending on how many things are open).

I still prefer Firefox, however with the breaking bugs it is facing currently (Stable users wont be seeing this for quite some time, unless they manage to fix the issues), I may need to delegate it to being my secondary browser, with Edge as my primary.

    moriel5 no other Chromium-based browser comes close to Edge's performance and stability

    This really surprised me. Many of you know that I keep a Windows SSD up-to-date, and swap it into my main workstation in order to operate my label maker, as I've found no equivalent that will run on Linux. A while back, I tried out Edge, out of curiosity, and did not get the impression that it was a finished product. Today I can't remember exactly what faults I ran into back then, but I do remember that I considered them to be showstoppers, and with several other browsers on that machine, I never looked at Edge again while using Windows 10.

    It doesn't seem that long ago that I tried Edge, but maybe it's been improved a lot since then. I'll take another look the next time I use that machine on Windows, and I'll give the Linux version of it a try sometime. Microsoft (I used to work there) has a long history of releasing unfinished software. They always wanted to get revenue coming in as early as possible, and then slowly improve the product through numerous updates. I would expect that Edge might be quite a bit better now than it was then.

      WetGeek
      Well what most people knew as Edge was before it was chromium based but sadly they joined the chrometinum...

      Honestly I would suggest considering vivaldi. The only reason I don't use it is 1 extension. Mutli-account-container (Firefox). If you haven't gotten used to it, use vivaldi, its great.

        Harvey If you haven't gotten used to it, use vivaldi, its great.

        Indeed, that's my go-to browser for most uses.

          Harvey Well what most people knew as Edge was before it was chromium based

          I didn't realize that there was ever a time when it wasn't chromium based. The version I first tried was definitely chromium, and it fetched my LastPass add-on from the Chrome Store. But then I very rarely boot up Windows, so I'm not surprised I missed a version.

            WetGeek
            Yep

            Edge was initially built with Microsoft's own proprietary browser engine EdgeHTML and their Chakra JavaScript engine, a version now referred to as Microsoft Edge Legacy. In 2019 Microsoft announced plans to rebuild the browser as Chromium-based with Blink and V8 engines.

            Harvey I recently installed Opera and I'm beginning to prefer it over all of the other browsers I use. I am also fond of Min, but I've received warnings from some site logins about it not being a secure browser, so I only use it for general browsing.

            WetGeek Isn't Vivaldi from the team that created Opera and then left because it was sold to some Chinese consortium? I've tried Vivaldi...not long enough as I felt overwhelmed. Not sure how I feel about it, conflicted, but really enjoying Brave - lighting quick. Not sure about the crypto thing. Not sure about the built on chromium thing. That being said, I'm sticking with it for now as it is smooth...almost as smooth as Solus 🙂

              jppelt
              Less about the sale itself and more about the decisions being made that annoyed them and many long term users.

              Although intended for general users, it is first and foremost targeted towards technically-inclined users as well as former Opera users disgruntled by its transition from the Presto layout engine to a Chromium-based browser that resulted in the loss of many of its iconic features. Despite also being Chromium-based, Vivaldi aims to revive the features of the Presto-based Opera with its own proprietary modifications.

              Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser)

              Opera continually kills things to adopt chromiums implementation. Last I remember was PIP (Picture-In-Picture, users were not happy). While this makes sense from a technical debt standpoint. If you are going to do everything the same way.. why do you exist?

              Vivaldi understands this.

              In the case of Jon S. von Tetzchner, co-founder and former chief executive of Opera Software, the answer is to launch a company that picks up where the old company is leaving off. He and 19 other ex-Opera employees have launched a new site called Vivaldi aimed at people who want a replacement for the My Opera community site, which Opera is closing on March 1.

              ...

              The closure of My Opera isn't the only bone von Tetzchner has to pick with Opera.

              He also thinks the company is too focused on mobile advertising and spent too much money on the acquisition of the SkyFire video compression technology. But his biggest complaint is that the company has, in his opinion, squandered its reputation for building a browser with cutting-edge features and high performance.

              "If you look at the number of new features during the last four years, then compare that to the four years before that, it's a very significant difference", he said. That's what led Opera to scrap its own Presto browser engine in 2013 and move instead to Google's open-source Blink project that's also at the heart of Chrome.

              I would have kept Presto," von Tetzchner. "The decision to move away from Presto was taken after years of negligence. They should have increased the investment to stay competitive. They stopped investing in the engine, then they took the consequences and threw it away.

              Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/ex-ceo-picks-up-where-opera-left-off-launching-vivaldi-site/

              jppelt Isn't Vivaldi from the team that created Opera

              Definitely Opera developers who created Vivaldi, but I had never heard the part about selling it to a Chinese consortium. I always assumed it was probably because of creative differences. I just looked it up in Wikipedia, and found nothing about Chinese ownership, so I suspect that's probably just a conspiracy theory.

              I find it interesting that the Vivaldi organization is considering creating an email client. It would take a lot to tear me away from Thunderbird, but if any development team could ever do that, I'd bet money on the Vivaldi team. I can't wait to get a look at what they come up with.

                WetGeek I just looked it up in Wikipedia, and found nothing about Chinese ownership, so I suspect that's probably just a conspiracy theory.

                Opera was indeed sold to a Chinese consortium. https://www.engadget.com/2016-07-18-opera-browser-sold-to-a-chinese-consortium-for-600-million.html

                But considering its co-founder and former CEO turned strategic adviser had left Opera due to "disagreements with management" in 2011 -> founded vivaldi in 2013 -> First vivaldi preview release 2015 -> Opera was sold in 2016. It is clear the sale was not the reason Vivaldi's creation.

                  Harvey Opera was indeed sold to a Chinese consortiu

                  I had never heard that before. Thanks for the link.

                  I'll need to give that some serious thought now. I've kept Opera around as a default browser, to open links in places like emails or search results, so that the two instances of Vivaldi that I use daily aren't disturbed for such purposes. But I'm generally not a fan of any software that accesses the Internet and could easily be passing personal information to the CCP.

                  I could just as easily use Firefox as a default browser, so I'll probably change to that instead. In fact, I'll probably do that today.

                  EDIT: Opera is now gone from my daily driver laptop. I'll remove it from the rest as I access them to install upgrades. I realize there's very little chance that the CCP is interested in my browsing data, but there are just too many good browsers that aren't owned by China for me to want to take that chance.

                    My opinion is we have more browsers in the software center than we need, which I think should be enough for everyone here

                      putzerstammer we have more browsers in the software center than we need

                      For sure. My daily workflow only requires two good browsers. And I could even get by with just one, if I had a good enough reason to do that. It would be only slightly less convenient.

                      WetGeek That is how I feel about hardware - but much tougher to implement. I do not buy Lenovo when I can buy System76 or Tux or Starlab...

                      Any thoughts on Brave?