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?

                                                I have been with firefox from the start with all its ups and downs I feel it still offers middle of the road privacy security
                                                At this time I really dont have a second browser of course I dont do the stuffs I use to. But to Use a microsoft browser when
                                                usually the purpose of another OS is to get away from microsoft seems alittle against the purpose. I do not and will not Use anything microsoft on linux Period!!!! Guess I am different I always try to be aware of country of origin of software no matter how much I like it. (Just an Opinion)

                                                  Axios Then you should stop using the kernel because even microsoft is sumitting PR on the kernel 😉

                                                      @kyrios Also they best make sure they use zero Electron applications since not only does Microsoft contribute to Chromium, but they also have paid engineers that work on Electron for a living 😛

                                                      I can sorta understand why you would've been anti-Microsoft before Satya Nadella became CEO, but it's kinda ignorant at this point. Microsoft is a pretty significant contributor to open source software, with even some of their own system applications shipping in Windows being open source under permissive licensing like MIT. They've been contributing to the kernel for years and have been a corporate platinum member of the Linux Foundation, meaning they annually pay at least half a million USD a year and have a say via its Board of Directors, for 4 years now. Hell, SUSE (ya know, the ones that make SUSE Enterprise Linux and openSUSE) is only a "gold" tier member, and Canonical is only a "silver" tier member.

                                                      Silver tier is 5-20k. I mean, when Solus accepts donations again, we could even be a silver-tier member. Not saying we would, I'm just saying the bar is that low. Of course, that's ignoring all the engineers Canonical has contributing open source on a daily basis and Canonical was operating at a loss almost exclusively year-over-year for over a decade, but the point is you have a company that used to be so anti-Linux that they used to have anti-Linux marketing campaigns donating at least 25x more (500000 / 20000, if we're being generous about Canonical) on a yearly basis than a company that has contributed to Linux for years and actively has tried to make money off of it (which is fine, seriously) since 2004. Not saying Canonical hasn't contributed more to open source than Microsoft in the long-term, just saying what the situation is now.

                                                      It's time for you to re-assess the landscape and your notions of it.

                                                        For me Opera was dead when it became chromium-based.
                                                        And Vivaldi is a true spirit of the Classic Opera, it is great as a second or even the first browser 👍️
                                                        Oh, and I don't care about Microsoft Edge =)

                                                          JoshStrobl It's clear that the new CEO clearly gave a new direction to the company and it is a clever move because Microsoft failed to impose Windows on most servers, phones, and other embedded devices. Azure wouldn't be a thing without Linux and open source in general. So instead of doing some more unsuccessful attempts to impose their OS on some segments on which they are clearly too late now, they embrace the technologies they can use to develop their business on these markets.

                                                          At the same time, they are making sure to keep their monopoly on the desktop; thanks to WSL many developers/companies won't need to use Linux workstations or a dual boot anymore. Just saying because every year around this period I read that the next year will be the year of Linux on the Desktop... So nope I don't think Linux will get 5% of the desktop market share in 2021. 😉

                                                            Solarmass I tend to agree with @JoshStrobl re: how MS has evolved under new leadership. I'm using brave but I know it chromium based. Isn't the base open source? It would seem to me if a browser uses the chromium base but does not feed everything back to google then it is a win, no? What am I missing? I also tend to use Midori now that I am 100% on Solus Budgie. Falkon on my old KDE days.

                                                            As for @kyrios I'm counting on Solus to increase the linux desktop share <smile>.