It looks like Microsoft could finally bring Chromium-powered Edge, the revamped browser with dark mode and a set of exciting features to Linux.
Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser specifically built for Linux is being actively developed, and the development was confirmed at the Ignite conference. As shown in the screenshot of a slide from Ignite session, Microsoft Edge is listed as a compatible software for Linux.
I wonder if Microsoft will do the legwork to ensure proper integration with GNOME, KDE, and others.
Thom Holwerda,
Google already did all the legwork. As long as microsoft didn’t screw it up with their modifications, porting the browser to different platforms should literally just be a recompile.
Microsoft already did the legwork, in order to kick Linux back in line.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
gus3,
Haha funny, I don’t see it hurting linux though, if anything that would be more in line with linux services for windows. If microsoft’s version of chrome succeeds at displacing google’s version, that seems to be a bigger threat to google and maybe mozilla than linux itself. And although microsoft was a master of embrace, extend, extinguish in the past, two things are different: 1) various governments are prohibiting microsoft from coercively manipulating the market these days and 2) it was always a case of david vs. goliath with the microsoft monopoly easily strangling competitors on unequal footing.
Interesting! Also it makes sense so they can streamline their support. Office 365 in the browser and other web-based products can now be supported. The Chromium core is already cross-platform.
Let’s wait till Office will run on Linux… THAT would be news 🙂
I agree with Thom that specific desktop integration quality remains to be seen. As for me, as long as it integrates in XFCE and doesn’t do evil client side decorations, I’m OK. To be honest, I will probably not use it anyway; what is the point? But if I would be using web-based Microsoft software, then I would consider it. Also this move makes it easier for sysadmins to support Linux boxes in their organizations.
True, but the lackluster versions of Office in the browser (excepting OWA) would not inspire me to use Edge no matter how much they can standardize the experience. Standardized crap is still crap. If they ever do want web-based Office to take off, they’d better put more legwork into it.
The hell with Edge! I want M$ Office with Outlook. If M$ really “loves Linux” Theey would have Office available , especially Outlook, since stable Office alternatives are already in the wild. But I digress, Exchange is too big of a corporate cash cow and, as any publicly traded company, they would minimize competition as muhch as possible.
s/Exchange/Office 365/g;
Microsoft now makes their money on cloud and is actively discouraging on-premises Exchange.
If they port anything to Linux, it’ll be Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and OneNote. Maybe a OneDrive client will also come over.
OWA on the Mac is far better than the full fat client and provides better functionality.
mbpark,
You’re probably right, but I find some of microsoft’s web products to be too buggy. For a while in september I was experiencing major issues with ms teams under a corporate account. Javascript errors galore! Thankfully it got fixed eventually. Just this week I fought with outlook.com & hotmail.com email delivery issues and I had to spend a lot of time diagnosing the problem. The whole point of hosted apps is that they’re supposed to just work. Support forms show that these kinds of problems are not uncommon.
Now that you mentioned it, You’re right! On that note, I also find it a huge challenge for them to move business customers such as Banks and other financial institutions with sensitive data to th e cloud formail purposes as those types of organizations prefer in house hosting for regulatory purposes.
Precisely. Part of the reason some organizations cling to onprem solutions is because they have total control over them. It doesn’t only impact security (which can be much better or much worse depending on the admins involved) but also troubleshooting. The IT department and admins aren’t really of much help when someone asks them wtf is going on with their email and the best response is along the lines of “well, ahem, I’ll have to call our provider.” If you’re not a big shot customer, that “call” can turn into weeks of waiting with no light at the end of that tunnel.
I guess the tl;dr version is this: if you have competent admins, go onprem. If you don’t, go cloud. If you want cloudlike benefits and have competent admins, go for virtual colo.
darknexus,
Agreed with all your points, you’re right on all counts. But “virtual colo” didn’t bring back relevant hits. Is this “virtual colo” different than “physical colo”? These days we might as well call it “cloud colo” for sales fluff, haha. I’d probably have more sales if I did that.
Hint: M$ does not increase credibility of the person who uses it.
OneDrive yes please, it’s the missing piece of the puzzle for me. All the other stuff being web based is fine, but I want a native Linux OneDrive client!
If you have WebDAV turned on for OneDrive you can use the davfs2 package to integrate it. You don’t need a UI at all, let alone a specific desktop or distro.
It should be a snap, taking into account that Canonical already is planning switching their existing packages towards snaps..
Easier to package and maintain, but few to no integration with chosen DE..