สิ่งที่โลกต้องการคือ more browsers สิ่งที่โลกไม่ต้องการคือ more Chromium-based browsers มันเหมือนฉากจากหนัง I Love You Man ที่เพื่อนร่วมงานส่ง Paul Rudd's character a rather non-work clip: I don't want it You've got it! There As it happens the world has a new Chromium-based browser and now Linux has it too We're talking about Microsoft Edge
In a way Edge is the culmination of the Internet Explorer 6.0 story told over ~15 years or so It's also an interesting turn of events because for the first time there is an official (well almost) version of a Microsoft browser available for Linux No more WINE or whatnot tricks you run this as is Well I wanted to see how good or useful or relevant this browser is And I'm not going to focus on the shock value of OMG Microsoft software running on Linux That's overdone So with that in mind we check yegdemash
Setup
I decided to try the preview build on my KDE neon 5.20 instance If you follow the official instructions there's also the signing key thingie plus you will get updates At the time I didn't I just grabbed the .deb file and tried to install it through Discover and this didn't work I then ran the installation on the command line using dpkg and this did work but the setup failed as a font package was missing Once I sorted that out Edge was installed and working correctly Well this was my fault really
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of microsoft-edge-dev:
microsoft-edge-dev depends on fonts-liberation; however:
Package fonts-liberation is not installed.
The interesting thing that happened was - the Firefox icon disappeared from the icons-only manager it got unpinned Instead Edge was pinned there Odd However Firefox remain(ed) the default browser and Edge actually couldn't check whether it was the default application or not Well no biggie really
You need to accept the terms so to speak - before the browser opens - including optional diagnostics You can also choose the layout you want for the New Tab page Several presets are available of which Focused looks the most reasonable Not sure what gives with the scrollbars in the early setup stage but later on everything was fine
Once this initial setup was complete the browser lay open before me Feels a bit bland but then most modern browsers do What I don't like is the search bar plus links to a seemingly random collection of sites But then you can turn most of this off
Settings, Privacy
Before using the browser one must go through every option and tweak EVERYTHING After all the defaults are almost always designed for low-IQ crowds so there Privacy will obviously be a huge deal Now as it happens Edge's configuration ain't bad Suggestions from Pintrest in Collections are off - not sure what makes this service special but hey Then you can of course minimize the cloud chatter if you toggle off a further bunch of other suggestions and such However you cannot disable necessary telemetry [sic]
Under Appearance you can do quite some including reducing the amount of noise shown on the New Tab page But like the other browsers of the Chromium persuasion it won't let you remove the search bar At least the about:blank page is what it says But nothing beats Firefox customizability
What I found interesting is the Family section which I don't recall seeing in other browsers - I might just be so used to them that I have familiarity blindness Familiarity get it! This lets you tweak your browser behavior so you get a bit more control over unruly offspring or some such Now what I didn't like is the option that lets background apps run when the browser is closed No that's nonsense and it's also there in Chrome If I close the browser I want all network connectivity severed Very simple
Another strong point is the integration with Microsoft services (apps) the whole cloud Office 365 thing Of course this is unto Edge what the Google suite of apps is into Chrome Since a large number of Windows users do run Microsoft software this may come handy should they dual-boot or end up running Edge on Linux
Extensions
This is a rather interesting one One of the big problems with the original IE series was the lack of meaningful powerful add-ons framework The original Edge sort of had it but it was somewhat cumbersome and you had to go to the Store and follow half a dozen prompts to install extensions Here you get the classic browser functionality And then some
First you can use extensions available in the Edge Add-ons Store But if you find that insufficient you can also grab extensions from the Chrome Web Store You will need to allow support for third-party stores In my test this was necessary because the default store had no privacy or security extensions whatsoever None And if you want to use the Internet which is nothing more than a cesspool of misinformation and shock value today then you must use an adblocker at least
So I went to the Chrome Web Store and grabbed Ublock Origin from there No fuss Installed fine
Now one can browse somewhat sanely
Browsing
All in all Edge does the job It's almost identical to Chrome/Chromium You won't notice any cardinal differences speed or rendering wise The interface is similar to its parent product which I find too restricting But then if you are already using Chromium then you might like this for some other reasons Maybe I'm sure a lot of people will only care about acronyms and buzzwords like 4K UHD PiP and such Well whatever
Something I found a little odd - after a system reboot Edge didn't remember my history From what I see the browser was configured correctly But then remember this is a preview build So All in all though the experience quite tame
Various features, options
One of the things that Edge offers is immersive reader Most browsers have this - I've never found this useful and they call it by different names Here you get a laid back reader mode with a colorful range of font options grammar tools and more Quite handy but again I fail to see how this would be practical If the idea is to allow you to read "distracting" sites - the answer is don't read "distracting" sites Don't support low-quality stuff by using an alternative view mode go to sites that offer a pleasant reading experience to begin with In fact in the example below Wikipedia is far more readable in its normal guise than this
สรุป
Microsoft Edge is not a bad browser Far from it it's quite decent The only question is why would you want it? Well the answer seems to be: who do you trust or prefer - Microsoft or Google? That's about it There are some differences in settings and options but only nerds will really care about this especially on Linux On Windows the market domination story is different and it's about real competition on who gets the major share of the pie
So the way I see it if you want a Chromium-based browser to be your default then simply take your pick among the different options based on whatever criteria you like In this regard Edge isn't any better or worse on any fundamental level That said I still believe you should use Firefox because without it the future net will be a hundred times worse than it is today quite likely unusable unless you have the IQ of a spud So then the question is what ought to be your secondary browser? Edge has some decent points configurable settings and some extra integration with Microsoft's tooling - the same way Chrome has extra integration with Google's tooling Your choice And we're done here
Cheers
