I recently discovered that you can get Microsoft Edge for Linux (🤢🤮) and am curious… does anyone here use Edge for Linux, or have you ever? What was your reasoning for using it?

EDIT: Well, you all have provided some interesting perspectives I hadn’t ever considered. Including one which means I’ll have to install Edge, so… thanks, I guess. 😂

  • empireOfLove@lemmy.oneEnglish
    583·
    9 months ago

    Probably a godsend if you’re a web dev. No more rebooting or running a second PC/VM for compatibility checking.

  • mholiv@lemmy.worldEnglish
    43·
    9 months ago

    It has a slightly better privacy policy compared to google chrome while fully supporting progressive web apps on Linux. Edge is also very much so more efficient in terms of system resource utilization. It also has high quality native built in translation which I need. All of this means I use Edge as my PWA browser.

    Chromium lacks native translation support. Firefox PWA support is not good. Edge was the least bad option for me. 🤷‍♀️

  • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
    33·
    9 months ago

    In my opinion no proprietary browser is worth using.

    Chrome isn’t better in any way than Edge, as both don’t respect it’s users privacy and decisions (dark patterns, etc).

  • astrsk@artemis.camp
    29·
    9 months ago

    I use Edge on Linux as my user agent in Firefox on Windows just so I can give some engineers a laugh.

  • DeathByDenim@lemmy.worldEnglish
    301·
    9 months ago

    I use Edge daily for work. Everything it Office 365 and there is of course no Outlook client or Word or whatever on Linux. So I use the web version for everything. So I might as well have Edge to do the Microsoft since surely MS must make sure their stuff works on their own browser, right? (right??).

    I also use the PWA version of Teams since the native client doesn’t really work well and since somewhat recently is also “officially” unsupported.

    Anyway, it keeps the MS stuff separate from my normal browsing with Firefox and I’ve disabled JavaScript in Edge for all non-MS stuff. It works pretty well. Took me some battles to get rid of the Bing sidebar but they finally made that an option you can set.

    • flubba86@lemmy.world
      10·
      9 months ago

      This is the reason I use it too.

      I first installed it when the Teams web client stopped working properly in Firefox. I installed Edge, and it worked well. Also noticed Teams in Edge allows me to turn on background blur, where that was disabled on Firefox and Chrome in Linux. Then I tried PWAs, and found the Edge support for installing and running PWAs is second to none, so now I run Outlook 365 and Teams as PWAs.

      Firefox is still my primary browser, but I don’t use Chrome anymore. Edge has become my chromium-based browser of choice. Somehow Microsoft has built a better Chrome than Google does.

      • gerdesj@lemmy.mlEnglish
        71·
        9 months ago

        Try installing a User Agent switcher into your browsers and then fake your browser ID. FF works fine with Teams, Exchange and M365 - I have been an IT consultant installing or using all of that lot for over two decades.

        I too have a favourite browser. It used to be FF up to about 15 years ago (v2 or so) then Google were cool and I went all in on Chrome. I then went Chromium. I actually started out with telnet but that’s another story.

        A couple of months ago I finally dumped Chromium and co and went back to FF. Biggest win for me was a slightly less opinionated SSL experience. That needs some explaining:

        I run a lot of IT and that means a lot of SSL certs. Mostly I use Lets Encrypt if I can as well as the usual suspects. Sometimes a site does not need SSL at all. Googles browsers are very VERY opinionated about this: “Thou shall not use thy browser password manager with self signed SSL certs”. FF has a slightly less opinionated “Thou canst TOFU and thy password manager will work”. I spend a lot of time pissing around with uploading CA certs to group policy objects and copying them to /usr/local/share/ca-certificates and getting the machines to trust them. On Arch we use /etc/ca-certifictes etc and so on and so forth. I also have to deal with Teams - FF works better now than Cr browsers

        I’ve returned to FF after a very long time and I don’t regret it at all. I run Arch actually!

      • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nzM
        4·
        9 months ago

        Same here. Work allows BYOD, so I use my Linux laptop for work stuff. I use Edge for accessing all work stuff and running M365 PWAs. I especially like how Teams in Edge runs so much better than the standalone Electron app, which is horrible.

        • 601error@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          Damn, this thread just got me to install Edge for a better Teams experience.

    • Glacials@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      I really respect this strategy but I could never get past one personal obstacle: what do you do if you want to click a link, say from an email? Do you switch browsers and copy paste the link? Or do you delve into the link in Edge? What if you eventually reach a website you wish you were logged into on Edge, but are already in Firefox?

      • ThatHermanoGuy@midwest.social
        4·
        9 months ago

        This is a very frustrating limitation of every PWA implementation I’ve seen. They need to respect the default browser setting for external links!

      • DeathByDenim@lemmy.world
        2·
        9 months ago

        Yeah that is annoying. I just copy the link and paste in Firefox. I don’t ever need to go back I find since I only use Edge for MS365 stuff.

    • krash@lemmy.ml
      2·
      9 months ago

      That’s how I use it too, but I was surprised to see that it doesn’t have syncing of bookmarks, history etc yet!

  • Dukeofdummies@kbin.social
    27·
    9 months ago

    I always use edge whenever I’m making a public presentation with a computer I use. Simply because I never use it. Then autocomplete won’t embarrass me if we look something up.

    • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
      152·
      9 months ago

      Why dont use any other browser, like vivaldi, brave, librewolf, ungoogled chromium, that are not made by data hungery big tech like Microsoft.

      • Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca
        5·
        9 months ago

        Those are all solid options, so you might be tempted to use them. I keep a windows partition on case I need it for something, but I’m never tempted to use it unless I absolutely have to.

      • mariom@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Or just launch second profile… Firefox / chrome(ium) supports it. No need to use different browser.

      • 30p87@feddit.de
        31·
        9 months ago

        Many of those have shady Histories and CEOs. Many are seemingly made by normal companies, but those are owned by Chinese organizations. The only real alternatives would be Librewolf/FF and Degoogled Chromium. That would be a matter of preference, mostly. And you don’t even have to use Librewolf, you could just use a seperate, clean profile in FF. Launch it with firefox -profilemanager or on about:profiles, @dukeofdummies@lemmy.world

  • BitingChaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    9 months ago

    I set it up with my work profile for Office 365 stuff.

    I’ve given up the hope that Office will ever come to Linux, so instead I’m just trying to use the web version more.

    • thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe
      3·
      9 months ago

      Similarly, when I’m on a contract that requires O365 and teams and doesn’t supply a work device I use Edge strictly for work to quarantine Microsoft away from the rest of my usage on Firefox etc.

        • NegativeLookBehind@kbin.social
          2·
          9 months ago

          No, I get not having a choice. But he specifically used the word “hope” to describe his desire to have Office available for Linux.

          • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
            7·
            9 months ago

            Would I rather use outlook on a work linux machine, or Thunderbird on a work windows machine? The former. Every. Single. Time. MS Office suite availability on Linux would make it easier to do my job, potentially

          • lukas@lemmy.haigner.me
            3·
            9 months ago

            I hope that Office will be available on Linux in addition to Adobe Acrobat. LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, etc. aren’t good enough for documents that use advanced Office features. Same thing applies to Acrobat.

      • BitingChaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        9 months ago

        Well, it’s for work stuff, so I don’t have a lot of choice.

        Several years ago some higher-ups chose Microsoft to provide all services. Exchange, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, etc.

        I can use LibreOffice or whatever for documents, but everything else is Microsoft.

        A native version of Outlook would be nice.

      • LeFantome@programming.dev
        3·
        9 months ago

        Look, I have a love / hate relationship with Outlook but it is the best email client by far and the web version works great on Linux ( especially on Edge ).

        For me, Outlook is the difference between being able to use Linux for work and being forced to use Windows or MacOS.

  • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
    151·
    9 months ago

    Nah it’s proprietary garbage. If it weren’t proprietary it would be an option (although in that case a “deMicrosofted” version would be better). there are free Chromium browsers and free browsers that aren’t chromium, this one offers nothing of interest.

  • NX2@feddit.de
    152·
    9 months ago

    Yo I’ll install this bs right now if it allows me to watch Netflix into such in 4k. Anyone tried that?

    Edit: Nope that’s not a thing

    FUCK NETFLIX DISNEY AMAZON AND ALL THE OTHERS

    • BlinkerFluid@lemmy.oneEnglish
      141·
      9 months ago

      Set sail, matey. The actors are on strike anyway. You can afford to hate a corporation or two.

  • 1984@lemmy.today
    11·
    9 months ago

    No… I don’t want to use a browser made by Microsoft. They will turn it to shit as soon as they can get away with it, and I’m happy with Firefox.

  • Gamma@programming.devEnglish
    11·
    9 months ago

    I have it on Steam Deck since it can be launched with a CLI argument to force a 1280x800 window.

    Vivaldi pretends to be Edge when visiting Bing to unlock GPT-4, and prefer that to Edge on my other devices. (Secondary to Firefox, ofc)

  • PythagoRascal@lemmy.world
    11·
    9 months ago

    I currently use Edge for mostly one thing, its “Read aloud” feature.

    Because you can use some of the Azure neural voices its currently the best, free, easily accessible text-to-speech available.

    It can even do PDFs quite well. Really helps when I’m too unable to focus for reading long texts but can still listen well enough (ADHD).