Microsoft's "Edge" web browser will be available in October for Linux

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Microsoft just confirmed which the version of your browser Edge, based on Chromium will be available in October for Linux. Edge for Linux will be available first in the browser's developer preview channel.

So the first appearance of the browser will be available to Linux users from the "Microsoft Edge Insider" website. Microsoft will start with Ubuntu and Debian distributions, then will support Fedora and openSUSE.

And it is that more and more Microsoft is investing in the Linux community. The company announced the October arrival of Edge Chromium on Linux and of course she is primarily interested in developers, but this is a testament to the company's growing desire to provide reliable tools to the Linux community.

In fact, Microsoft released Edge Chromium for Windows 7, 8, 10 and macOS in January 2020. According to a company spokesperson, Edge has grown in popularity since then and has been installed by hundreds of millions of people.

According to Net Applications, a web analytics company, the browser has been ahead of several competitors and is now the second most popular desktop browser after Chrome.

In January, Microsoft said it designed Edge to be the browser for companies. Therefore, the October release of Edge on Linux is not only aimed at increasing browser market share, but also represents the company's efforts to provide commercial customers with a way to offer a single browser in one. wide range of applications and devices for employees.

"We are delighted with the customer interest we have received since we expressed our vision to bring Edge to Linux," said Kyle Pflug, supervisor of the Edge program at Microsoft. "We have received feedback from commercial customers who want to implement a single browser solution in their organization, regardless of platform, and we are pleased to offer an offer to those who need a solution for Linux." Edge would also be a more secure alternative to Google Chrome for business.

Liat Ben-Zur, vice president of Microsoft's Modern Life and Devices Products Division, said that an independent study from NSS Labs found Edge to be more secure than Google Chrome for Business on Windows 10.

Google Chrome, however, has a much larger market share: around 65% globally by one measure, with 2,3% for Edge. Microsoft also announced today that its developers have made more than 3.700 submissions to Project Chromium so far, surpassing the 3.000 that the company announced in May.

Part of this work se has focused on touchscreen support, but the team too has contributed in areas such as accessibility features, developer tools and browser fundamentals.

In addition to offering Edge on Linux, the company announced that it is also expanding the Developer Toolkit with WebView 2 and the Visual Studio Code 1.0 extension. According to Ben-Zur, WebView2 is decoupled from specific versions of Windows and makes it possible to offer full web functionality in Windows applications.

The Visual Studio Code 1.0 extension (available from the VS Studio extension store) allows developers to work seamlessly when switching between contexts.

According to Ben-Zur, both tools will be available in the coming months. In addition to this, Microsoft also announced the addition of a new feature to Edge. The company said IT pros can now downgrade to Edge. He explained that it offered this feature, because sometimes new versions break things.

This is especially motivated by the fact that in remote work environments, “every cut is amplified”.

"With so many employees working remotely now, Microsoft wants to give professionals a way to minimize interruptions and solve the problem," he said.

There is no official release date for Edge on Linux, but Microsoft will meet with developers in October.


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  1.   Juan Carlos said

    It is not that I am a purist of free software, and not an extremist to Microsoft and its products and, but ... Will there be users who use this browser on Linux? In my case, no! I am happy with Vivaldi as primary and Firefox as secondary.