Microsoft Edge Is Coming Out For Linux Next Month

[droidhacker]

For the love of everything good and right, dear Microsoft, no one cares about your browser... it serves nothing better than to do the initial download of some other browser as soon as someone does a fresh install of windows.

If anyone from Microsoft happens across this forum, please do something right and bring Office to Linux!! (hint office 365 web edition is a joke for real users... it doesnt count).

I want very badly to be able to buy (yes as in pay money) to run a native version of office on Ubuntu (heck I will even switch distros if its required).

NO.
The last thing any sane person wants is for that crap to propagate any further than it already has.

[droidhacker]

I'm genuinely confused as to why Microsoft thought this was a good business move. I mean, I can't imagine anyone using it. A much better business move would have been porting Outlook to Linux or even licensing app extensions for good Exchange Office 365 mail support. It's nearly impossible to escape Exchange in the enterprise and it's a way they could make linux users pay for BYOD at work, even if they aren't even using Windows.

Ah, but there is one legitimate use for it!
Web developers, for testing that their ugly web pages will work in a web browser that no sane person would ever use.

[zexelon]

NO.
The last thing any sane person wants is for that crap to propagate any further than it already has.

Honestly Microsoft Office and Active Directory/Exchange are the last couple of products of any significance from Microsoft. Excel for example completely dominates anything available from Libreoffice. I can open a 200,000 line item CSV in excel, but cant even hope to open that in Libreoffice and have it respond.

[directhex]

If anyone from Microsoft happens across this forum, please do something right and bring Office to Linux!! (hint office 365 web edition is a joke for real users... it doesnt count).

I looked into it for this year's hackweek, but Office is a BIG wobbly C++ code base, so the marginal effort required is VERY high. Edge on the other hand, the marginal effort was low.

You should take it as a good sign, however, that Teams (owned by the Office division - though yes I know it's "just" an Electron app) shipped for Linux. That means the Office division now has in-house experience shipping enterprise-ready apps for the Linux desktop. It was a necessary foundational step for them.

[zexelon]

I looked into it for this year's hackweek, but Office is a BIG wobbly C++ code base, so the marginal effort required is VERY high. Edge on the other hand, the marginal effort was low.

You should take it as a good sign, however, that Teams (owned by the Office division - though yes I know it's "just" an Electron app) shipped for Linux. That means the Office division now has in-house experience shipping enterprise-ready apps for the Linux desktop. It was a necessary foundational step for them.

Yes, I for one was very excited to get Teams on Linux... personally I actually hate teams but my company standardized on it so it was really nice to have the Linux client available for that.

I am sure you are right and it would not be "trivial" to bring Office to Linux, but hopefully they can see the advantage of doing so. Slowly they have been bringing more and more to Linux. I mean I was completely stunned when they brought MS SQL server to Linux! That said I think MS Office on Linux makes a lot more sense than MS SQL server on Linux as the latter has way to much good quality high end options in already existing in the Linux eco system.

[directhex]

Yes, I for one was very excited to get Teams on Linux... personally I actually hate teams but my company standardized on it so it was really nice to have the Linux client available for that.

I am sure you are right and it would not be "trivial" to bring Office to Linux, but hopefully they can see the advantage of doing so. Slowly they have been bringing more and more to Linux. I mean I was completely stunned when they brought MS SQL server to Linux! That said I think MS Office on Linux makes a lot more sense than MS SQL server on Linux as the latter has way to much good quality high end options in already existing in the Linux eco system.

Teams on Linux mattered, because of customers like ARM where a LOT of the company are on Windows, but a bunch of VERY IMPORTANT people at the company (the engineers) are not - and without a Linux version, the engineers could not use the same app as the sales etc people.

Typically, these things need a minimum trifecta of things:

• Passionate internal pressure, ideally at the Product Manager level rather than engineering
• Supportive management, probably up to the CVP level
• Sufficient demand from individual customers (worse) or a small number of big customers (best)

from there, there are lots of documents produced to essentially provide a dollar cost to management, i.e. "we've identified these issues in doing the thing, it will take X engineers Y amount of time". Teams had all three. Azure Storage Explorer had all three. Edge had all three. Edge also had a head start - CI had been doing mostly-useless builds on Linux from day one (2GB zip, containing 5.6GB Chromium-branded debug `chrome` binary). Going from that throwaway "in case we need it later" binary artifact to "hey look, .debs and .rpms, also Disney+ and Hulu work" was under a week's work for one person - going from _that_ to "this is ready for public preview" took more than a year of additional work by multiple engineers.

Here's a Twitter thread I wrote in 2017 about how to make products happen at modern Microsoft: https://twitter.com/directhex/status/943990479917670400

And one about Edge specifically (highlighting the importance of management) https://twitter.com/directhex/status...80040430530560

And the Reddit thread which made Edge a reality https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/commen...fx/?context=10

[oleid]

I can open a 200,000 line item CSV in excel, but cant even hope to open that in Libreoffice and have it respond.

Huh? Sure, did that last week. But usually I process that kind of tabular data with awk.

[directhex]

The video about this is now posted. https://myignite.microsoft.com/sessi...c-97481c2a2310

[BesiegedAce]

I swear, Michael tosses these kinds of posts just to sit back with a bowl of popcorn and watch all the bitching

If you lean in close enough, you can actually hear the unhinged frothing at the mouth from some people in these forums.

[Kano]

Basically it is the correct thing to do for Microsoft. As the browser is based on Linux compatible code they should use it. In the video posted above it is mentioned that sync does not work yet but that's one of the points that's important for success. You don't want to import your bookmarks all the time using a 2nd browser. If you want to configure the browser not to store data like cookies and history at all this is interestingly easier with Edge than using Chrome. Firefox has the auto delete on exit feature as well. Btw. the main strategy for Microsoft is cloud first and for this goal you certainly have to provide a competitive browser on any platform. The main loser will be most likely Firefox - they had to lay off developers already. Competition is certainly needed but if there will be only one rendering engine in the end this is sad. The legacy Edge code was definitely not competitive - it was only used to download another browser after you installed the OS for many people. So Microsoft had to learn it the hard (expensive) way what customers want.

So, lets think about Microsoft Office. Is is important to have got a Linux binary for it or not? For the always online generation the answer will certainly be no - and they learnt this from Google as well - nothing else are Chromebooks. In the first years all they ran was a web browser. Now they can execute Android apps as well - hopefully Chrome for Linux will learn this in the future as well.

If you just need special macro support and Libre Office does not support on Linux I would just use the online office version. Then you can certainly say that you don't want to store your data in the cloud, but this aspect does not matter so much for many people and even companies. For companies the Exchange integration is certainly very important. But if you think about how many companies are already switching from on-site Exchange to the cloud version the pure online office use is a much smaller step away than it was years ago. One other point for local office installs are 3rd party addons. I am no fan of those but if you rely on em for the work then you gain nothing if there would be a Linux binary for the office suite but not for the addon.

One very huge thing for the next years will be cloud gaming. The PS5 or Xbox Series X are most likely the last full featured consoles for gaming at home. Also upgrading your local pc with a new CPU, more RAM, huger SSD, faster GFX card just for new games sounds a tiny bit expensive. Currently you need it for low latency in online games - and if the Internet speed is not improving at home then it could stay so for a while but you can expect that fibre to the home makes this obsolete - and faster WLAN connections of course would not hurt too.

Google has problems to get enough gaming studios for their Stadia service. Microsoft on the other hand just buys em - could be very important for xCloud. And what do you need for xCloud? Right... at least a web browser in the end. So if I would be Google then I would aquire Valve, EA, Epic or maybe Sony. Sony has PS Now, if they add PS5 boards (or something similar) to datacenters they could provide all games. I really miss the annoucement that you can play Steam games in the cloud.