Lowkey I wish Perplexity would do this for Comet, idk why but I use the heck out of their browser on my Mac. I dont always use the "browser agent" stuff (lol!), and I dont use it for EVERYTHING, but you spend so much time looking things up, and sometimes its nice to just be able to highlight text on a page and go "yo ELI5 this for me pls I feel dumb" and it just does it.
Wild that I can't use Kagi in Safari on iOS, where my search options are still locked down to three~four Apple-approved choices, of which at least one is just a multi-billion-dollar paid product placement.
(Yes, I know about the extension that hijacks your searches to redirect them to Kagi, but how is that an acceptable state of affairs?)
It seems weird to run a closed-source browser on an open-source operating system when so many open alternatives exist—I certainly wouldn’t do it, and I’m a Kagi customer.
Why does it seem weird? I run a lot of proprietary software on linux. Actually made a career of it. I also run a lot of open source whenever I can, but I'm pragmatic about the whole affair. I think most users are like that.
Being closed-source isn't just an ideological issue, it bring about a lot of practical issues. E..g.: distributions aren't going to package it, so users need to download the tarball and install it manually. They'll also need to manually update it (unless they're including some dedicated service?).
Then, integration with the OS will be weird. If you're distributing binaries, you can't dynamically link system dependencies (they are either bundled or statically linked). Any distribution-specific patches and fixes will be missing. AFAIK the default path for the CA bundle varies per distribution; I'm not even sure how you'd handle that kind of thing. I'm sure there's hundreds of subtle little details like that one.
The audience ends up being Linux users, who are fine with proprietary software, have time and patience for manually configuring and maintaining a browser installation, and are also fine with an absence of proper OS integration.
I think Steam is the only popular proprietary software on Linux, and they basically ship an entire userspace runtime, and almost don't integrate with the OS at all.
I've been a Kagi user for months now and was really looking forward to testing this. However, I cannot find the download link. The page does not really contain any information on an actual release.
EDIT:
I found this in the docs:
> The alpha version of Orion for Linux is currently only available to [Orion+ supporters](../orion-plus/orion-plus.md) and can be downloaded from the [Billing Dashboard](https://kagi.com/settings/billing) under the Orion browser section.
So I still can't test this. Only for Orion+ supporters.
I love what the kagi team is doing, and being some of the first innovators maybe since the ladybird(?) browser, even if it's using the same base of webkit, not being a fork of chrome or firefox. I wish they'd bring it to android, but it doesn't look like they're interested.
This is a healthy thing to happen to the Linux browser ecosystem imho.
We talk a lot about browser diversity, but on Linux and Windows, it is a lie. You have firefox (gecko) and fifty flavors of chromium. Webkit on Linux has essentially been relegated to embedded devices or the GNOME epiphany browser, which I'll admit while is a noble effort, lags a bit in the stability and power-user features department. Big reason for that is that it lacks the commercial backing to keep up with the modern web standards rat race.
Kagi bringing orion to Linux changes the calculus. It introduces a third commercially incentivized, consumer-grade engine to the platform. Even if you never use orion, you want this to succeed because it forces WebKitGTK upstream to get better, which benefits the entire open source ecosystem.
The sticking point like always will be media playback (read: DRM/widevine). That is the graveyard where Linux browsers go to die. If Kagi can legally and technically solve the widevine integration on a non-standard Linux webkit build, they win. If not, it will be a secondary browser.
Browser engine diversity doesn't matter. The only important browser diversity is in the browser itself. Multiple browser engines makes it harder for developers of websites due to divergence of the engines and it makes it harder on engine developers since there are less resources going to the same engine.
On the other hand, that one same engine would then be under near-full control of a single company (Google), with all the disadvantages a monopoly usually brings.
> Even if you never use orion, you want this to succeed because it forces WebKitGTK upstream to get better, which benefits the entire open source ecosystem.
I don’t understand this logic. AFAIK Orion is doing downstream work and has not contributed to WebKitGTK. Hopefully that changes but we’ll see.
If I'm a linux user who uses firefox currently, what's the value prop for this browser? I already get privacy and extensions, is it just for testing my app on webkit?
Orion has come an extremely long ways on iOS and macOS. I daily drove it for a couple months maybe a year and a half ago and it had a lot of little rough edges and was slightly broken on a number of websites.
I’ve picked it up again as my daily driver as of the new year and haven’t had a single issue yet. It even blocks ads in YouTube now - only Brave did that previously.
For me - Brave was the best browser product. It’s ad blocking is truly phenomenal and nearly every site “just works”. But I don’t love the ethics of Brave and certainly not its founder. So I am extremely excited to have Orion take over that niche of the browser space that I most care about.
Nice. But I stopped using Orion on macOS when they stopped offering complete offline installers. They taut they are a zero-telemetry browser, as proof that they are privacy conscious about user data, and that was a good feature and overture. But then when they create technical avenues to (possibly) bypass that (like using online installers that can do all kind of data collection) it becomes harder to trust them as it follows the tried-and-tested path of other companies that have claimed to care about user privacy, to increase their user-base, and then betrayed their customer base by harvesting their personal data.
I first used Orion a couple years back and it was already pretty good back then. Super cool to see it coming to Linux!
I must +1 that no matter the platform (this criticism is not limited to Linux), the open source option is almost always my choice, especially for something as important as a browser. This is a big reason I don’t use Orion today, even though I have big issues with the other available browsers.
I love Kagi. I understand the niche this fills. I even understand not open sourcing it yet.
But what I really miss is a self-hosted sync server. I don't want to use a browser without sync, but I also don't want to trust this data with any 3rd party other than myself.
It's one of the main reasons I'm using Firefox, since that is the the only browser that even vaguely supports this - albeit not well.
I hope they upstream their implementation of Web Extensions to WebKit.
I'm not interested in using a proprietary browser, and hope for a release under a free license at some point. But a free WebKit-based browser with Web Extensions could have interesting properties regarding battery life on mobile GNU workstations.
Most Linux users couldn't care less whether or not their software is open source. They are drawn to Linux for practical benefits, not ideological ones.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 68.5 ms ] thread(Yes, I know about the extension that hijacks your searches to redirect them to Kagi, but how is that an acceptable state of affairs?)
Does Kagi plan to open-source Orion on Linux?
Then, integration with the OS will be weird. If you're distributing binaries, you can't dynamically link system dependencies (they are either bundled or statically linked). Any distribution-specific patches and fixes will be missing. AFAIK the default path for the CA bundle varies per distribution; I'm not even sure how you'd handle that kind of thing. I'm sure there's hundreds of subtle little details like that one.
The audience ends up being Linux users, who are fine with proprietary software, have time and patience for manually configuring and maintaining a browser installation, and are also fine with an absence of proper OS integration.
I think Steam is the only popular proprietary software on Linux, and they basically ship an entire userspace runtime, and almost don't integrate with the OS at all.
EDIT: I found this in the docs:
> The alpha version of Orion for Linux is currently only available to [Orion+ supporters](../orion-plus/orion-plus.md) and can be downloaded from the [Billing Dashboard](https://kagi.com/settings/billing) under the Orion browser section.
So I still can't test this. Only for Orion+ supporters.
Regardless, great to see this come to Linux.
We talk a lot about browser diversity, but on Linux and Windows, it is a lie. You have firefox (gecko) and fifty flavors of chromium. Webkit on Linux has essentially been relegated to embedded devices or the GNOME epiphany browser, which I'll admit while is a noble effort, lags a bit in the stability and power-user features department. Big reason for that is that it lacks the commercial backing to keep up with the modern web standards rat race.
Kagi bringing orion to Linux changes the calculus. It introduces a third commercially incentivized, consumer-grade engine to the platform. Even if you never use orion, you want this to succeed because it forces WebKitGTK upstream to get better, which benefits the entire open source ecosystem.
The sticking point like always will be media playback (read: DRM/widevine). That is the graveyard where Linux browsers go to die. If Kagi can legally and technically solve the widevine integration on a non-standard Linux webkit build, they win. If not, it will be a secondary browser.
So corp stuff but with devrel?
I wouldn’t install a close source browser by a ad-incentivised company like Kagi.
The Orion Alpha is happily playing back Youtube video's at 4k for me out of the box.
Confirmed it just now with this one to make sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFG3Ah-zf18
I don’t understand this logic. AFAIK Orion is doing downstream work and has not contributed to WebKitGTK. Hopefully that changes but we’ll see.
Homebrew also initially had mac only support, later Linux. But it always felt as if Linux was a second-class citizen. Is that also the case for Orion?
I’ve picked it up again as my daily driver as of the new year and haven’t had a single issue yet. It even blocks ads in YouTube now - only Brave did that previously.
For me - Brave was the best browser product. It’s ad blocking is truly phenomenal and nearly every site “just works”. But I don’t love the ethics of Brave and certainly not its founder. So I am extremely excited to have Orion take over that niche of the browser space that I most care about.
What are your thoughts on upgrading gnome 48 to 49 as a dependency?
I must +1 that no matter the platform (this criticism is not limited to Linux), the open source option is almost always my choice, especially for something as important as a browser. This is a big reason I don’t use Orion today, even though I have big issues with the other available browsers.
But what I really miss is a self-hosted sync server. I don't want to use a browser without sync, but I also don't want to trust this data with any 3rd party other than myself.
It's one of the main reasons I'm using Firefox, since that is the the only browser that even vaguely supports this - albeit not well.
I'm not interested in using a proprietary browser, and hope for a release under a free license at some point. But a free WebKit-based browser with Web Extensions could have interesting properties regarding battery life on mobile GNU workstations.