Microsoft Edge for Linux reaches a new and decisive milestone with its first stable version for this system. It does so more than two years after the company’s intentions to venture into not-so-strange lands with its new browser became known, and almost a year since the download of the first preliminary version was made available to Linux users. Although that was not the end of the road, far from it.
Microsoft Edge for Linux was initially provided through the Dev channel, one of the browser development compilations that would be equivalent to an alpha or similar state, to gradually deploy functions as basic as data synchronization, which did not arrive until some time later. It wasn’t until May of this year that the Microsoft Edge beta for Linux was released. By then, however, the browser already had a good number of users on the penguin’s system.
It should be noted that the news that there is already a stable version of Microsoft Edge for Linux is spreading among the specialized press not because Microsoft has announced it, but because browser users have realized that update is popping up in software managers, at least as far as their name is concerned.
In fact, anyone who accesses the official Microsoft Edge page from Linux will notice that the download button still displays the “not compatible with Linux” warning. To install Microsoft Edge for Linux, therefore, it is still necessary to do so through the Microsoft Edge Insider site, where the Beta and Dev channel versions are offered. So?
It turns out that Microsoft Edge for Linux works in this sense just like the rest of browsers. In other words, when the user installs it, they create repositories for updating, which usually include the development channels, even if the application installation is the one chosen in principle; but the update itself can make changes to these repositories.
There you have it: Microsoft Edge for Linux in stable version
It’s true: the stable version of Microsoft Edge for Linux is here, although it is possible that it is necessary to endure a little to be announced properly and the process is smoothed out for the user who wants to download and install the stable version of the browser directly, and not the beta. Be that as it may, a path is completed that has lasted longer than expected, considering what Microsoft Edge is.
And is that Microsoft Edge is a derivative of Chromium and like this, although they differ from their own characteristics, which have them and are one of their main hooks, it keeps its compatibility with Linux from its very conception. The question is the impact that Microsoft Edge will have for Linux, because although it has been accepted by many users, many more reject it outright.
Why? For several reasons: because it comes from Microsoft, because it is proprietary software, because there are open source alternatives such as Firefox, Brave or Chromium itself with which to fill the gap without any lack of functionality … And yet, it is enough for someone to do so want to give you, now yes, welcome to the penguin system.
