Comment by Fiveplus
2 days ago
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.
> Webkit on Linux has essentially been relegated to embedded devices or the GNOME epiphany browser
Don't forget about https://falkon.org. It's a browser I enjoy using. WebExtension support will be big if it lands in Orion though.
EDIT: apparently Orion is not open source. Not particularly interested in a closed source browser, TBH. In 2022 they said they plan to open source "when there is merit"[1], whatever that means. No merit yet, it seems.
[1] https://orionfeedback.org/d/3882-open-source-the-browser/2
As a Kagi user for years now, I am very interested in a Firefox/Chrome competitor but I will absolutely not use Orion until it is open source.
This. Super happy with Kagi but won't use until it is open source.
Just curious: what browser do you currently use? Firefox, Zen?
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Falkon uses QtWebEngine, essentially a Chromium (Blink&V8) wrapper. QupZilla, its predecessor, was using QtWebKit. Otter & kbd-driven qutebrowser (two other Qt browsers) for time, and maybe still do, simultaneously supported both.
Same for me. Using a proprietary browser is not quite as bad as using a proprietary OS, but it is a distant second. Hopefully they figure out whatever merit they are waiting for...
I find it strange because it seems to me that outside of their bread and butter products (Kagi Search, Assistant), there really isn't a business secret or proprietary technology to keep secret no? Perhaps integrated browser LLM tooling they don't want to give out for free.
Not too much speculation needed as to why: data collection which is then used to enhance both their Search and Assistant products + they can easily start pushing their search and assistant through the platform once adoption is high enough and people who are used to Orion will more easily be convinced to just fork up a little money for continued or slightly improved features/access
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Also Ladybird is quite an interesting alternative. Anyone here using it day to day?
Ladybird is a long way off being viable to daily drive
The last Falkon update was 8 months ago (falkon.org/posts), seems like a very long time for a browser without any updates. Is it not a security problem to run a browser like this?
The last update was 2 days ago, see https://github.com/KDE/falkon/tags
> 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 for documentation reading only.
I'm hopeful that some day Linux will have enough users where the media companies can't ignore them. Hopefully, that day is sooner than later.
It's pretty frustrating that peacock (and all xfinity streaming) doesn't work and you can't get 1080p or 4k on most other streaming platforms.
Hmm good point. The issue is also the distinction between widevine L1, i.e hardware-backed DRM and L3 (the software backed one).
Correct me if I'm wrong but to stream 4K, studios require a hardware root of trust and a verified media path. They need a guarantee that the video frames are decrypted inside a trusted execution environment and sent directly to the display without the OS kernel or user space being able to read the raw buffer.
AFAIK Windows and macOS provide this pipeline at the OS level. OTOH, ChromeOS gets 1080p/4K not because it has massive market share but cause the hardware and boot chain are locked down by the almighty Google.
On desktop Linux, where you have root access and can modify the kernel or compositor to inspect memory, there is technically no way to guarantee that secure path to the studios' satisfaction. Am I right in this assumption?
Unless the DRM providers change their threat model, which sounds unlikely to me. Or distros start shipping signed and locked-down kernel modules that prevent the user from being root, which is again unacceptable to most (me included), we will likely be capped at 720p for some time now.
> Am I right in this assumption?
Yes. I tried using Chrome on Linux just to watch movies that I purchased on Youtube at HD/4K and watched as the stream was limited to 240P. IMHO regardless of what Google says in their ToS they have already broken the trust agreement by not providing what I paid for. Regardless of what the studios want, all this does is push me back towards piracy because once again the industry fails to understand that piracy is a accessibility problem, not a financial problem. If I pay for 4K then regardless of where I want to watch that movie it better be in 4K, that's what I paid for. Google hides behind their ToS to get around the fact that they sold me a product then failed to deliver.
> ChromeOS gets 1080p/4K not because it has massive market share but cause the hardware and boot chain are locked down by the almighty Google.
ChromeOS is based on Gentoo Linux underneath just very stripped down and Googlefied. It's the same BS that Bungee pulled with Destiny 2 and Linux. If you so much as dared to run Destiny 2 on Linux you would be banned. Stadia used Linux but because Google controlled the platform they allowed it to be played there.
These are the games they play to make other platforms that aren't MacOS/Windows appear like they are incapable but in reality it's just corporate greed and grift.
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> They need a guarantee
s/need/want/ but yes.
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As far as I understand, on the mobile implementation not even the OS can access the buffers. So even with root you can stream L1 content but not screen record it
> Correct me if I'm wrong but to stream 4K, studios require a hardware root of trust and a verified media path.
Oscilloscopes and signal analysers exist.
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You can work around the Widevine issues by pirating the content you're interested in.
This is the way. Widevine is a cancer that only serves to lock down the browser market to a small handful of web engines that have been approved by Google. If your browser isn't based on Chrome, Firefox, or Safari you're out of luck.
Most people will not use a browser that can't open youtube videos and they know and exploit this with extreme precision.
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But the browser still won't get mainstream and will eventually die.
This isn't even a strictly Linux problem. On Windows, Edge has by far the best encrypted streaming playback using their PlayReady DRM. Many services like Netflix will only do 4K for Edge. Chrome is often 1080p, and Firefox was 720p last time I tried it.
Same situation on Mac where Apple's Fairplay DRM enables 4K playback in Safari, but Chrome and Firefox have the same limitations as on Windows.
Last time I tried to use Firefox on Windows as my daily driver, video playback was one of the biggest gaps that made me go back to Edge.
Perhaps a blessing in disguise. You're not missing out on anything of value.
> I'm hopeful that some day Linux will have enough users where the media companies can't ignore them. Hopefully, that day is sooner than later.
Does YouTube and Netflix work? That's the lion's share right there. A lot of users probably don't even care about the other streaming platforms. I'm probably being too optimistic, but I think the upcoming Steam machines will have a significant adoption of the linux desktop. Microsoft is certainly working 'round the clock to alienate their users.
YouTube does, Netflix doesn't
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> The sticking point like always will be media playback (read: DRM/widevine). That is the graveyard where Linux browsers go to die.
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
Youtube with 4k has always worked. Renting commercial videos on Youtube uses DRM.
I don't disagree with you about a new browser being a good thing but ...
> If not, it will be a secondary browser for documentation reading only.
I don't even have sound on my main desktop PC: the one I use the most. The one I do all my "life admin" stuff from (banking, real estate, etc.), all my work emails, all my coding. I think sound works but I haven't bothered to plug in speakers to check (since three years, when I assembled the PC).
That's a bit more than documentation reading.
There are work environments where even just a sound emitted by a PC is frowned upon.
People who aren't into media consumption are not just "reading documentation".
Yeah, that was a bit harsh on my part. I removed that bit, apologies. Had no intention of coming across as crude.
> The sticking point like always will be media playback (read: DRM/widevine).
Probably true in general. But for me, that's not a sticking point at all. I don't care if a browser supports media playback or not.
What I do care about is the ability to enable/disable embedded code execution (JS, at the very least) at a fairly granular level. Does Orion allow for that?
It's a major sticking point for most people though and a very large blocker for wider Linux desktop adoption.
We like Linux adoption around these parts. But don't we like it because linux doesn't let companies mistreat it's users?
If users are unwilling to opt out of that abuse then I think its OK that their migration to Linux remains mildly inconvenient.
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You are, you recognize, a tiny minority?
Did I not make that clear with "Probably true in general."?
Among users generally, or among kernel developers? Because that's the audience you'd have to convince.
The actual important part is consumer-grade. Because WebKitGTK itself is already commercially incentivized, developed primarily by Igalia (a quite underrated firm regarding their contributions in open source) who are offering consulting services mainly in embedded-related industries.
> "DRM/widevine [...] is the graveyard where Linux browsers go to die"
Maybe it's not widevine L1 but Firefox has the widevine plugin enabled on my Debian 13. I don't remember I had to do anything except downloading Firefox from Mozilla and installing it.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm
Apparently it's part of Brave too but it's disabled by default
https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/360023851591-How...
I expect it to be available on Chrome and I don't expect much from Epiphany.
> 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.
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.
> The sticking point like always will be media playback (read: DRM/widevine). That is the graveyard where Linux browsers go to die.
On Firefox, you can disable DRM in about:config. Forks such as Librewolf and Tor Browser disable DRM by default.
I have to disagree with some of your points. No shade at Orin but WebKitGTK is a volunteer project. Having competition won't push WebKitGTK any faster because I am sure they are going as fast as they can. WebKitGTK already have a good list of features to add because they have other commercial browsers to compare themselves to, it's the speed that they can add them due to resource limitations. BTW, Firefox also runs on Linux. Also, nobody is installing a secondary browser for documentation reading only - what's the point of doing this?
> commercially incentivized
So corp stuff but with devrel?
I wouldn’t install a close source browser by a ad-incentivised company like Kagi.
How is it ad incentivized?
And Ladybird.