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Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

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Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#121

Post by pdpi »

barbazoo wrote: post #109
hobofan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a customer, you already trust Kagi enough to feed them your entire search history, so I guess you don't think they're bad actors. Do I? I'm not going to post sensitive information into a search engine no matter who runs it. My search history ain't worth much. What the contents of e.g. my bank website are is.

There’s still trusting Kagi that what’s in the binary was built from the open source code right?

I can build it myself and skip that step. Or, if the build process is reproducible, you can make trust less of an issue by having a small handful of independent people run their own builds and post their signatures. That way you need those people to all collude with Kagi to forge a bad build. This is how e.g. bitcoind binaries are handled.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#122

Post by [deleted] »

jwcooper wrote: post #61
Fiveplus wrote: post #35

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…

> 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. Ho…

[deleted]

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#123

Post by rixthefox »

Fiveplus wrote: post #83
jwcooper wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Ho…

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 r…

> 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.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#124

Post by zamadatix »

presbyterian wrote: post #101
rapind wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. M…

YouTube does, Netflix doesn't

If you're using a "common browser" on Linux (Firefox/Chrome) Netflix should work, just at 720p for most of the content. If you're using a minor Chromium based fork the customized Chromium package provided by your distro it probably doesn't have Widevine by default.

The same is true for running a vanilla Chromium build on Windows, the big difference is the quality of content you can get on Windows can be higher than 720p in the mainstream browsers (as long as the rest of the system is compliant as well).

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#125

Post by mistercheph »

barbazoo wrote: post #109
hobofan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a customer, you already trust Kagi enough to feed them your entire search history, so I guess you don't think they're bad actors. Do I? I'm not going to post sensitive information into a search engine no matter who runs it. My search history ain't worth much. What the contents of e.g. my bank website are is.

There’s still trusting Kagi that what’s in the binary was built from the open source code right?

With reproducible builds, and the way most people get packages, from their package manager: No.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#126

Post by fwip »

freediver wrote: post #115
JohnFen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring it to be open source is not just about trusting the publisher. There are a bunch of other possible reasons, including wanting to support open source as a counterbalance to proprietary software. For me, it's a big deal (although not a dealbreaker) for that reason. If I have the option of two different pieces of software, one being open source and the other proprietary, I'll choose the open source one every t…

Side thought: nobody's ever asked us to open source Kagi Search. Curious why the expectation differs.

Kagi Search runs on your computers, Orion runs on ours.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#127

Post by MarsIronPI »

packetlost wrote: post #85
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

DRM sucks, but the time to thrash against it is has passed. It's here, it's not going away, and users expect to be able to use their browsers to watch protected content.

> DRM sucks, but the time to thrash against it is has passed.

Speak for yourself. I avoid any DRMed content. If I pay for it, I'm getting unrestricted access to the files. Or I don't pay for it.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#128

Post by EbNar »

freediver wrote: post #115
JohnFen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring it to be open source is not just about trusting the publisher. There are a bunch of other possible reasons, including wanting to support open source as a counterbalance to proprietary software. For me, it's a big deal (although not a dealbreaker) for that reason. If I have the option of two different pieces of software, one being open source and the other proprietary, I'll choose the open source one every t…

Side thought: nobody's ever asked us to open source Kagi Search. Curious why the expectation differs.

Yup, I was about to comment on that as well, but didn't want my question to be interpreted as polemic.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#129

Post by andyjohnson0 »

freediver wrote: post #92
hellcow wrote: post #9

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. Does Kagi plan to open-source Orion on Linux?

Kagi founder here. Orion isn't open source yet primarily because we're a 5-person team that spent 6+ years building this and created significant IP doing so, and we're not in a position to defend our work against a well-funded company using it as a base (we care very much about the business model of the browser surviving). Restrictive licenses help in theory but enforcing them against a company with a larger legal bu…

Thanks for being so transparent about this. As a Kagi search user since the beta, I appreciate what you are doing. Good luck!

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#130

Post by mistercheph »

freediver wrote: post #115
JohnFen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring it to be open source is not just about trusting the publisher. There are a bunch of other possible reasons, including wanting to support open source as a counterbalance to proprietary software. For me, it's a big deal (although not a dealbreaker) for that reason. If I have the option of two different pieces of software, one being open source and the other proprietary, I'll choose the open source one every t…

Side thought: nobody's ever asked us to open source Kagi Search. Curious why the expectation differs.

Code you run on your machine outside of a browser sandbox vs content served by an HTTP endpoint to your machine.
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