There is some strange irony in this. Apple initially used the khtml code-base to build Safari but it quickly became impossible to back-port the changes from the Safari branch of khtml back into Konqueror. Now, 20 years later, someone has made an open source version of Safari.
Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux
171–180 of 325 posts
Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux
#172Earlier 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…
> 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.
Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux
#173Orion 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.…
I just switched to Orion on iOS to kick off the new year and it is MUCH better than where it was just a few months ago.
I used it for close to a year and abandoned it because I kept running into issues with tabs getting randomly reloaded and extensions causing trouble.
What would you say has changed over the past few months? I just felt like Kagi wasn't prioritizing Orion development enough, being busy with their main Kagi subscription and all.
Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux
#174It 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?
In my opinion open sourcing something is a privilege, not a duty.
Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 responding. Orion on iOS with extensions has been outstanding.. looking forward to linux version.
Which extensions do you use? I was never able to get them to work. d reddit redirect, for example, never once redirected a reddit link to old reddit.
Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux
#176Just use Yandex browser and skip the middleman
Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux
#177It's rough, but I like it. Definitely an alpha, but wonderful to see them thrive.
Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 7…
> If you're using a "common browser" on Linux (Firefox/Chrome)
Right. The user I was replying to was asking about a browser that isn't either of those.
Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux
#179Whats special about Orion? Why would I use it instead of FF or even Chromium?
The built in ad blocker is phenomenal. Only Brave is as good on this front. It supports extensions from both FF and Chromium. It has a really neat integration with Kagi private search in private tabs. Kagi as a company has generally pretty good ethics and respects their users. That’s enough to make it compelling for me.
> It has a really neat integration with Kagi private search in private tabs
What's the integration you're referring to here? This was something I was interested in, but as far as I can tell if I enable Kagi Privacy Pass it's enabled browser-wide, not just in private tabs.
Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 me…
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