Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

help.kagi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 325 posts

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#91

Post by leephillips »

EbNar wrote: post #37
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?

Just curious, but is this really a big deal? 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. Thus, why you find problematic the (momentary?) "unopeness" of the browser? I'd gladly try it (I'm on Arch), even just out of curiosity (unlikely to make it my main, though). Jeez, downvoted for asking about context? People, calm down.

Google started as a company that seemed worthy of trust. The founders had ideals and followed them. Look what happened. Companies can turn evil surprisingly quickly. I'm also a Kagi customer, but I wouldn’t use a closed-source browser either.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#92

Post by freediver »

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 budget doesn't.

We also see limited upside from community contributions - the number of people who can meaningfully work on a WebKit browser is small (from our experience hiring), and most of them already work at Apple or Kagi. Meanwhile, managing an open source codebase of this size would add real strain to our small team.

The plan is however to open source when Orion is self-sufficient (business model of Orion is you are the customer and can pay for it - like we used to pay for browsers 20 years ago before advertisers started paying for our browsing), meaning it can sustain its own development independent of Kagi Search. I want to take the opportunity to thank all people who supported the Orion browser vision [1]. We're not there yet but recent 1.0 launch and expanding to Linux are steps in that direction. And on Jan 1st this year we began development of Orion for Windows (HN exclusive yay!).

I understand this is unsatisfying to people who want source access now. It's a tradeoff we've made deliberately, not something we're hiding behind.

[1] https://kagi.com/stats?sub_stats=orion

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#93

Post by rapind »

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…

> 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.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#94

Post by h4x0rr »

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…

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

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#95

Post by solarkraft »

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.

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#98

Post by freediver »

freedomben wrote: post #27
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?

I hope freediver will shed some light on the open source plans, because that's a deal breaker for me too. I'm a long time paying customer and huge proponent (even evangelist) of Kagi, but a closed source browser is just too many steps backwards for me no matter who makes it. I get (though wouldn't necessarily agree with) keeping it closed while it's still in the works, but would like to know if the plan is to open so…

Wish granted!

Re: Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

#100

Post by jlarocco »

jsheard wrote: post #31
ericyan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also runs on iOS/iPadOS and Webkit is the only allowed engine on these platforms (outside Japan).

You have to use the system Webkit though, right? So even though Orion is based on Webkit they are still constrained compared to other platforms, where they can patch the engine if necessary.

That limitation is only on iOs, though.
Post reply on HN