this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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Orion Browser for Linux Gets Exciting Progress Update (www.omgubuntu.co.uk)
submitted 1 month ago by that_leaflet@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 36 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If you’re itching to test Orion for Linux, you’ll have to wait. No public builds are available yet, and when testing versions do arrive, they’ll initially be restricted to paid Orion+ and Kagi subscribers.

If reading this has you itching to try it out, you’ll have to wait. No public builds of Orion’s Linux port are available for testing, and when available, the plan is to only give paid Orion+ and Kagi subscribers first dibs – crushing, but there is a reason for it.

Seems they didn't give it a proofread before publishing. :p

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Does it feel like AI to you? I'm a Kagi subscriber and while they don't shove it down your throat like Google tries too it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that a) it's there at all; and b) that I'm paying for it regardless of not using it. AI should be an add-on you choose in addition to search.

[–] Fifrok@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Feels like a LLM to me. There's interjections in sentences, like this one, and the dash ofc. I've found that most models also rarely use first person pronouns (is 'we' first person in english?) and there's none here (unless that's the style those articles are writen in, idk I don't read things like this)

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 month ago

We is first-person plural so I guess you mean it lacks first-person singular?

[–] gramgan@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I love Orion on iOS for its ability to use WebExtensions, but I’m not sure what benefit yet another mediocre WebKit browser would bring to the Linux space…

[–] trevor@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 1 month ago

Extensions. Epiphany can't run Firefox and Chromium extensions, but Orion mostly can. I can't live without uBlock Origin or autofill from my password manager, and Orion is the only niche browser I know of that can.

[–] that_leaflet@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

We have to wait and see if it's really mediocre. Gnome Web certainly has performance issues, but those may be due to WebkitGTK.

Orion is not using WebkitGTK, despite using GTK and Libadwaita. Their port may not have the same performance issues.

And when I say performance issues, I don't mean benchmarks. Gnome Web actually does pretty decent on benchmarks, but things like scrolling with a mouse just don't feel smooth (but do with a trackpad).

[–] trey_a_12@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Speaking from macOS and iOS use, Orion’s great in terms of performance and efficiency in my testing, and I’m excited to see what all can be done on Linux.

[–] alexcleac@szmer.info 2 points 1 month ago

But on macOS it just uses Apple's own WebKit fork, so it is very expected: WebKit is very optimised towards Apple hardware on macOS and iOS.

[–] priapus@piefed.social 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I mean, I'd imagine the goal is to avoid being mediocre.

If Orion fully supports the Firefox extensions I use and is as privacy respecting as I expect, I'll likely switch to it as soon as I can. I'm sick of Firefox prioritizing features very few people want.

[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

i don't think it's the browser for you if you care about privacy, it's not even open source

[–] priapus@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Open source =/= private. Chromium and Firefox are open source, and both have horrible privacy defaults. I have far more trust in Kagi than Mozilla or Google. There are many ways to verify privacy than other than reading the source code.

Besides, they have shared that they plan to open source the browser once the project is ready, and some components are already open source. Making a project open-source is a much bigger task than people realize. While community contributions may take some maintenance load off of your staff, they now become responsible for much more external code review, which requires more scrutiny due to coming from outside sources.

https://help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.html#oss

[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

how do you verify privacy without access to the source code? open source != privacy but open source helps a ton to verify it

btw the kagi people have been saying they'll open source it at some point for ages, and in my experience those promises are usually just promises. I'll believe it when i see it

[–] priapus@piefed.social 2 points 1 month ago

They've been open sourcing parts of it the entire time. Looks to me like they're doing what they said.

You can easily monitor network connections to see what addresses its sending packets to. You can't collect information without sending it somewhere. Run Firefox through a proxy, and you'll see it is far from private. The source code will show you what they're sending, but nothing about what they're doing with it after it's received.

[–] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

O_O

OK, time to cancel plans of using kagi.

[–] TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Paid search engine makes sense to me but paid browser does not. The browser's target audience will have a better experience using a free of charge and Open Source browser than a paid one because the paid browser won't integrate very well with package managers.

This is off topic but their search engine pricing is quite scummy. Either you pay $5 for 300 searches per month, which is too little, or you pay $10 for unlimited searches, which is too many for a mere mortal. They are trying to up-sell the $10 subscription.

[–] priapus@piefed.social 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The browser isnt paid though. https://help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.html#business

I agree the $5 a month option is pretty useless, but I also think $10 is completely reasonable for everything you get.

Also even if it was paid why would it have issues with a package manager? Paid software generally just uses an account or license key to verify payment, with the executable being frwely available. JetBrains and Burp Suite are two software that come to mind and both are in many repositories.

Edit: To be clear, the browser will only be for Kagi and Orion+ members during the testing phase, likely just to control the size of the testing group. After that it will be free.

[–] TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The browser isnt paid though.

So it's a closed source browser that relies on donations? Or is it Open Source? I could not find much about it (eg. a git repo or something) and just assumed it would have a similar business model to the search engine.

why would it have issues with a package manager?

Depends on the package manager. It's probably easy on Debian, but more difficult on rolling releases, mostly because of dependency hell. Binary distributed software is also harder to integrate in a build system and cross-compilation to a different architecture is not possible.

Regarding the cost of the search engine, I don't care about all the things you get. I just want a search engine and for a reasonable price compared to the price of their "all of them at once, I suppose" bundle.

[–] priapus@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The FAQ explains it better than I will:

Depends on the package manager. It's probably easy on Debian, but more difficult on rolling releases, mostly because of dependency hell. Binary distributed software is also harder to integrate in a build system and cross-compilation to a different architecture is not possible.

You shouldn't need to cross compile, as they will provide the binaries for systems they support. I'm not sure what integration with build systems it might need, but I feel like a package manager should not have this limitation. I use NixOS Unstable, the rolling release branch, and have many packages that are distributed as binaries, either due to being closed source or having issues preventing them from being built with Nix.

Regarding the cost of the search engine, I don't care about all the things you get. I just want a search engine and for a reasonable price compared to the price of their "all of them at once, I suppose" bundle.

That's perfectly fair. I felt ok with spending $10 a month on the search, even before they started adding more features and services to it. I believe that the $5 option used to offer 500 searches, which felt more fair, but I guess that wasn't sustainable.

[–] TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Thanks for the links! I think their wording on why they don't want to open source the project is quite slimy when it just requires them to give ship users the source code tarballs alongside the binaries.

You shouldn’t need to cross compile, as they will provide the binaries for systems they support.

Well it's unlikely a company would support every possible system in the world. The best one can do is using something like static linking/flatpak/nix. But that means not using shared libraries which can make software start slower. This would bother me for a daily-driver browser. I guess it does not bother nix users like you but I was thinking they would be potentially missing out on some Linux users. Maybe it isn't really a significant portion that would care.

I felt ok with spending $10

I guess I would be too but in the context of their offerings, it's kinda off-putting for me.

[–] daggermoon@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I was excited before I saw it was a libadwaita app.

[–] seralth@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Can libadwaita just go die. So sick and tired of it.

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 5 points 1 month ago

Its fine on Gnome,but other desktops meh.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I've always been wary of Kagi, as they have not been very clear about how big part of their search is based on their own index and how much is metasearch on various other engines.