Orion for Linux

Wasano

clintre The 'modern' and ready desktops at the moment are: GNOME, KDE and Elementary.
Cinnamon, XFCE, Budgie and the others are either abandoned, not maintained enough or have a tiny userbase. Most of them still don't support Wayland. Building applications around ecosystems that are decades behind is silly. Cosmic is not ready and won't be for many years. Tiling window managers benefit from adaptive toolkits like libadwaita and kirigiami as they scale nicely and small windows.

Only those 3 have any design direction at all. Cinnamon and XFCE's design is literally 'old GNOME'. Especially since many of their apps are forks of the old GNOME ones, following GNOME's old HIG. Mint is slowly modernizing its design to follow the modern GNOME one https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4811

Webkit is only available on GTK so kirigami is out. But even if it wasn't the design difference between the two is miles long. Compare https://developer.gnome.org/hig/guidelines.html and https://develop.kde.org/hig/.

Elementary has its own HIG https://docs.elementary.io/hig and its own widget library, but libadwaita accommodates for it https://github.com/GNOME/libadwaita/blob/main/src/adw-application.c#L124.

There's at least 320 libadwaita apps mostly made by solo developers https://arewelibadwaitayet.com/ with new ones coming out every day https://flathub.org/?category=new, I would say libadwaita is extremely popular among developers and users.

clintre

Wasano I did not say it was not popular with developers. Many of those apps that uses libadwaita are built for the Gnome ecosystem and work to be certified by them. If Orion is to be an application that is for Linux Desktop in general and not just a Gnome app, then libadwaita is not a good choice. The main problem is it does not look good on KDE which is one of the very largest install bases. I work on several projects myself, I have dealt with this stuff going on 3 decades. There is a reason the mainstream browsers support the GUI side beyond gtk/libadwaita. It is not a good universal design, it is great for Gnome.

If they want to have libadwaita enabled or as an option for Gnome, that is not difficult to do. It is literally a switch to go between GTK with libadwaite and without.

Dustin

clintre

The main problem is it does not look good on KDE which is one of the very largest install bases

I don't think there's any meaningful data available that can prove this and of course the Steam Deck and SteamOS do not count.

This is ultimately the problem with developing a consumer product for the Linux desktop.

aspiringnobody

clintre

I hear what you’re saying, but will add that anything that’s not Qt looks out of place on KDE. GNOME at least has Kvantum to make Qt appear somewhat compliant.

But KDE is a dealbreaker for me. I’ve tried several (dozens?) of times to use it and I’ve never been able to deal with the haphazard-ness of it all. Sure, everything is customizable and I’m sure with work I could get it how I like it — but if I’m going to do all that work why not start with something closer to what I want (dock + overview for switching windows).

But, when I found out about this I signed up for the lifetime Orion subscription, because I don’t care if I end up using it. I just want a good WebKit option on Linux and I think Kagi might actually come through. I don’t know how much adoption they will get, I think lots (most?) Linux users will turn their nose up at a business trying to make money selling them a product… even though it’s exactly the right thing to do (buy the product, instead of being the product).

So I’ll chip in. I don’t care if it’s Qt, GTK3, GTK4, or libadwaita. Just get the thing working and we fill in the rest later.

Aka shut up and take my money.

clintre

Dustin Prove what? That KDE is one of the largest install bases? Really? It absolutely not even something that is in question. Fedora did not make it at the same level of Gnome in their editions because it is not. There is no question that Gnome has the largest, as they were the default on several distros many years. However, KDE since KDE 5 has been on a rise and since they were and are ahead on the graphical stack, with fractional scaling, Wayland, vrr, hdr, etc. they gained even more users. KDE is the preferred on several distros as well now. I have been working with and on Linux since 1992 and have worked with many teams across distros and desktop environments.

clintre

aspiringnobody GTK actually works solid kn Plasma 6. But I do agree, get the thing out, and we can figure the rest out later. Libadwaita decision bothers me because it is easy to have a switch for both with and without within GTK.

But I will rest my case for now 😉

Thibaultmol

Btw, for anyone interested in trying, you can sign up here to get notified: https://forms.kagi.com/?q=orion_linux_news

TheDarkWizard

I am super stoked to see that my favorite browser is getting a Linux version. I currently use Orion on my phone and laptop but I have to use a firefox based browser on my main linux desktop if I want to avoid anything chrome based, now soon I won't have to.

While I can ultimately only speak for my self, I know of a few others who will jump just because it's not chrome or firefox based when it comes out who are also on Linux like me.

Jarmer

TheDarkWizard

Exactly how I feel. Very dissillusioned by the direction the bloated mozilla corp has gone with firefox, so currently on librewolf, but will be happy to move to this on my fedora desktop install when it's ready for testing.

MarcBunce

I have been a linux user for a long time, used android for many years and hence chrome on desktop.
I have recently became an IOS user as got sick of google swapping / changing, removing apps and had a hand me down ipad for gaming with the family.
I use orion on ipad and phone, dont care what kit it comes with on linux as I use whaterver is best for the app I want to use.
I cant wait to use orion as I want to remove my reliance on google full stop.
Thankyou to all involved in doing this

tellur1an

Good evening. I was asked to post here regarding potential packaging for Linux. I would like to suggest that the first alpha release either be a tar or a deb file. This would allow for the broadest release without running into performance and various other technical issues with a flatpak distribution. In order to show how efficient a browser is, you are cutting yourself off at the knees with an un-optimized flatpak. I look forward to experiencing Orion for myself and I want the initial impressions to be the most favorable possible and I would hate to hurt the team's limited bandwidth by focusing on a format that would potentially lessen the experience.

Thank you to the whole team for embracing Linux. I signed up to Kagi to support your efforts and I hope to do the same for Orion when it is ready.

clintre

tellur1an You are cutting by going deb only as well. A large percentage of users do not use Debian-based distros. As for Flatpaks, the only time there is a performance issue is during the initial launch. Gnome Web / Epiphany, which this is based on, is officially supported as a Flatpak, and that is the recommended way to install it by them. Source: https://apps.gnome.org/Epiphany/

hawdini

tellur1an as an Arch user (obligatory btw) as long as all the dependencies are met on different distros (or static links) someone will happily pick apart whatever packing system you choose and repack it. A lot of Arch’s software in the AUR are scripts to repackage deb files.

Great to see Orion for Linux taking shape though.

Vlad

Dev update 2

We are at the beginning of the journey. Team is making progress. Nothing more substantial to share at this moment

We will make sure the application feels native to use and optimize design for the environment. The below is the actual screenshot from the Orion application and you can see our current efforts.

deshonium

Vlad Ogromna podrška i zahvalnost na svemu ovome što radite.
Pozdrav iz Beograda

TheDarkWizard

Vlad

Hopefully, you guys release an alpha/beta or RC so that we can provide feedback and testing along the way.

EliteAMDGamer

Vlad it’s looking nice. Will it be possible to put tabs under the address bar panel like safari. I understand side tabs are all the rage but accessibility wise. They’re a bit more difficult.

alexjsteffen

Vlad LOOKS amazing. Great job so far. Finally a decent client for WebKit on Linux. Look forward to testing it on Arch once you feel that it's ready.

Letho

Hello there, and thank you for bringing Orion to Linux.

As others pointed out, I really think you should focus on Flatpak for packaging – a simple tar archive would be good enough for early releases.

I'd be happy to subscribe to Orion+ as soon as a preview version is released.

hashrack456

Thank you for working on Linux version of Orion browser. I would love to see it release flatpak version. You can cover almost all mainstream Linux distro using flatpak. Good to see Libadwaita is being used. I am using libadwaita apps in KDE and I am happy with it. We need more Linux apps. Again. thank you very much.

Pan_con_palta_99

The browser looks beautiful, using Libadwaita was definitely the right choice.

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