The Early Beta Build of Orion for Linux is Now Available!

We know many of you have been eagerly waiting for a chance to try Orion Browser on Linux, and we’ve been hard at work to make progress behind the scenes. After months of building the foundations, we’re excited to share this early beta with you. It’s our first opportunity to let you get hands-on with the new features we’ve been developing.

What’s included in this early beta

Browsing made smoother

The core of Orion is fully connected to the Linux UI, and basic browsing is ready: you can navigate pages, use back, forward, and refresh actions, and start exploring multiple tabs. This milestone lays the groundwork for a more flexible and powerful tab system.

Staying organized and secure

We’ve added password management, history tracking, and Dark Mode and Focus Mode, giving you more control over your browsing experience. Custom search engines can be defined in Settings > Search, making it easy to search directly from the address bar.

Stability and polish

This early beta also brings several fixes that improve reliability - from preventing crashes when closing pinned tabs to resolving freezes in Website Settings, and ensuring new installations allow creating new tabs without issues.

Note:

Kagi Sync and webKit Extensions are still in development and not supported in Beta

✴ Try the Early Beta ✴

You can download the Flatpak build of Orion Browser for Linux here: Download Orion Early Beta (Flatpak)

What’s next

This early beta is just the beginning. Over the coming weeks, we’ll continue refining tab management, expanding WebExtension support and improving stability and usability.

We’d love to hear from you

As always, your thoughts, questions, and suggestions are welcome. They guide us in shaping the future of Orion on Linux, and we’re excited to have you on this journey with us. Go to our dedicated Orion Feedback Website: https://orionfeedback.org/

Browse Beyond ✴︎ The Orion for Linux Team

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
      5·
      18 hours ago

      Edit: see the reply on my comment

      I’m not sure if I understood this criticism. The Reddit thread links to this page:

      https://web.archive.org/web/20251203060750/https://kagi.com/changelog#5340

      Our image search became even better with the inclusion of two more sources: Yandex Image Search (widely recognized as one of best image search services) and Openverse (vast collection of openly licensed images). Kagi is doing the hard work so that you don’t have to.

      Are they financially supporting or sponsoring Yandex in some other way?

      To me, this sounds like they added the option to run an image search on Yandex? I use a browser extension for image searches that has a number of options including Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Sogou, etc., and users are free to choose which ones they want to try searching on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search_by_image/

      I also remember seeing Bellingcat (who has done excellent investigative reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) using Yandex tools to gather information because it has information on the region that other English/Chinese focused tools don’t.

      I don’t doubt that Yandex tries to manipulate information in favor of the government in Russia. Rather with the right browser protections, someone can take advantage of their free tools and cost Yandex money without Yandex benefiting from it. It’s not necessarily a bad thing for Kagi to let people do that?

    • artyom@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      915·
      20 hours ago

      So anyone who does business with a Russian company is “sponsoring the Russian war”? Seems a bit discriminatory.

      • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
        132·
        20 hours ago

        Yandex is Russia’s Google, sold in 2024 to Russian oligarchs with close state ties, so I’d say it’s justified to criticize this particular sponsorship business

        • aksdb@lemmy.world
          4·
          16 hours ago

          To be fair, it is not sponsorship. Kagi pays for a service they use. And since this is just one of many sources, this is likely also a relatively small amount of money. If they would deliberately pay more than what they use to “do something good” for yandex, then sure, it would be a much bigger issue.

      • versionc@lemmy.world
        168·
        20 hours ago

        Discriminatory? Are you for real?

        So anyone who does business with a Russian company is “sponsoring the Russian war”?

        Yes. Russian companies pay taxes to the Russian regime, and the Russian regime uses that tax money to fund their war. Therefore, if you do business with Russian companies, you sponsor the Russian war.

        Am I saying that means you shouldn’t pay for the service? No. We can’t boycott everything, but people should at least know where some of their money goes. Where you draw the moral line is entirely up to you.

        • SwooshBakery624 [they/them]@programming.devEnglish
          111·
          15 hours ago

          Yes. Russian companies pay taxes to the Russian regime, and the Russian regime uses that tax money to fund their war. Therefore, if you do business with Russian companies, you sponsor the Russian war.

          Just out of curiosity: Should we boycott DuckDuckGo for using the Bing API, since Microsoft is an American company whose tax dollars go toward funding the genocide in Palestine, the war in Iran, and the economic blockade of Cuba?

        • artyom@piefed.socialOPEnglish
          610·
          20 hours ago

          Discriminatory? Are you for real?

          Are you? You’re discriminating against an entire country, 146 million people, based on the actions of their government?

          • BigJohnnyHines@lemmy.ca
            135·
            16 hours ago

            Correct. That’s how boycotts work. The people of Russia should increase pressure on their government if they don’t like current outcomes. Nobody is blaming them personally but putting any money into that economy ends up killing innocent people in Ukraine.

            • artyom@piefed.socialOPEnglish
              21·
              6 hours ago

              Nobody is blaming them personally

              That’s exactly what you’re doing. Most govts are guilty of wars for stupid reasons. Better boycott everything, I guess?

          • versionc@lemmy.world
            116·
            20 hours ago

            We have wildly different definitions of the word discrimination. The fact of the matter is that doing business with Russian companies funds the Russian war. There’s no away around that, and the fact that innocent Russian civilians have to suffer the repercussions of that is tragic, but it’s through no fault of the people choosing to boycott. Throwing accusations of discrimination in this situation is asinine.

            Stop with this childish nonsense.

            • N.E.P.T.R@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              3·
              8 hours ago

              I think it is worth noting that while what Russia is doing is evil, they are not the only evil players in the game. So many countries are complicit and actively support Israel (monetarily), and most countries do business with USA (mega)companies (like Google, Microsoft, Meta) even with the current regime.

                • artyom@piefed.socialOPEnglish
                  11·
                  6 hours ago

                  Boycott everyone! Don’t buy anything! Just squat on some land in the woods and live off the land until you die from dysentery!

                  • versionc@lemmy.world
                    11·
                    6 hours ago

                    Like I said earlier, I didn’t say that you or anyone else should boycott Kagi. I merely informed everyone for transparency. It’s up to you how you compromise your morals, because compromise we all do. I can live without Kagi, and therefore I don’t need to pay them. If I can refrain from supporting war and shitty governments, I will do so. That includes avoiding American companies, which I do primarily thorough self-hosting alternatives to big tech software.

                    Either way, you’re a very exhausting person to communicate with so this will be the last time I respond to your comments.

            • artyom@piefed.socialOPEnglish
              28·
              20 hours ago

              We have wildly different definitions of the word discrimination.

              LOL I don’t know what else you could possibly call it.