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 for that is that it lacks the commercial backing to keep up with the modern web standards rat race.

Kagi bringing orion to Linux changes the calculus. It introduces a third commercially incentivized, consumer-grade engine to the platform. Even if you never use orion, you want this to succeed because it forces WebKitGTK upstream to get better, which benefits the entire open source ecosystem.

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.

1. It's a lot of work to maintain an open source project accepting community contributions. Absolutely true, but that's not what's being asked for. Providing a tarball under an open source license doesn't add any significant work. 2. No one has asked for the Kagi backends to be open sourced, so why is the browser different? Obviously because I run the browser on my machine. Your backend runs on your machine. 3. We need to protect our IP. Then release it under a copyleft license. Or if you absolutely must, release your proprietary bit under a non-open source license. 4. You don't need the source because we send 0 telemetry, which you can verify using a network proxy. That's hardly the only thing to be worried about with a binary blob. Even if you kept the code completely closed source, by just releasing a tarball with the source under a proprietary license, I can build my own binary from source and eliminate this threat.

Does Kagi plan to open-source Orion on Linux?

(Yes, I know about the extension that hijacks your searches to redirect them to Kagi, but how is that an acceptable state of affairs?)

EDIT: I found this in the docs:

> The alpha version of Orion for Linux is currently only available to [Orion+ supporters](../orion-plus/orion-plus.md) and can be downloaded from the [Billing Dashboard](https://kagi.com/settings/billing) under the Orion browser section.

So I still can't test this. Only for Orion+ supporters.

But what I really miss is a self-hosted sync server. I don't want to use a browser without sync, but I also don't want to trust this data with any 3rd party other than myself.

It's one of the main reasons I'm using Firefox, since that is the the only browser that even vaguely supports this - albeit not well.

It probably matters less to Linux users who do the minimal tiling WM thing, but as someone more drawn to traditional floating DEs it's always bothered me how alien the browsers one might actually want to use feel running in a GTK or Qt DE. Themes can help reduce the gap, but it never disappears — that last 10-20% always remains as an unavoidable side effect of how the big browsers are built, with it being particularly pronounced with Firefox and derivatives.

Of course a GTK based browser like Orion isn't going to feel the best under a Qt desktop like KDE, but GTK themed to match Plasma is a good deal closer than the bespoke UI found in e.g. Firefox or Chrome.

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. It’s ad blocking is truly phenomenal and nearly every site “just works”. But I don’t love the ethics of Brave and certainly not its founder. So I am extremely excited to have Orion take over that niche of the browser space that I most care about.

I'm not interested in using a proprietary browser, and hope for a release under a free license at some point. But a free WebKit-based browser with Web Extensions could have interesting properties regarding battery life on mobile GNU workstations.

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.

Regardless, anything that works toward dethroning the 2 worst spyware distros in the world i.e. windows and osx I must support heavily

I don't know what they do, but it caused weird graphics glitches and kernel panics simply from running in the background.

I've used Brave from the beginning but it has become bloated with web3-related stuff and has outdated UX (imo) on mobile.

Orion desktop is inspired by Safari, Arc in a best way. Ad-blocking and chrome/firefox extensions from the beginning, convenient vertical tabs, mature level of ui customization.

Glad it see on Linux too.

That would be awesome!, but would be nice to have a list of things comprising "everything", Vivaldi is the best browser in this regard, and still they have plenty of gaps.

I tried Orion in Dec 2025 and it crashed more frequently than I could handle. It and/or VPNs I was using worked poorly with websites that I want to keep a page open on for days at a time.

[1] https://mysk.blog/2025/06/17/introducing-psylo/

What are your thoughts on upgrading gnome 48 to 49 as a dependency?

(They don't seem to be going for the "serious, clueful privacy and Internet freedom" demographic, or they wouldn't be using Discord.)

Regardless, great to see this come to Linux.

This is a huge disappointment.

I am not touching this with a 15m stick.

Homebrew also initially had mac only support, later Linux. But it always felt as if Linux was a second-class citizen. Is that also the case for Orion?