PM of Orion here.
Orion (https://orionbrowser.com) is a WebKit-based browser for Mac, Linux, iPadOS and iOS that supports both Chrome and Firefox extensions natively ⟩ including uBlock Origin.
We have no plans to drop extension support. Content blocking is a feature, not a loophole, and we think users should have full control over what runs in their browser.
I'm a devoted Kagi user and really want to use Orion but keep running into perf issues and jank that frustrate me enough to switch back to something else. My most recent attempt was this past week.
You all seem to maintain a very fast pace of development (the changelogs are always chock full of cool stuff) but the problems I am hitting have remained broken for ages. Some examples include:
* The app hangs for 1~2 sec partway through typing a URL/search, when using the back button, or during other navigation
* The 1Password extension fails to fill usernames and passwords most of the time, regardless of which version I install. It works fine in Safari, Chrome, Firefox.
* Your built-in ad blocking triggers anti-ad-blocking measures on many news/blog sites now, resulting in the entire page being blocked.
I don't know your business, but maybe pausing new features and pushing for stability/perf/quality of life for a while (a la macOS Snow Leopard) would make sense.
No, you don't support Linux. I just tried to download it and got a "coming soon". Please don't post misleading things to HN :(.
Kagi has a good rep; misleading comments like this hurts it.
> No, you don't support Linux
Here you go, official beta flatpak:
https://orionbrowser.com/download/oriongtk-early-beta
Any idea if that browser will ever go open source? I don't mind flatpaks but would rather just have some of my tools installed on my distro (which can be monumental to maintain).
They said the plan was they would if enough people paid for it to sustain development.[1]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46554890
I am also strongly perturbed by the misrepresentation, especially with no real package support. An alpha flatpak that posts "coming soon" is a bad first impression.
What about the glaring memory issues that is a pinned thread in your forum? It’s had one comment by a staff member over 5 or so months?
I loved Orion and have been using as a daily driver almost since day 1 including paying for it but now it’s completely unusable. I’ve since moved to Firefox.
The fact that a pinned thread was silent for months concerns me about the future of Orion. It honestly hurts to see.
Literally this. Every response initially was "we don't see that and we let it sit for weeks". Now there's just no response from devs. I was unable to browse past more than 1 or 2 pages before memory ballooned to 30gb.
Happy Kagi customer here—I wish Orion was available on Android.
I will consider Orion only when it is open source.
Yeah. At least Chromium is open source.
Why do you have quite a number of glaring UX issues? I want to love Orion, but even something as basic as the tabs theming is driving me away.
By default is it almost impossible to distinguish which tabs i active in some situations. I think the browser automatically tints the window based on the dominant color of the page you are viewing, which means if I am viewing youtube for example, the whole browser windows is tinted a bit darker, in such a way that I can't easily make out outline of the currently selected tab.
Such a bummer for what should have been an easlity changeable behavior with settings: I do not want any tinting, and I want hight contract mode
While you can install the Firefox uBlock Origin extension in Orion on iOS, it doesn't block any ads.
This has been reported for some time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203237
Could you please clarify?
They can’t modify webkit on ios. They also don’t appear to contribute upstream. So it’s just not supported.
Exactly. And that is why I find the parent comment from the Orion PM misleading at best.
Because it sounds like uBlock Origin works on iOS, when in reality it doesn’t and probably won‘t in the forseeable future.
A closed source browser from supporters of largest war in Europe since ww2.
For context, a small amount (~2% of subscription fees IIRC) goes to Yandex.
The CEO argues that their goal is to provide the best possible search, and that they remain impartial to geopolitical issues. Reducing the quality of their product to pick sides on political issues is not a sacrifice they are willing to make.
Whether or not you agree with this take, framing this as being supporters of the war in Ukraine is extremely dishonest.
And to be clear, while I understand their point, I generally don’t agree. All information comes in a political context. Choosing which information to favor is inextricably tied to political context. If I search for flat earth content, do you show the science? Do you show content that favors the flat earth model? Do you focus on the controversy itself? Those are inherently political choices whether or not you want them to be.