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posted by martyb on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the new-shiny! dept.

Microsoft is building a Chromium-powered web browser that will replace Edge on Windows 10

Microsoft's Edge web browser has seen little success since its debut on Windows 10 back in 2015. Built from the ground up with a new rendering engine known as EdgeHTML, Microsoft Edge was designed to be fast, lightweight, and secure, but launched with a plethora of issues which resulted in users rejecting it early on. Edge has since struggled to gain any traction, thanks to its continued instability and lack of mindshare, from users and web developers.

Because of this, I'm told that Microsoft is throwing in the towel with EdgeHTML and is instead building a new web browser powered by Chromium, a rendering engine first popularized by Google's Chrome browser. Codenamed Anaheim, this new web browser for Windows 10 will replace Edge as the default browser on the platform. It's unknown at this time if Anaheim will use the Edge brand or a new brand, or if the user interface between Edge and Anaheim is different. One thing is for sure, however; EdgeHTML in Windows 10's default browser is dead.

Report: Windows Lite is Microsoft's long-awaited answer to Chrome OS

The success of Google's Chromebook hardware and Chrome OS software wasn't an inevitability, but the ease of use they afford ended up allowing Google to carve out a niche in a very crowded PC marketplace. Ever since Chrome OS entered the scene, we've been waiting for Microsoft to come out with its own pared down version of Windows, but its half-hearted attempts (Windows 10 S, Windows RT) have all fallen flat.

Those failures haven't stopped Microsoft though, as Petri on Monday reported that the company is working on "a new version of Windows that may not actually be Windows." Based on the documentation he has seen, Petri's Brad Sams believes that Windows Lite — the new OS — is Microsoft's answer to Chrome OS.

According to Sams, Windows Lite will only run Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, while removing all other functionality. He says that this is the first "truly lightweight version of Windows" – one which won't run in enterprise or small business environments, and may not even be available for purchase on its own. Just like Chrome OS, Windows Lite will have to be pre-installed by an OEM.

Microsoft ChromeOS: It's Linux-Free!


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:29AM (4 children)

    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:29AM (#769466) Journal

    If you do not recognize this memo, it was written by Elop during Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia:

    Elop's memo happened when Nokia was doing very well, so in effect, he killed Nokia [seekingalpha.com] starting with that memo. The board was also culpable. The board had signed a contract with Elop granting him a $25 million bonus on the condition that he sell Nokia to M$ [blogs.com]. A lot of lies were spread to cover that.

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:02PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:02PM (#769571) Journal

    I can only hope this is the beginning of the end of the beginning of the end for Microsoft.

    That is, I hope we've moved past the beginning of the end, and are now near the end of the end for Microsoft.

    Good riddance.

    Put it out of our misery now.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:34AM

      by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:34AM (#769874)

      Actually, I very much hope it is not, even though I suspect the days of Windows are now numbered. If you look around, what do you think will replace Windows on the desktop? I won't be Linux, it's too fragmented and still considered "difficult". OS X has been languishing just as Windows, resigned to the "legacy" development bucket. Realistically it's going to be a Google OS, perhaps fucks-ya (Fuchsia). And I want that even less than Windows. At least Microsoft is somewhat incompetent in collecting, aggregating and capitalising on your private info. Google is nowhere near as incompetent in that area.

      Oh, and Microsoft will be surviving in the Cloud space for quite some time. Their offerings there are actually pretty decent, as far as Cloud goes.

    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:19PM (1 child)

      by Bot (3902) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:19PM (#770034) Journal

      As much as I'd like the demise of M$ (cue trolls decrying the practice of putting the dollar sign on the acronym of a literal vampire corp.), I must point out that IBM is still around and GASP innovating with their AI stuff. But, there's hope, maybe Google wants to expand their evil segment and buys them out. At least the M$ logo won't give me PTSD.

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      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:13PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:13PM (#770102) Journal

        You are right. But I can still hope. :-)

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        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.