Who would have thought that Microsoft, a company that once branded Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches” have condescended to adding its browser software in GNU+Linux?

This means free software world has definitely won, doesn’t it?

Microsoft will release its Edge browser for GNU+Linux next month, initially through the browser’s Dev preview channel.

The Windows giant, which has warmed to GNU+Linux in recent years, made the announcement at its Ignite 2020 conference, conducted virtually this week on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our mission to bring Microsoft Edge to the platforms our customers use daily takes its next step: starting in October, Microsoft Edge on [GNU+]Linux will be available to download on the Dev preview channel,” said veep Liat Ben-Zur in a blog post. “When it’s available, [GNU+]Linux users can go to the Microsoft Edge Insiders site to download the preview channel, or they can download it from the native [GNU+]Linux package manager.”

Initially, Microsoft will provide Edge for GNU+Linux through Debian and Ubuntu distributions, with others to follow.

I don’t know what will be the license of the browser and if Microsoft releases the software under a proper license like GNU GPL but I’m not optimistic about it. Microsoft doesn’t like the free software world as we threaten its interests in violating people’s rights.

However, it’s still good news. It means Microsoft now knows more people are informed and interested in their rights. It means that they feel more and more people are using GNU+Linux as their operating system. I won’t use it though.

One thing I should mention is that we are surrounded with proprietary software and companies. Almost all of the major tech and publishing companies are proprietary ones. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, IBM, and Amazon (Big Tech) are constantly working to protect the proprietary software and patents of theirs.

Sadly, the majority of people use almost only proprietary software and these companies are benefiting from them. Now, what we do (supporting the free culture) is against their benefit so they have to advertise against it and target people with false accusations against free software world.

For instance, the Google page about the AGPL details inaccurate (but common) misconceptions about the obligations of the AGPL that don’t follow from the text. Google states that if, for example, Google Maps used PostGIS as its data store, and PostGIS used the AGPL, Google would be required to release the Google Maps code. This is not true.

These companies don’t like free software. This is actually one of the reasons that they use the term Open Source instead of free software.

Now, if they have to pretend to like a free software, they prefer the ones they can control, the ones like MIT that can be used proprietorially. An example is BSD. One of the major developers of BSD is Apple which benefits a lot from the weak BSD licenses.

Copyleft restricts big tech from benefiting and not giving back to community so these companies don’t like it and do everything they can to weaken the copyleft culture so they can survive on benefiting from our community and violating people’s freedom and rights.

Many people believe Apple is a privacy hero. It’s surprising that a lot of people believe Apple really respects their privacy. For years, Apple has advertised about how it respects users and cares about their privacy and many people fell for their lie.

Apple is simply one of the worst companies when it comes to respecting people and users privacy. Apple doesn’t encrypt your data and when it does, it has full control over encrypted data and decrypts whatever it wants, but that’s not even the case.

Apple tracks users, collects personal information, stores sensitive and personal data, gives away every data it wants, targets people with advertisements and even uses human workers to listen to people’s conversations with Siri sound recordings.

Apple is no better than Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. What Apple does, is the same as what Google does but Apple does it in a fancy way and falsely advertises about its fake privacy practices.

Every Apple device and service is a violation of people’s privacy. Don’t listen to those who are hardcore Apple fans and want to reduce Apple’s privacy violation to service providing. Apple and every other major company can deliver service without tracking and storing people’s data.

Yes, to get maps and routes working, the device needs to track your location but the service provider doesn’t need to store this location data. If Apple respects people’s privacy, then it should stop storing data, or at least, at least store data anonymously without any piece of data that can be used to identify an individual personally.

There are ways to avoid Apple and Google. We can still buy phones that has no Google or other trackers in it or we can simply install custom Android distributions ourselves. Some like Replicant and LineageOS are freedom-respecting and privacy-focused.

Remember, Apple is no better than Google or other companies. Respect yourself and avoid it.

ThinkPad have been GNU+Linux users first choice for years and now Lenovo has released a ThinkPad with a ready-to-run GNU+Linux. And, not just any GNU+Linux, but Red Hat’s community’s, Fedora.

Red Hat Senior Software Engineering Manager Christian Schaller wrote:

This is a big milestone for us and for Lenovo as it’s the first time Fedora ships pre-installed on a laptop from a major vendor and it’s the first time the world’s largest laptop maker ships premium laptops with Linux directly to consumers. Currently, only the X1 Carbon is available, but more models are on the way and more geographies will get added too soon.

First in this new Linux-friendly lineup is the X1 Carbon Gen 8. It will be followed by forthcoming versions of the ThinkPad P1 Gen2 and ThinkPad P53. While ThinkPads are usually meant for business users, Lenovo will be happy to sell the Fedora-powered X1 Carbon to home users as well.

The new X1 Carbon runs Fedora Workstation 32. This cutting-edge Linux distribution uses the Linux Kernel 5.6. It includes WireGuard virtual private network (VPN) support and USB4 support. This Fedora version uses the new GNOME 3.36 for its default desktop.

I personally love Fedora. I’m currently a Trisquel user after I found out about Fedora’s discriminatory act (rule) but Fedora is actually one of the best.