// OMG! UBUNTU! — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
Orion for Linux beta update adds private browsing and link previews
Kagi's new Flatpak repo makes installing it easier too
Kagi has released a new beta of Orion for Linux, a WebKitGTK-based port of its popular browser for macOS and IOS.
Orion for Linux v0.4.1 builds on the v0.3.0 public beta, released in May, adding more features found on its macOS and iOS versions and improving existing ones.
The new beta adds working private windows, a functional (if bare-bones) download manager and a toolbar overflow menu. The overflow menu lets you hide buttons out of the way but without making them hard to reach.
Orion’s link preview feature also makes its way to Linux. This isn’t the ‘AI summary’ sort of preview (thankfully). More like macOS ‘Quick Look’ for web pages; you can view a link from the page you’re on, without it opening a tab.
In this beta, there’s no keyboard shortcut to activate link previews – macOS users get to press shift + click – but a context-menu entry is there when right-clicking on a link. The preview can’t be resized but it has an ‘open in tab’ button:
Elsewhere, the v0.4.1 beta includes Orion’s Programmable Buttons feature. These let you create custom toolbar buttons that run code or apply conditions to web pages, on-demand, like a bookmarklet. They can live on the toolbar or hide in the overflow menu.
You can add and edit these action buttons manually, using the in-browser editor. Or you can import ready-made ones from a URL. Orion’s GitHub has a repo of open-source programmable buttons, if you need some inspiration.
Local sync support also lands in this beta, which is welcome.
iOS and macOS versions of Orion use iCloud to sync bookmarks, tabs etc., across platforms. Kagi has plans to offer its own cloud sync backend in time but, for now, you can now export your key data as a file and import it into another build.