Well, for a month I’ve been running the MS Edge Dev version (that’s all there is so far), and while it has many good features that I like overall, like those mentioned in this article and the comments, unfortunately, it has one behavior that is no longer acceptable.

Each time I restart or boot up my Linux Mint system, and then click on an html file extension, it has reset to open it in MS Edge. In my settings, it has always been Text Editor (Gedit or Xed), as all us web developers edit html files this way.

I’ve had Firefox (forever my default browser in Linux OS’s), Chrome or Chromium, and Opera browsers, on my system for years, but they never took over my default settings like this.

I reset it in the Default Applications, as well as reset it in the ‘Open With’ function by selecting ‘other’ and then setting Text Editor as the default, but both settings are overwritten the next time I boot the system up. So, I will uninstall it for now and hope they can fix this behavior, otherwise, it is not for me, as I do not like any program that resets established defaults.

The Immersive Reader function, which reads aloud the text of a page. If I am reading, they want to get up to hit the kitchen or bathroom, I can have it read on for me. I have an Intel NUC-PC tethered by HDMI to my (55″ 4K Sceptre dumb) HDTV, and also directly to my component sound system so that I can hear it anywhere in the home.

The IR function is a book icon located on the right side of the omnibar (using Chrome parlance); you click on it when there’s text on the page, and another bar drops down offering “Read Aloud” & “Text Preferences” & “Grammar Tools” & “Reading Preferences”. Click on read aloud and it reads whatever is allowed in Reader Mode; you can set the speed, the voice, and other settings. I use a UK female voice as my reader. I’m using Edge right now! But I also have installed,

You can get extensions to do this (e.g. FF & Chrome’s “Read Aloud Text to Speech Voice Reader”), but this is not only built-in, but it works far better and is more natural sounding than the extensions perform, as they sound like annoying AI computer voices. But perhaps in time, they’ll get better. I’m using Edge right now, but I also have FF and (the other Chromium-based browsers) Chrome & Opera.

The advantage is that Firefox is now swamped by feedbacks that it blocked feedback. Also, there are voices that their team shrinks. Their browser is not compatible with quite a few websites that you have to resort to Chrome/Chromium/Edge/Safari in order to make some buttons work or be available.

One example is that Firefox on mobile will not work with AOL e-mail – you have to either download their app or use a different browser. The reason is that rendering and some browser logic does not allow to drop off some AOL “popup”. Also over time Firefox became a resource hog and has problems with dispatching processes creating hundreds of threads on CPUs with very few cores.

Not the best idea when you see that your computer’s CPU is 30-40% of the time used by Firefox and it is 24/7 No. 1 process at CPU usage. This used to be Chrome, but now it is Firefox for some reasons. Edge on the same computer seems to be working far better. It makes sense to send feedback to Microsoft and help them improve it.

After all, Firefox blocked their feedback channel and they do not necessarily are open to change when given constructive feedback. They do not also seem to understand business/corporate culture to be able to help themselves put a foot into company doors. Microsoft on the other hand has decades of experience in that area and now changes to better and proven ways of the Internet rather than old ways of Internet Explorer.

I am using Visual Studio Code on an ARM64 Linux computer. Its from MS. I found it clean, simple and useful.