Edge installation on Debian linux (Raspberry Pi OS) on Raspberry Pi 400 fails

Copper Contributor

Hi,

 

I tried to install Edge using the command line instructions, and also by double clicking on a downloaded debian installer package, and both installs failed. This is using a Raspberry Pi 400 running the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS, which I believe is based on Debian. The command line install gave an error saying "Unable to locate package microsoft-edge-dev".

 

Any ideas what the issue may be?

 

Thanks

18 Replies
@formula1551700 I'm not an expert on Linux, so let's wait for the pros at Microsoft.

@Kam 

I've seen this happen multiple times, please if you don't know about a subject and don't have anything useful to add, you don't need to comment.

Maybe MS Edge is simply not compatible with ARM SoCs?

@HotCakeX  This article talks about Win10 ARM. Neither about Linux on ARM nor Mac on M1 (ARM).

Google Chrome for example supports M1 starting with 87.0.4280.67 (https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2020/11/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_17.html)

@Johannes Goerlich 

Edge M1 chip support coming soon

https://twitter.com/MSEdgeDev/status/1329161442755547136

 

for Edge ARM SoC support (if it's entirely not available), it's best to send feedback through Edge feedback button. the way it works is that the more people ask for a feature, the higher priority that feature request will have for Edge developers.

 

 

 

@Johannes Goerlich  I suspect this is correct. I don't think the Edge version is arm, 

@HotCakeX Hope this will become available soon,

 

While the DEV version works on Ubuntu, the install on Raspberry Pi returns „Paket microsoft-edge-dev kann nicht gefunden werden.“ (package ... can’t be found) and the RasPi community is really also waiting for MS Edge, as you can read here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=288865

I think the community that are waiting for it should send feedback to Edge developers using feedback button on Edge or form here:
https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/support

more feedbacks mean higher priority and they will know how many people want it

@HotCakeX 

 

Hi,

 

I did provide feedback as suggested to the Edge team. Didn't hear anything back so I assume this is not in the plans right now.

@formula155 "I did provide feedback as suggested to the Edge team. Didn't hear anything back so I assume this is not in the plans right now."

 

I suspect that you are right. 

 

Microsoft Edge supports Edge on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and openSUSE distros, the same distros for which Microsoft supports WSL.  If Microsoft has plans to support additional distros in the future, Microsoft has not announced those plans.  I did listen to a podcast a month or so ago in which a Microsoft spox said that Microsoft may extend support to additional distros after Stable is released, but "may" doesn't mean "will".  Microsoft has announced that Microsoft will support Edge on Apple's M1 SoC, but has not said anything (to my knowledge) about support for Linux on Broadcom's BCM-series SoC.

 

So far, Microsoft's embrace of Edge-Linux (and WSL) has been aligned with (and more or less limited to) the needs of the Enterprise base.  Because Edge is neither fully open source nor freely distributable, we are all just going to have to wait and see what Microsoft does outside the Enterprise base, keeping the pressure on as much as we can.

@formula155  From what I can find the Microsoft Edge browser is only for Windows, MAC, and Linux on the X86 platform.   There is a build for the raspberry pi but it is only for Windows 10 on ARM.   Microsoft will need to build a specific version for Raspberry PI os on ARM.  I cannot find where they have made this build.   

 

When I looked on the Microsoft Insider page I only found the x86 version for Linux not the ARM version.   I hope this helps. 

 

Patrickw99

From what I can tell it looks like there isn't a version specific to Linux ARM architecture. However there is still a way you can install the version that is available on the raspberry pi even though it's the x86_64 version. It's quite simple, you must install an x86_64 version of debian inside your current Raspbian and then "chroot" into that OS and then install Edge and then after it's installed you'll be able to launch edge from there. It is a semi lengthy process just to run Edge on the Raspberry Pi. I hope you find this useful.

@J_jones85Thanks for the work around to use until such time as an edge for arm / raspberry pi os becomes available?

 

q1. Does the process you outline work for raspberry pi os 64bit beta installs or only the default 32bit installs?  

 

q2. Is the resulting edge install performance using the method you describe significantly impacted?

 

q3. Is installing chrome on raspberry pi os 64bit beta release also require a custom process?

@Rob Ob 

The process I outlined in my previous post is a form of emulation using the application QEMU, but your not using it to emulate a fully system, so you are able to get much better performance than emulating a full operating system.  I first learned of this process when I was trying to use "wine" to play some old windows games like "starcraft" and "diablo" I would say the performance I got out of it might have been somewhere around that of Pentium II 300MHz, however, while attempting the same thing emulating a full operating system like Windows 95, the performance I got probably equated to that of an x486 66MHz CPU. In regards to your question #2, because edge doesn't have a lot of overhead you get much better performance than you would expect from emulation. Now I am unsure, but you may run into an issue which can be resolved by changing memory allocation in the linux kernel and then recompiling it, I doubt you will run into that though, however, if you seem to hit a snag during your playtime with this and you get something like "DBUS error" then you need to change the memory allocation in the linux kernal to a 3G/1G split, the raspberry pi linux kernel has a default of 2G/2G.  This is user vs system memory allocation.  Feel free to ask any additional questions here I am happy to answer.

 

 

q1. Does the process you outline work for raspberry pi os 64bit beta installs or only the default 32bit installs?  It should work on both the 64bit and 32bit, you might even get better performance with the 64bit, however, because it is beta, it may be buggy.  I have only done it with 32bit.

 

q2. Is the resulting edge install performance using the method you describe significantly impacted?  I haven't noticed any significant performance impact besides the initial browser launch time.

 

q3. Is installing chrome on raspberry pi os 64bit beta release also require a custom process?

Before I used Edge with linux at all, I ended up using the same process I mentioned in my earlier post to install Google Chrome for my browser once again the AMD64 version of it.

 

Hopefully, this gets you started....

 

Dear readers,

 

How do I download Microsoft edge on Rasberry pi? 

Do let me know soon as possible as I need it for my work

 

Yours faithfully,

Indoraptor aka Hamza 2420