By Fredrik Brattstig @virtualbrat
1st November 20204
Microsoft EDGE integration in IGEL OS was announced at IGEL Disrupt in 2024. Now the day has come, and Microsoft EDGE is available in the IGEL App Portal:
To me, Microsoft EDGE is a big deal, because it isn’t only the Microsoft EDGE consumer version, as soon as you login with a corporate account, it becomes Microsoft EDGE for Business! And it allows you to store multiple corporate and personal profiles, which comes in handy when working with multiple organizations, and also want to separate your private life in the browser experience:
IGEL is repackaging the official Microsoft EDGE binaries, the output of the process is an IGEL Package. The IGEL package allows for installation of the Microsoft EDGE browser using the IGEL Universal Management System (UMS), and the IGEL App Portal. For this browser, IGEL took the stance to incorporate the browser’s default settings into the browser, instead of locking down parts of the browser, as is done default for other implemented browsers in IGEL OS. This will give the user a well-known out-of-the-box experience while leaving it possible for admins to completely control the browser using the IGEL UMS.
This all means, that the default behavior is to allow access to EDGE settings etc., so that the usual user experience is maintained compared to if the user downloads and installs Microsoft EDGE on a regular Linux machine.
Of course, IGEL offers a simple check box in EDGE profiles to enable secure mode, and on top of that, you can use standard browser policies to control how Microsoft EDGE will function in your environment.
IGEL will be providing updated packages of Microsoft EDGE and these will be released to customers via the IGEL App Portal. I recommend you as an IGEL admin to auto-update your client devices installation of Microsoft EDGE as soon as a new version of EDGE is published, making sure that you are using the latest version at all times!
Microsoft EDGE is also a requirement and enabler for the upcoming integration of Microsoft Intune. The authentication module Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) is used when enrolling your IGEL OS endpoints to Intune. Going forward, Intune will allow Entra conditional access. But that will be covered in another blog post.
That’s it for today!
Safe and performant surfing with Microsoft EDGE on IGEL OS!
/Fred
VirtualBrat 