We present a randomized algorithm that, given a constant $ε> 0$, outputs a proper $(1+ε)Δ$-edge-coloring of an $m$-edge simple graph $G$ of maximum degree $Δ\geq 1/ε$ in $O(m)$ time with high probability. This is the first linear-time algorithm for this problem covering the full range of possible values of $Δ$. Indeed, even for edge-coloring with $2Δ- 1$ colors (i.e., meeting the "greedy" bound), no such linear-time algorithm has been previously known.