[HN Gopher] Microsoft's new Windows prompts try to stop people d...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft's new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading
Chrome
Author : ArmandGrillet
Score : 327 points
Date : 2021-12-02 11:55 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neowin.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neowin.net)
| vesche wrote:
| I just bought my ~55 year old mother an HP laptop. It was
| completely strange how difficult it was to install Chrome on
| Windows 11. I couldn't run the MSI installer for Chrome and found
| out that by default the OS was in something called "S mode" which
| I had to disable by doing an odd series of steps via the
| Microsoft store. After finally installing, I got all the weird
| pop-ups that the articles mentions suggesting in various ploys
| that Edge was the superior browser. It was also made difficult to
| convenience the OS that I wanted Chrome as the default browser,
| it required changing several preference options. I then found
| that there was no way to disable Edge, as you can some other
| Windows applications. By using the SysInternals tool Autoruns I
| found that Edge had at least half a dozen means of persistence /
| continued execution by launching updaters and background
| processes doing unknown tasks.
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| For people complaining about "Evilz M$"--isnt this roughly the
| same strategy Chrome used?
|
| My question is: Do you see these prompts when downloading
| Firefox?
| nathanfig wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean- Chrome never tried to prevent me
| from downloading any other browser.
| itsaride wrote:
| It adds a banner at the top of the search results :
|
| " There's no need to download a new web browser. Microsoft
| recommends using Microsoft Edge for a fast, secure, and modern
| web experience that can help save you time and money. Try now"
|
| Even more bizarrely it puts Opera as the top result, at least
| here in the UK.
| bluedino wrote:
| It's annoying, and kind of sad, how bad Microsoft pushes Edge.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| "Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the
| added trust of Microsoft."
|
| They named their user tracking, telemetry, and "Buy Now, Pay
| Later" add-ons "trust"? That's really Orwellian.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| "WAR IS PEACE"
|
| "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY"
|
| "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH"
|
| "TRACKING IS SAFETY"
|
| "CHOICE IS DEFAULT"
| MMS21 wrote:
| I'm struggling to understand how that quote could be anything
| but satire
| maltalex wrote:
| Google's has been bashed so consistently on privacy issues on
| mainstream media that non-techies often associate them with
| creepy data collection.
|
| Microsoft hasn't been in the news as much, at least not
| regarding privacy matters. They're often seen by the public
| as the _solid_ company behind trusted products like Office
| and Windows.
| johncena33 wrote:
| HN is on the fore-front of this Google bashing. Just look
| at this comment on another HN thread about "buy now, pay
| later". Here's the comment [1] which justifies MS actions:
|
| > Maintaining browsers has become a significant
| undertaking, so complex that only well-funded corporate
| interests can afford to keep one patched and up-to-date
| with the latest web standards. It surpassed operating
| system complexity. It surpassed pretty much everything else
| too. So we can forget about it ever being truly "free" (and
| free from ads) unless we simplify the web somehow. I also
| don't think we're going to go back in time and start
| cutting features out of browsers. So that isn't going to
| happen
|
| Google develops Chromium and Google gets constantly bashed
| for selling ads. MS modifies Chromium and adds their own
| branding and sell ads. MS is just trying to cover their
| development cost.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29354937
| 14 wrote:
| These are multi billion dollar companies that siphon
| money from all sorts of avenues powered by people's
| ability to use the web. It is in their interest to
| develop these browsers. But they don't have to syphon
| even more money from people by doing so. I don't agree
| with your assessment.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Microsoft hasn't been in the news as much, at least not
| regarding privacy matters.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12305598
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10144733
|
| ...and many more.
| maltalex wrote:
| You're proving my point. The sources you linked are the
| eff, a techie's personal blog, arstechnica, and forbes.
| With the exception of forbes they're all tech niches.
|
| Now look at mainstream media. CNN alone has 230K results
| for _google privacy_ [0]. How many results for _microsoft
| privacy_? 16k [1]
|
| [0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acnn.com%20goo
| gle%20pr...
|
| [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acnn.com+micro
| soft+pri...
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| You're being intentionally obtuse. Google is a search
| engine product and a company. Microsoft is just a
| company. It stands to reason more people would search for
| the former.
| Spivak wrote:
| The same search for bing has 5000 results.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Lol who searches for bing info on Google? Seriously?
| Spivak wrote:
| Good lord. This is a search of the articles on the
| website cnn.com _using_ Google search. It's not Google
| Trends.
| hericium wrote:
| I chuckled a bit upon seeing those links but quickly
| realized that DDG gets its results from Bing and
| Altavista isn't around anymore.
|
| However clean, possibly less bubbled browser, gets number
| over twice larger on the second link.
| 1_player wrote:
| > Google's has been bashed so consistently on privacy
| issues on mainstream media that non-techies often associate
| them with creepy data collection
|
| What? Every non-tech person I see is happily running Google
| Chrome and has never even considered Firefox. Hell, I think
| most still think Google is one of the "good guys".
|
| Non-tech people still trust Google much more than
| Microsoft. Microsoft is bad, but they haven't made your
| data their core business just yet.
| tester756 wrote:
| >Non-tech people still trust Google much more than
| Microsoft. Microsoft is bad, but they haven't made your
| data their core business just yet.
|
| That's pretty interesting claim, what makes you think so?
| 1_player wrote:
| There is nothing interesting or crazy about my statement.
| Microsoft sells software and services and has done so for
| the past 35 years. They started getting interested in
| people data recently but it is not their CORE business.
| How is this controversial?
| mnw21cam wrote:
| The definition of trust that security professionals use is that
| A trusts B if B has some way to do something bad to A. A can
| stop trusting B by taking steps to eliminate the ability of B
| to harm A.
|
| So, the statement "Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology
| as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft" actually means
| "Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the
| added ability for Microsoft to screw you over".
| donmcronald wrote:
| > I hate saving money,' said no one ever. Microsoft Edge is the
| best browser for online shopping.
|
| I hate having Microsoft scan my online shopping carts so they
| can collect data and hijack affiliate commissions. Do they
| think we're dumb?
| benttoothpaste wrote:
| It just means Microsoft trusts this technology.
| hef19898 wrote:
| But they developed it!
| technobabbler wrote:
| > with the added trust of Microsoft
|
| lolololol
|
| Does someone on their marketing team actually believe that?
| tester756 wrote:
| Just a friendly reminder that whenever I open gmail from Edge,
| then it asks me about using Chrome too
| The_rationalist wrote:
| They've gone too far.
| sixothree wrote:
| Sure is a lot of brigading in here.
| sofixa wrote:
| I hope Margrethe Vestager is paying attention, this bullshit is
| getting egregious. Microsoft not only deserve a fine, but a
| thorough breaking up into multiple separate entities.
| zvrba wrote:
| Really? What does Google deserve when it nags me about
| switching to chrome whenever I use any of their pages from a
| browser that's not chrome?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Whataboutism. Google probably also deserves this treatment,
| but we're talking about Microsoft.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean they were already thoroughly whipped and fined, forced
| to add a browser choice window, then made to pay a fine again
| after this browser choice window 'accidentally' didn't work
| anymore. Time for another fine? I mean I have no clue where
| that money ends up at, I like to think it goes into IT
| subsidies, but still.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| >Time for another fine?
|
| Sure! I mean it's working so well at changing corporate
| behavior, why would we want to stop now?
|
| Things like this are why I advocate for Corporate Jail time
| and a Corporate Death Penalty.
| creshal wrote:
| Microsoft can probably argue that they worked very hard to no
| longer be a monopolist, and as such can't be fined any longer.
| JCWasmx86 wrote:
| > "'I hate saving money,' said no one ever. Microsoft Edge is the
| best browser for online shopping."
|
| This is really cringe
| prepend wrote:
| I don't like this new form of writing, I'm not sure what it's
| called. It's not just informal, it's cringy.
|
| I especially hate funny error messages as they just frustrate
| me. It's ok when Reddit has a funny image because they can't
| show my video game forum, but it's infuriating when Microsoft
| shows a "whoops, what happened" when it just failed to sync the
| last 30 minutes of my work document.
| bityard wrote:
| > I'm not sure what it's called.
|
| I call it "meme speak". It's the style of writing used on
| meme image captions or in tweets designed to generate the
| most number of shares and "likes".
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It sounds like a 2010 rage comic. Only thing missing is
| that guy eating cereal.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Microsoft has been doing that for years, the blue screen of
| death contained an emoticon starting around Windows 7.
| arbitrage wrote:
| following in sad mac's footsteps ... decades after.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| Maybe it's a generation gap, but I've seen this in other
| places. I got a text message from my student loan servicer -
| It "needs 2know if U wish 2stay in Autopay". I thought it was
| spam, but it's real. Do Gen Zers really think this is okay,
| or am I getting too old
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Would the words have been over 160 characters?
| howdydoo wrote:
| The 160 character limit is an ancient relic of 2008
| (unlike Chrome)
| f0rmatfunction wrote:
| The 160 limit per message segment is absolutely still a
| thing, but when you receive a message >160 characters
| your phone stitches the segments back together for you so
| you don't notice.
|
| Why this matters: SMS delivery is usually priced per
| message segment. Going over the 160 limit ~doubles the
| cost to deliver the text.
|
| (Source: I am the CEO of a company which sends millions
| of text messages and avoiding 2 segment messages saves us
| thousands each month!)
|
| All that said, the text from the above commenter's loan
| servicer is unprofessional nonsense regardless of its
| length.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > I am the CEO of a company which sends millions of text
| messages and avoiding 2 segment messages saves us
| thousands each month!
|
| How much is each customer worth to you?
|
| Which is worse for your business - all your customers
| getting a cringey _needs 2know if U wish 2stay in
| Autopay_ text and thinking that your entire business is
| unprofessional, or spending an extra $0.001 per customer
| per month to send them a message that reads
| _F0rmatFunction can automatically pay your bill each
| month, but we need your approval. Change your mind?
| Cancellation is easy, just text "No" to this number.
| Respond "OK" to enable auto-pay!_ I'd rather get the
| latter for sure!
|
| Sure, it's good to let those generating the messages know
| where the threshold is. Concise communication is best,
| sometimes you can be equally professional and just pick a
| different synonym or structure, and save the company some
| money. But sacrificing quality of a $20/mo service to
| save $0.001 per customer seems unwise, even if it adds up
| to a thousand-dollar bill.
| jdmichal wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that longer messages still generate
| multiple "packets" or whatever you want to call them on
| the backend. Which is important if you're paying per
| packet. It's just that every modern phone knows how to
| collect and stitch them together into a single displayed
| message. That's why phones still display the number of
| messages being generated when you type in longer ones.
| For instance, mine starts showing "10/1", then after
| another character "9/1", eventually to "0/1" and then
| "145/2".
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Some providers didn't support concatenated SMS until mid
| 2010s at least. Lots of software in financial
| institutions is old. And providers charge more for
| concatenated SMS still.
| arbitrage wrote:
| gen Zers know it's stupid, but have the ability to cope
| with reality and just go on with their business, instead of
| obstinately pretending to be 'baffled' by something that's
| been in common usage for twenty years, then complainging
| about it on the internet.
|
| you're thinking really hard about paying your student loans
| now, so it worked. who doesn't understand what's going on?
| doesn't sound like it's your loan-servicer, to me.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| No I really thought it was spam!
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| It sounds like the sales prompt I was forced to use in my
| telesales job in 2003.
| dgellow wrote:
| I call it "fellow kids writing". It feels really patronizing
| when used in a serious context.
|
| On the opposite, I started using Discord recently and they
| manage their funny tone very well, but it is used
| consistently through the application. And it stays
| informative.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| "OOPSIE WOOPSIE!! Uwu We made a fucky wucky!! A wittle fucko
| boingo! The code monkeys at our headquarters are working VEWY
| HAWD to fix this!"
| 1_player wrote:
| Oh shit, corporate Twitter is going to adopt this kind of
| meme language in 5 years or so. Not even Idiocracy went
| that far.
| Spivak wrote:
| At least this tone accurately conveys the seriousness of
| the average dev team and is more fun than "this error has
| been sent to an unmonitored Slack channel, if you want to
| scream into the void here's a link to our community
| forums."
| prepend wrote:
| I would rather have a message of "we piped this error to
| /dev/null and will ignore it until someone important
| manually brings it to our attention" than whatever this
| is.
|
| I also don't think it reflects the dev team tone as it
| seems so fake fun and probably means the dev team is in
| terror of saying the wrong thing. I'd rather see the
| localization resource bundle value than whatever this is.
|
| It's about as honest as the Costco greeter in Idiocracy
| saying "Welcome...I love you."
| howdydoo wrote:
| From what I've seen of Edge, it should be the project
| managers working vewy hawd to fix things, not the
| developers.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Ok, so I don't condone this behavior by Microsoft or Google, but
| I do use edge at work since we are a Microsoft heavy company with
| Sharepoint, teams, outlook, and all that. If we were using Google
| I'd surely use Chrome, but edge bakes in your Microsoft work
| profile to the browser and when searching on Bing you can find
| documents on your internal network easily. I also like the fact
| that edge supports vertical tabs out of the box.
|
| So here's my defense of Microsoft taking these steps:
|
| * Google promotes Chrome on YouTube, search, and gmail.
| Strategically Microsoft needs a message to counter the pop ups on
| Google sites that are leading to the Chrome download page. It
| would be much more annoying if you saw this message every time
| you visited YouTube or Google. The author presents it as the case
| of someone actively seeking to download Chrome but they could
| have been lead to the download page from another Google property.
|
| * Many people don't know that both edge and Chrome use the same
| engine. When my company mandated edge, people reflexively
| complained even though they don't lose anything in terms of
| speed, extensions or compatibility. For many people knowing that
| edge has the same browser engine is informative - most non geeks
| won't keep up with that.
|
| * if you are working at a Microsoft company, your data is already
| in the hands of Microsoft and your employer so there's little
| privacy to be lost by continuing with edge, but by switching to
| chrome you bring a 3rd party into the mix. * you
| could argue a lesser version of this for all windows users with
| the integrations that Microsoft has been pushing.
| quitit wrote:
| I do find it silly - but have never liked how Google promoted
| their browser on their properties (with factually incorrect
| speed and efficiency claims - which seem to work since plenty
| of people here parrot them whenever possible.)
|
| I see Google prompting users to download Chrome on Google.com
| similar behaviour to Microsoft using Windows 95 to push
| Internet Explorer.
| chaorace wrote:
| > Google promotes Chrome on YouTube, search, and gmail.
| Strategically Microsoft needs a message to counter the pop ups
| on Google sites that are leading to the Chrome download page
|
| You know what I say to that? Tough cookies. Websites and OSes
| have different responsibilities to their users -- if MS wants
| to use shady cross-promotion tactics like Google, they should
| provide web services that justify the annoyance and do their
| cross-promotion there.
|
| Why are we making computers _harder_ to use for the everyman?
| It 's such a grossly short-sighted decision that will only
| serve to further the divide between an increasingly mobile-
| oriented consumer class and a primarily desktop-oriented
| professional class.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| > if MS wants to use shady cross-promotion tactics like
| Google, they should provide web services that justify the
| annoyance and do their cross-promotion there
|
| So to have a successful browser you need to invest to have a
| visitor count rivaling the largest search engine, video
| platform, and online mail combined? I think that's a very
| large hill to climb even for Microsoft. Your statement leads
| to only a Chrome hegemony. In terms of sites with Google's
| reach, maybe Facebook could make their own browser but that's
| about it.
| siproprio wrote:
| yeah, but instead of removing those banners and supporting ad-
| blocking and filtering, microsoft chooses to add more pop-ups
| and banners.
|
| indeed this is the added trust of msft.
| iso1210 wrote:
| They should have a popup saying "Try Firefox", then I'll believe
| it's based on a genuine concern for their users.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| "With the added trust of Microsoft"
|
| You must be borderline and delusional if you work at microsoft
| and have the guts of thinking that the company deserves even the
| tiniest amount of trust
| sli wrote:
| I distinctly remember Microsoft getting into an anti-trust
| case[0] over things much more benign than what they're doing
| right now.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
| zeroz wrote:
| Same in Europe. EUR561 million fine in 2013: "Antitrust:
| Commission fines Microsoft for non-compliance with browser
| choice commitments" [0]
|
| I'm wondering if it's still a business case for Microsoft
| despite being sued.
|
| [0]:
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_13_...
| hardlianotion wrote:
| Quite tacky really. Would be interesting to see if that is
| effective. It seems like it's a one time hit as you download
| Chrome and annoying enough for people to mark it.
| easton wrote:
| Humorously, using tools built into Windows 10 and 11 now, you can
| open a PowerShell window, type winget install Google.Chrome, and
| never open Edge once if you don't want to.
| mynameismon wrote:
| That is exactly what I love about Windows 11 particularly. I
| don't have to deal the abdominations like Microsoft News, just
| a winget away. Don't like Edge? winget
| uninstall -e "Microsoft.Edge"
| pseudalopex wrote:
| A future update will block other browsers from opening start
| menu or widget links.[1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29251210
| driverdan wrote:
| Can winget also uninstall the Microsoft Store and all their
| spyware/telemetry/advertising BS?
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| i look at advancements like this in Windows and think it's
| really cool.
|
| But after spending so many years, especially in the late 90s
| and early 2000s, getting shit from a bunch of khaki wearing,
| corporate butt kissing MSCE types about how Linux is "get
| what you pay for" and constantly mocking that all this "free
| software can't do anything"
|
| and then sitting back and watching Linux empowering cloud
| computing, Unix/Linux being the basis of all our mobile
| devices, being the base for most IoT, watching the explosion
| of Docker and tons of other toolsets all initially rooted in
| the Unix/Linux ecosystem, watching Unix/Linux become a tool
| that developers heavily relied on either Linux on the server
| or Linux/MacOS on the desktop/laptop...
|
| watching Microsoft do things like making Notepad use Unix EOL
| characters, supporting MS SQL on Linux hosts, expanding
| PowerShell to perform all kinds of tasks easily done by
| Unix/Linux for over a decade, creating a knock off of apt and
| yum with "win-get", making it super easy to install a whole
| Linux ecosystem within Windows itself, doing everything they
| can to make using GIT on windows, an easy experience, and so
| forth and so on..
|
| and i just can't help being figuratively stick up my middle
| finger. Not just to MS as a company but to all the clowns
| that mocked Linux and Unix guys for literally 20 some odd
| years. Not just peers and co-workers, but managers, upper
| level managers all the way to CTOs who reluctantly realized
| Linix solutions were a better fit in some areas and were won
| over by lower management.
|
| At this juncture - i don't even particularly like desktop
| computing, no matter the flavor. It's all frustrating in
| their own ways - including my precious Linux.
|
| But F* windows and F** windows people in IT. The whole lot of
| em
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _watching Microsoft do things like making Notepad use
| Unix EOL characters_ "
|
| A system which still pretends you're talking through a
| teletype, a system where it would make sense to use both CR
| and LF together and individually to move the cursor accross
| or down or both, shuns it.
|
| Windows never did mandate it, applications can use any line
| ending they like, but used it as a convention for backwards
| compatability with DOS which was backwards compatible with
| CP/M. CRLF is the standard in SMTP, POP, IMAP and HTTP.
|
| To watch Linux fanatics:
|
| 1) identify Linux with Unix, for "superiority by
| association".
|
| 2) personally identify with the use of LF as a newline
| indicator in text(!)
|
| 3) fantasise that Microsoft's use of CRLF is inexplicable,
| inferior, dictatorial and in some way objectively wrong,
| while Linux's parroting of Unix is superior, amazing and in
| some way objectively correct.
|
| 4) Ignore that the American Standards Institute draft of
| control characters from 1963 had only CRLF newlines, and
| Multics from 1964 didn't go with the standard when it could
| have.
|
| 5) _personally_ feel superior and vindicated that Microsoft
| 's basic text editor changed newline terminators...
|
| 6) ... a program they don't even use ...
|
| 7) ... while in the same breath complaining about how
| everything should be like Linux and they've said so for
| years, but now it is that way it's also bad; "fuck you fuck
| everyone I was here before it was cool, I was angry that
| you didn't do it my way and now I'm angry that you are
| doing it my way".
|
| 8) while ignoring the elephant in the room that the
| "everything as text" OS with tools that "do one thing well"
| is completely incapable of handling both styles of line
| endings.
|
| Is just a ridiculous situation.
|
| > " _doing everything they can to make using GIT on
| windows, an easy experience, and so forth and so on.._ "
|
| What a terrible company, doing things to make users lives
| easier. Imagine if all the standard Linux tools could just
| handle common line endings. Python does, which demonstrates
| it's totally possible and mostly a non-issue. It could have
| been made to completely go away, but instead has become a
| source of Ego and Pride for the Linux fanatic, thinking
| people who use tools that deal with complexity and present
| it simply are inferior, instead of thinking that those
| tools are desirable and superior.
| ddoubleU wrote:
| \n MeAnS NewLiNe
| sixothree wrote:
| And doesn't mac use a third scheme - CR?
| majkinetor wrote:
| And F* shitty Linux users with stupid names, horrid and
| unsecure desktop, and irrelevant topics.
| handrous wrote:
| True enlightenment is realizing that the Every OS Sucks
| song is, and always has been, right.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| Great post until:
|
| > But F* windows and F* windows people in IT. The whole lot
| of em
|
| Maybe leave the late 90s.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| maybe Windows guys should. "look at all this cool stuff
| Windows can do, that the stuff i was mocking could do 20
| years ago".
|
| The way Windows people talk about all the "revolutionary"
| stuff Windows can do, like just piss off.
|
| This is like the jocks bullying kids for wearing
| Metallica shirts or NIN shirts freshman year only to act
| like the biggest fans 2-3 years later.
|
| It's like Star Trek fans getting mocked for decades, just
| so people who never cared in the first place can tell
| people who've been fans for 20-30+ years they aren't
| "real fans" (and banning them from communities for daring
| to have a critical opinion) b/c they don't gobble up
| every piece of shit Abrams or Kurtzman puts out.
|
| There's just this trend of people swinging down and then
| when said thing becomes mainstream, they act like they've
| been down since day one. the important lesson is that
| they're cool and smart and in-tune, no matter what.
| sixothree wrote:
| Just to make you mad, I am going to compile this
| application written in an open source MS language and run
| it on Linux. Every day.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| there's a lotta people that use windows but you're
| imagining they're all the same as the people you hate.
| That's hate.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| people that accept the default choices in life are always
| the ones swinging at people who don't and it remains true
| even when what was once is obscure all of a sudden has
| cultural/business momentum to escape that relative
| obscurity.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| sorry, are you suggesting I'm oppressing (swinging) you
| just because I want my OS install to be easy or idk play
| games or just because I'm not really into OSes and prefer
| to focus on other stuff?
| nrki wrote:
| I couldn't agree with you more.
|
| I was thoroughly in the "screw Microsoft" camp until about
| 2018, when I thought they were on the way to redeeming
| themselves.
|
| Unfortunately they've continued their prior "hatefully
| corporate ++" behavior. I bestow this term on companies
| like Oracle & SCO (remember them?). At this stage in my
| career, I have regularly been in a position to send a
| significant portion of comapny expenditure toward
| Microsoft. I won't be in future, and when I reach CTO/CIO I
| will continue to advocate for more open and fair solutions
| for my company.
| zamadatix wrote:
| This has been doable since Windows has had network
| connectivity, winget is just the latest way on the pile. Albeit
| probably the easiest yet. TFTP, FTP, SFTP, SCP, Powershell
| HTTP(S), curl (giving you a copy of all the prior methods),
| winget. That's all of the ways I can think of without getting
| too "make your own program"-y like VBA and whatnot.
|
| In particular I remember utilizing the FTP method to get
| Firefox (avoiding IE) was all the rage in the XP era.
| majkinetor wrote:
| You could do that almost 10 years ago with chocolatey the
| exactly same way, here is one liner iwr
| https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1 | iex; cinst googlechrome
| dotancohen wrote:
| And how did you get chocolatey on that new install? I'm
| guessing that the vast majority of users opened IE and
| downloaded it through that browser.
| vadfa wrote:
| "iwr https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1 | iex" installs
| chocolatey without having to open IE
| dotancohen wrote:
| I see. That's why my comment was worded so carefully:
| though I'm sure one _could_ install chocolatey from the
| Windows CLI, a tiny minority ever would do so.
|
| But that's for introducing me to the iwr command. I don't
| use Windows often, but it's good to know what tools are
| available in the rare instances that I need to. Now I
| need a mnemonic to remember it... "I Want Real (curl)"
| easton wrote:
| C:\Windows\System32\curl.exe exists if you want real
| curl. (or just run curl from a command prompt. curl in
| powershell is an alias for iwr.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Its 5 years outdated tho, better use this, always up to
| date:
|
| https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/curl
| alexchro93 wrote:
| Invoke Web Request is another good one, considering iwr
| is just an alias for the PowerShell cmdlet Invoke-
| WebRequest.
| zingplex wrote:
| Does anyone know if they're displaying similar popups on the
| Firefox download page?
| IiydAbITMvJkqKf wrote:
| Firefox' market share is low enough that I'd be surprised if
| Microsoft wasted even one developer hour implementing this for
| Firefox downloads.
| catfishx wrote:
| Well, its almost as high as Edges market share
| bityard wrote:
| "Almost as high" is a strange way to put it since its
| popularity has been dropping steadily over the last decade.
| And Edge market share is only going up.
|
| Now that Firefox is no longer in the top 3 (in the Western
| market, further down world-wide), we can expect it to lose
| relevance even more quickly. Especially since Mozilla
| leadership has studiously avoided any effort to
| differentiate themselves from from Google/Chrome. They
| missed a huge chance to become The Privacy Browser that
| puts users in control of their web experience when Google
| and Facebook recently got all that bad press about privacy
| violations and monopolistic behavior.
| zamadatix wrote:
| An Edge's worth of desktop browser usage share of users
| are searching for different browsers is why it wouldn't
| even be worth an hour of dev time to show the message?
|
| The point GP made was Firefox was worth targeting not
| that Firefox is going to be more popular the Edge.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288599
| tlhunter wrote:
| I could have sworn this started years ago, albeit with different
| messaging.
| overtonwhy wrote:
| Every feature update they try to get you to reset your browser
| preferences. And sometimes it'll say "oops! Something went wrong
| and we had to reset your browser preferences."
| robbrown451 wrote:
| "Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the
| added trust of Microsoft."
|
| Hmmm, can I trust you to not put your own ads onto competitors
| websites?
|
| That is beyond f'd up. Will they never learn?
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean they pretty much learned that they can get away with
| this and their only repercussions will be an HN post, a Reddit
| post, a few tech blogspam articles, and an EFF doomsday email
| blast cringier than the ads.
|
| I mean this entire thread is a bunch of very angry people
| screaming to the void and self-congratulatory people stoking
| their own superiority complex for having the most common
| opinion in the HN echo chamber.
|
| The days of "tech people" being ambassadors and having any
| influence over the direction of B2C software is over.
| DrBazza wrote:
| I'm really having issues with Microsoft now. It just seems to be
| one dark pattern after another in Windows 11.
|
| They're not wrong about it being _based on_ on the same renderer
| as Chrome, but that 's about as far as it goes.
|
| The worst thing is that Apple and Google do the same dark
| patterns and no one seems to care about them. For some reason,
| Microsoft didn't learn from the early 00s any lessons on how to
| do this kind of thing with any subtlety.
|
| I have a Mac laptop and iPad, an Android phone, and I now run
| Linux on my PC and haven't booted into Windows 10 since May
| (checks uptime...). I don't think I have any reason to use
| Windows at home any more. The changes in Windows 11 are even more
| unappetizing. It feels like Windows Me, or Vista. The version no
| one asked for.
| darepublic wrote:
| Gotta keep the kids off of windows don't want them to be trapped
| by Microsoft ecosystem one day
| bityard wrote:
| The laptops I give to my kids have always had Linux (Ubuntu)
| pre-loaded onto them. To my kids, these are just what normal
| computers look like. The school uses Chromebooks and Macs so
| far as I know, my kids have never seen Windows.
| Julius_Caesar wrote:
| Thank god... Take my upvote kind stranger.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Operating systems are getting ever more user hostile, even though
| their main reason to exist is moving more and more in the
| direction of being there to run a single application: the
| browser, with ChromeOs being the current representative of that
| trend.
|
| I'll shed a small tear for the people that are still forced to
| use Windows, but Google is _at least_ as bad with this in pushing
| Chrome at the expense of other browsers.
|
| And users are caught in the middle. OS vendors should STFU, stop
| pushing their services, ban telemetry and other invasive stuff
| and put the user centric. Fat chance of that happening any day
| soon though, after all, the only reason that users exist in the
| first place is to be ripped of or squeezed like so many lemons
| until the last penny has been forced out of their pockets.
| green-eclipse wrote:
| Welcome to the new Microsoft. Same as the old Microsoft.
| Datagenerator wrote:
| Debian 11 with Firefox for me. Firefox does need some tuning like
| opting out of any studies and telemetry. Verified with tshark
| until it really doesn't prefetch all previously visited sites and
| bookmarks. Some sites are able to request infinite invisible
| visits somehow but it's stoppable and Firefox at least gives the
| user the freedom to do something about it.
| retskrad wrote:
| Google used same tactics to grow Chrome market share. Don't hate
| the player, hate the game.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I think it is totally ok to hate the player too.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I hate that saying, usually because both the game and the
| players are utterly trash. Which is the case here, by the way.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| "Should I show up any speck of decency? No, the game lets me
| get away with it anyway, so who cares" - Approximately everyone
| who uses that saying unironically.
|
| If the only environment where someone will not be an asshole is
| an environment that punishes assholery, they are an asshole.
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| I can hate both Google and Microsoft for using the same tactic.
| [deleted]
| DashAnimal wrote:
| What is an example of Google using a similar tactic to grow
| Chrome market share?
| shmerl wrote:
| Download Firefox.
| dustinmoris wrote:
| It's interesting how many people here rationalise the trash that
| Windows 11 is by thinking that Microsoft is purposefully trying
| things out for Windows 12 which will be much better again. As if
| Microsoft would actually produce trash on purpose and piss off
| lots of their remaining customers with some optimistic big
| picture in mind. Nah, the truth is they actually think it's a
| great OS which is really the scary thing in this entire thing.
| You'd think one day they'd manage to hire at least one good UX
| person from their competitors to clean up the trash Windows has
| been for years now but they keep thinking they can do it
| themselves with the same people who have already been doing the
| same trash for way too long.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| eh. google.com pops up a nearly identical box when using edge.
| seems like a bit of a nonstory. is it anti-competitive because
| its on a microsoft OS? hardly seems like consumers are being
| harmed.
| tw04 wrote:
| I'm sure it's in direct response to the popups you get from
| Google telling you the site works best with chrome when you visit
| any of their properties with edge or Firefox.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| I heard some people having a decent time with Edge in the past
| with some features implementations. Not that I would use it
| myself, but I'm firmly convinced these childish plays only ruin
| whatever good work was done on it. Who on Earth would continue
| using a browser that has such hostile behavior and dark patterns
| all over the place e.g., buy-now-pay-later at browser level?
|
| It's so hard to trust Microsoft anyway, I'm glad 11 is such a
| tranwreck dead on arrival. Makes it easier to discourage people
| from using it, ever.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > Who on Earth would continue using a browser that has such
| hostile behavior and dark patterns all over the place e.g.,
| buy-now-pay-later at browser level?
|
| Almost every single person that I can think of in my life does
| not give a shit about an edge reminder. The one that does
| doesn't use Windows anyway.
|
| Hackernew is a unique audience.
| sixothree wrote:
| Agreed. Have you tried using google products without a google
| browser? It's _worse_. Much much more annoying.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Windows releases always alternates between horrible and good
| enough. 11 will fester on some machines for a while like 8,
| Vista and ME did. Enterprise will stick to 10, and anyone who
| cares enough to fight dark patterns every time Windows update
| runs. 12 will likely be good enough for everyone to upgrade. 14
| (they'll skip #13) will be garbo, 15 will be ok. Sun goes up,
| sun goes down.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I'm convinced there's an alternate universe where Windows 9
| brought all the improvements of Windows 10 without treating
| the user like a contemptible moron.
| handrous wrote:
| I'm struggling to think of any improvements since Win7. The
| only thing that might qualify is WSL, but that's still
| experimental and buggy (yes, I know some people have had
| success with it, anyway).
|
| IIRC Win7 was the one that started installing most drivers
| without any user effort, which was really nice. It also
| bloated minimum disk size to many times that of XP (or a
| very full-fat Linux install, so the drivers can't be the
| reason, since that _also_ includes tons of drivers) but if
| you had the space, it was worth the trade-off.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Amen. I'm pretty sure 7 is the last Windows ill ever feel
| happy about installing.
| helmholtz wrote:
| Windows 10 was a horrible release. With the passage of time,
| it has become just about usable (although not really in my
| opinion). When it came out, though, it had an immense amount
| of bloatware (candy crush), idiotic auto-updating, sample-
| your-DNA levels of spyware, Cortana rubbish, identical
| settings in two places, and a whole host of other
| unpleasantness. All for what, the dark theme? I fucking
| despised Windows 10. This myth of alternate-releases-good
| died with Windows 10. Heck, Windows 8.1, with it's full
| screen start menu, was still a better release in my opinion.
| ynx wrote:
| Re: Candy Crush - technically, those icons on the start
| menu were served up via XML tile specifications, and it
| wasn't installed until you clicked.
|
| Source: Over the years, an app I had my hand in was on one
| of the rotations.
| helmholtz wrote:
| Doesn't matter. It'd be one thing if I was talking about
| some cheap Chinese Android phone, but I'm not. It's
| Windows. It's supposed to be the pinnacle of Microsoft.
| If not, atleast something with a modicum of integrity.
| But seems Microsoft disagrees with that.
| klodolph wrote:
| IMO Vista was better than people give it credit for. ME and
| 8 were the truly bad releases (I used both, ME is super
| unstable and 8's UI is a total mess).
| Causality1 wrote:
| Vista was fine except for all the OEMs installing it on
| $300 Office Depot shitboxes. I still miss being able to
| have My Computer as a menu across the top of my desktop.
| minimaul wrote:
| Vista ran positively well on decent hardware.
|
| On a relatively recent (at the time) processor and
| ideally more than 1GB of RAM and it was absolutely fine.
|
| It's reputation for instability was heavily due to early
| NVIDIA WDDM drivers being utterly crashtastic - this is
| something that did eventually get resolved. At the time I
| had an ATI card and it was perfectly stable.
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| If you could ignore the UI, 8 was actually a great OS
| underneath...which is why 8.1 was pretty solid, they
| fixed the UI
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Yeah, I think actually 11 is just a testing ground for 12.
| ZetaZero wrote:
| Exactly. Like Vista was laying the table for 7.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| My experience with 11 is that is just like 10 but with bad UI
| changes. 11 is stable and runs everything I need.
|
| I think 11 is more about changing hardware requirements,
| requiring a TPM. The UI garbage seems more like an
| opportunity to try new things, they'll figure out that people
| don't like these new things.
| manbart wrote:
| Yes, the UI is why I'm not planning on upgrading. I prefer
| the square windows of 10 to the knock-off MacOS theme that
| is 11. If I wanted MacOS I would be running it
| musicale wrote:
| Knockoff macOS theme? I'm in.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > people don't like these new things
|
| I personally don't like the lack of old things. Namely
| being able to drag to the taskbar. That's baked into a lot
| of my workflows, and I can't believe they removed such a
| useful feature.
| tapoxi wrote:
| Outside of requiring a newer PC I don't think Win11 is a
| trainwreck at all, I was auto-upgraded to it a few weeks ago
| and it's been fine. Auto HDR is neat for games and there's been
| a UI refresh, other than that it's basically Windows 10.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Win11 is a wreck just because they effectively made it non-
| installable on 5 out of 6 PCs.
|
| Prime majority of users don't upgrade BIOS, or don't even
| know what it is.
|
| 11 will be a short lived release just because of that, and
| them not only needing to backpedal, but to entice users into
| biting into a new bait, as all what is actually good in Win11
| been kind of mentally displaced by the fiasco.
|
| A supposedly sucks less Win11.1 will not do it to attract
| more users. A completely new release is coming.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Every windows since 7 has been a train wreck by my standards.
| The amount of times I've had a system update just clear my
| windows profile is objectively abysmal and yet every HN
| thread someone will go and defend them.
|
| No one cares about HDR. How about some decent data retention?
|
| I get better frame rates in Linux running wine than I do in
| windows 10 since the 2020 updates.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| What the hell are you doing with your Windows profiles.
| I've admin'd many Windows machines and have a Windows
| install AND a VM windows install and have literally never
| had a problem with windows profile. Have you at least
| attempted to debug the issue, or can you point to a issue
| report you have filed?
|
| This is someone who uses linux for 99.99% of all computing
| things, so its not like I'm a Windows shill
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Run two upgrades in a row..see how it goes for you. I ran
| insider edition for years and that's a pretty common
| scenario when doing updates. And that's not even the
| legit bugs that have occured as well.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I've done this for dozens of computers. I have not seen
| this issue.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| They might mean things like having all their file type
| associations wiped out because feature updates insist on
| doing that, rather than literally having their profile
| destroyed.
|
| Then again, I've seen Windows do weirder things.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Both.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Provide issue links
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Here you go:
|
| https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/forum/all/update...
|
| https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/forum/all/update...
|
| https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/forum/all/window...
|
| https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/forum/all/window...
|
| and numerous others.
|
| Why does it happen? I have no idea, and probably
| Microsoft doesn't either. Nevertheless, it means the
| update process is broken. After such a case you may feel
| like you have the alternative of either running unsecure
| system or losing your data, so you may even consider the
| first option. Except you can't unless you pay for the
| Enterprise version.
| tehbeard wrote:
| I just accept that 10 is buggy at this point and have no
| desire for an even buggier/jankier 11.
|
| Current bugs: - every MS app store app has the windows
| image preview program icon, despite following every guide
| I could find to fix this.
|
| - sometimes WiFi just dies, and won't come back until I
| disable the card, full reboot, then enable it (Intel 6
| chipset AFAIK, so not some noname brand)
|
| - explorer randomly dies when switching virtual desktops
| and then comes back. I've had this one 3 machines now and
| I've no clue why.
| LegitShady wrote:
| >- explorer randomly dies when switching virtual desktops
| and then comes back. I've had this one 3 machines now and
| I've no clue why.
|
| Were you using an Nvidia graphics card and did you right
| click on the left box of explorer where the quick access
| toolbar is? This is a common issue with Nvidias context
| menu in that situation.
| yrro wrote:
| Filing an issue report? Against Windows? Are you joking?
| nixgeek wrote:
| Feedback Hub exists and has been useful to me on several
| occasions.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Unfortunately true. Microsoft support these days, even
| the paid support, is a complete trainwreck. We had cause
| to open 2 separate tickets for two separate issues
| lately. One of them was clearly a bug, has a community
| forum issue about it with oodles of data provided, and
| nearly a month in to the ticket I'm still getting 'try
| this configuration' style bullshit from some low-level
| tech. I would expect that for free, but for paid support?
|
| The other issue is being handled by the DBA but it sounds
| like he's getting a similar treatment.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| In my previous job, I have seen windows support cases
| escalated to somebody who know how to do kernel
| debugging. I have no idea how much did that cost, but
| this level of support does exist.
| passivate wrote:
| People defend Windows because they don't have the same
| experience as you. I don't either. Windows is a rock solid
| OS that I use at work and it just works. For instance, the
| machine I'm typing this on has a 250 day uptime, my second
| W10 box next to it has a 460 day uptime. I use them every
| day to get stuff done. I work in biotech, not in s/w dev
| land, and my computer is IT managed (so maybe they're doing
| something special). I don't ever fiddle with the OS,
| registry or whatever and I usually can find a PortableApps
| option for stuff that I need to use.
| orev wrote:
| Not saying that there aren't issues, but the fact that
| billions of people use Windows and don't routinely have
| their profiles wiped out with every update points to a
| specific issue with your setup; not a systemic Windows
| problem.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Oy vey. You're objectively incorrect. It's definitely a
| Microsoft issue. They use the old OS upgrade procedure to
| do quarterly updates now which means if it finds a Users
| directory it will rename it to Users.old and make a new
| one. However if it does two upgrades in a row in the
| background without telling you the old Users.old will be
| deleted from your disk.
|
| Now all it would take them is a second to check the sizes
| of both and not remove the one with actual data but ya
| know that would be a actual useful feature.
|
| And before you complain about to me about my "setup"...
| The scenario I described above is entirely common in IT
| departments the world over.
|
| Now please stop blaming victims and start blaming the
| people that have the power to change things.
| CJefferson wrote:
| I've never heard of this -- I've just tried googling and
| I can't find anything about automatically deleted, or
| even created, "Users.old" folder (I realise you might not
| have got the name exactly right).
|
| Sometimes individual user directories get moved if they
| are corrupted, but they still aren't in my experience
| deleted.
| AshleyGrant wrote:
| _citation needed_
|
| I just upgraded to Windows 10 21H2 last week, after
| upgrading to 21H1 a couple weeks ago. I'm looking at my
| C:\ drive with hidden files viewable and there is no
| "Users.old" or "Windows.old" folders.
|
| This is on Windows 10 Pro using my personal Microsoft
| account, but the PC is managed through Intune so I can
| access corporate resources.
|
| What I'm saying is, to use your own words, "you're
| objectively incorrect."
| misnome wrote:
| For large proportions of people a misbehaving operating
| system is just "how computers work" and it would be like
| complaining that water is wet.
| orev wrote:
| There's a huge difference between "I need to reboot to
| fix some wonky thing" and "all my data gets deleted every
| time there's a Windows update". People would very much
| notice the latter as being a problem.
| Duralias wrote:
| While my laptop definitely got more unstable after being
| upgraded (might be better with a clean install), I could
| never put it on my actual gaming machine, because I play VR
| and right now it is a coin flip if VR just won't work for you
| at all.
| rob74 wrote:
| "requiring a newer PC" is a bit of an understatement -
| Windows 11 is the first version that will actively _refuse_
| to run unless the hardware meets its "compatibility"
| requirements, and from what I heard, it's quite picky...
| rnd0 wrote:
| There are pretty easy to use workarounds -such as rufus,
| though that may change.
| rnd0 wrote:
| I used the rufus work-around to install it, and I'm nervous
| that it'll die after an update for that reason.
|
| Aside from that, and a couple of UI annoyances (the placement
| of the start button and the re-arrangement of the start menu)
| I'm happy enough with Windows 11 that it will be a bummer for
| me if I have to go back.
|
| For me it's little things like the way the context menu is
| cleaned up -but the old one is still available, and the file
| manager is similarly cleaned up. I also like that WSL is
| better than it was on Windows 10 (running gui apps are now an
| option without grafting a separate and half-assed X
| implementation ).
|
| So yeah, I'd say "trainwreck" is a hyperbole -especially for
| anyone who had to use Windows 8!
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > it's basically Windows 10.
|
| It's crippled compared to Win10.
| coliveira wrote:
| > I was auto-upgraded to it a few weeks ago
|
| The train wreck starts there. Who wants a system that auto
| upgrades itself without the user permission?
| drcongo wrote:
| That, and most of the rest of the parent comment, made me
| believe the post was a joke.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Technically that's a flaw of Windows 10, maybe they fixed
| it in 11 :)
| Grazester wrote:
| This has certainly NOT been my experience. Windows 11
| update is sitting in the download queue with it
| asking/trying to sell the update to me for a while.
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| I want auto updates for security patches, please.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Good for you, there should be a checkbox so I don't have
| to suffer for your preferences.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| There is, just turn off Windows Updates.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| It isn't so straight forward if you aren't in the know on
| special tooling like O&O ShutUp 10 to accomplish it for
| you. Even then it'll get reset after updating and you'll
| have to fix it again. There is no "don't ever update
| unless I tell you to" checkbox, there is only the option
| to pause them for a limited time.
|
| Windows is actively user hostile when it comes to
| updates.
| tobias3 wrote:
| Use Windows Pro and Group Policy Editor. There isn't a
| checkbox there but a radio box that allows you to
| configure update behaviour in detail. Never had an issue
| with it during all upgrades.
|
| And if Windows Home users should be able to disable
| automatic updates is debatable.
| [deleted]
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I don't think it is debatable. Users should have control
| over their own computers.
| passivate wrote:
| I agree with parent, most non-technical people don't want
| to be system admin for their OS, so MS taking over is not
| really a bad deal. All my computers are IT managed and I
| have never had any update issues, so maybe there is some
| special sauce there via group policy. I have instructed
| them to section off my work PCs so they never update
| unless I tell them to, and it works. I get months and
| months of uptime till I take the reboot hit and do the
| updates.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| The special sauce is probably WSUS, which allows them to
| control the update process for everyone and determine
| which updates they get and which they don't.
| Additionally, the WSUS channel for updates is behind
| Microsoft's normal updates, which allows for them to
| prevent problematic updates from reaching WSUS servers in
| the first place. Of course, home users get none of this.
|
| I personally believe it is arrogance to say that non-
| technical users shouldn't be allowed to control their own
| PCs. And besides, a lot of users of PCs at home _are_
| technical. So I strenuously disagree with you.
| passivate wrote:
| Your arguing against something I didn't say. You can
| disagree with me, but you can't put words in my mouth. I
| didn't say or imply "shouldn't be allowed" or anything
| similar.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Since my comment was along the lines of "people should
| get a choice", if you did not intend to argue against
| that then one wonders what the point of your post was.
|
| I mean, look at your language: "MS taking over is really
| not a big deal". How am I supposed to have interpreted
| that?
| tartoran wrote:
| Security patches != system upgrade = broken of existing
| installations and reset any custom configurations
| marcodiego wrote:
| Ubuntu update notification allows the user to optionally
| see details of updates:
| https://www.addictivetips.com/app/uploads/2021/01/ubuntu-
| upd...
|
| From there you can see what is being update and what the
| update does. You can even choose not to install one
| update or another or even not update a system component
| or another.
|
| So, if you're afraid a new LO version may break
| compatibility with documents you work on but GNOME
| updates will improve usability, you can disable one
| specific update. Very simple and user friendly. For users
| who don't know, understand or don't care, they will
| simply click update.
|
| Canonical is also planning to use snaps for some desktop
| or core components so they can have security updates
| automatically installed in the background. This is a
| somewhat polemic topic, but I understand their rationale:
| some people simply choose never to update because they
| have been burned by bad past experiences. Of course, the
| more advanced user can still disable it.
| tapoxi wrote:
| It did offer user permission, it was an icon in my taskbar
| that prompted for it. I didn't go out of my way to do it
| though.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| i just don't see the point, from a consumer perspective, in all
| the major players fighting over who's version of Chromium is
| the most preferred. I get why the company's care - i just don't
| get why anyone else does.
|
| Firefox, for all it's modern faults, is the only browser that's
| actually different in any substantial way.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > Firefox, for all it's modern faults, is the only browser
| that's actually different in any substantial way.
|
| as a casual reader, I know this is false.. several HUGE
| efforts, have failed to gain the eyeballs of readers .
| repeating that there is only one choice, is not useful or
| constructive right?
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29378307
| mistrial9 wrote:
| maybe people will look at alternatives:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers
| dralley wrote:
| How many alternative browsers can you name that are not
| mere forks of Blink or Webkit?
| passivate wrote:
| Maybe those efforts were not as huge as you think they
| were? I also don't know what you're referring to. I'm not a
| FF fanboy or anything like that, but I have made my choice
| and I'm sticking to it so I can divert my mental energy
| towards other more productive areas.
| the_duke wrote:
| Which efforts would that be?
|
| Pretty much every other browser is based on Chromium. Some
| very niche ones on webkit.
| authed wrote:
| I don't think that Otter Browser is based on Chromium.
| jefftk wrote:
| Otter Browser looks like it uses QtWebKit. So not
| chromium, but still the same KHTML/WebKit/Blink family.
| authed wrote:
| just great. we really need a new alternative because I
| don't like where Firefox is heading and I have been using
| it since the beginning.
| prepend wrote:
| > i just don't see the point, from a consumer perspective, in
| all the major players fighting over who's version of Chromium
| is the most preferred
|
| I imagine the telemetry is extremely important. Knowing every
| activity done by every user is valuable to Google, or
| Microsoft, or whoever gets the chrome feed. Of course this is
| why I like brave, FireFox, safari and others as there is no
| similar telemetry.
| kgeist wrote:
| Microsoft controls the OS, they already can track activity
| of any userland program, can't they?
| prepend wrote:
| I suppose they can, but that would be a new low to
| inspect the memory of their competitors processes to
| monitor traffic. With most chrome traffic SSL, I don't
| think they could tell much from the network traffic.
|
| If Microsoft started doing this, it would be a lot of
| negative attention. Whereas Chrome users haven't cared
| about logging stuff for years now.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Nice thing about Firefox:
|
| about:telemetry
|
| Full details on what is sent to Mozilla, how it's used, and
| easy to understand.
|
| Additionally, if you don't like what's being sent, you're
| still able to disable telemetry.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| What faults to you find in Firefox, when compared to Chrome?
|
| I switched a year ago and I was emotionally prepared to fight
| a rough battle with problematic websites, incompatible apps
| and so on. I was very positively surprised. The only major
| PITA was the fact that I had to define MIME types for
| downloadable documents that I wanted to save by default - the
| usual box "remember this option" was missing for .mkv and the
| like. So far, this was the only major complaint on my part.
| Everything else was very positive, especially the containers,
| no forced Google logins everywhere, the availability of
| extensions that Google doesn't like (like Ad Nauseam) and so
| on. I wouldn't go back even if someone paid me (OK let's be
| honest: I'd do it if I was paid more than EUR1000 a year).
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Firefox's greatest fault is Mozilla. They reinvent the UI
| every couple years, and seem hell-bent on stripping away
| power-user features.
|
| They also managed to ruin their privacy-oriented Firefox
| focus browser on mobile, by making it redirect website
| links to compatible apps - completely butchering its only
| use case as a private browser that lets you be online
| without any permanent sessions
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Breaking Addons to be more compliant with a standard
| between other browsers - making things like TabTreeStyles
| not work.
|
| Putting ads in the address bar:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/22715179/firefox-
| suggest-...
|
| Recording what you type in the address bar:
| https://today.in-24.com/technology/450296.html
|
| Putting ads on the New Tab Page:
| https://www.ghacks.net/2018/12/31/firefox-with-ads-on-new-
| ta...
|
| Randomly installing Addons for people:
| https://itsfoss.com/firefox-looking-glass-controversy/
|
| Some times installing addons without permission to promote
| TV Shows: https://gizmodo.com/mozilla-slipped-a-mr-robot-
| promo-plugin-...
|
| They last 5-6 years, Mozilla has made a number of baffling
| decisions. And most of their advancements just seem to be
| very 'me too, me too!' as they chase design decisions made
| by Google.
| handrous wrote:
| FF's behavior over the last decade or so makes it seem
| like about three different and totally unrelated
| factions/departments/people that should never have been
| given any power have been given _lots_ of power.
| gjvc wrote:
| This is known as _" shipping the org chart"_, aka
| Conway's Law.
| tehbeard wrote:
| Don't forget firing the Servo team and cutting funding /
| support to MDN while execs. and middle management got a
| pay rise..
| r00fus wrote:
| You can turn off all this nonsense. Most of these mis-
| steps have been mitigated.
|
| Never going back to Chrome - even though I'm forced to
| use Google apps @ work, and it has noted
| incompatibilities with FF.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| These are valid complaints; frankly Mozilla hasn't been
| the steward that I would like for them to be, but I
| really struggle to understand how these are enough to
| make someone switch to Chrome. They're all things that
| make FireFox _less better_ , but surely not worse?
|
| The auto-installed addons thing was a bit of a fiasco
| (though one which didn't affect me), but things like
| advertising or extension support are still worlds better
| in FireFox than on Chrome.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Yeah, I have the same feeling. Chrome feels like a
| carefully planned campaign of tricks to enter every
| aspect of your life and make it controlled by Google.
| Facebook feels like a browser with occasional frantic
| episodes of random folks having an idea "let's make money
| on $this" (where $this is so stupid you can't believe
| it), and the usually it disappears and another person has
| another equally brilliant idea. Not ideal, but I can live
| with that, it doesn't even come close to what Google is
| doing. And each year they go further.
| technobabbler wrote:
| > Firefox, for all it's modern faults, is the only browser
| that's actually different in any substantial way.
|
| That's the thing. I don't _WANT_ a browser that 's actually
| different. The web is a duopoly between Apple and Google, and
| everything else is a second-class citizen. The era of an
| "open" web came and went, passing us by as capitalism took
| over. Firefox offers no meaningful freedom when all the
| content it's supposed to consume was designed by and for big
| companies targeting other big companies' products and
| customers.
|
| Using Firefox introduces a lot of headaches and subjects you
| to frequent, meaningless UI updates that add partner
| extensions against your will and show you recommendations
| that I don't want to see... Mozilla is desperately trying to
| stay relevant and has introduced a lot more dark patterns
| than Chrome has, all while adding no value beyond some vague,
| lackluster appeal to a libre web... too little, too late.
|
| Google, for all its faults, makes a darn good browser. The
| only downside is that they track my habits. So what? I'm not
| particularly exciting, and the only real cost I've noticed,
| beyond needing an ad blocker, is that my Google News feed
| gets cluttered with shit I don't care about derived from my
| browsing history. But other than that Chrome is just
| wonderfully simple and clean compared to the bloated Firefox
| (and its lookalike clones, Opera and Edge).
| mmastrac wrote:
| This comment reads like you've never lived through a
| browser monopoly. Sure it's great now, but do you think
| Google will work as hard and dedicate as much budget if
| there are two or even worse - just one - viable browser?
| criddell wrote:
| Sometimes I wish the pace of change would drop way, way
| back for a few years. If the main browser developers were
| to all agree to an X year ceasefire where no new features
| are introduced - only bug fixes and standards
| clarifications are allowed - I don't necessarily think it
| would be all that bad for users or developers.
| technobabbler wrote:
| Frankly I do miss the IE6 days, when everything just
| mostly worked. NetCaptor, an IE-based browser using
| Trident to render pages, had its own ad blocker, tabbed
| browsing, quicksearch, etc. -- most of the best features
| of Chrome -- without all the compatibility issues of the
| browser wars.
|
| Disabling ActiveX and Java (not Javascript) and having
| Just One Browser made for a remarkably clean and simple
| experience, the likes of which we haven't seen since.
|
| For all the modern innovations, I don't think the
| fundamental premise of the web has changed all that much
| -- hyperlinks, text, and media -- but the user and
| developer experience has gotten a lot, lot worse over
| time as more and more money competed for eyeballs.
|
| Edit: As for "work as hard and dedicate as much
| budget"... I hope they don't! A circa-2000s feature
| freeze on web browsers would be wonderful. Stop
| "innovating", i.e., creating trash features that only
| help huge enterprises selling trash advertising. The web
| doesn't need to be this complex; we're feature-rich and
| content-poor as it is. What started as a network for
| academics and info sharing ended up being a marketer's
| wet dream and a nightmare for everyone else.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> Mozilla ... has introduced a lot more dark patterns than
| Chrome has_
|
| What are you referring to?
| technobabbler wrote:
| Stuff like this (not my post):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29416956
|
| I just remember that every time I reopen Firefox (to test
| it for something), some new annoying thing like Pocket or
| some other trendy extension I didn't ask for has suddenly
| appeared. And it's always bugging me with CHECK OUT WHAT
| WE ADDED popups. I don't CARE about your new features,
| just let me browse the web and stay outta the way, damn
| it.
| handrous wrote:
| That's not a dark pattern, it's just obnoxious
| advertising garbage. Which is still bad, but a different
| thing.
|
| FWIW this is also one of my least favorite things about
| FF. What the fuck is the point of unobtrusive background
| auto-updating if you're also going to annoy me with ads
| _every single time_ you do it?
| eropple wrote:
| YMMV, but people talk about these ads firefox is throwing
| around and I just don't see them. Did I accidentally turn
| a knob or something and it's just carried with me through
| years of Firefox Sync'ing?
| technobabbler wrote:
| Yeah, there are a bunch of ways to turn them off if
| you're a frequent user. But as a fresh install, you get
| bombarded with all sorts of useless recommendations and
| ads. It reminds me of the MSN start page.
|
| I see the fresh installs often because I only use Firefox
| to test occasional browser bugs (it's always Firefox),
| and then delete it a few weeks later when I no longer
| need it, then reinstall it later when I need to test it
| again. Every time it gets more annoying.
| handrous wrote:
| Most updates at least open and focus a tab about what
| updated. I'm not sure I've _ever_ cared what it said or
| needed to know any of the info on those, in years of that
| happening. Some updates also like to pop up messages or
| bug me to use crap like Pocket or their revolutionary
| (LOL) new color theming. Possibly there 's a way to stop
| it, but I only use FF on my Windows gaming machine these
| days, so it's not a big deal.
| godshatter wrote:
| > unobtrusive background auto-updating
|
| On that same point, whenever something starts failing to
| work on firefox (on Windows or Linux), I have come
| realize that it's probably an "unobtrusive auto-update"
| that is causing it. Sure enough, closing and restarting
| firefox gives me a new tab showing what was just
| "unobtrusively auto-updated", and whatever was broken is
| now working again.
|
| I don't think they know what "unobtrusive" means.
|
| Having said that, even with the previous complaints it's
| still much better than the privacy problems with chrome,
| at least in my opinion.
| dralley wrote:
| All of this _combined_ is still less "dark" than Chrome
| automatically combining Chrome logins with standard
| Google accounts, and logging you into the browser account
| whenever you log into your Google account.
|
| To say nothing of things like FLoC, new web APIs that
| just so happen to be excellent ways to track you,
| neutering ad blockers, AMP integration, and so on.
| technobabbler wrote:
| > All of this combined is still less "dark" than Chrome
| automatically combining Chrome logins with standard
| Google accounts, and logging you into the browser account
| whenever you log into your Google account.
|
| I actually find that a very useful feature that keeps my
| settings and logins in sync across multiple computers and
| accounts.
|
| > To say nothing of things like FLoC, new web APIs that
| just so happen to be excellent ways to track you
|
| Still falls into the "it just tracks you" category...
| basically the only major downfall, which isn't a big deal
| to me. Everyone tracks you these days, and mostly an
| adblocker negates the effects.
|
| > AMP integration
|
| Yeah, AMP and its ilk (FB Lightning pages, etc.) were
| good ideas evilly implemented. Good thing AMP is on its
| way out.
|
| > neutering ad blockers
|
| That would be a big deal if and when it comes to pass
| (seemingly soon, perhaps?)
|
| The thing is, aside from the ad blockers, most of those
| supposed downsides have had little to no impact on my
| user experience, vs the constant hassling of Firefox. I
| get _annoyed_ every time I open Firefox. Chrome just
| works and actively makes my life easier with its syncing
| and auto logins. To you those may be downsides, to me
| they are helpful and unobtrusive.
| jefftk wrote:
| A dark pattern is trying to trick the user, with hard to
| find close, boxes, pre-checked subscriptions, or other
| misleading user interface patterns. Looking through your
| linked comment, I don't see any examples of these?
| Details:
|
| The first point there is changing the API for their add-
| ons, which they did for performance, maintainability, and
| security reasons. No dark pattern there.
|
| On Firefox Suggest (points 2 and 3), are you saying it is
| a dark pattern because their messaging when you enable
| the feature is not clear about what's happening? What's
| wrong with the messaging and how would you like it to be
| better?
|
| With ads on the new tab page, I don't see what is a dark
| pattern about it? Or are you just saying that you don't
| like ads and wish Firefox would find another source of
| revenue?
|
| With the Mr. Robot extension (points 5 and 6), I think it
| was a dumb choice, but again I don't see how it's a dark
| pattern?
| technobabbler wrote:
| I'd argue that presenting partner extensions as though
| they were a user-friendly feature is a dark pattern in
| and of itself. "Check out this shiny new feature you'll
| love!" Oh wait, it's just more Firefox spam. Stop wasting
| my time.
|
| If the semantics bother you, feel free to call it
| something else... an anti-feature, perhaps.
|
| Every time I open Firefox it's different, and annoying in
| some new way. It's really gone downhill in the last
| decade.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| My biggest gripe with Chrome isn't so much its tracking
| (though that's not great either) but rather that for
| Google, efficiency is a ghost of an afterthought and all
| engineer time goes into pumping out shiny new web features
| to woo devs.
|
| Only OS maintainers seem to give two hoots about
| efficiency... Google and Mozilla see no issue with turning
| your laptop into a battery destroying space heater, and the
| impact of Google's part in this is outsize with every other
| app being built with Electron.
| danaris wrote:
| > Firefox, for all it's modern faults, is the only browser
| that's actually different in any substantial way.
|
| ...Because apparently Safari no longer exists...?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| And where can I download the current build of Safari for
| Windows?
| danaris wrote:
| They didn't say anything about "...for Windows." They
| said _the only browser_.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| The topic is about windows 11 and Edge and the discussion
| continued on alternative that are not chromium based ...
| for Windows, since this is the topic.
|
| Where does Safari fit in here?
| swasheck wrote:
| that safari isnt available necessarily puts it into the
| group of "not different" browsers because of how it's
| restricted by apple. not knocking it because i really
| enjoy mobile safari, but it's not different, at least not
| in ethos.
| s_dev wrote:
| https://support.apple.com/downloads/safari
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| What use are releases from 2015 today? Or are you just
| trolling?
| y4mi wrote:
| Apple fanboys are generally serious, even if they always
| sound as if they're trolling
| jaywalk wrote:
| I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I don't think
| .dmg files do much good on Windows.
| archontes wrote:
| The substantial difference that I experience is that it is
| incapable of utilizing hardware acceleration for youtube
| videos using an nvidia graphics card in a linux environment,
| and that I don't get tab-to-complete search in the bar.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| Seems more useful than Chromes search bar which has tab-to-
| go-to-google-search-and-generate-ad-revenue. At least
| Firefox has down-to-find-what-I-actually-want-from-my-
| bookmarks-and-history.
| archontes wrote:
| "You shouldn't want that thing that you want."
|
| No.
|
| If I type eba{Tab}query, firefox should search ebay for
| query. If I have to go to settings once and tick a box to
| enable this functionality, I will. I won't stop wanting
| what I want.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| I don't understand, Firefox has this functionality. For
| example I have it set up so if I type 'y cats' it will
| search Youtube directly for cats. You can do the same
| with ebay. Similarly if I type 'yout<tab>cats' it will do
| the same search. Also, if you like it so much, you can
| configure Firefox to not put things like bookmarks and
| history before search results in tab-complete search
| suggestions. Firefox's address bar is strictly superior
| as far as I can see. The only thing it's missing vs
| Chrome is dark patterns.
| FranklinMaillot wrote:
| Firefox search bar is so much superior to other browsers,
| I don't understand why almost no one points this out.
| Chrome is so frustrating when it keeps prioritizing
| search suggestions over history.
| tialaramex wrote:
| 1. In Firefox settings, tick "When using the address bar,
| suggest: Search engines".
|
| 2. Find an eBay search engine you like, install it in
| Firefox.
|
| Now, when you type eba{Tab} Firefox will suggest the
| search engine you installed, and your continued typing
| will be as a search in that engine.
|
| I don't use this for eBay, but I do use it for Rust,
| typing e.g. rust{tab}iterator takes me to the
| documentation for std::iterator and related entries.
| belorn wrote:
| > Who on Earth would continue using a browser that has such
| hostile behavior and dark patterns all over the place
|
| Every kind of technology today has clear and visible dark
| patterns. In the past it was advertisement everywhere and now
| it is user-hostile design. See any discussion about smart tv,
| subscription services, webshops, smart devices, phones, apps or
| any other technology topics and the issue of dark patterns will
| pop up. It is a race to the bottom, and I can see the rationale
| by Microsoft. They are doing the same thing as google is, just
| a slight step further.
|
| If people switch to Apple then third-party browser must use iOS
| WebKit framework, and reportedly have their performance limited
| to make safari better in comparison. They could go linux but
| then people complain about a lack of polish and compatibility
| with programs/hardware that they use and so return back to
| either windows or mac.
|
| As a person who have been working with computers for my whole
| life and used to be quite excited by new technology, it is
| quite often that I get tempted to become a farmer and leave
| behind the dark world of technology.
| fartcannon wrote:
| There is no darkness in the world of FOSS, it's an actual,
| currently functioning, computing utopian dream.
|
| Let Caeser have his awful stuff. We can all push for fun, and
| free computing.
| npteljes wrote:
| I agree, I honestly feel like the FOSS world is tech's last
| bastion when it comes to this stuff. There's a lot of
| bullshit too but it's nowhere near the mass surveilled
| dark-pattern galore the current tech era is.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| SystemD and the Gnome file picker don't look so bad now,
| do they?
|
| At least Pottering isn't trying to extort loans from me
| when I start/stop a service.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Once one company implements a dark pattern, it doesn't take
| long for other companies to follow suit and claim it's in the
| spirit of competition.
|
| Instagram's log-in to view anything (even public pages) is
| everywhere now. If you go to Twitter and click a person's
| name or click a tweet, you get a log-in pop-up.
| redconfetti wrote:
| I've stopped using VSCode and have started using VSCodium
| instead. Also, I dropped Chrome and Firefox in favor of Brave.
| Microsoft and Google both are evil.
| rnd0 wrote:
| You might want to look deeper into Brave, I'm not convinced
| they're not evil in their own way.
|
| Personally, I'm looking into Vivaldi; though I haven't
| switched over yet.
| xattt wrote:
| I'm waiting for MS to implement an feature where they mirror
| side-by-side in Edge whatever you are doing in another inferior
| browser.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Agreed, I don't plan to ever install it.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Edge isn't a _bad_ browser now, but that 's a testament to the
| underlying Chromium.
|
| It still crashes way too much for me to use as my primary
| browser, and I only keep it because it is a better PDF reader
| than Chrome and I've not had time to find a replacement.
| nojito wrote:
| How is this any different than what google does in google app?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| One was already found guilty of abusing their OS near-
| monopoly on desktop.
| dgellow wrote:
| They are both bad.
| nojito wrote:
| How so?
| kgwxd wrote:
| Phone OSes got/get away with it because they came out of
| the gate doing it. MS and Apple have been trying to convert
| their PC OSes into the same thing ever since. They're
| envious of Chrome OS. "Compatibility", "standards based"
| and "open platform" used to be badges of honor. In my
| opinion, MS and Google would be better off sticking to
| being open, because if everyone is forced to chose between
| walled gardens, Apple is going to beat them both every
| single time.
| mook wrote:
| I've been using Firefox as my browser on my Android phone
| for something like six or seven years now (I guess I'm
| weird). I don't recall any hard pushes to switch to
| Chrome. Using a non-Blink browser there is probably rare
| enough that making people switch isn't worth it.
|
| The websites don't seem to want to support Firefox, so
| Google definitely isn't blameless, but we should probably
| at least blame them correctly.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Oh snap, I misread the original comment and went off on
| the wrong rant, they didn't even mention phones :/
|
| I use FF on Android too. Android is better than others. I
| have Chrome disabled on my phone and there are some
| things that just won't open without it. It won't let me
| shut off the "Play Protect" nag every single time I
| install or update something from F-Droid. I've
| accidentally turned it on countless times. But it is the
| least worst of the mainstream mobile OSes.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Try the Samsung Internet Browser.. It will give you the
| benefits of Chromium but with a better user interface.
| sixothree wrote:
| Based on recent Firefox post, HN seems to agree firefox is
| going down the wrong path and not worth using; but that
| google and microsoft are evil. They do seem to agree that
| semicolons are good.
| pc86 wrote:
| Where did they imply it was different?
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Why would anyone prefer Chrome over Edge? I mostly use Firefox
| but also Edge as the secondary browser on the Windows machine.
| It's the same engine but better UI (e.g. vertical tabs), both are
| equally proprietary.
| mc32 wrote:
| Microsoft has had a good few years of building up their
| reputation after their self inflicted blemishes from the IE
| integration fiasco as well as their EEE mode of operation.
|
| Now they are throwing away their good will with smarmy tactics
| --why? for some short term gains?
|
| They were passing Google reputation-wise, of late, but these
| moves undercut their work of the last few years.
|
| It seems they see Google, FB, even Apple, etc., eating this cake
| (using market to undercut competition) and can't stand the
| temptation. I can only hope the DOJ will find some will to take
| on tech and do something about their behavior, but I am not
| holding my breath.
|
| If only companies would have principles they could stand on and
| we could count on.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > Now they are throwing away their good will with smarmy
| tactics --why? for some short term gains?
|
| I mean... if you're paid to increase the usage of X, do you
| really care about long-term reputation, if you'll be five
| companies away by then?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Microsoft has had a good few years of building up their
| reputation after their self inflicted blemishes from the IE
| integration fiasco as well as their EEE mode of operation.
|
| Microsoft never changed. There was never a "new Microsoft".
| Only a new strategy with the same goals as ever: anti
| competitive behavior, bullying "partners", and what not. Just
| because they made this or that opensource changes nothing to
| the nature of that company. Windows 11 is basically just adware
| at that point.
| mc32 wrote:
| I don't contest that characterization; however, they did try
| to rehabilitate their brand, and, I think they did. So why go
| through that effort and throw it away?
|
| To circle back to your point, I now feel Google's Don't be
| evil was a deke, a fake and was all about building reputation
| which they leveraged for market share.
| arbitrage wrote:
| And what is good will worth these days? What does that get
| them?
| wongarsu wrote:
| Microsoft was never good at being consistent. It's an
| organization defined by corporate politics and infighting. Just
| because the Edge or the Windows UI department are user hostile
| doesn't mean that this is a wider trend in the company.
| Conversely, the vscode or the Azure departments doing good
| things doesn't mean the rest of the company behaves that way.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| My personal theory is that they see Apple brazenly pushing
| anti-competitive features with their browser such as
| disallowing extensions on anything but Safari and they realize
| that they can't be called out themselves unless the corrupt
| courts are willing to call out their darling Apple as well.
| FredPret wrote:
| I noticed the same thing. However, I trust MS less now than in
| the 90's.
|
| Back then, I felt like the owner of my machine. Sure they had
| bad things like IE but I could just ignore it.
|
| Now, it restarts itself and installs updates despite me
| specifically trying to stop it.
|
| It's a shame really because I really enjoyed Win 10 and even
| Bing doesn't suck completely.
|
| Thank goodness for competition and the new M1 laptops! Now
| Apple just needs to launch a good search engine and get Numbers
| to where Excel is and I can wave goodbye to both MS and Google.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I trust Apple more than Microsoft, but if you want to feel
| like you own the machine Apple is much worse.
| FredPret wrote:
| Really? I've never had a Mac, but I have all the other
| gadgets and I love them. Would it interrupt a running
| process to restart itself?
|
| I've had Python scripts (ML, data analysis) running locally
| overnight on Windows, only to come back to a restarted
| computer. Not fun.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Back when Edgeium was new and just Chrome but with a lot of
| Google cruft removed, I actually used Edge instead of Chrome when
| I was on Windows. It was the same browser with some additional
| tweaks that I quite liked.
|
| Then Microsoft started this aggressive, disruptive push to bring
| it to iOS Safari's level as the only browser people should use.
|
| I don't know any good operating systems for normal people
| anymore. Windows 10 and 11 are hostile, macOS only runs on very
| expensive hardware and doesn't run most programs people need
| (because the business world is still Windows oriented) and Linux
| has been making progress but still isn't a good alternative for
| the common user unless they have an expert to rely upon when
| something breaks down. ChromeOS doesn't run on most devices (it
| can, but the images aren't available) and I wouldn't recommend a
| Google-oriented OS to most people anyway, if they can avoid it;
| Android is bad enough already.
|
| I miss the Windows 7 days. The Win10/11 kernel may have seen
| loads of improvements, the UI and basic behaviour has only been
| regressing for many years now. The Windows 11 window snapping is
| nice but it doesn't excuse the aggressive spyware that comes with
| the OS, and neither does it excuse this antitrust lawsuit in
| waiting.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Anecdotal but I've never had any issue with Linux. Aside from
| installing Nvidia proprietary drivers when secureboot is
| enabled. In which case DKMS is broken so I had to enroll a new
| signing key in MOK and use that to sign the nvidia kernel
| driver.
|
| If I need to run Windows, I will either use WINE or single GPU
| pass through to a Windows VM on KVM. Never needed to dual boot.
| Edge on Linux is great actually, I just don't like that I can't
| disable the listening on avahi ports even though I have
| disabled avahi. Apparently Edge uses it to mask IP when using
| WebRTC.
| pierrebai wrote:
| That was a crash course on how to self-disprove one's
| argument, all in the first sentence. "It works well, except
| for this extremely common use case that requires arcane
| knowledge to fix."
| donmcronald wrote:
| > Back when Edgeium was new and just Chrome but with a lot of
| Google cruft removed, I actually used Edge instead of Chrome
| when I was on Windows.
|
| I fell for it too. There was a brief period where you could do
| a clean Win10 install, log in to the OS with your MS account,
| and everything just worked and synced in a "this is nice" sort
| of way. The cynic in me kept thinking "don't fall for it," but
| it was too convenient.
|
| Now I regret it and the only reason I haven't switched back to
| local accounts is because I'm not happy with any of the
| competition either.
| Angostura wrote:
| > iOS Safari's level as the only browser people should use.
|
| FWIW, iOS doesn't chide you when you download Chrome or
| Firefox. Of course Apple requires them to use the iOS rendering
| engine - but that's perhaps a slightly different point.
| ichik wrote:
| On macOS Safari prompts me to set it as a default browser
| every time I launch it.
| SllX wrote:
| That's interesting because it doesn't for me as if Safari
| 15.1, but Chrome certainly does as of version whatever is
| the latest (and I use Firefox as my default on this
| machine).
|
| Most browsers will, or to be more precise: I've never met a
| browser that didn't request to be the default, but there's
| usually a point where they stop asking or else a setting to
| disable that "feature".
| FireBeyond wrote:
| macOS does display something when you do, the first time
| ever. Initially I thought "why don't Apple get called out for
| that?", but upon reading this article, 1) it's once, and less
| intrusive, and 2) is not cringey/loaded with an air of
| smugness or condescension like some of these prompts.
| bko wrote:
| Is it still impossible to set your default browser on iOS?
| That to me is even more hostile than just having me click an
| extra button once to download it.
| selfhoster69 wrote:
| I don't think so. Didn't a recent software update change
| this?
| somehnguy wrote:
| Started with iOS 14, so a little over a year ago.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| the ability or the inability?
| amykhar wrote:
| No. You've been able to change the default browser for
| years.
| taeric wrote:
| Fwiw, my family has been perfectly happy with various Linux
| machines.
|
| Most things work with just a browser. Such that my kid's school
| just gives Chromebooks. They prefer the Ubuntu and Pop os
| machines, but are fine with any.
|
| The windows machine was ok when we had it, but it did crash
| more.
|
| I only regret some content creation tools. Used to regret
| gaming, but steam has come a long way.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| If you're a user with low experience and all you want is to
| browse the web Linux actually works quite nicely.
| r00fus wrote:
| > macOS only runs on very expensive hardware and doesn't run
| most programs people need (because the business world is still
| Windows oriented)
|
| This is an outdated take - it's functionally untrue in most
| business settings.
|
| Gaming on the other hand, is very much still mostly Windows
| only.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'd agree if they still had 32-bit support. Nowadays though,
| even most creatives are getting frustrated by the vicious
| upgrade cycle and outright refusal to continue support for
| fairly modern tooling. If by "business" you mean word
| processing and web browsing, then... yeah. Chromebooks are
| also a competitor if we're bringing the bar that low.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| Honestly, Apple (and Microsoft) should have dropped 32-bit
| support sooner. The only reason it's such a big issue now
| is because lazy developers kept building apps that are
| 32-bit only because "it works fine on 64-bit systems". The
| same thing happened with the Python 2 -> 3 transition.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| A big reason why some people stayed on 32-bit was that 64
| bit consumes more memory while providing not much useful
| in return when your address space doesn't exceed 4GB. In
| an era when you rarely had machines with this much RAM,
| 32 bit computing is a perfectly rational choice to
| maximise the amount of memory available.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That doesn't really fix the paradigm today though. A lot
| of people (myself included) consider 32-bit support to be
| essential if they want their device to run _everything_
| they want, and I don 't really see that going away until
| there are convenient, performant ways to execute 32-bit
| code on modern CPUs.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _functionally untrue in most business settings_
|
| Most business settings have some absolutely critical custom
| software written in Winforms or something that can't be
| ported, plus an entire machine of IT personnel and software
| tools that would be just as costly to convert.
| [deleted]
| mackal wrote:
| > Gaming on the other hand, is very much still mostly Windows
| only.
|
| I game a lot, I haven't rebooted into Windows in well over a
| year. Luckily I don't really play games that require stupid
| DRM/anticheat (although, that is being worked on)
|
| I would probably start playing Apex Legends again if they
| allowed EAC Linux support. Epic added support, the devs just
| need to support it -.-
| godshatter wrote:
| Steam with proton, proton glorious eggroll, vulkan, lutris,
| and recent changes to wine have been a godsend for gaming
| on linux. It's night and day now. Aside from some really
| old games and newer competitive games (which I don't play
| regardless of OS), there are very few games that I can't
| play well in my 200+ steam games library. I often play
| native games in Windows emulation mode because a lot of
| linux ports are terrible but proton makes them play much
| better even though it's running the Windows binaries.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > proton glorious eggroll
|
| what?
| 1_player wrote:
| https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom
|
| An experimental patchset for Wine/Proton. Might help with
| some newer titles, and Steam gives you the choice per-
| game to target a specific Proton version.
| godshatter wrote:
| It's a version of proton with some of the enhancements
| that the main proton team either won't or haven't added
| yet. I haven't looked into whether it's an individual dev
| doing this on their own or if they are affiliated with
| the proton team. I run the GE versions of proton because
| they solve some problems I have in certain games without
| breaking anything. It's my understanding that the proton
| devs are from the same team as the wine devs and that
| they have strict rules about introducing new code that
| doesn't meet certain standards for wine (i.e. affecting
| more than just games). The GE builds include some of this
| code that hasn't been integrated yet "in the right way".
|
| This is all just my understanding from reading various
| discussions, so may be incorrect in whole or in part.
| FinalBriefing wrote:
| I've had a great experience with Lutris for Linux.
|
| https://lutris.net/
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > Linux has been making progress but still isn't a good
| alternative for the common user unless they have an expert to
| rely upon when something breaks down
|
| I'd say there are 2 main problems with Linux (for non-techies,
| etc, etc):
|
| 1 - They are not using 'linux', they are using one of the main
| distros, that can have some big differences between them. That
| also happens with Android, BUT, people that use a Galaxy S20
| will google `S20 how to xyz` without even knowing how Android
| differs
|
| 2 - As mentioned in other comments, setting up can be a pain.
| Windows have enough drivers that installing it is just a matter
| of putting the cd/flashdrive and clicking next-next-finish.
| Some big distros might have sorted that out, but then you go
| back to problem #1 if they are the ones having to decide on a
| distro
|
| 3 (bonus) - Most people don't actually benefit from having too
| many choices, specially from things they don't care about.
| Usually they will choose a smartphone by 'it looks nice, camera
| is good, the interface is beautiful'.
|
| For me, sounds like this could be improved if instead of
| recommending Linux, we (tech folks) collectively decided on
| just one distro to recommend to non-technical people. But I
| doubt that would be possible
| overshadow wrote:
| > Linux has been making progress but still isn't a good
| alternative for the common user
|
| For non tech savvy people, Linux can cause problems, but only
| if they do something weird to their system. Linux, specifically
| Ubuntu or Mint, untouched, and unaltered is a great out-of-the-
| box experience.
|
| The key (if turning someone on to Linux for the first time) is
| to stress that the command line is for power users who want
| full control of every bit on the system.
|
| It's best to gradually introduce the command line once they're
| familiar with using the system and are comfortable doing their
| first (command line) update/upgrade ritual.
| coolso wrote:
| > Then Microsoft started this aggressive, disruptive push to
| bring it to iOS Safari's level as the only browser people
| should use.
|
| Counter-point: my dislike of Edge aside (especially since it
| uses Chromium instead of their own engine, which is lame),
| Google has made an aggressive, disruptive push to switch people
| to Chrome for many years now, which itself has made some
| aggressive, disruptive effects on the web. Is a little friendly
| "popup" from a competitor in a style all other browsers
| incorporate really such a bad thing to help keep Google's
| market dominance in check a bit? I don't think Microsoft or
| Firefox should just roll over and do nothing while Google
| pushes Chrome in everyone's face every chance it gets - it
| seems to have cooled off a bit recently (or maybe that's just
| due to me switching to DuckDuckGo permanently) but in the very
| recent past it was still doing so.
|
| > I don't know any good operating systems for normal people
| anymore. Windows 10 and 11 are hostile
|
| May I ask what makes you think this? Occasional oddities aside,
| I've found Win10/11 to make for an incredibly pain-free desktop
| experience. While the upgrade to Windows 11 was a bit of a pain
| due to all of the weird system requirements - I have the
| hardware required, but apparently not everything was enabled or
| set up properly and it took some effort to do so - and the
| start button location is still taking some getting used to, it
| mostly Just Works and gets out of my way. I've found it to be
| the opposite of hostile.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| I don't necessarily think either is a good thing, but
| Microsoft is being _far_ more aggressive than Google is.
|
| - In Windows 10, they already made it harder to change your
| default browser. You have to explicitly open the Settings app
| and go to the relevant page (maybe if you're lucky the app
| you're using can link you there at least), and then when you
| try to change your default browser it will try to push you to
| try Edge.
|
| - In Windows 11, they went even further: you now have to
| change the default apps separately for _every single_
| protocol and file extension, rather than having an option to
| set an app as default for everything it supports. The concept
| of a "default web browser" that's easy to understand for the
| average user no longer exists.
|
| - When Firefox decided to implement a hack to let users
| directly change their default browser with a single click,
| Microsoft decided to patch it because "it can be used by
| malware to hijack your default browser". Which would be a
| completely reasonable explanation if we ignored the context
| this is happening in, but they're making their ulterior
| motive painfully obvious.
|
| - And now, they're going even further by injecting unwanted
| and unprofessional self-promotion into third-party websites
| without the user's consent. It's quite different from what
| Google is doing, because they only suggest you to switch to
| Chrome when you visit Google Search, they don't try to stop
| you when you try to download Edge or Firefox from Chrome.
|
| I seriously hope Microsoft gets hit with an antitrust lawsuit
| again, they completely deserve it. Looks like they haven't
| learned from last time.
|
| If MS really cared about security as they claim rather than
| competition, they could very easily implement a popup dialog
| that shows up when an app tries to change your default
| browser. Heck, maybe even make it part of UAC for extra
| security. That way, it would only take two clicks and be also
| far more secure than whatever they're doing right now.
|
| Also, I'm not entirely sure about this, but I remember
| reading somewhere that MS is also doing the same on Firefox
| downloads. While Google may _somewhat_ deserve it (though
| that doesn 't make MS's behavior any less user-hostile),
| Mozilla definitely doesn't deserve it as Firefox already has
| a quite low market share.
| marcodiego wrote:
| > window snapping is nice
|
| A long time ago, I helped the development of some useful compiz
| plugins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X9bcrJ3TjY .
|
| I abandoned the development when compiz was rewritten in c++,
| but the next step we planned was to add the choice of some
| fixed window layouts. Seems very close to what window snapping
| turned out.
| dustinmoris wrote:
| > macOs.... doesn't run most programs people need (because the
| business world is still Windows oriented)
|
| This is not only not true for many years anymore, it's even got
| so far that it's almost the opposite now. Most successful
| businesses nowadays are increasingly led by tech-savvy leaders,
| because otherwise they wouldn't be successful anymore, and
| those people make their own software now increasingly better on
| macOS than Windows for their own selfish reasons because they
| all run on MacBooks, iPhones and Apple Watches today.
|
| Even Microsoft's own software ironically works MUCH better on
| macOS than Windows. Try Office on macOS and you'll be surprised
| how good it is compared to Windows :)
| ehutch79 wrote:
| I doubt many companies are writing their internal apps to be
| macOS specific. Likely it's browser based.
| avalys wrote:
| You seem to have ignored the entire class of businesses that
| don't "make their own software" at all.
| dustinmoris wrote:
| Uh yes? If you don't make software then obviously you won't
| make software for macOS either lol?
|
| Those folks also us macOS, but that was not the poiI tried
| to make.
| mthoms wrote:
| >Even Microsoft's own software ironically works MUCH better
| on macOS than Windows. Try Office on macOS and you'll be
| surprised how good it is compared to Windows
|
| That has not been my experience (though I wish it were).
|
| Excel on MacOS still feels clunky and has significant
| performance problems with big files - including crashes.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| In my experience excel has gotten significantly better in
| the last 2-3 years.
|
| Though yes, that accounting sheet that has 2 million blank
| rows, and some macro trying to access a file in
| c:\windows\system32 is likely still causing problems...
| (not kidding)
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > Linux has been making progress but still isn't a good
| alternative for the common user unless they have an expert to
| rely upon when something breaks down
|
| IME "common users" already rely on an expert when their Windows
| OS breaks down. Not long ago I had to walk my aunt through
| opening the command prompt in Windows 10 and entering the
| command to do a full reboot (as opposed to that hybrid
| shutdown+hibernation) because for some reason i couldn't really
| figure out from the phone the WiFi stopped working even after
| shutdown/reboots (she shuts her computer down whenever she
| isn't using it and she called me after not having connection
| for days). I remembered reading at some point that normally in
| Win10 the kernel doesn't shutdown fully but instead hibernates
| and my guess was that the WiFi driver somehow got in a state
| that didn't let it work and instead of restarting at reboot it
| was getting hibernated so i tried to do a full reboot. Which
| worked, though it could have also been something else that
| happened to get unstuck after the full reboot - at some other
| time she also had the entire taskbar get frozen and that would
| persist normal reboots (via alt+f4 and selecting to reboot)
| which was also "fixed" by that full reboot (she has the steps
| and commands to type written in a piece of paper by now :-P).
|
| Not to mention the myriad of issues encountered due to forced
| updates.
|
| I think that the whole "Windows is good for common users" idea
| is very outdated nowadays, it might have been the case a decade
| or so ago, but it certainly isn't anymore.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| In my experience the real issue with Linux is that it's hard
| to set up. Especially when you have/get an OS preinstalled
| with Windows, to just using Windows. And that most
| applications / drivers don't support it nearly as well.
|
| There are many many distributions. When I started Linux, I
| first tried Ubuntu because that was recommended to me. Ubuntu
| is installed with Xfce which looks and basically is clunky
| and outdated. Setting up WiFi was a PITA because my laptop
| doesn't even have an ethernet port, and i couldn't do much
| else without wifi. I had to configure some stuff via the
| command line because there were no settings for it, and
| install a new trackpad driver. Eventually I gave up Ubuntu
| because it was too hard to use with my trackpad.
|
| Later on I installed Debian which IMO should be recommended.
| But i couldn't properly install regular Debian. After some
| research I had to install "nonfree" Debian from some
| confusing site, because my computer needs a nonfree Wifi
| driver (again, no Ethernet port). Setting up Wifi was an even
| harder PITA.
|
| At least Debian was usable and had good trackpad support once
| I set up. Plus I have to admit the graphics are _way_ better
| than even macOS and Windows. It's also very noticeably faster
| than macOS, running the same programs. But actually
| installing it wasn't easy.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| > Ubuntu is installed with Xfce
|
| Ubuntu's default desktop environment is GNOME (or Unity in
| some earlier versions). You must be thinking of Xubuntu.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If Windows says "restart" that should always mean a full
| reboot as far as I know.
|
| I usually disable fast startup, and it sounds like she should
| disable it too.
|
| Whoever set it up so that you have to reboot to shut down
| should have realized that the way they were implementing this
| was a bad idea.
| whakim wrote:
| > I think that the whole "Windows is good for common users"
| idea is very outdated nowadays, it might have been the case a
| decade or so ago, but it certainly isn't anymore.
|
| I agree with you, but I think that "for common users" pretty
| much all OSes are interchangeable these days anyways. The
| biggest headache for most folks isn't the occasional need to
| resort to an expert (which they'd always have to do), but the
| unnecessary headache of learning the quirks of a different
| OS. Easier to just stick with what you know, which is usually
| Windows.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| > Not long ago I had to walk my aunt through opening the
| command prompt in Windows 10 and entering the command to do a
| full reboot (as opposed to that hybrid shutdown+hibernation)
|
| That's unnecessary, reboot will always skip Windows's "Fast
| Startup". It can be a bit unintuitive because back in the day
| people used to recommend a full shutdown+boot cycle instead
| of a reboot as it could fix more issues. But it makes some
| sense, because generally when you reboot it's either because
| of an update or issues that probably won't be resolved if the
| kernel is just hibernated rather than fully restarting.
| arendtio wrote:
| So what are the typical attributes of a normal user? AFAIK,
| everybody who doesn't need an expert to care for his system,
| would be capable of installing and running one of the more
| popular and user friendly Linux distributions.
|
| If you need an expert anyway, it doesn't matter much which OS
| you use. The only exception I can think of are disabled people,
| who might rely on very specific software.
| mnholt wrote:
| > macOS only runs on very expensive hardware and doesn't run
| most programs people need (because the business world is still
| Windows oriented)
|
| What programs won't run on macOS that "normal people" are going
| to need? In my experience most "normal people" use a web
| browser, the Office suite, and maybe some Adobe programs.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Accounting software perhaps?
| minimaul wrote:
| At least in the UK, this is getting ever more cloud
| oriented. A lot of especially small-business accounting
| software is online.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| games and all gaming related software
| themadturk wrote:
| Many "normal" people aren't gamers. My mom and my father in
| law used PCs frequently at home, never played games. My
| wife doesn't play on her Mac (but she does on her iPad). I
| am also not a gamer, and I've been heavy microcomputer user
| (hobbyist and professionally) since 1984 and haven't played
| many games since my Commodore 64 days. (I know, I'm talking
| about "old" people. We're still normal.)
| ehutch79 wrote:
| No one at my company needs games or gaming related software
| to do work. I imagine that's true for most companies.
| 1_player wrote:
| Some people use the computer for leisure as well. And
| some of these even enjoy computer video games. Crazy, I
| know.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| Yeah, but it was explicitly brought up that macs don't
| have a good gaming story right now. Also, a lot of the
| focus was on office apps specifically.
| cryptos wrote:
| It is a somewhat silly game, but I like it anyway. It is just
| good entertainment.
| userbinator wrote:
| _That browser is so 2008! Do you know what's new? Microsoft
| Edge._
|
| Newer is not always better... if only Microsoft (and the rest of
| Big Tech) would go back to 2008 or even earlier, when they were
| far less controlling.
|
| Browsers detecting specific sites and acting differently on them,
| unless specifically requested to do so by the user, should be
| prohibited. Ditto for operating systems detecting specific
| applications. There needs to be a word for the equivalent of net
| neutrality, but applied to software and environments in general.
| speeder wrote:
| Back in 2008 MS had a lawsuit punishment against them active.
|
| MS in 1997 or so was doing shenanigans like crash Explorer if
| you attempted to download Netscape (Firefox predecessor) they
| got sued by the EU and lost.
|
| The lawsuit terms expired recently and Microsoft is doing exact
| same shit they got sued for the first time, I guess they are
| testing to see for how long they can get away with thsi shit
| before they get sued again.
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/2/22813733/microsoft-window...,
| which points to this.
| aquir wrote:
| It's a shame the Linux is still "not there" to be a good
| replacement for Windows. I keep trying but having stupid issues
| all time, like my laptop is identified as a mobile device when
| connected to a Bluetooth multipoint headset so I can't connect to
| my phone and laptop in the same time :( Scaling is awful and
| unfortunately simply there are no good drivers for certain
| hardware.
|
| Windows 11 is awful, I went back to 10 within a week - screen
| flickering, stupid scrolling issues etc.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Drivers for certain hardware is still a huge issue. I have
| hardware that I just won't attempt to install Linux on because
| devs don't think exotic setups (like Intel integrated graphics
| AND an nvidia GPU) are worth supporting.
|
| But everything else seems to be much improved lately. I've got
| Ubuntu running on my laptop and it works with my Magic Trackpad
| (including gestures), 4k display with fractional scaling, and
| 1080p low-dpi display simultaneously. I wasn't sure they would
| ever get there. Everything pretty much works.
|
| The App Store is still garbage and the whole Snap concept seems
| to work much worse overall than Flatpack. But I have faith they
| will get their act together eventually.
| Mk2000 wrote:
| I don't know about Ubuntu but on Opensuse, Nvidia Optimus
| (Nvidia + integrated intel) works fine after installing the
| official Nvidia drivers and setting suse-prime to the desired
| mode.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I agree. Linux Desktop still has all the same basic usability
| problems it did in the 90s. In some ways it is even worse since
| it has massively overcomplicated a lot of its subsystems.
|
| Still, I foresee a future where the pain of Linux Desktop for
| me will be outweighed by the pain of continuing to use Windows.
| Which is sad. Linux Desktop will have won not on its merits,
| but because Microsoft just decided it didn't want to make a
| Desktop OS anymore.
|
| If I get extremely lucky, it's possible Haiku will take off in
| the meantime and implement some of the things I'm still waiting
| on for it to be a decent desktop for my uses, but I'm not
| holding my breath.
| procinct wrote:
| I would imagine surely there's a distro that is just as
| functional as what you're imagining Haiku will be one day
| right? The main issue I find with Linux is app support but
| that would be worse again with Haiku. What sort of usability
| issues would you expect to run into with something like Mint?
| Btw not saying Haiku isn't cool, it absolutely is. But I see
| it being a long way behind even the Linux desktop.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > I would imagine surely there's a distro that is just as
| functional as what you're imagining Haiku will be one day
| right?
|
| You can imagine it all you want, like most things that are
| pure fantasy.
|
| > The main issue I find with Linux is app support but that
| would be worse again with Haiku.
|
| There are other issues that I consider important. Things
| like how application management works, coherency of the
| platform, stability of ABIs, simplicity of the platform,
| non-bloatedness, lack of fashion-oriented design, etc.
| procinct wrote:
| This is a pretty uncharitable interpretation of my
| comment. I currently don't even use Linux on desktop
| (though I have in the past). Like I said, Haiku is very
| cool, and I love the idea behind it and Serenity, but in
| terms of what is closer to a useable desktop, I think it
| is still a while off, and will always suffer from app
| support (if that isn't as important to you as it is to me
| that's fine).
|
| I do agree though that all of the Linux distros that are
| aimed at being minimalist aren't simple (e.g Arch).
|
| Though there are some like Puppy Linux which I think have
| quite cool ideas around it.
|
| Please refrain from projecting whatever ideas you have
| around "Linux desktop people" onto me.
| aquir wrote:
| Yes, Haiku would be awesome! The UI is great, it's highly
| functional. We'll have the same problems re hardware :(
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Yet more Microsoft Garbage. No wonder The M$ CEO is cashing out
| his chips.
| korginator wrote:
| This brings back memories of their 1990s shenanigans. I guess
| expecting ethical behaviour from them was always a pipe dream.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Sabotaging Windows95 so that it would fake a crash on DR-DOS
| was a real high water mark.
| Jyaif wrote:
| Additional ideas for Edge's PMs: silently corrupt Chrome's binary
| at download time, and mark the website and the binary as
| dangerous.
| maltalex wrote:
| How about just creating an icon with the Chrome logo that opens
| Edge?
| N19PEDL2 wrote:
| I bet that many people would not notice that they are
| actually using Edge.
| quink wrote:
| How about a friendly reminder about best practices. A very
| innocent statement, don't mean no harm by it. Just helping
| out a friend.
|
| "Did you know that personal files can disappear just like
| that, just like that? Oh, I just noticed you are downloading
| Chrome. By the way, you sure those backups are working? You
| have backups, right? Just saying."
| d3nj4l wrote:
| That would probably be a trademark violation?
| majkinetor wrote:
| Better, use Youtube tactic and slow down the chrome processes
| by setting their priority lower, but make it look like it has
| normal one.
| yrro wrote:
| "Windows ain't done 'till Chrome don't run (fast)"
| [deleted]
| cryptos wrote:
| Microsoft could sandbox chrome and add some (costly) extra
| checks to systems calls for advanced security.
| IiydAbITMvJkqKf wrote:
| Windows can force Chrome to use software rendering for
| "stability" reasons.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| I, for one, would love to see the two face off in a lawsuit
| that costs millions and saps the attention and focus of both
| sides for years on end.
| globular-toast wrote:
| As pointed out by the original Neowin article [0], Google has
| been abusing its power for years in basically the same way. Two
| wrongs don't make a right, but Google is far from the "good guy"
| here.
|
| [0] https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-says-its-own-edge-
| brow...
| tiraniddo wrote:
| That dialog is only on Google websites, I'm not sure how that
| is abusing its power as you can choose not to use Google
| products (hard but doable). Regardless Microsoft are already
| doing that to push Edge as well, try going to microsoft.com
| using a non-Edge browser and you'll see a banner appear. But
| this goes much further and actively bakes those prompts into
| the OS and browser, you wonder how far they'll take it?
| randombits0 wrote:
| This is an excellent example of violating implied trust. What is
| implied trust? I expect my software to do what I tell it to do,
| without any additional, unexpected behaviors, especially those
| that do not serve my interests.
|
| Microsoft violated that trust. This means that they value their
| interests above my own. They are demonstrably untrustworthy.
| Again, btw.
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