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Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

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Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#311

Post by cptskippy »

icebraining wrote: post #250
runjake wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should use Chrome and ChromeOS more. It's already happening.

Which ads do Chrome/ChromeOS show, outside of those shown to everyone using other OS/Browser to access the same sites?

> outside of those shown to everyone using other OS/Browser to access the same sites?

That isn't a fair comparison because each company primarily advertises from their monopoly position. Google does not have a monopoly position on platforms, only services. Microsoft is the opposite.

If you flip it around, Microsoft shows you one advert if you haven't turned them off entirely. Where as Google shows you an advert every time you visit every service they have and you can't turn it off.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#312

Post by my_username_is_ »

kbenson wrote: post #299
swebs wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they shouldn't. They should switch to Firefox or Safari. Or at the very least Chromium (from a Linux package manager).

>> who insist on using Chrome > They should switch to Firefox or Safari. There seems to be a disconnect here. You can tell people they should do something all you want, but if they've already shown themselves unable or unwilling to do so, you're better off putting that effort into something that might actually achieve something.

It seems like Brave should get some attention in this conversation. Chromium-based for when that's important, but with privacy designed into the browser rather than it being an afterthought. I've been using it (non-exclusively) for a few months and have been quite happy with it so far.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#313

Post by rafiki6 »

Has anyone here actually looked at the "anti-Firefox" ad in question? It's literally a tile that says "Still using Firefox? Edge is here!". I'm not really sure what we expected here. This is about the same as a browser asking you to make it default when you open it. All big companies do weird anti competitive things. This isn't one of those things. I know I'll likely get downvoted for this opinion, but to many commenters here saying things like "this is why I don't believe in the new Microsoft or that Microsoft has changed", I'm not entirely sure how some meh ad telling you to switch your browser counteracts things like SQL Server on Linux or Azure supporting Linux VMs, or Microsoft's purchase of github, or .net core being cross platform, etc. I don't generally care to support a large company, nor am I an active developer or user in the microsoft stack, but the over reaction is a bit absurd.

Does anyone who uses Firefox realize for a long while they were primarily funded by having Google pay them to be the default search engine?

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#314

Post by wott »

simion314 wrote: post #269
alxlaz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't understand why people run windows. I've used Linux for about the same time and honestly, I understand it completely. I would switch, were it not for muscle memory and for the fact that at least 50% of my work involves systems-level development for Linux (mainly embedded stuff, so a lot of cross-compiling). In the last five or six years I've come to dread the Linux desktop and its constant churn of rewr…

Then don't use that DE that is targeting at clearly other people (I agree it sucks that most distributions use that DE but as power user you can install the distribution or DE that fits you better).

Unfortunately the triplet DE--GUI-Toolkit--Applications is often intertwined or at least evolves in the same manner.

For example, I don't want GTK-3, I only have GTK-2 installed. It could be all fine and dandy if, one after another, year after year, applications wouldn't give up their GTK-2 backend to only maintain/develop their GTK-3 one. The set of (up-to-date) applications I can run decreases, despite the fact that, as Alxlaz, I still run WindowMaker :-)

On Qt side, there are applications which requires an exact version of Qt (not only the main version Qt-3/4/5, but the point version), or require KDE, or require an exact version of KDE. If you want to install a new application, you have to go back in its history and find a version of the application that matches your installed library version. Or install another Qt version and hope it doesn't break other programs.

---------

A bit different, but many years after my last try, I tried to use Scribus. I quickly remembered why I had not really used it long the previous time: text input is still convoluted and not WYSIWYG, which is a bit annoying (understatement) for this kind of program where you precisely want to see how text flows. So I gave a try to the new branch (which BTW required a new version of Qt, if I am not mistaken), hoping that they finally did something about it after all those years this program exists. Alas! Apart from the underneath Qt version change, the visible changes were: icons are now flat and monochrome (i.e. you cannot recognise one from another), keyboard shortcuts have been slightly and viciously modified (what was F3 is now F4, stuff like that... but why, oh why? what is the freaking point of doing that?), and it crashed on me after 5 minutes.

---------

So basically, even if you'd just wish to have a few bugs fixed, and possibly a long-time missing feature finally added, by getting the new version that does this, you are forced to follow the crazy flow of adding or updating all libraries/toolkits/environments, because maintainers have decided it was way more interesting to rewrite their stuff for the umpteenth time with a different/new back-end (toolkit, environment), rather than polishing their existing, mostly fine for the job, code base.

It is exhausting, I am, too, really tired with that churn and constant breaking.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#315

Post by orclev »

alharith wrote: post #92
dralley wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Windows division has never really been part of the "New Microsoft", it seems from the outside.

Microsoft didn't buy Github out of the goodness of their heart. They also didn't buy it because of it's significant revenue, a couple hundred million is probably a marketing budget to Microsoft, not something that drives the bottom line. Microsoft also didn't buy it to score appearance points with the socially conscious dev community that populated most of Github, although it was a nice PR story for a bit. You could…

Anything sufficiently advanced to produce working code from vague design documents would be functionally indistinguishable from true AI. Barring some kind of major breakthrough in the field of AI (not machine learning, actual AI), this is basically a pipe dream. At best they'll produce something that given a very detailed and rigid set of instructions can produce a working program... which is exactly what a compiler does.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#316

Post by starik36 »

zentiggr wrote: post #298
iso1631 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the last couple of years I've been coming round to the fact that microsoft aren't necessarily a major problem now, compared to google and amazon at least. Doesn't take much to put the shields back upto full. I just don't understand why people run windows. Maybe I just use computers wrong, having been on linux for the last 20 years, but my family (who I refuse to help with IT needs) are all far happier on chromeb…

Because I work in a Windows-only facility, at least where my level of dev work is done. And I live in a house where the only other person has only ever user Windows, and hates change. Like even desktop icons shouldn't relocate unless she does it herself. She fights every application update unless there's a clear reason, then there better not be any more differences than the ones indicated.

> She fights every application update unless there's a clear reason

Unless you are in the IT industry or at least an enthusiast, this is a rational approach.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#317

Post by reaperducer »

Delmania wrote: post #102
aneutron wrote: post #6

Microsoft doing shady stuff again. It's really a shame. The engineering that the teams at Microsoft put to the kernel and the actual operating system at large is amazing. But then some Product Management division decides to shove this shit down people's throat and, for me at least, ruins all the fun of what would is otherwise an amazing piece of an operating system. I paid for an operating system, just let me use the…

How is this shady compared to Google's ads for Chrome on google.com or the paid search results in the App Store? All the tech giants participate in this behavior.

How is this shady compared to Google's ads for Chrome on google.com or the paid search results in the App Store

They can both be bad. It isn't either/or.

All the tech giants participate in this behavior.

That doesn't make it OK.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#318

Post by themacguffinman »

yborg wrote: post #285

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. If nothing else convinced people Firefox is back, this should tip the scale.

Based on what? If Microsoft can show ads for Candy Crush with impunity, I don't know why you think this will tip any scales.

Firefox has also lost ~2% desktop marketshare since 2018. Firefox is definitely not "back" and ready to fight a non-garbage browser.

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#319

Post by sslayer »

Mirioron wrote: post #301
iso1631 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the last couple of years I've been coming round to the fact that microsoft aren't necessarily a major problem now, compared to google and amazon at least. Doesn't take much to put the shields back upto full. I just don't understand why people run windows. Maybe I just use computers wrong, having been on linux for the last 20 years, but my family (who I refuse to help with IT needs) are all far happier on chromeb…

> I just don't understand why people run windows. For me the main reason is games. Dual booting is really annoying and jumping through the 15 hoops it takes to run games on Linux doesn't seem worth it considering how poorly games seem to run natively on Windows already. It's not a question of "there are no games for Linux" but rather "the game I want to play is not on Linux". This one point is basically the anchor th…

Steam with Proton and ProtonDb was a game changer. What runs native in Linux vs using Proton is like night and day

Re: Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu

#320

Post by jmnicolas »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #297
stiray wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't understand why people run windows I do. And just a disclaimer, I am using linux 100% on desktop (and prefer freebsd on servers). Where I run firefox, i3, terminal, evolution (as I am forced to use it due to Exchange support, while I actually prefer mutt) and this is it. I rarely run anything else that is windowed. The reason is simple. Linux desktop really sucks. Instead of whole community stepping tog…

As someone who uses one of the minority desktops within a minority distro (Fedora w/ Cinnamon spin), I agree that all of the trash-talking within a community is to the detriment to its spread. I almost wish we could get all Linux users to verbally agree to something like the following: "I will not trash popular Linux desktop environments to outsiders. Ubuntu is fine. GNOME is fine. I understand that for the sake of t…

I think you misunderstood : the problem is not the trash-talking, the problem is that all Linux DE are trashes and if people were only putting their effort on one it wouldn't be trash.
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