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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

#471

Post by akiselev »

grawprog wrote: post #427
tzs wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all my Linux work has been via command line for quite a while, so maybe this has changed, but my recollection was the GUI inconsistency had little to do with the window manager. It had much more to do with the X libraries that the developer of each app decided to use. I used to have a screen shot showing me running something like 5 different GUI apps on a Linux system, all of them trying to open a file, each w…

>I used to have a screen shot showing me running something like 5 different GUI apps on a Linux system, all of them trying to open a file, each with a completely different file chooser dialog. That's because one app used Motif, one use GTK, one used Qt, and I have no idea what the others used. But they all perform the same function of choosing a file right? What does it matter if they all look the same? I don't under…

The devil is in the implementation details. Are favorites/shortcuts in the same part of the screen? Are they in the same order? Does the dialog remember sort and view configuration between folders? Does the dialog differentiate between mounts, symlinks, and tangible files? Does it display networked machines properly? Are file icons consistent in design if not color scheme? The problem most people have (in my experience) is behavioral. The mismatching visuals is just the most jarring aspect that's easiest to point to.

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

#472

Post by yorwba »

owl57 wrote: post #363
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

GNOME isn't fine. See, on switching keyboard layout it switches focus from current window while it writes some file to disk. Yes, it's not terrible on SSD, and I bet whoever invented this monstrosity has an SSD. But needing an SSD not to lose some of the letters you type just screams of insanity. OTOH, yes, the rest of Ubuntu is fine, and to anyone fed up with Windows I gladly recommend anything else based on Ubuntu…

> on switching keyboard layout it switches focus from current window while it writes some file to disk.

I don't use GNOME, but I've noticed switching keyboard layout in Fcitx being slow. This is especially annoying since I have four different layouts and switching back-and-forth requires cycling through all the others.

I wonder whether this is actually a problem at a deeper layer. (Possibly that layer was originally created for GNOME.) Do you happen to have a link to a bug tracker for this issue?

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

#473

Post by grawprog »

tzs wrote: post #468
grawprog wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I used to have a screen shot showing me running something like 5 different GUI apps on a Linux system, all of them trying to open a file, each with a completely different file chooser dialog. That's because one app used Motif, one use GTK, one used Qt, and I have no idea what the others used. But they all perform the same function of choosing a file right? What does it matter if they all look the same? I don't under…

It's not that there are aesthetic difference like pink sparkles on some. It's that some have a file type filter and some don't. Some show all files while others hide dotfiles and provide a checkbox to show them. Some show files and directories in the same pane while others show directories in one pane and files in another. Some show ".." in their directory list and you go up by opening that, others do not show ".." a…

I understand this, but modularity is one of the philosophies and benefits behind linux, with modularity unfortunately comes inconsistency. As many of the apps available on linux are open source and open source developers are mostly free to use whatever toolkits they want or are comfortable with, you're not likely to get the consistency you want with linux.

With windows you have an API provided by windows for ui programs, there will be more consistency between apps because of this.

Linux providing a standardized ui API would go against the core philosophy of it and you're not likely going to be able to convince every developer making gui apps for linux to agree on and use only one graphical toolkit.

Like with anything, every os has tradeoffs and downsides, personally I prefer modularity and control over my system to ui consistency.

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

#475

Post by undersuit »

zeusk wrote: post #373
black_puppydog wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Microsoft using their desktop operating system market share to drive their web browser market share. That's pretty much what they got sued for before. Given, their market position in desktop might be a different one now than back then. But it's still quite close to what antitrust laws were written against. Also saying "oh all corps do stuff like that calm down" is a really bad defense IMO.

Try using any Google property without chrome, or try using any iOS device without safari. This is pretty harmless in my opinion.

What's the problem? I use Firefox and Firefox Focus as my only web browsers on my Android phone.

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

#476

Post by frankharv »

kelnos wrote: post #392
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…

I absolutely get the distaste for gratuitous UX changes. I've been using Xfce since 2004 and it hasn't changed all that much since then. Overall I'd never claim that a Linux desktop is a "Just Works" proposition, but judging from the issues my colleagues have with macOS, I wouldn't trade my Linux problems for their macOS problems. I can't speak much to Windows anymore, but I can't imagine it'd be all that much better…

Thank You for all your contributions to Xfce. I switched to it on FreeBSD and it is rock solid. When WinXP went EOL I setup a FreeBSD desktop and it has been fabulous. Truthfully my only gotcha is bluetooth support on FreeBSD is pretty bad. I can work around it as I listen to all these horror stories about Win10.

Xfce allows me to mimic XP quite well. Drag the bar to the bottom of the screen and setup a dark blue background and I felt at home. I like feeling in control of my desktop experience. The switch to GTK3 was not better but GTK2 is getting stale so I understand..

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

#477

Post by ubercow13 »

tzs wrote: post #463
ubercow13 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment reminds me of this meme image that I saved a few years ago: https://i.imgur.com/JG7I2hu.png Odds that it's even worse since this was created?

I found my screen shot: https://i.imgur.com/Wcwaiwu.jpg

Nice. Actually some of these remind me of Windows, too. It's less common on Windows but plenty of applications seem to link against antiquated libraries which provide really unusable and nonstandard file selection dialogs. One thing I remember being annoyed with is old-style ones that are very small and you can't resize. Here are some, but I've seen weirder ones:

https://i.imgur.com/jYa3qX8.png

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

#478

Post by andrewshadura »

PeterisP wrote: post #447
heavenlyblue wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is office better than Google Docs?

Interoperability. For me, a common use case is to receive a large document from someone using MS Office, make small alterations or comments, and send it back... while being certain that I have not changed anything else (including formatting and layout of included illustrations) that I did not want to change. Neither Google Docs nor OpenOffice currently support that, simply opening and saving a nontrivial Word documen…

OpenOffice doesn't exist anymore, and hasn't for a decade.

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

#479

Post by roca »

proactivesvcs wrote: post #449
zeusk wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try using any Google property without chrome, or try using any iOS device without safari. This is pretty harmless in my opinion.

I am an occasional user of Maps, YouTube, Blogger and Translate. Never used Chrome, and all of these properties work just fine and have not tried to push Chrome. I'm also using a stock Android and have never used Chrome on it. Play Store, Play Games, Find my Device, and the Google app work just fine and haven't tried to push Chrome either. I guess I should prepend these observations with "Yet", as I'm not at all of t…

> all of these properties work just fine and have not tried to push Chrome.

Historically Google has relentlessly advertised Chrome to Firefox users on Youtube and their main search page ... probably the most valuable advertising space on the Internet. Maybe they've cut back, for some or all users.

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

#480

Post by ubercow13 »

overgard wrote: post #459
slgeorge wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "open source" that's in question here, it is "work done for free without commercially paid developers". A bunch of work happens for things like wifi and cpu because of Android and ChromeOS. But, the number of professional paid developers doing "desktop Linux" drivers is probably fewer than 10 right now [0]. The number of full-time paid developers on "desktop Linux" itself is probably under 100? ... probably…

So honestly, if the answer is "buy special hardware to use this thing"... I'm probably not going to use the thing. I support desktop linux up to the point where I'm willing to use it, and contribute if I am using, but, I'm not replacing everything I own for an experience that's already proven to be bad. I'm not really convinced the problem is hardware, I think there are cultural/organization/design problems here. It…

I think you just have to accept that desktop Linux has a different set of tradeoffs. It's not right for everyone but you were driven here because you couldn't stand Windows but you're already dismissing the alternative as 'proven to be bad'.

Also I think you are underestimating how crappy and broken a lot of hardware is. See eg. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/tree/master...

or read some of the comments here, lots are about ACPI https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/pci/q...

Has anyone bought the libinput maintainer your laptop hardware so he can work out why it doesn't work? You can see from the commit log that it's mainly developed by one person, who also developed the previous Linux (synaptics) touchpad driver for years before that.

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