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Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

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Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#401

Post by badsectoracula »

nyuszika7h wrote: post #346
badsectoracula wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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…

As i wrote in another comment this is what i thought too but it doesn't turn out to be the case in practice.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#402

Post by okamiueru »

throw10920 wrote: post #375
fartcannon wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it's an actual, currently functioning, computing utopian dream False. The FOSS software that I personally use is less useful (on a practical technical level) on average than its technical equivalents. And beyond my specific tools (which I admit could just be the bad parts of FOSS), FOSS software is near-universally bad (along with almost every other piece of software I've touched - this isn't a condemnation of FOSS…

> but I've never actually found a single piece of software, FOSS or not, that is anywhere close to "utopian" (or barely even "functioning").

Probably because of which fields you work in. But in software development, I'd say it is almost exclusively the case all over the board.

If you work in digital arts, then Blender is probably the best end-user application example I can think of.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#403

Post by 0x0nyandesu »

AshleyGrant wrote: post #93
0x0nyandesu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

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 incor…

Not every windows update generates them but it is still possible to hit two in a row that do when you update old installs of 10 from 2020 that have precached an incremental update. I'm not writing a research paper here. If you want citations you can put on your research hat and find them yourself.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#404

Post by grammarnazzzi »

MMS21 wrote: post #11
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #10

"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.

I'm struggling to understand how that quote could be anything but satire

It alludes to the hypocrisy in the claim:

> "with the added trust of Microsoft"

Hijacking a competitor's page demonstrates that Microsoft lacks integrity and cannot be trusted

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#405

Post by okamiueru »

fartcannon wrote: post #227
belorn wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

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.

I could not agree more. It's almost baffling to see the constant frustration of closed operating systems, and then outright rejecting Linux as an alternative, as if stuck one some preconception that it is bad. I've regularly used all three, and from my point of view, they are not even close to being equal. It's the only platform where I can start my day, and reliably get to work, without any unexpected fuckery wasting half my day.

The only thing that causes a comparatively bad experience on Linux is in part software availability or driver related, neither of which is the fault of the operating system itself.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#406

Post by 0x0nyandesu »

passivate wrote: post #214
0x0nyandesu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 spe…

You use vastly fewer things than I do on my daily driver. I'm not complaining about stability. I still maintain windows boxes for work and yes I get uptimes measured in years. In fact I used to be a windows fanboy.

The issue is really that the front end experience has gone to shit and that windows boxes are inherently zero day hackable at random. With gaming there's memory leaks out the ass. When doing updates windows regularly ignores and resets settings. Not everyone wants to use defaults and not everyone has time to edit group policy settings every time there's a changes. Your IT team is definitely 100% debloating your system before imaging.

I'm over here coding, running vms, setting up ssh tunnels, streaming, recording video, playing music, doing teleconferencing and all manner of other nonsense. So yes my standards are a little out there.

But frankly I don't think windows should be able to be HIPAA certified because I don't believe it's possible to secure it. And trust me that's my job.

The workers at my job that use Chromebooks are by far the most secure in our entire IT stack.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#407

Post by Fogest »

jeroenhd wrote: post #190

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…

I actually only recently switched to Edge and have been enjoying it. Google is not totally innocent in this battle either. At least once a week if not more often when I am in my Gmail, on my Google Calendar, or on the Google search pages I get a little banner in the top right just like the Edge one seen in this article telling me I'd get a better experience if I switched to Chrome and have a similar download style button. And with how prevalent Google's webpages are the majority of the web users will see these adverts if they aren't using Chrome. So I'd argue that Google is not really much better than Microsoft in this regard.

I guess the difference is that Microsoft has an additional avenue to advertise since they control more of the software stack.

The things I have more of a problem with are the dark behaviours for things like changing my default browser. I noticed when I originally would install Google Chrome and it asks if I want to make it my default, the process to do so is more complicated. Chrome can only pop up Windows default application chooser settings dialogue and then you have to manually switch the default browser in there. Microsoft will give multiple messages you have to go through before it sets it as default. Whereas when I recently switched back to Edge they had the same banner asking if I wanted to make Edge default, except when I clicked "yes", that was all. Microsoft was able to directly make that change without having me go through the weird process of switching defaults.

When one company gives themselves artificial advantages over their competitors like this that is when things start to get weird for me. For now I am going to stick with Edge for a bit, but if they continue to do things like implementing "buy now pay later" schemes I'll probably go back to Chrome.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#408

Post by throw10920 »

okamiueru wrote: post #402
throw10920 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's an actual, currently functioning, computing utopian dream False. The FOSS software that I personally use is less useful (on a practical technical level) on average than its technical equivalents. And beyond my specific tools (which I admit could just be the bad parts of FOSS), FOSS software is near-universally bad (along with almost every other piece of software I've touched - this isn't a condemnation of FOSS…

> but I've never actually found a single piece of software, FOSS or not, that is anywhere close to "utopian" (or barely even "functioning"). Probably because of which fields you work in. But in software development, I'd say it is almost exclusively the case all over the board. If you work in digital arts, then Blender is probably the best end-user application example I can think of.

Can you specify some specific pieces of software-development software that you consider to be "utopian"?

I'm a software developer and have used the following pieces of software that were very non-utopian: gcc gdb sbcl vim emacs vscode atom tmux bash fish make cmake automake autotools m4 cpython pip mypy pyinstaller firefox gradle ant sbt chisel npm qmk (that is - everything I've touched). I also know that virtually everything related to webdev is just straight-up awful.

I've also used Blender and can testify from personal experience that it's bad.

What else is there?

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#409

Post by loudtieblahblah »

gibspaulding wrote: post #254
loudtieblahblah wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 instal…

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 worl…

oh i'm not switching to Chrome. FF is still my main driver.

but boy has it made Brave more attractive.

I just feel like Mozilla has a very "Democratic Party" attitude. They do really stupid shit that no one likes and stares you square in the eye and says "what are you gonna do about it - vote for the other guy?" and it's super frustrating.

Re: Microsoft’s new Windows prompts try to stop people downloading Chrome

#410

Post by loudtieblahblah »

crocodiletears wrote: post #213
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

>by making it redirect website links to compatible apps

You can turn this off

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