Live data from Hacker News

Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

news.ycombinator.com

261–270 of 470 posts

Re: Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

#261
Tipping point, for using ms products in general, was malware posing as an Asus driver /s.

Fresh windows 10 install. Installed a bunch of drivers fresh off the vendor's site. Asus driver installation installed some GUI i didn't much care for, Armoury Crate. Well, no problem, right? One can extract the cab/inf files and let windows add the driver rather than use the vendor's executable. Wrong.

Trying to uninstall the driver through the vendor's uninstaller - Error. Add/Remove (probably points to the same location) - Error. It ran a web service; Trying to end task it - Automatically restarted.

This went on for a long debugging session until I realized it's like fighting hackers for control over my own PC. An experience commonplace to windows. Sifting through dodgy forums yielded no results.

Thanks to AMD's professionalism, they added drivers for their latest video card gen to the Linux kernel well before their cards released. Which made my new gaming PC transition to an Arch based distro a no brainer. Didn't look back since.

For anyone interested, I'm using the Garuda distro for games successfully. All games that don't use intrusive garbage like Easy Anti Cheat work. It isn't an inplace replacement for ms and requires patience and tinkering. With the latest Proton 7 release, games work a lot better. Even Cyberpunk 2077 works out of the box with no tinkering.

Sifting through git issues, discussions, solutions and usually just a cli command away for Linux issues is worlds apart than the walled garbage dump that is ms.

If you're up for it, i suggest installing arch yourself as Garuda has its unjustified quirks.

I must add that regardless of anecdotal experiences with ms products, it is important to support the only competition by moving away from ms. Because of their monopolistic practices in tying up hardware to their own software such as TPM and Pluton. Security is great but not proprietary security that ties the hardware to a specific operating system. Something ms always strived for by thrusting their product as the default on any PC and laptop.

Re: Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

#262
post #96
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to run Linux on a computer, you do your research and build/buy one where the hardware support is there. Most people don't need "latest" hardware; hardware from 2-3 years ago is fine, and, honestly, most latest hardware works fine too -- again, if you do your research. Grabbing a random machine and expecting it to work fine (especially if it's a laptop) will often fail, and that's why people spend hours on…

> Grabbing a random machine and expecting it to work fine Not random, but my current machine. How else am I (or random person on the Internet) to migrate to Linux then? Create an entire new machine just for Linux? That is a pretty hefty price. E.g. You bought an expensive nVidia card. Yeah, throw it away. Get AMD. Want dual monitors. Throw one away... I honestly dread switching to Linux. > Certainly some people have…

It all comes down to the time you are willing to dedicate in learning something new.

For most of the stuff that runs on windows and mac there are alternatives on linux, some equal, some worse, some better. I have been mostly a linux users for years. I still have one laptop with a dual boot on windows...for only one use case: music production. Not because there are no music production software available, not because they aren't good, quite the contrary there are fairly decent tools both opensource and proprietary, but because I don't know them well. I only do music as a hobby in my free time and so far I have been too lazy, or more interested in producing music than learning a new workflow. I admit it is mostly about laziness and time to dedicate to something new. I intend to correct that because I don't want to feel forced to use windows, which I mostly hate for anything else, for that.

Re: Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems weird that when a company grows beyond one point they start these user hostile practices. Google is another example. When they are small they are more open to innovation than manipulating user into using their product. What goes wrong?

My probably a bit naive take: The MBAs take over and implement KPIs that might even be well-intentioned but are ultimately easiest to satisfy by cutting corners. For example: KPI that measures market share of Edge; instead of making Edge better to increase its share, just screw your users by making Edge default on Windows on every other update. I've seen it happen at my own company, and while I always had pipedreams…

If their MBAs set-up KPIs that reward this kind of behaviour, they need better MBAs. Instead of "get more people to use Edge", it should be "get more people to choose Edge". Neither people nor geese respond well to having stuff rammed down their throats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras

Re: Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Ubuntu have an Amazon link in the Unity start menu for a while?

That could be removed and never come back, on the other hand i think canonical is going towards the path of Microsoft nonetheless

Nah Ubuntu got rid of the Amazon link and app, I think they're doing well in the enterprise space these days so there's no fuckery on the desktop (although that means they've also given up on stuff like phones).

Re: Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

#265
post #104
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then go back to my family - because not worrying about Wayland, that new driver or that new update or "that new thing "- suprsingly leaves a lot of time that you can spend with your family :) What about the times when windows take forever to "getting things ready". I once spent around two hours updating windows. And just after the reboot there were ten new updates.

My partner was about to get back from the office, bringing food. It was 8pm, and everything set for tomorrow with Windows. Except at this point it needed to update, and for a specific reason the computer needed to be in a working condition the next day and updates of course installed. Two hours later it was still updating, and we were eating in the end 11pm... My NixOS machine updates in a few minutes even when it ne…

> has anybody tried to install Windows on ZFS or Btrfs?

I used to do banking on a VirtualBox immutable disk image. I only made it mutable when it was time to regular updates, then made it immutable again for using the bank and government software (in Brazil you had some govt issued tools that made life easier). You can also make it work with filesystem snapshots as well as letting VirtualBox manage its own snapshots for you.

Re: Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

#266
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it, given that Microsoft now actually owns the Candy Crush IP.

No, the only "actually" is that a deal was announced to buy the company that has that. The acquisition won't be finished for months if at all (government may block based on antitrust concerns)

by months I think you mean years

Re: Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

#267
post #128

>How do you deal with Microsoft's crap on a daily basis? wuauclt.exe and wuaueng.dll. Add 'Administrators' to permissions, then go back in and delete all permission entries. Basically deny windows access to its update system. Doesn't hurt to run Anti-Beacon as well. NSudo as Trusted Installer to cripple security center and Update medic service, group policies can shut down most of Defender and Customer Experience Imp…

> Basically deny windows access to its update system

If that also disables security updates that is not a good advice.

Re: Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisements in the start menu around Windows 8 was my tipping point. It's just a trashy thing to see candy crush and other crap in there that I never asked for, never could remove, etc. I went to Ubuntu and now PopOS and haven't looked back in almost 10 years. Maybe they've cleaned things up and removed the crap in later Windows but the damage is done and I'm never going back.

Didn't Ubuntu have an Amazon link in the Unity start menu for a while?

>Didn't Ubuntu have an Amazon link in the Unity start

You don't have to use Unity, and thank god for that.

Re: Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

#269
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have been Windows 10 insider since 2016ish maybe, before that installing whatever WzoR iso put out. This PC I am writing from - had Windows 10 installed on it 2018 with Windows Insiders builds, upgraded to Windows 11 around August, joinned the beta/canary channel, right now I am on: https://changewindows.org/platforms/pc/releases/windows-11-c... [Version 10.0.22538.1010] I had ZERO (0) issues with upgrades or downtim…

> I had ZERO (0) issues with upgrades or downtime. I too could make coffee or read a book while apt or dnf do their magic, but the truth is I can continue working while they do it, probably because, unlike Windows, they can delete and replace open files while they install, making the update-on-reboot issue on Windows a non-issue on Linux machines. It's been a while since I had a BSOD on Windows, but I have been force…

Every single half-year release of Windows 10 took more than one hour on both of my windows computers (using upgrade assistant; windows update never offered an update). They are no slouchs either, one is i7 and the other is Threadripper, both with ample ram and disk space.

They also break Intel ANS on every single release - i.e. VLANs and LACP will stop working until Intel releases a new version. For Windows 11, Intel gave up and there will be no ANS anymore[1].

And the last, january 2022 update? It casually killed L2TP...

[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...

Re: Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

#270
post #96
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to run Linux on a computer, you do your research and build/buy one where the hardware support is there. Most people don't need "latest" hardware; hardware from 2-3 years ago is fine, and, honestly, most latest hardware works fine too -- again, if you do your research. Grabbing a random machine and expecting it to work fine (especially if it's a laptop) will often fail, and that's why people spend hours on…

> Grabbing a random machine and expecting it to work fine Not random, but my current machine. How else am I (or random person on the Internet) to migrate to Linux then? Create an entire new machine just for Linux? That is a pretty hefty price. E.g. You bought an expensive nVidia card. Yeah, throw it away. Get AMD. Want dual monitors. Throw one away... I honestly dread switching to Linux. > Certainly some people have…

Honestly, your machine will probably work. Linux supports a lot of hardware. Nowadays it's rare to find any that doesn't work.

> You bought an expensive nVidia card. Yeah, throw it away

Nvidia works fine (it has to, lots of ML shit on GPUs is done on Linux), you just need proprietary drivers. If anything their support on Linux is probably better than AMD's.

Why? Just make an Ubuntu startup stick and try it without installing... Nothing lost except maybe 10 minutes of your time.

Post reply on HN