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Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

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

#371

Post by notreallyserio »

prawn wrote: post #219
qbasic_forever wrote: post #105

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.

Frustrating thing is it's hard to escape. It's petty, but one of the most infuriating episodes of my life was Apple forcing that U2 album into everyone iOS owner's existence and making it difficult (impossible at the time?) to delete. I'd forgotten all about it until, a couple of phones later, it reappeared as the first song played every time I connected my phone to the car. Petty, like I said, but enraging. Having s…

I had a problem getting my car to recognize my iphone, specifically constant USB "unsupported" errors. It turned out the problem was I had no music loaded on my device. I downloaded that U2 album and like magic the problem was resolved. Thanks Bono!

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

#372

Post by w4rh4wk5 »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #350
w4rh4wk5 wrote: post #290

> How do you deal with Microsoft's crap on a daily basis? I've been exclusively using Windows 10 since 2016 on my main rig as well as my laptop. While there are a lot of small annoyances, for me, it's been far from _on a daily basis_. I'd say, from 360 days in the year, I spend maybe 10 days dealing with some Windows bullshittery. These are the things I changed on my system: - Disable Windows Defender real-time scann…

Same here. I use Windows since ever on the desktop, and Linux on the servers (ever is ca. 1994) I like Windows very much on the client side - everything pretty much works without any problems. I used to use Classic Shell but I got rid of it when I realized that I actually always start programs though a search (pressing the Win key and starting to type). As I said somewhere else, once every year or so I install Linux…

There's a lot in here I can relate to.

I specifically use Classic Shell _because_ I always start programs through search, i.e. pressing the Windows key and start typing. It's just that the Windows start menu search doesn't work well for me. Linus from LTT ranted about this on multiple occasions.

I ran Linux (tried Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, and Mint) on my Lenovo T460s and the experience was quite bad. Battery life was down to 2.5 hours; even in sleep state, battery drain was significant. Often the laptop would wake up from sleep without apparent reason. The log showed that the lid switch was actuated while the laptop was, in fact, just sitting on my desk without anyone operating it. This never happened on Windows.

About every second Arch system update spawned new issues related to either ACPI, using the docking station or HDMI output. Things were better on Debian based distros but still a pain. I remember trying to get a bluetooth speaker to work, giving up after 5 hours of debugging.

Recently, while visiting a friend, I connected my laptop to a bluetooth speaker, now running Windows, and was surprised that it just worked as one would expect.

Yeah, so far, my experience with Linux on the desktop hasn't been great.

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

#373

Post by hutzlibu »

open-source-ux wrote: post #359
oblio wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone from Microsoft is reading: If this is true, find a way to FIRE THOSE PEOPLE OR FORCE THEM TO USE WINDOWS! I don't care how great they are (on paper), or how kewl MacOS is, they should either walk the walk or get out. I'm sure there still are more than enough designers willing to work on products used by 1 billion people.

I'm also shocked to hear that designers at Microsoft are designing features for Windows on a Mac. I presume these are 'UX Designers' or 'Interaction Designers'. Imagine the opposite scenario for Apple and how absurd it sounds: designers at Apple designing features for MacOS or iOS using Windows OS laptops. This prompts the following question: What design apps are the Microsoft designers using on a Mac that they can't…

"What design apps are the Microsoft designers using on a Mac that they can't use on a Windows machine? (Is it Mac-only Sketch?)"

The main designer tools, as far as I am aware, are bundled in the Adobe suite and that works on windows, as well as Mac.

But there are tons of other designer apps, that are Mac only - but I would assume it is mainly a designer thing to have Macs - they have been succesfully marketed (and to some excent were designed) for creative folks.

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

#374

Post by gruez »

cerved wrote: post #281
4cao wrote: post #251

> How do you deal with Microsoft's crap on a daily basis? I don't use Windows 11. On Windows 10, I modify the installation image with DISM, removing as much of the unnecessary and user-hostile stuff as possible. (Some of these packages are hidden but can be un-hidden and then uninstalled anyway. Edge can also be completely removed at this stage.) I make extensive changes to the registry that disable all the unwanted…

would you consider sharing this?

Not OP but there are many projects along those lines, eg. https://github.com/DrEmpiricism/Optimize-Offline/

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

#375

Post by gruez »

cortic wrote: post #331
sdfhbdf wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically deny windows access to its update system If that also disables security updates that is not a good advice.

My advice would be to take control of your own security. Microsoft do not have your best interests at heart.

take control how? installing adblock and not downloading from shady websites isn't going to save you from stuff like BlueKeep.

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

#377

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

medo-bear wrote: post #93
SantiagoElf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Linux since Redhat 6.2 back in 1998. I have had my share of xconfig edits, bash scripts, etc explorations. I am now reaching 36, I just like 'things that work' - like Windows. Windows works with all my hardware, with all my 7 laptops, with all my 2 towers, I can install Visual Studio 2022 on it, I can install Ubuntu in WSL2 and I can play Dota2/Civ/Baldur's Gate/Warhammer 40k Insquisitor Martyr/list…

without games windows would crumble. what has been changing in the past few years is the ammount of support given to gaming on linux as well as nvidia actively developing drivers for linux due to the machine learning community. it will be interesting to see how this develops also, as someone who has to keep a windows machine for availability of certain applications that have no linux versions yet, the statement that…

> without games windows would crumble

Eh, pretty sure it is mostly Office, specifically Outlook, that keep Windows alive. Glorious PC Gaming Master Race is relatively small, although they do spend a lot of money.

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

#378

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

jiggawatts wrote: post #130
schleck8 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Based on this very recent comment, even the creaters of Windows do not: I made a joke about this after the Windows 11 update introduced the new right click menu, meaning things like 7zip and my file reputation tool where all an additional click away for no apparent reason other than putting bigger spacing and more icons. That just had to be designed by atleast someone who doesn't power use Windows, and maybe even d…

Microsoft broke their own right-click menu integrations in Explorer by doing this. "Open with Code" and "Open with Visual Studio" have both been relegated to the "Show more options" submenu. It absolutely boggles the mind that any of this was shipped. This is Beta level software.

Well, if you want to go down this road, let's really talk about the entire right-click menu paradigm. I do almost all of my development on a personal MBP, but I make sure that my work PC laptop can _do_ everything I would need it to do for my job. On this minimally-functional, bog-standard corporate Dell machine, it takes about a third of a second to bring up the right-click menu. Juuust enough time to make you wait. There are TWENTY-EIGHT menu items, NINE of which are sub-menu openers. The menu is so tall that it takes 7/8ths the height of the screen, so I can't reliably know at what item the cursor will be lying at when it appears, and I have to think about it. This supposed "convenience" has now become an actual impediment to productivity.

I suppose I should be thankful. Before the last refresh, there were so many items in the right-click menu that it was taller than the internal LCD could display, and I would need to scroll to get to the bottom.

Sure, the Mac has right-click (and I don't like how it embeds a possibly-very-long file name on the "compress" item), but the entire _way_ you work with files on a Mac doesn't rely on it. Windows has centered it's workflow on right-click, so their right-click menu is critical to using it in anger. Every time I need to do something on that machine, I'm just glad to stop and go back to my Mac.

EDIT: I used Windows Explorer for these figures, because that's what everyone has. I just did the same thing in Directory Opus, which I use as a replacement. It took longer to open the right-click menu, and has 4 more items.

I should run a poll: how many items are in your right-click menus in Explorer? How many of them are just "convenience" placeholders for things you would normally be doing with dragging-and-dropping between targets IN THE PROGRAM? How many are "convenience" items for compression-related tasks? I suppose I could remove a bunch of these right-click menu item targets if I did some research on how.

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

#379

Post by gambiting »

f1refly wrote: post #280
gambiting wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not a feature then? Yes I'm ok with my browsing history and bookmarks and tabs and extensions and everything else being synced using google servers because it makes my life easier. To give another example - my Volvo allows me to track every single journey in the app, seeing the electricity/petrol consumption, mileage, start/end date..... Yes it means Volvo now knows all of my travel history. But it also m…

What do you gain from having every single journey in your app and seeing the fuel consumption? Have you ever actually looked at those stats? I think I've never in my life been in a situation where I thought "Dang, I wish I knew how much kilometers my last 18 trips where, if only I had some kind of tracking device that kept these stats for me!"

>>Have you ever actually looked at those stats?

Literally all the time. It's a PHEV, and maybe not for every journey, but for 8/10 journeys I will look how many kWh of electricity and litres of petrol were consumed, and how many kWh of electricity have been regenerated. When I drive I try to stay in EV mode as long as possible, and regenerate power as much as I can and looking at those stats after every journey gives me a lot of satisfaction. I've driven across Europe last year and it was great to see detailed stats for the entire journey.

It's literally one of my favourite things about this car for me, alongside the ability to pre-heat and pre-cool it remotely.

Edit: also, I don't use it this way, but I know people find the online journal hugely useful for tracking business miles, you can just download an .xml with all trips from the app and that makes it super easy claiming tax/fuel costs back.

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

#380

Post by cassac »

codefreakxff wrote: post #369

During start up it asked me if I wanted to change my browser settings and I said no. My settings were not changed. Either you clicked yes without realizing what it would do, or there was something that made it not ask you. I think the wording of the question was something along the lines of “internet security”, which is Microsoft’s way of tricking users, so you may not have realized what it would do when you said yes

I agree with your assessment. They use dark patterns to get people to click yes.
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