Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 470 posts

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

#421

Post by gigel82 »

infamia wrote: post #418
gigel82 wrote: post #402

I hate MS's stance on privacy like anyone else, but I have serious doubts about your post. This would be a very big thing if actually true. Most likely thing that happened was that you started Edge yourself, then clicked on the pop-up that sometimes shows up (regardless of updates installed) asking you to switch to "recommended settings" which replaces your default browser. Yes, shitty dark patterns, but definitely n…

I don't know why you would doubt this. Windows updates have been doing this for decades, first with Internet Explorer when they were battling Netscape/Firefox and now (apparently) with Edge. edit: clarity

I've been running Windows since forever on hundreds of machines and this has literally never once happened to me.

Not discounting your experience, just saying it doesn't match my own.

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

#422

Post by qbasic_forever »

0xFF0123 wrote: post #152
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.

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

Yeah there were amazon search results in app searches for a time. It's part of the reason why I switched to PopOS, which has none of that crap but builds on ubuntu's base.

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

#424

Post by dTal »

hnlmorg wrote: post #410
dTal wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My experience with Linux has been that you have the same install running for 10+ years (this is especially true for Arch because you have fewer risky distribution upgrades), Arch is needy; it commits seppuku if you abandon it for too long. Every update on Arch is a "risky distribution upgrade", and it insists that you update every day. On the other hand, I have kept Debian installs going for a great many years, with…

> Arch is needy; it commits seppuku if you abandon it for too long. It's certainly introducing more risk but these days I only update my Arch systems a maximum of once every 6 months (usually less than that) and never have an issue. This meme largely came about from ~10 years ago with the filesystem changes and migration to systemd. But it's been a pretty smooth ride since. > Every update on Arch is a "risky distribu…

>This meme largely came about from ~10 years ago with the filesystem changes and migration to systemd. But it's been a pretty smooth ride since.

It's not a meme. Just this week I attempted to update an Arch system that had been left unattended for only a couple years. It got caught in some kind of cycle where it didn't have the GPG keys required to download the latest GPG keys. Then there was some package conflict issue. Finally after much wailing and gnashing of teeth I completed the update and rebooted... "kernel not found".

I gave up on it.

And lest I be accused of incompetence, here's another Arch user's 3-year update story, only a few weeks ago, on our very own HN:

"Somehow the upgrade didn't completely hose everything. It just took a bit of finagling in the form of looking through any packages that gave errors (errors like cyclic dependency stuff and conflicts from bad use of pip) and uninstalling those that I didn't see a need for or switching them to the package manager instead of pip. About an hour of babysitting it and I had a completely updated and working Arch setup." -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29872053

So I'm sorry, but "pretty smooth ride" my ass.

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

#425

Post by aqfamnzc »

falcor84 wrote: post #316
luciusdomitius wrote: post #307

Either install Linux or accept that the actual owner of your PC (and no, this is not you). is going to do whatever they want with it. There is no third option really. "Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart." M. Aurelius

I absolutely agree, but just want to say that when trying to promote this sentiment, you really should be saying "GNU" or "GNU/Linux" rather than just "Linux".

I've recently taken to calling it GNU plus Linux.

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

#427

Post by HeavyStorm »

Windows is still my main OS because of gaming. Until not so long ago, I would still argue the benefits of this OS over its numerous competitors - HN usually considers Linux, but let's not forget OSX and even mobile systems that can be used full time, at least by non technical people.

Nowadays, I just hope that one day I'll be able to game on Linux and never have to boot windows again. The UI is shit (try using multiple languages inputs and have fun with windows), it's still unstable, a damn memory hog (I boot to almost 8 gbs of RAM these days).

At least I'll not upgrade to 11. The tpm requirement made sure of it, even if now I've updated my system - I don't think msft deserves my support as a user of their system, considering that they deemed my less than 6 years old machine unfit for 11.

And I know the security arguments. Was I more secure by being stuck with Win10? Don't think so.

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

#428

Post by dtx1 »

dijit wrote: post #419
dtx1 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I have a thinkpad with a pretty stable setup (except suspend resume, i havent even bothered trying to get that to run well) but on my desktop system Ryzen 5600x AMD rx6600xt MSI B550M pro Zen Kernel with 3600mhz XMP Ram and auto overclock settings i get a hard crash once a month with some random MCE hardware errors, bluetooth card spams my dmesg on boot with some errors i cant be bothered to fix, firefox sometim…

MCE Errors are nothing to do with Linux, it's the CPU reporting itself as faulty. I would check your warranty.

nah, it propably runs fine if i don't blindly overclock it with MSIs questionable auto OC feature and it's so rare, i don't really care

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

#429

Post by robotnikman »

dogben wrote: post #414
0xedd wrote: post #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 d…

That Armoury Crate bullshit is embeded inside the UEFI ROM. It's called Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT). I can't distinguish it from malware. Trully disgusting.

I didn't even know about the WPBT until I read this, that is truly horrifying. It's also probably a good attack vector for someone trying to install malware which persists on the machine even after reinstallation.

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

#430

Post by infamia »

gigel82 wrote: post #421
infamia wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you would doubt this. Windows updates have been doing this for decades, first with Internet Explorer when they were battling Netscape/Firefox and now (apparently) with Edge. edit: clarity

I've been running Windows since forever on hundreds of machines and this has literally never once happened to me. Not discounting your experience, just saying it doesn't match my own.

Gotcha, not discounting your experiences either. Every desktop engineer I've met (10's or 100's of thousands of workstations) were well aware of this long-standing, dark pattern (esp. after a med-large upgrades), and gnashed their teeth whenever it was discussed because of the extra work/complications it caused. Hopefully those bad times aren't coming back. I'm not hopeful though. For example, Microsoft's tactics preventing Firefox from changing the default browser reminds me a lot of the nasty, underhanded Microsoft from way back in the day.

https://www.ghacks.net/2021/12/21/a-recent-windows-update-pr...

Post reply on HN