Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users

ctrl.blog

121–130 of 499 posts

Re: Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, on MacOS you can use whatever browser you like, engine and all, while being unmolested for favoring something not-Safari. That’s why, after a lifetime of being a Windows user, my most recent PC purchase was a MacBook Air. I would prefer to use Linux, but where I’m at in my life, I just want something that works relatively well out of the box, and I use some software that won’t run on Linux.

There are still ads for Safari if you use something else. MacOS will pop up a notification recommending Safari for battery savings.

Yeah, they do ask you to stay, but compared to what MS does, it’s nothing. They could be better, of course, but they aren’t in the same league with MS/Edge nags and abuse.

Re: Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users

#123

It's their OS. Seems like an odd issue.

Wasn't there a major lawsuit long ago between Netscape and Microsoft over software bundling. Pretty sure it Microsoft in reaction made Internet Explorer free to avoid the monopoly claim effectively. This bankrupted Netscape because their browser was their only revenue driver whereas Microsoft could still sell its other products. Mozilla the non-profit was formed and inherited Netscape's browser software which was then supported by Google paying for it's search engine to be the default browser page in Firefox and funding the majority of the donations to Mozilla for years. So it's actually a huge deal with seemingly exactly the same precedent from the same company only a couple decades later. Kind of surprising they keep trying so it must be very lucrative.

Re: Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users

#124
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux required almost-daily googling and opening up a terminal to fix or change something. I usually try to avoid discussions of the OS, since it's such a terribly boring topic. However, this is quite an extraordinary claim that is made without any details. Perhaps you could elaborate. As someone that has used various Linux distros for nearly twenty years, I don't think I could construct a scenario in which someone…

I believe it. I've used linux desktops for 20 years also and command line is definitely a must on a daily basis. Ive also used Windows and agree that it just fades into background. Windows 10/11 definitely less paiinful on the desktop. These days with better integration with and tools for Linux cli, Windows is definitely my preferred gui productivity environment. Many Linux fans don't know better or won't admit it be…

I just set up Windows and spent an entire week googling how to tame it. Turns out dism.exe at the CLI is required to make it free up 20 to 30GB! of disk space it was wasting.

Many, many hours and late nights figuring out how to turn off telemetry, Edge and more. Multiple Group policy editor settings to force it to do what is asked and no more. For some reason updates and uninstalls take forever and uninstalls can’t be batched. (A powsh I found didn’t work) I could go on…

“Fades in the background” my ass. :-P

Re: Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users

#125
post #52
post #37

I don't care for edge for the most part, but there is actually one integration with edge that I have come to like. When I click on an email link inside outlook, edge opens the link, and also displays a sidebar which displays the email. Super handy IMO. Somehow we need to find a balance that allows vendors to tightly integrate their apps but prevent abusing this. MS is everyone's favorite whipping boy, but I fear what…

> Somehow we need to find a balance that allows vendors to tightly integrate their apps but prevent abusing this A vendor of a web browser and email client, sure. A vendor of an operating system and one (or both) of a web browser and an email client, hell no. If anything, an operating system should be forced _not_ to tightly integrate to vendor-specific apps and instead should provide integration loosely and in a way…

I do think people like Dolby Atmos, Android Auto, Airdrop, SMB, systemd, the whole of SteamOS and I think when you get down to it "tight integration but I don't like it" is the only definition you'll get that actually will encompass what people mean. Because what makes Springboard on iOS okay when on Android you can have Nova? What makes NFS okay to build in the kernel but not Airdrop? What makes Steam's overlay browser okay to tightly integrate but not Edge?

The whole OS is a mess of tightly coupled software with messy boundaries. I don't think the coupling is the thing that matters.

Re: Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users

#126

Microsoft is also forcing office 365 support to end on windows servers in 2025/2026. It's going to be a blood bath if you run on prem.

Meh. I just use text files and emacs. And I hacked sc to use emacs key bindings for spreadsheets. It's far from an ideal system, but it works for me. Simplicity can be nice.

How is your personal preference relevant at all under a comment of enterprise-level setup? You are going to ask everyone in the company to use emacs?

Re: Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users

#129
post #7

I gave my old parents the latest hand-me-up laptop and installed ubutntu on it because of windows 11. The install process and default configuration is so user hostile to someone that "just needs to use chrome". My niece & nephew have only known ChromeOS/iOS/Android. They will never use windows until a college course requires some specific software, or they get a desk job. I think they will for sure eventually "learn…

Ubuntu is now bundling advertisements for their paid services in apt upgrade output and the GUI software sources manager, in packages which cannot be uninstalled because they're hard dependencies of the `ubuntu-desktop` metapackage. Plus they've replaced Firefox with a package which installs a Snap, which loads so slowly they added a "snap opened" notification.

FWIW there's really nothing wrong with uninstalling this kind of metapackage. I've been uninstalling the "ubuntu-desktop" metapackage as I trim my ubuntu systems, for over a decade. I use a combination of "debfoster -n" and aptitude for the trimming ... it is a bit annoying but it's just once per install.

That said, for the past couple years I've just run Debian and Arch. But I'll probably use ubuntu again for a while when I get a new framework laptop later this month, the hardware is too new, some special/custom kernel package provided for the latest ubuntu will probably be the most convenient solution initially, and I find trimming back ubuntu isn't too bad. Yes, you have to remove the "desktop" meta-package. It's fine.

Re: Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users

#130

Am I the only one who thinks it's expected behavior for microsoft-edge://bing.com to open in Edge as opposed to any other browser? Edge isn't being forced onto people. People are just opening a deeplink into Edge.

Microsoft is the one generating the deep links.
Post reply on HN