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Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users

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

#211

Post by FireInsight »

dismalpedigree wrote: post #158
cebert wrote: post #53

I used to be a huge Windows fan, but shoving Edge upon me so aggressively has made me decide it’s time to move on. Moving forward, I’m only buying Apple or Linux devices.

I bought my pre-teen a prebuilt pc for gaming recently. Figured windows 11 would be easier due to compatibility with games and it being pre installed. After screwing with it for several hours to remove as much crap as possible, What I found was that every time it restarted there was a new prompt to reenable something, surreptitiously start using a ms service, etc. I gave up and installed Ubuntu. Not every game works…

Once Ubuntu breaks: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/

It's a gaming distro built on top of Fedora Silverblue, making it stable as heck while having up-to-date official steam, and other goodies. Works on Deck too, if you want that.

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

#213

Post by Novosell »

topaz0 wrote: post #118
smt88 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is the opposite. I spent 15 years on Linux desktops until finally switching to Windows for the sake of my producivity. I've seen promoted links in Win10/11, but never anything that harmed my productivity. Most importantly, the OS just fades into the background. I never think about it. Linux required almost-daily googling and opening up a terminal to fix or change something. It became maddening eventuall…

> [Windows 10/11] fades into the background I strongly disagree with this. When I am forced to use windows, I am constantly fighting with it to not be obnoxious. It takes many seconds to do something as simple as bring up an explorer window. I can't count the number of times I have had to dig into menus to disable this or that ad panel or other bloatware. In linux, I occasionally have to figure out how something work…

Windows key+E opens explorer. Or do you mean that it's so slow that it takes several seconds?

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

#214

Post by Thlom »

topaz0 wrote: post #118
smt88 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is the opposite. I spent 15 years on Linux desktops until finally switching to Windows for the sake of my producivity. I've seen promoted links in Win10/11, but never anything that harmed my productivity. Most importantly, the OS just fades into the background. I never think about it. Linux required almost-daily googling and opening up a terminal to fix or change something. It became maddening eventuall…

> [Windows 10/11] fades into the background I strongly disagree with this. When I am forced to use windows, I am constantly fighting with it to not be obnoxious. It takes many seconds to do something as simple as bring up an explorer window. I can't count the number of times I have had to dig into menus to disable this or that ad panel or other bloatware. In linux, I occasionally have to figure out how something work…

Just took me 0.5 seconds to bring up an explorer window.

I've mostly used OS X and Linux the last 25 years, but have been forced to use Windows at work and recently on my gaming computer, so I'm not really defending Windows here. But honestly, I don't have any big problems with it. It works OK for the most part.

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

#215

Post by The_Colonel »

p1necone wrote: post #17
piyh wrote: 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 kinda sucks now too. "Sign up for an account" is part of the install flow just like Windows. Fedora is my default "easy" Linux install nowadays, the excessively corporate vibes I get from Ubuntu feel very wrong for a Linux distro.

> "Sign up for an account" is part of the install flow just like Windows.

There's nothing wrong with providing an easily skippable option to do that (ubuntu), a completely different thing to make it a mandatory part of the installation (windows).

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

#216

Post by DrSiemer »

toastal wrote: post #195
TonyStr wrote: post #137

I used a debloater on my windows 11 laptop which also removed edge. No big deal since Firefox is my browser if choice, but I'm a Web developer and need to test my apps in different browsers. I've tried to install edge multiple times, but I can never get it to work.

Edge is still Blink+V8. Just test Chromium or Brave & forget about Edge.

Don't remember what it was exactly, but I did run into some obscure scenario (something with tab focus I believe) where Edge had a bug that prevented my code from working.

Just spin up a VM for testing Edge, the differences are small.

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

#217

Post by stevage »

antiframe wrote: post #79
doyouevensunbro wrote: post #61

I’m using Windows 11 and nothing forces open Edge on my machine. Every link opens in Brave like I told it to.

What happens when you press Win, type a query, then press enter, quickly? In Win 10 that opens a Bing search in Edge for me, no matter what settings I try. Very annoying when I type "(Win)chr(enter)" to open Chrome and get a search instead. If I do it slow it will sometimes work. I haven't tried it on Win 11 because that was what caused me to drop Windows altogether. (Everyone has their straw).

I use Windows 10. I'm not sure what settings I applied (I did do quite a few), but I don't get that.

If I do Win+aoeuaoeu+enter, nothing at all happens. It just sits with a search box open showing "No results for aoeuaoeu". I can't actually see any way of getting to a browser search window from there (whether my preferred browser or not). So I must have found some way to disable that behaviour completely. Keep trying?

(FWIW yes that is the way I open my browser: win+fire+enter. Nothing bad happens if I do it too fast.)

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

#218

Post by S201 »

biogene wrote: 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…

> Apple seems to be the only sensible alternative.

My Arch box has never once tried to display an ad to me, or coerce me to use any particular piece of software for that matter.

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

#219

Post by devsda »

codebolt wrote: post #196
foxylad wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad you didn't see Linux as a better alternative to OSX. I credit it with making me at least 10% more productive over the twenty years I've used it, partly because it is stable and fast, but mostly because it isn't trying to sell me stuff while I work.

My 8 year old son inherited an old laptop this week, that was too slow to consider installing Win 11, so I ended up loading it with XUbuntu. The first thing I did was actually to install Edge, because that makes it possible to monitor his web browsing using MS Parental Controls. I actually think it's a good browser, certainly better than Chrome (too bloated) or Firefox (too buggy). I'll never understand HNs relentles…

What are these bugs that people encounter that often in Firefox?

I've been using using Firefox on Linux and Mac for a long time now and I'm yet to see any bug(a rare occurrence) that is a show stopper(for me atleast).

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

#220

Post by Thlom »

richiebful1 wrote: post #90
piyh wrote: 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…

I'm a 'non-traditional' student (25) and my fellow students are normal undergraduate age (19). Half are having a hard time with learning some of the CAD software because they lack the experience with full featured Desktop OS's like Windows/Linux/Mac. It's surprising how fast generational change occurs

I've heard the same from university staff. The last few years many new students are having problems with the simplest stuff like uploading their course work into whatever educational platform the university is using because they have no grasp of the concept of a file.
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