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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

#481

Post by hakfoo »

Spivak wrote: post #125
saghm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 brow…

"Tightly integrated" can mean "We designed A and B to fit together well. We built them side by side and tested them together" That's perfectly acceptable and can make a fair direct case to the customer.

What's not:

* Not allowing controls to manage integrations. Maybe I want to connect A to C, D, or Q instead, or not allow a connection at all.

* Accidentally-on-purpose clobbering customer choices (ooh, whoops, we reset all your file associations for the sixth time this year, perhaps now you'll stop changing them).

* Using undocumented APIs or similar gimmicks to ensure a competitive product will be inherently hamstrung.

* Pretending a seperate product is an indivisible component of the whole. I'm sure there are a bunch of places where Edge could be pulled out in favour of an external help-file/PDF/etc viewer.

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

#482

Post by hakfoo »

yomlica8 wrote: post #449
zelphirkalt wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows is definitely my preferred gui productivity environment lmao, not because I don't believe you really think what you write, but because how user hostile everything in Windows seems to me, if you only want to change a single setting. It will be hidden behind 3 level deep settings dialogs and a "material design" flat links connecting those setting dialogs, so almost no visual indication, to make things stand o…

The main problem with Windows' terrible settings is that they are constantly changing. So when you search for how to change something all the instructions are obsolete.

There's a frustrating trend across the software industry-- chasing that hypothetical "next billion" users by removing customization, complicating discovery, and nerfing advanced features.

I'm sure Windows 11 works perfectly if you teleported in from a dimension without computers and never had to unlearn any prior experiences. You'll use the defaults, which of course expose you to the most possible Microsoft revenue streams, and not notice the friction points. It's probably a net positive for that user if they make customization limited and frustrating-- don't give him any paint and he can't paint himself into a corner, resulting in an expensive support session.

The most cynical take on this is that the advanced users, who are suffering from the constant abuse from the software undermining attempts at personalization and breaking workflows, are not a priority. They've already paid, and are unlikely to suddenly turn into a new revenue centre.

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

#483

Post by codebolt »

Zetobal wrote: post #260
devsda wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I guess the "best viewed with" and "please use the last version of chrome" banners preventing you from logging in some services could be seen as a bug from normal users.

This is the reason. Too often I will go to a site and find that it's unusable with Firefox.

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

#484

Post by simion314 »

jwells89 wrote: post #398
simion314 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Getting global menus set up in your DE of choice for example takes a surprising amount of twiddling and even at its best doesn't work with a lot of software. And is one click and works with all apps in Windows ?

No, but there’s no chance of Windows becoming my primary platform — I use it almost exclusively for games (some of which don’t play nice with Proton) — and so I don’t need as much from it. Additionally, Windows isn’t usually sold on its flexibility to anywhere near the extent that desktop Linux is. As such I don’t think it’s strange to expect that taking advantage of said flexibility is relatively painless, regardles…

But you realize that getting all possible apps to look the same and have same behavior is very hard, you have GTK2, GTK3, GTK4 with their limited customization, then you have Qt apps, KDE apps, Java with their different GUI frameworks, node apps, Wine apps, other smaller toolkits used in Python etc.

But as you admit in Linux you have infinite more power to attempt setting up a global menu, but this feature is not something a mainstream distro offers by default so IMO is not a fair complaint.

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

#485

Post by Draiken »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #480
Draiken wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be mad at Dell, not Linux. Pretty much every sleep issue I've encountered in the wild is due to the hardware manufacturer's shitty implementation. The only reason some features "just work" with Windows is because they only care if it works with Windows. Ultimately it still sucks if it happens with your hardware, but you should direct your frustration to the right party. Maybe one day people will care enough and inter…

Either way it doesn't change the fact that you need to do this on Linux but not Windows. There's dozens of fiddly little things like this that you don't need to do on Windows. I use each OSX, Ubuntu and Windows daily but I could never recommend my mother switch to Ubuntu or Mint because of things like this.

Come on. Linux is stable enough for anyone. So many people have done exactly what you said can't be done, and then never again had to play tech support for their relatives. I can get a flash disk with Linux and it will work for the proverbial mom for years without touching it.

What I found happens often is pure confirmation bias. People already hate Linux and love Windows/OSX, then find reasons to confirm that. I'm sure I have some of that too, but I try to see all sides.

The amount of blue screens and shitty issues my wife puts up with on Windows is astonishing. Disconnecting/reconnecting dongles so they work again. Manually searching for drivers. She re-installs Windows every few months and normalizes it.

Same goes for OSX. Apple fanboys at work having random segfaults on services, OS upgrades that sometimes takes them down a full day. A coworker of mine still runs a years old OSX version because last time he updated he had to pay hundreds of dollars for Apple care to get his MacBook working again. I still remember when I had to use OSX, wasting days searching for solutions after every OS upgrade.

My point is: there are issues with all OSes and this generalization that "Linux is the bad one" is a plain lie. Especially for basic usage, which is what normal people usually stick to.

Yes, if you pick a bad distro and sometimes gets hardware from manufacturers that intentionally fuck Linux over, you're gonna have a hard time.

But on the other side, you have a choice. You can choose a more stable distro, you can tweak it as you like. Something other OSes can't offer.

Everyone is free to choose, but this meme against Linux is plain tiring.

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

#486

Post by tech2 »

Zetobal wrote: post #257
fh973 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is effectively also the reason for the modular PC platform to exist. If peak Windows also means peak modular hardware, it's a dim future with closed Apple and Android-style hardware. Nothing's composable, OS is bound to the specific piece of hardware.

Intel just announced that they will be putting ram on the package with their next gen CPUs...

One would hope they might instead consider the use of CAMM - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_Attached_Memory_Mo... - but I guess we'll see :(

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

#487

Post by ubermonkey »

tallanvor wrote: post #367
ubermonkey wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME, people who insist that Windows is somehow "better" are people with only a very very shallow level of experience with it, and who have zero or near-zero experience with Macs or well-configured Linux. But they're a LOT of those people, and so it gets repeated.

Macs aren't for everyone. I had a Macbook Air back in the days where they still came with spinning drives, and after dealing with random freezes for months, I finally discovered that the drive was failing despite there not being any warnings displayed. It was only when trying to upgrade to the next version of the OS that it told me it couldn't install on a failing drive... But it would have happily let me keep using…

Sounds like you got a lemon. I'm sorry that happened to you.

I've never had trouble with Macs reporting hardware faults. I mean, drives fail WAY less often now than they used to, so it's a rare event, but the errors I've gotten have been pretty easy to parse and interpret.

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

#488

Post by DirkH »

c0nducktr wrote: post #160
diffeomorphism wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows: ads in the start menu, candy crush, hey you are trying to install chrome and I don't like that. Ubuntu: one line message in the terminal about we released thing, feel free to try it. Yeah, basically the same thing.

It's the same thing, just one company has taken it further. I realize this is a slippery slope argument, but when there are countless examples of how this slopes is slippery, I think it's a valid point of contention.

It's not the same thing for the same reason that a shiny billboard for an ad right outside your bedroom window that you can't not see every time you look outside is not the same as a text ad on the first page of a book you want to read.

A text ad on the first page of a book is not a slippery slope to a billboard right outside your window.

I use a Linux terminal everyday. I completely forgot it has any ads at all until reading this thread. I have to put conscious effort to find where the ad is.

It would be impossible for a daily Windows user to forget their OS has ads.

My 2 cents at any rate

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

#489

Post by cbozeman »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #469
cbozeman wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2TB 2.5" SATA SSDs are $61. 2TB M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs are $63. Why are you worried about 20-30 GB again??

Bandwidth - was building a VM. A 10GB VM is much more convenient than 40GB one, to move copy, share, run from network drive etc. And yes, a few older drives are kinda small here. Laptop vendors overcharge on storage so most of ours have a half TB, which goes fast. We could buy a number of new drives, or we could look up an esoteric CLI and free up 30g.

Ahhh yes, now that makes sense.

Point taken!

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

#490

Post by fphhotchips »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #432
dustedcodes wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, with all due respect you are the first person who has ever claimed that Office doesn't work on a Mac. In fact, Office on Mac is notorious for being BETTER than on Windows, even Microsoft employees say so themselves.

You must live in a mirror universe. Office on Mac is awful. Excel doesn't even have Power Query!

Excel doesn't do half the Excel things, PowerPoint doesn't have reader mode, the list goes on. Anyone who thinks Office for Mac is any good hasn't used Office for Windows in 10 years.
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