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Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

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Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#331

Post by summerlight »

orev wrote: post #234
summerlight wrote: post #99

Unfortunately in the current landscape, I think Firefox will unlikely gain the traction again even if we can bring those big techs to a fair playground. Browser development becomes an extremely complex, expensive project that requires at least hundreds of engineering headcounts and Mozilla cannot simply afford it. Worse, Servo was a kind of big bet to change the equation from the ground but Mozilla decided to abandon…

Servo was not abandoned, it was setup to act as a proving ground for various techniques, and the things that worked out well were integrated into Firefox. The group was disbanded because they accomplished their initial goals.

And most of its developers got laid off. At the moment, Mozilla told that they need to "put a crisper focus on new product development and go to market activities" because "economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue".

I don't think it has achieved its original goal and gracefully disbanded, unless I see any strong evidence that the decision was primarily and independently driven by the Servo/Rust engineering leaders.

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#332

Post by RunSet »

russnes wrote: post #272
InitialLastName wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Any links from many Microsoft apps (including searches in the Start Menu that silently turn into web searches) - PDFs (sometimes, even if you don't have Edge set as your default PDF app) (even though Edge is actually the least unusable non-paid PDF viewer for Windows) Besides that, Edge will randomly reset itself as the default on updates.

For PDFs you should try this bad boy https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf

SumatraPDF singlehandedly makes the format readable for me. The alternatives are complete rubbish- in other words, worthy of Adobe.

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#333

Post by [deleted] »

ht85 wrote: post #141
cm2187 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the default browser matter that much? I mean how often do you click on a link outside of a browser?

You're right, it doesn't matter, they spend so much time and take so many risks (and pay so much in fines) to push their own settings for absolutely no reason.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#334

Post by CoolCold »

sshine wrote: post #244
epolanski wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly enough I can't find a better programming environment nowadays than the win, wsl, powertools combo. I noticed the same about qbittorrent tho.

Ubuntu + VSCode? Not sure where powertools come in, but I’m personally agnostic wrt. shell scripting flavours.

PowerToys may be? I'm using it with couple of plug-ins

1) find my mouse

2) search through windows titles (I tend to have 15-30 terminals with ssh)

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#335

Post by CoolCold »

ht85 wrote: post #215
epolanski wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly enough I can't find a better programming environment nowadays than the win, wsl, powertools combo. I noticed the same about qbittorrent tho.

I don't know... everything works so well on linux out of the box nowadays, and over time you can setup everything exactly as you want. As an engineer I feel like it's a great investment and loving my setup has a big impact on the enjoyment I get from work. If you spend the time, can all the annoying stuff be turned off in Windows?

I hardly remember doing any kind of special fighting or annoying stuff. What's your pain points here?

Had some issues after Win10->Win11 beta Insider build updates, but that's other story.

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#336

Post by InitialLastName »

russnes wrote: post #272
InitialLastName wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Any links from many Microsoft apps (including searches in the Start Menu that silently turn into web searches) - PDFs (sometimes, even if you don't have Edge set as your default PDF app) (even though Edge is actually the least unusable non-paid PDF viewer for Windows) Besides that, Edge will randomly reset itself as the default on updates.

For PDFs you should try this bad boy https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf

Sumatra is a phenomenal viewer, but its annotation management is miles short of the "write directly on the page" convenience that Edge achieves.

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#337

Post by hyperman1 »

foepys wrote: post #252
ht85 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The win11 / Edge bullshit finally pushed me to migrate my last win machine to linux. I used to love Windows, nowadays it just makes me bitter. Do you know typing "torrent" in the start menu doesn't find "qbittorrent"? In 2022. It sums it all. And the acquisitions... I've had countless minecraft sessions ruined because of microsoft account / store issues. Don't even get me started on realms and the chat policing bulls…

> Do you know typing "torrent" in the start menu doesn't find "qbittorrent"? In 2022. It sums it all. It's even worse. I want to open Notepad++ and begin to type N -> notepad.exe No -> notepad.exe Not -> Notepad++ Note -> notepad.exe Notep -> Notepad++ Notepa -> Notepad++ Notepad -> notepad.exe The times I actually wanted to open notepad.exe is exactly 0 but the stupid algorithm sees me mistakenly opening notepad.exe…

The notepad++ wiki has a trick for replacing notepad with np++. It basically installs np++ as a debugger for np.

I would be completely happy if my win10 stopped deciding I really want to search the word notepad on the internet with edge/bing

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#338

Post by lelanthran »

yazantapuz wrote: post #330
lelanthran wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the students with Linux boxes have some kind of problems, like the user was not a member of the dialout group or the group does not exist at all. I still prefer Linux, but no everything works "out of the box". This (requiring elevated privileges) is a very niche thing, though (raw access to the serial port).

But the students with Windows laptops did not have these kind of problems. Although I can think of a lot of issues, in this "very niche thing" Windows worked "out of the box" and Linux didn't.

> But the students with Windows laptops did not have these kind of problems. Although I can think of a lot of issues, in this "very niche thing" Windows worked "out of the box" and Linux didn't.

Yes, for this very niche thing Windows works out the box. For other not so niche things, Linux works out the box. For the not so niche thing of "set up a LAMP stack" and similar, Windows is pretty poor at it, compared to using apt-get.

Also, for this very niche thing, I'm pretty certain that the arduino IDE I installed from the repository worked out the box for serial port access.

I'm guessing that you pretended the Linux boxes were Windows, and installed on Linux by downloading it off the arduino distribution site?

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#339

Post by yazantapuz »

lelanthran wrote: post #338
yazantapuz wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the students with Windows laptops did not have these kind of problems. Although I can think of a lot of issues, in this "very niche thing" Windows worked "out of the box" and Linux didn't.

> But the students with Windows laptops did not have these kind of problems. Although I can think of a lot of issues, in this "very niche thing" Windows worked "out of the box" and Linux didn't. Yes, for this very niche thing Windows works out the box. For other not so niche things, Linux works out the box. For the not so niche thing of "set up a LAMP stack" and similar, Windows is pretty poor at it, compared to usin…

> I'm guessing that you pretended the Linux boxes were Windows, and installed on Linux by downloading it off the arduino distribution site?

Yes, that was a mistake. But it was not as simple as saying "install from apt-get" because some where using Arch-based distros (pacman), a few were using Fedora (yum) and others Ubuntu. Even so, not always that the user is added to the right group. Also, we wanted to show the new 2.0 IDE.

Re: Mozilla claims Apple, Google and Microsoft force users to use default browsers

#340

Post by RunSet »

peterangular wrote: post #132
ravenstine wrote: post #71

What exactly are these companies supposed to do? Web access really is the meat behind modern OS usage. Say what you want about Microsoft, but that's exactly what they realized when they began shipping Internet Explorer with Windows (and got into hot water over it). Safari can't be deleted from iOS, but aspects of Safari are integral to the OS. As long as someone can use another web browser for actual web browsing, as…

> Also completely remove Pocket and anything else like it. Yeah - hard agree. Pocket feels like a sheer gimmick. It cheapens the experience, and it hurts the trust people have for Firefox when they jam it in your face. I remember the original Firefox ethos where it was just a browser, and that was awesome.

At one point Firefox's slogan was "Your web the way you like it."

Now it's more like "You can disable that new change by installing an extension and trusting its developer and whoever they might sell it to at a date TBD."

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