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Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

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Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#351
post #4

Tell me again how Microsoft has changed and it isn’t the same company anymore, and how EEE is ancient history.

Microsoft, like many other big modern tech companies, just treat goodwill like a currency. Now the time has come to spend it again. I don't believe for a second that EEE is gone from Microsofts culture and strategy.

It's more that Microsoft is a huge company that contains both benevolent and malevolent actors. The Windows team has embraced dark patterns wholeheartedly whereas the VSCode team is doing good work to earn developer love. That these goals are in complete opposition seems to not trouble MS execs.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#352

Linux Desktop feeling extra good today, my sound often doesn't work but I don't have to deal with Microsoft nonsense.

I sorely wish this was the case. I have a W11 install now but always have an extra SSD for a Linux install (right now EndeavourOS with Cinnamon), but there's little things that keep me away from using it fulltime. The majority of them are gaming related, but there are other reasons. Last hiccup I encountered was trying to watch something with a friend over Discord, only to find out audio sharing is nonexistent. There seemed to be a way to pipe all audio through Pipewire mic input and have it work that way, but then I'd lose the noise threshold functionality. Ended up just booting into Windows anyway.

I'm really hoping with SteamOS, the Steam Deck, and the Linus daily challenge videos, the Linux desktop can get more love, but it's just not there for the majority of people yet.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, there's one very big reason you'll need Windows 11: that Windows 10 won't get security updates forever. After October 14th, 2025, you'll need to "upgrade" to it to stay secure.

That gives me four years for the tools that lock me to Windows to decide to port to literally any other OS.

Heh, exactly. I bought an amazing all-AMD laptop this summer and its 2TB SSD and 32GB RAM still lie on my desk right next to it. I'll get to opening it up and upgrading it and then will proceed to try and make it my main machine with Linux, including for light AAA gaming and main gaming machine for everything that's not AAA -- console emulators, MAME / arcade emulators, Steam Proton, you name it.

(Well, for programming too of course but a 6c / 12t mobile CPU might not be good enough for a main dev machine. We'll see.)

So yep, my sentiment is exactly like yours. I'll start slowly but seriously work towards ridding myself of Windows forever. It has been on a downward spiral for far too long to ignore anymore.

Linux is not all sunshine and rainbows either but at this point I am willing to take the plunge and create my own Frankenstein monster of scripts and workarounds so that it can work perfectly for me. Plus, if more people start doing it, desktop Linux will eventually improve (lol; but who knows?).

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#354
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd, I run Slackware-current, with Fluxbox. To suspend, I just run "xlock & loginctl suspend" from a script being called from a Fluxbox submenu. Dumb easy.

Good satire!

To clarify the parent's comment, he clicks a button in a menu to suspend, he just also said what the button is doing. It's probably less complicated than you're thinking.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#355
post #305
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On windows 10, holding down the ctrl-button while clicking on the icon will switch to the recently used instance and if you keep clicking it will cycle through the open instances. If you want this behaviour as standard, you can enable it by editing the register. https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-last-active-click-wind...

Thanks man, TIL! Too bad ctrl-click means new instance on gnome, I'm bound to confuse the two now...

In windows, shift-clicking or middle clicking opens a new instance

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#356

Was there not a huge lawsuit around this kind of crap in the 90's? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor... . How did this anticompetitive BS ever get the greenlight from legal?

A good thing about monopolies is that it gives the government the power to step in and stop anti-consumer abuses. In duopolies, such as Windows/MacOS or iPhone/Android, the government doesnt have as much power.

I think this is a pointless distinction, and I'm not a lawyer, but I also don't think it even matters from a legal perspective whether a company is a Hasbro-style 100% monopoly. The reason the government is going after these companies is probably just because the people in charge are incompetent and/or lazy morons.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#357
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be worse. You could be on MacOS where Cmd-Tab switches between apps not windows. I currently have 13 browser windows open (each with 3 to 15 tabs) and another 9 windows of other things (terminal, vscode, etc....) and IMO The Cmd-Tab vs Ctrl-Tab vs Ctrl-Up vs Ctrl-Down suck compared to Windows. I really want to easily switch to the previous window, not the previous app. Command + backtick doesn't work either.…

The app 'Contexts' will change your life if you feel like this.

Contexts is great, I like it better than alt+tab on Windows 10!

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#358
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caveat emptor: your normal apps might struggle still. Some common things have wayland native replacements but it might be jarring. Redshift (automatic Color temperature change) -> gammastep Dunst (notifications) -> mako Rofi (launcher) -> idk I just used kitty+fzf with some special options.

wlsunset was a lot simpler for me to get to work compared to gammastep, which I thought had too steep a learning curve. I only need it for the yellow light, thought.

Oh interesting. I don’t know if I set anything specific but I usually just invoke it with my lat/long and it seems to work.

Will look at wlsunset too, maybe it’s a better UX. :)

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#359
post #285

Windows 11 was an absolute downgrade to my Windows 10 experience. To the point that I went back to windows 10 in less than a day of Windows 11. 1. I can't ungroup the taskbar windows. So now I have to hoover the taskbar to see multiple instances of the same software; 2. Who the hell thought it was a great idea to couple all the commands like WiFi, power energy, etc under the same menu? On Windows 11 I needed to click…

> Who the hell thought it was a great idea to couple all the commands like WiFi, power energy, etc under the same menu? ahem, gnome, ahem

I could be wrong but iOS/macOS were probably the inspiration for MS.

Re: Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround

#360
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, microsoft-edge links are used through Windows itself when it wants to show a webpage, e.g. from Cortana or a desktop widget. They open in Edge even if you've told Windows you want a different default browser

FWIW seems to me that if you rename msedge.exe to somethingelse.exe, that those microsoft-edge links don't work any longer. I don't know if you can actually get it to open another browser (I tried renaming firefox.exe to msedge.exe without achieving the desired result) but at least you can stop it from opening Edge, if that's what you want.

I wonder if it's keeping the protocol ms-edge, although I'd assume you'd have noticed that. I guess you could try creating a tiny app named msedge.exe that reopens the links as https://
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