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Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

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Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#501
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice it has been free for home users for many years. I assume the only reason they still keep up the facade that Windows costs money is so they can sell it to OEMs and volume licenses to businesses, which still makes them big bucks.

It only seems free for home use because the activation key for the home version is embedded in NVRAM of the machine by the OEM. You pay the OEM when you buy the machine, and they pay Microsoft.

You pay the OEM once, for a Windows 7 key, and then you run on that -- because it keeps working, with Microsoft's implicit authorization -- for the next 15+ years. They 100% would not let you do that if they cared to charge for Windows like they did in the pre-Windows 8 days when Windows was the product and not the user's data.

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forced me to make a Microsoft online account They actually don’t quite force this. They just make it very difficult to find the option to use a local account instead. (Unless they’ve changed things for the worse since last time I installed windows. Very possible!)

It's changed for the worse :( I had to help my grandma get her new laptop up and running for the first time, with Windows 11, and it got to the account screen and there were no hidden/vague options to skip or go local. I assume this is because they detected an internet connection. She literally had to get an MS account which apparently didn't work because she already had one from the last laptop. MS wanted to send he…

Correction: those were opt-out screens.

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and never felt Linux was a worthwhile alternative on desktop ZorinOS ( https://zorin.com/os ) can hopefully change your perspective.

This time, this OS really will be the one! based on ubuntu

Headaches for me are dist-upgrades breaking, or fresh reinstalls needed every couple-few years. Using Linux as primary/only OS (except for AAAA games) for 2 decades, and after dozens of distro-hops, I can finally recommend EndeavorOS for a clean, Arch-based system with rolling-release updates. My Framework laptop has everything functioning, from media buttons to sleep to GUI-managed bluetooth audio to full-disk encryption with sleep and hibernation to multiple DE choices while I watch Wayland advance, but have GTK stuff around just-in-case. It all just works.

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#505
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s unfortunate, but there’s not really a FOSS alternative for a general purpose personal-use OS that comes close to Windows. It completely owns that market. There’s macOS and iOS I guess, but they’re not generally available to install on third party equipment. Linux, sadly, is just not at all a consumer OS and never became one. The security model alone is an unfixable disaster (and many have tried over the years).

> The security model alone is an unfixable disaster (and many have tried over the years) Surely you are talking about Windows... :-)

- notarization, code signing and revocation

- sandboxing

- root of trust hardware encryption

None of the above can be enforced at a distribution level, and where these features are opt-in they’re significantly underdeveloped relative to Windows/macOS/ChromeOS as no-one is using them in significant numbers.

I’m not even sure you could find any amount of FOSS advocates to even get on board with notarization let alone get it implemented.

You could maybe enforce protected folders at the distribution level but I don’t know if anyone could really trust a feature like that if it wasn’t implemented in the kernel directly.

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not fully true. There is a way to open command prompt and skip the account login and the entire setup https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...

How kind of Microsoft to allow us to skip such a critical step using command prompt.

I bet my ass it was originally included for OEM and hardware manufacturers

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Correct: with the latest images, W11 will not under any circumstances allow you to avoid creating an MS account. It will insist you go online and halt the installer until you do. Huh. Aside from the ethics, this creates a chicken-and-egg problem for anyone who needs a PC to set up their home internet.

Most people would just get a pre-configured router from their ISP that you can just plug in.

Even those sometimes require some kind of activation on a network-connected PC or phone. It's probably not very common, but it happens.

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#508
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edge is cross platform.

That's a technicality - who in their right mind is going to choose edge on other platform if they are not already used to it from Windows.

Enough users to justify the salary of the teams making it happen.

Re: Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft

#510
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.deb is not executable. It’s an “ar” archive (see https://manpages.debian.org/buster/dpkg-dev/deb.5.en.html for more details) containing a few other archives - for files and metadata. The fact that deb extension is associated with an application (I don’t know what Eddie is) does not make deb executable. It’s like Winzip opening a zip archive on double click in Windows: yes, the file is opened, but no untrusted code h…

It is like self extracting winzip archive, because of maintainer scripts.

Self extracting archives don't require scripts or other functionality to work. They have a decompressor built-in. This is why they're _self_-extracting and not just archives.
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