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Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop

news.ycombinator.com

71–80 of 158 posts

Re: Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop

#72
Just once I would like to see whoever is responsible for something like this show up in the replies and be completely honest about how it’s hostile shitty behaviour, but on the other hand they increased Edge engagement by 0.5% which really impressed their bosses boss.

Re: Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop

#73
post #30

Does anyone have a list of all the dark patterns Microsoft has used to push IE, Bing, and Edge? It's truly astounding.

What I find astonishing is, that they were fined 561 million once by the EU, for not having an explicit "ballot box" where the user was offered different browser as alternative and now they can do way worse, without getting fined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission "On 16 December 2009, the European Union agreed to allow competing browsers, with Microsoft providing a "ballot box" screen letti…

This is a failure of the regulatory government agencies to do their jobs. If we actually had regulators that actually did their jobs, MS, Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, etc would have been smashed into dozens of smaller companies.

Re: Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop

#74
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

proton

Tried, not good enough. I don't understand why this conversation has to be had ad nauseam.

When did you try, and which genres? Out of all the 20+ games that I bought in the last two years, all of them were Gold or Platinum rank on ProtonDB. The only real issues these days are with anti-cheat stuff in competitive multiplayer games.

Re: Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop

#75
post #22

It happens when Edge updates which, like Chrome, happens fairly frequently so I can understand why you might think that it is forced. But you can delete it and not have it appear until Edge updates again. Note that Adobe Acrobat Reader is one of many that does the same thing, it used to do it, stopped for a while, and is now doing it again. My errant thought is that this sort of thing happens when the marketing depar…

That's what I keep telling people about consent, but they're not very receptive. Strange. It's not really forced, since it only happens sometimes. Look, I can see you might think something is still done without your consent and without your best interest in mind, but actually you can go an entire night or evening without anything happening! It only happens fairly frequently. We just need to weaken words a bit until b…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried, not good enough. I don't understand why this conversation has to be had ad nauseam.

Counterpoint, I tried it and it was good enough for me. I play games every day and haven’t used Windows since 2020.

I used it for about 3 months for Monster Hunter World with some occasional visual bugs and artifacts, just had to tweak some settings to go from 3 FPS to 60 FPS (seemed to only use my GPU if I selected a particular DirectX version). One day a patch dropped and it went back to 3 FPS. Couldn't find a remedy, so I installed windows. No more visual bugs and artifacts and no more tweaking settings to play the game.

Re: Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop

#78
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is also free and doesn't have this problem.

Games.

I saw your same - not really valuable - comment above. If you're using Windows for games only, then having or not having an Edge icon on the desktop is not an issue.

If you're using it professionally, then it's annoying, along with all the ads, tracking, dark patterns and other bullshit you receive in Windows - especially that you already pay for a license.

Compare that with Linux, which mostly gets out of your way, doesn't track you and is free.

I've been using (Fedora) Linux for professional work for more than 5 years now and still very happy with it. I'm also gaming occasionally on a dual-booted Windows (browsing HN while Death Stranding is installing :)) and get annoyed every time when booting into it.

It always feels good to go back to Linux, where you can play most non-AAA game titles anyway.

Re: Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried, not good enough. I don't understand why this conversation has to be had ad nauseam.

When did you try, and which genres? Out of all the 20+ games that I bought in the last two years, all of them were Gold or Platinum rank on ProtonDB. The only real issues these days are with anti-cheat stuff in competitive multiplayer games.

Must have been 2019

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34479899

Re: Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop

#80
post #48

This is the kind of shenanigan that happens when you use an OS that literally has third party advertisements in its start menu

I wish there was a genuine Pro version of Windows I could pay for that didn’t have any of this.

I have Win 10 Pro genuine that comes with my laptop and I still get candy crush icon and some others that I forgot, but microsoft team you can't remove it, it comes back every time so what are you talking about
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