Then Microsoft started this aggressive, disruptive push to bring it to iOS Safari's level as the only browser people should use.
I don't know any good operating systems for normal people anymore. Windows 10 and 11 are hostile, macOS only runs on very expensive hardware and doesn't run most programs people need (because the business world is still Windows oriented) and Linux has been making progress but still isn't a good alternative for the common user unless they have an expert to rely upon when something breaks down. ChromeOS doesn't run on most devices (it can, but the images aren't available) and I wouldn't recommend a Google-oriented OS to most people anyway, if they can avoid it; Android is bad enough already.
I miss the Windows 7 days. The Win10/11 kernel may have seen loads of improvements, the UI and basic behaviour has only been regressing for many years now. The Windows 11 window snapping is nice but it doesn't excuse the aggressive spyware that comes with the OS, and neither does it excuse this antitrust lawsuit in waiting.
IME "common users" already rely on an expert when their Windows OS breaks down. Not long ago I had to walk my aunt through opening the command prompt in Windows 10 and entering the command to do a full reboot (as opposed to that hybrid shutdown+hibernation) because for some reason i couldn't really figure out from the phone the WiFi stopped working even after shutdown/reboots (she shuts her computer down whenever she isn't using it and she called me after not having connection for days). I remembered reading at some point that normally in Win10 the kernel doesn't shutdown fully but instead hibernates and my guess was that the WiFi driver somehow got in a state that didn't let it work and instead of restarting at reboot it was getting hibernated so i tried to do a full reboot. Which worked, though it could have also been something else that happened to get unstuck after the full reboot - at some other time she also had the entire taskbar get frozen and that would persist normal reboots (via alt+f4 and selecting to reboot) which was also "fixed" by that full reboot (she has the steps and commands to type written in a piece of paper by now :-P).
Not to mention the myriad of issues encountered due to forced updates.
I think that the whole "Windows is good for common users" idea is very outdated nowadays, it might have been the case a decade or so ago, but it certainly isn't anymore.
When a Linux update fails (which can happen automatically; for example, Ubuntu 16 reserved a very small boot partition and upgrading it to the latest version leaves it with too little space to keep the normal amount of kernels available), you end up digging through files and configuration and terminal commands. This is different from Windows where you have four buttons to click, and if all of those fail, you either reinstall the entire OS or reverse engineer Microsoft's logic and directory structures.
When Windows fails, the OS usually detects the issue and reverts all the work. Their self repair is excellent. Sure, Windows Update may be broken for a while and the forced restarts make the whole process annoying, but the system still works.
Linux can easily leave the system unbootable while Windows has the necessary recovery options. Boot recovery and System Restore are some features that definitely improve Windows' stability. Timeshift with a CoW filesystem and some GRUB hooks can somewhat replicate the effect, but I haven't seen any distros enable all of those by default yet.
For example: I enabled encryption in the installers of both Ubuntu and Manjaro and hibernation simply didn't work. I managed to make it work with some config tweaks on both, but out of the box my laptop simply shut down and lost all of my work when the battery got low. My laptop also had no sound, stuttery video and no working microphone because of missing drivers for Nvidia, Intel and Realtek chips. Udev rules broke sound every time I unplugged my HDMI drive or let it go to sleep.
Windows sometimes breaks down because of shitty drivers, but I've never seen it happen this severely.
This was probably all related to the manufacturer's decisions about board configuration, drivers, and other proprietary crap, but the end user doesn't care whose fault that is and neither should they.
I usually disable fast startup, and it sounds like she should disable it too.
Whoever set it up so that you have to reboot to shut down should have realized that the way they were implementing this was a bad idea.
There are many many distributions. When I started Linux, I first tried Ubuntu because that was recommended to me. Ubuntu is installed with Xfce which looks and basically is clunky and outdated. Setting up WiFi was a PITA because my laptop doesn’t even have an ethernet port, and i couldn’t do much else without wifi. I had to configure some stuff via the command line because there were no settings for it, and install a new trackpad driver. Eventually I gave up Ubuntu because it was too hard to use with my trackpad.
Later on I installed Debian which IMO should be recommended. But i couldn’t properly install regular Debian. After some research I had to install “nonfree” Debian from some confusing site, because my computer needs a nonfree Wifi driver (again, no Ethernet port). Setting up Wifi was an even harder PITA.
At least Debian was usable and had good trackpad support once I set up. Plus I have to admit the graphics are way better than even macOS and Windows. It’s also very noticeably faster than macOS, running the same programs. But actually installing it wasn’t easy.
That's unnecessary, reboot will always skip Windows's "Fast Startup". It can be a bit unintuitive because back in the day people used to recommend a full shutdown+boot cycle instead of a reboot as it could fix more issues. But it makes some sense, because generally when you reboot it's either because of an update or issues that probably won't be resolved if the kernel is just hibernated rather than fully restarting.
I agree with you, but I think that "for common users" pretty much all OSes are interchangeable these days anyways. The biggest headache for most folks isn't the occasional need to resort to an expert (which they'd always have to do), but the unnecessary headache of learning the quirks of a different OS. Easier to just stick with what you know, which is usually Windows.
I fell for it too. There was a brief period where you could do a clean Win10 install, log in to the OS with your MS account, and everything just worked and synced in a "this is nice" sort of way. The cynic in me kept thinking "don't fall for it," but it was too convenient.
Now I regret it and the only reason I haven't switched back to local accounts is because I'm not happy with any of the competition either.
This is an outdated take - it's functionally untrue in most business settings.
Gaming on the other hand, is very much still mostly Windows only.
I game a lot, I haven't rebooted into Windows in well over a year. Luckily I don't really play games that require stupid DRM/anticheat (although, that is being worked on)
I would probably start playing Apex Legends again if they allowed EAC Linux support. Epic added support, the devs just need to support it -.-
Most business settings have some absolutely critical custom software written in Winforms or something that can't be ported, plus an entire machine of IT personnel and software tools that would be just as costly to convert.
If I need to run Windows, I will either use WINE or single GPU pass through to a Windows VM on KVM. Never needed to dual boot. Edge on Linux is great actually, I just don’t like that I can’t disable the listening on avahi ports even though I have disabled avahi. Apparently Edge uses it to mask IP when using WebRTC.
FWIW, iOS doesn't chide you when you download Chrome or Firefox. Of course Apple requires them to use the iOS rendering engine - but that's perhaps a slightly different point.
How is apple allowed to do this? Would MSoft have escaped the legal trouble back then if they had simply insisted that Netscape had to run like IE?
What programs won't run on macOS that "normal people" are going to need? In my experience most "normal people" use a web browser, the Office suite, and maybe some Adobe programs.
If you need an expert anyway, it doesn't matter much which OS you use. The only exception I can think of are disabled people, who might rely on very specific software.
Most things work with just a browser. Such that my kid's school just gives Chromebooks. They prefer the Ubuntu and Pop os machines, but are fine with any.
The windows machine was ok when we had it, but it did crash more.
I only regret some content creation tools. Used to regret gaming, but steam has come a long way.
Counter-point: my dislike of Edge aside (especially since it uses Chromium instead of their own engine, which is lame), Google has made an aggressive, disruptive push to switch people to Chrome for many years now, which itself has made some aggressive, disruptive effects on the web. Is a little friendly "popup" from a competitor in a style all other browsers incorporate really such a bad thing to help keep Google's market dominance in check a bit? I don't think Microsoft or Firefox should just roll over and do nothing while Google pushes Chrome in everyone's face every chance it gets - it seems to have cooled off a bit recently (or maybe that's just due to me switching to DuckDuckGo permanently) but in the very recent past it was still doing so.
> I don't know any good operating systems for normal people anymore. Windows 10 and 11 are hostile
May I ask what makes you think this? Occasional oddities aside, I've found Win10/11 to make for an incredibly pain-free desktop experience. While the upgrade to Windows 11 was a bit of a pain due to all of the weird system requirements - I have the hardware required, but apparently not everything was enabled or set up properly and it took some effort to do so - and the start button location is still taking some getting used to, it mostly Just Works and gets out of my way. I've found it to be the opposite of hostile.
Windows blatantly ignores your preferences and settings to push Microsoft's own products. It started with little popups about Edge and previews of Microsoft Office, but every month the intrusive crap gets worse. Now computers come with some kind of debt scam installed by default into the browser that is VERY hard to get out of without technical knowledge or the help of someone with it.
Firefox had to reverse engineer Microsoft's system twice now to simply allow setting a browser as a default, and Microsoft has said to "patch out" their latest approach. Even still, the default browser won't open when you accidentally click a link to Microsoft's help; that opens in an ms-edge link that Microsoft keeps strictly to themselves. I consider that to be hostile.
- In Windows 10, they already made it harder to change your default browser. You have to explicitly open the Settings app and go to the relevant page (maybe if you're lucky the app you're using can link you there at least), and then when you try to change your default browser it will try to push you to try Edge.
- In Windows 11, they went even further: you now have to change the default apps separately for every single protocol and file extension, rather than having an option to set an app as default for everything it supports. The concept of a "default web browser" that's easy to understand for the average user no longer exists.
- When Firefox decided to implement a hack to let users directly change their default browser with a single click, Microsoft decided to patch it because "it can be used by malware to hijack your default browser". Which would be a completely reasonable explanation if we ignored the context this is happening in, but they're making their ulterior motive painfully obvious.
- And now, they're going even further by injecting unwanted and unprofessional self-promotion into third-party websites without the user's consent. It's quite different from what Google is doing, because they only suggest you to switch to Chrome when you visit Google Search, they don't try to stop you when you try to download Edge or Firefox from Chrome.
I seriously hope Microsoft gets hit with an antitrust lawsuit again, they completely deserve it. Looks like they haven't learned from last time.
If MS really cared about security as they claim rather than competition, they could very easily implement a popup dialog that shows up when an app tries to change your default browser. Heck, maybe even make it part of UAC for extra security. That way, it would only take two clicks and be also far more secure than whatever they're doing right now.
Also, I'm not entirely sure about this, but I remember reading somewhere that MS is also doing the same on Firefox downloads. While Google may somewhat deserve it (though that doesn't make MS's behavior any less user-hostile), Mozilla definitely doesn't deserve it as Firefox already has a quite low market share.
I guess the difference is that Microsoft has an additional avenue to advertise since they control more of the software stack.
The things I have more of a problem with are the dark behaviours for things like changing my default browser. I noticed when I originally would install Google Chrome and it asks if I want to make it my default, the process to do so is more complicated. Chrome can only pop up Windows default application chooser settings dialogue and then you have to manually switch the default browser in there. Microsoft will give multiple messages you have to go through before it sets it as default. Whereas when I recently switched back to Edge they had the same banner asking if I wanted to make Edge default, except when I clicked "yes", that was all. Microsoft was able to directly make that change without having me go through the weird process of switching defaults.
When one company gives themselves artificial advantages over their competitors like this that is when things start to get weird for me. For now I am going to stick with Edge for a bit, but if they continue to do things like implementing "buy now pay later" schemes I'll probably go back to Chrome.
This is not only not true for many years anymore, it's even got so far that it's almost the opposite now. Most successful businesses nowadays are increasingly led by tech-savvy leaders, because otherwise they wouldn't be successful anymore, and those people make their own software now increasingly better on macOS than Windows for their own selfish reasons because they all run on MacBooks, iPhones and Apple Watches today.
Even Microsoft's own software ironically works MUCH better on macOS than Windows. Try Office on macOS and you'll be surprised how good it is compared to Windows :)
That has not been my experience (though I wish it were).
Excel on MacOS still feels clunky and has significant performance problems with big files - including crashes.
For non tech savvy people, Linux can cause problems, but only if they do something weird to their system. Linux, specifically Ubuntu or Mint, untouched, and unaltered is a great out-of-the-box experience.
The key (if turning someone on to Linux for the first time) is to stress that the command line is for power users who want full control of every bit on the system.
It's best to gradually introduce the command line once they're familiar with using the system and are comfortable doing their first (command line) update/upgrade ritual.
When you Google for "Windows 11 sound not working" the first result I get is https://www.makeuseof.com/fix-no-audio-windows-11/ which is much more user friendly.
The system itself is one part of the problem, and that's the part that has been improving for years. The community providing technical help is another; Linux help forums are often full of technical users advising technical users whereas Windows help threads are usually novice users asking help and getting it in simple terms.
I'd say there are 2 main problems with Linux (for non-techies, etc, etc):
1 - They are not using 'linux', they are using one of the main distros, that can have some big differences between them. That also happens with Android, BUT, people that use a Galaxy S20 will google `S20 how to xyz` without even knowing how Android differs
2 - As mentioned in other comments, setting up can be a pain. Windows have enough drivers that installing it is just a matter of putting the cd/flashdrive and clicking next-next-finish. Some big distros might have sorted that out, but then you go back to problem #1 if they are the ones having to decide on a distro
3 (bonus) - Most people don't actually benefit from having too many choices, specially from things they don't care about. Usually they will choose a smartphone by 'it looks nice, camera is good, the interface is beautiful'.
For me, sounds like this could be improved if instead of recommending Linux, we (tech folks) collectively decided on just one distro to recommend to non-technical people. But I doubt that would be possible
I'm a Delphi Developer who moved to NZ in 2005 and several programs are still live and running in UK factories. A tribute to the Win32 sub-system rather than my programming I assure you :-)
But in both cases, actual user interaction required is very little and decreasing with time.
I will admit though, that if something doesn't work immediately with Linux, there's a good chance you won't be able to get it working with Linux.
A long time ago, I helped the development of some useful compiz plugins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X9bcrJ3TjY .
I abandoned the development when compiz was rewritten in c++, but the next step we planned was to add the choice of some fixed window layouts. Seems very close to what window snapping turned out.
It's so hard to trust Microsoft anyway, I'm glad 11 is such a tranwreck dead on arrival. Makes it easier to discourage people from using it, ever.
Every kind of technology today has clear and visible dark patterns. In the past it was advertisement everywhere and now it is user-hostile design. See any discussion about smart tv, subscription services, webshops, smart devices, phones, apps or any other technology topics and the issue of dark patterns will pop up. It is a race to the bottom, and I can see the rationale by Microsoft. They are doing the same thing as google is, just a slight step further.
If people switch to Apple then third-party browser must use iOS WebKit framework, and reportedly have their performance limited to make safari better in comparison. They could go linux but then people complain about a lack of polish and compatibility with programs/hardware that they use and so return back to either windows or mac.
As a person who have been working with computers for my whole life and used to be quite excited by new technology, it is quite often that I get tempted to become a farmer and leave behind the dark world of technology.
Let Caeser have his awful stuff. We can all push for fun, and free computing.
Instagram's log-in to view anything (even public pages) is everywhere now. If you go to Twitter and click a person's name or click a tweet, you get a log-in pop-up.
Firefox, for all it's modern faults, is the only browser that's actually different in any substantial way.
I switched a year ago and I was emotionally prepared to fight a rough battle with problematic websites, incompatible apps and so on. I was very positively surprised. The only major PITA was the fact that I had to define MIME types for downloadable documents that I wanted to save by default - the usual box "remember this option" was missing for .mkv and the like. So far, this was the only major complaint on my part. Everything else was very positive, especially the containers, no forced Google logins everywhere, the availability of extensions that Google doesn't like (like Ad Nauseam) and so on. I wouldn't go back even if someone paid me (OK let's be honest: I'd do it if I was paid more than €1000 a year).
I imagine the telemetry is extremely important. Knowing every activity done by every user is valuable to Google, or Microsoft, or whoever gets the chrome feed. Of course this is why I like brave, FireFox, safari and others as there is no similar telemetry.
...Because apparently Safari no longer exists...?
as a casual reader, I know this is false.. several HUGE efforts, have failed to gain the eyeballs of readers . repeating that there is only one choice, is not useful or constructive right?
That's the thing. I don't WANT a browser that's actually different. The web is a duopoly between Apple and Google, and everything else is a second-class citizen. The era of an "open" web came and went, passing us by as capitalism took over. Firefox offers no meaningful freedom when all the content it's supposed to consume was designed by and for big companies targeting other big companies' products and customers.
Using Firefox introduces a lot of headaches and subjects you to frequent, meaningless UI updates that add partner extensions against your will and show you recommendations that I don't want to see... Mozilla is desperately trying to stay relevant and has introduced a lot more dark patterns than Chrome has, all while adding no value beyond some vague, lackluster appeal to a libre web... too little, too late.
Google, for all its faults, makes a darn good browser. The only downside is that they track my habits. So what? I'm not particularly exciting, and the only real cost I've noticed, beyond needing an ad blocker, is that my Google News feed gets cluttered with shit I don't care about derived from my browsing history. But other than that Chrome is just wonderfully simple and clean compared to the bloated Firefox (and its lookalike clones, Opera and Edge).
I think 11 is more about changing hardware requirements, requiring a TPM. The UI garbage seems more like an opportunity to try new things, they'll figure out that people don't like these new things.
8 and 8.1 were the last death throes of decent design, and then they started making a mess of everything in Windows 10. Not only didn't they reverse it with Windows 11, they doubled down on it when they had a perfect chance to rebrand with a "back to the classics" comeback to Windows 7-like UI without backlash.
Their trajectory is locked in. Barring a miracle and re-prioritising on their users, "good" Windows releases are dead forever. Looking forward to the LGR Retrospective on "Windows 7, the last good version of Windows" in about 10 years time.
Talk about timing...
The train wreck starts there. Who wants a system that auto upgrades itself without the user permission?
Aside from that, and a couple of UI annoyances (the placement of the start button and the re-arrangement of the start menu) I'm happy enough with Windows 11 that it will be a bummer for me if I have to go back.
For me it's little things like the way the context menu is cleaned up -but the old one is still available, and the file manager is similarly cleaned up. I also like that WSL is better than it was on Windows 10 (running gui apps are now an option without grafting a separate and half-assed X implementation ).
So yeah, I'd say "trainwreck" is a hyperbole -especially for anyone who had to use Windows 8!
Prime majority of users don't upgrade BIOS, or don't even know what it is.
11 will be a short lived release just because of that, and them not only needing to backpedal, but to entice users into biting into a new bait, as all what is actually good in Win11 been kind of mentally displaced by the fiasco.
A supposedly sucks less Win11.1 will not do it to attract more users. A completely new release is coming.
It's crippled compared to Win10.
No one cares about HDR. How about some decent data retention?
I get better frame rates in Linux running wine than I do in windows 10 since the 2020 updates.
Personally, I'm looking into Vivaldi; though I haven't switched over yet.
Almost every single person that I can think of in my life does not give a shit about an edge reminder. The one that does doesn't use Windows anyway.
Hackernew is a unique audience.
It still crashes way too much for me to use as my primary browser, and I only keep it because it is a better PDF reader than Chrome and I've not had time to find a replacement.
They named their user tracking, telemetry, and "Buy Now, Pay Later" add-ons "trust"? That's really Orwellian.
"FREEDOM IS SLAVERY"
"IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH"
"TRACKING IS SAFETY"
"CHOICE IS DEFAULT"
But really I feel like people jump to the antiauthoritarian rhetoric really quickly nowadays. I know your making a joke, but damn if I'm not worried we're kind of normalizing the concept
Microsoft hasn't been in the news as much, at least not regarding privacy matters. They're often seen by the public as the solid company behind trusted products like Office and Windows.
> "with the added trust of Microsoft"
Hijacking a competitor's page demonstrates that Microsoft lacks integrity and cannot be trusted
So, the statement "Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft" actually means "Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added ability for Microsoft to screw you over".
I hate having Microsoft scan my online shopping carts so they can collect data and hijack affiliate commissions. Do they think we're dumb?
Now they are throwing away their good will with smarmy tactics --why? for some short term gains?
They were passing Google reputation-wise, of late, but these moves undercut their work of the last few years.
It seems they see Google, FB, even Apple, etc., eating this cake (using market to undercut competition) and can't stand the temptation. I can only hope the DOJ will find some will to take on tech and do something about their behavior, but I am not holding my breath.
If only companies would have principles they could stand on and we could count on.
Back then, I felt like the owner of my machine. Sure they had bad things like IE but I could just ignore it.
Now, it restarts itself and installs updates despite me specifically trying to stop it.
It’s a shame really because I really enjoyed Win 10 and even Bing doesn’t suck completely.
Thank goodness for competition and the new M1 laptops! Now Apple just needs to launch a good search engine and get Numbers to where Excel is and I can wave goodbye to both MS and Google.
I mean... if you're paid to increase the usage of X, do you really care about long-term reputation, if you'll be five companies away by then?
Microsoft never changed. There was never a "new Microsoft". Only a new strategy with the same goals as ever: anti competitive behavior, bullying "partners", and what not. Just because they made this or that opensource changes nothing to the nature of that company. Windows 11 is basically just adware at that point.
To circle back to your point, I now feel Google’s Don’t be evil was a deke, a fake and was all about building reputation which they leveraged for market share.
This is really cringe
I especially hate funny error messages as they just frustrate me. It’s ok when Reddit has a funny image because they can’t show my video game forum, but it’s infuriating when Microsoft shows a “whoops, what happened” when it just failed to sync the last 30 minutes of my work document.
On the opposite, I started using Discord recently and they manage their funny tone very well, but it is used consistently through the application. And it stays informative.
I call it "meme speak". It's the style of writing used on meme image captions or in tweets designed to generate the most number of shares and "likes".
Newer is not always better... if only Microsoft (and the rest of Big Tech) would go back to 2008 or even earlier, when they were far less controlling.
Browsers detecting specific sites and acting differently on them, unless specifically requested to do so by the user, should be prohibited. Ditto for operating systems detecting specific applications. There needs to be a word for the equivalent of net neutrality, but applied to software and environments in general.
MS in 1997 or so was doing shenanigans like crash Explorer if you attempted to download Netscape (Firefox predecessor) they got sued by the EU and lost.
The lawsuit terms expired recently and Microsoft is doing exact same shit they got sued for the first time, I guess they are testing to see for how long they can get away with thsi shit before they get sued again.
Do you have a source for that? I remember them being sued and losing simply because they bundled the browser with the OS, but don't recall any sort of the "detect user attempting to use competing browsers and kill them" mentality that they now have.
winget uninstall -e "Microsoft.Edge"But after spending so many years, especially in the late 90s and early 2000s, getting shit from a bunch of khaki wearing, corporate butt kissing MSCE types about how Linux is "get what you pay for" and constantly mocking that all this "free software can't do anything"
and then sitting back and watching Linux empowering cloud computing, Unix/Linux being the basis of all our mobile devices, being the base for most IoT, watching the explosion of Docker and tons of other toolsets all initially rooted in the Unix/Linux ecosystem, watching Unix/Linux become a tool that developers heavily relied on either Linux on the server or Linux/MacOS on the desktop/laptop...
watching Microsoft do things like making Notepad use Unix EOL characters, supporting MS SQL on Linux hosts, expanding PowerShell to perform all kinds of tasks easily done by Unix/Linux for over a decade, creating a knock off of apt and yum with "win-get", making it super easy to install a whole Linux ecosystem within Windows itself, doing everything they can to make using GIT on windows, an easy experience, and so forth and so on..
and i just can't help being figuratively stick up my middle finger. Not just to MS as a company but to all the clowns that mocked Linux and Unix guys for literally 20 some odd years. Not just peers and co-workers, but managers, upper level managers all the way to CTOs who reluctantly realized Linix solutions were a better fit in some areas and were won over by lower management.
At this juncture - i don't even particularly like desktop computing, no matter the flavor. It's all frustrating in their own ways - including my precious Linux.
But F* windows and F** windows people in IT. The whole lot of em
iwr https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1 | iex; cinst googlechromeIn particular I remember utilizing the FTP method to get Firefox (avoiding IE) was all the rage in the XP era.
"Did you know that personal files can disappear just like that, just like that? Oh, I just noticed you are downloading Chrome. By the way, you sure those backups are working? You have backups, right? Just saying."
Sure! I mean it's working so well at changing corporate behavior, why would we want to stop now?
Things like this are why I advocate for Corporate Jail time and a Corporate Death Penalty.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
I'm wondering if it's still a business case for Microsoft despite being sued.
[0]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_13_...
Windows 11 is awful, I went back to 10 within a week - screen flickering, stupid scrolling issues etc.
But everything else seems to be much improved lately. I’ve got Ubuntu running on my laptop and it works with my Magic Trackpad (including gestures), 4k display with fractional scaling, and 1080p low-dpi display simultaneously. I wasn’t sure they would ever get there. Everything pretty much works.
The App Store is still garbage and the whole Snap concept seems to work much worse overall than Flatpack. But I have faith they will get their act together eventually.
Still, I foresee a future where the pain of Linux Desktop for me will be outweighed by the pain of continuing to use Windows. Which is sad. Linux Desktop will have won not on its merits, but because Microsoft just decided it didn't want to make a Desktop OS anymore.
If I get extremely lucky, it's possible Haiku will take off in the meantime and implement some of the things I'm still waiting on for it to be a decent desktop for my uses, but I'm not holding my breath.
So here’s my defense of Microsoft taking these steps:
* Google promotes Chrome on YouTube, search, and gmail. Strategically Microsoft needs a message to counter the pop ups on Google sites that are leading to the Chrome download page. It would be much more annoying if you saw this message every time you visited YouTube or Google. The author presents it as the case of someone actively seeking to download Chrome but they could have been lead to the download page from another Google property.
* Many people don’t know that both edge and Chrome use the same engine. When my company mandated edge, people reflexively complained even though they don’t lose anything in terms of speed, extensions or compatibility. For many people knowing that edge has the same browser engine is informative - most non geeks won’t keep up with that.
* if you are working at a Microsoft company, your data is already in the hands of Microsoft and your employer so there’s little privacy to be lost by continuing with edge, but by switching to chrome you bring a 3rd party into the mix.
* you could argue a lesser version of this for all windows users with the integrations that Microsoft has been pushing.You know what I say to that? Tough cookies. Websites and OSes have different responsibilities to their users -- if MS wants to use shady cross-promotion tactics like Google, they should provide web services that justify the annoyance and do their cross-promotion there.
Why are we making computers harder to use for the everyman? It's such a grossly short-sighted decision that will only serve to further the divide between an increasingly mobile-oriented consumer class and a primarily desktop-oriented professional class.
So to have a successful browser you need to invest to have a visitor count rivaling the largest search engine, video platform, and online mail combined? I think that’s a very large hill to climb even for Microsoft. Your statement leads to only a Chrome hegemony. In terms of sites with Google’s reach, maybe Facebook could make their own browser but that’s about it.
I see Google prompting users to download Chrome on Google.com similar behaviour to Microsoft using Windows 95 to push Internet Explorer.
- not talking about gp specifically. Just folks who make those sorts of decisions off such busted premises.
indeed this is the added trust of msft.
Microsoft violated that trust. This means that they value their interests above my own. They are demonstrably untrustworthy. Again, btw.
If the only environment where someone will not be an asshole is an environment that punishes assholery, they are an asshole.
So now, every stupid thing has to be completely free just to be considered by any consumer, and every software maker has to beg, badger and berate users over and over to get them to try things and download things and sign up for things, all because we collectively forgot that we could have just paid them 40 bucks and moved on.
You used to have to pay for operating systems, and for a while it actually became more expensive (e.g. macOS was $99 but went up to $129 to everyone’s surprise before becoming “free”). You definitely used to pay through the nose for apps but you got a lot for that money. Mobile devices are largely responsible for the 99-cent-ification of software, most of which is now “free” with “in-app purchases” which is ironic since these “cheap” replacements sometimes cost hundreds of dollars more if you actually add up all the recurring in-app purchases they contain. And, of course, subscriptions.
So great, Windows is “free” now and web browsers no longer cost money like Netscape did but instead we get all this crap in our faces. Personally, I think we have lost a lot and we desperately need to re-learn how to pay, once, for software, again.
[0] https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-says-its-own-edge-brow...
lolololol
Does someone on their marketing team actually believe that?
I'll shed a small tear for the people that are still forced to use Windows, but Google is at least as bad with this in pushing Chrome at the expense of other browsers.
And users are caught in the middle. OS vendors should STFU, stop pushing their services, ban telemetry and other invasive stuff and put the user centric. Fat chance of that happening any day soon though, after all, the only reason that users exist in the first place is to be ripped of or squeezed like so many lemons until the last penny has been forced out of their pockets.
They're not wrong about it being based on on the same renderer as Chrome, but that's about as far as it goes.
The worst thing is that Apple and Google do the same dark patterns and no one seems to care about them. For some reason, Microsoft didn't learn from the early 00s any lessons on how to do this kind of thing with any subtlety.
I have a Mac laptop and iPad, an Android phone, and I now run Linux on my PC and haven't booted into Windows 10 since May (checks uptime...). I don't think I have any reason to use Windows at home any more. The changes in Windows 11 are even more unappetizing. It feels like Windows Me, or Vista. The version no one asked for.
Hmmm, can I trust you to not put your own ads onto competitors websites?
That is beyond f'd up. Will they never learn?
I mean this entire thread is a bunch of very angry people screaming to the void and self-congratulatory people stoking their own superiority complex for having the most common opinion in the HN echo chamber.
The days of “tech people” being ambassadors and having any influence over the direction of B2C software is over.
You must be borderline and delusional if you work at microsoft and have the guts of thinking that the company deserves even the tiniest amount of trust
I really thought they were on a good path when Ballmer stepped down but this is old Microsoft all over again.
My question is: Do you see these prompts when downloading Firefox?
“ There's no need to download a new web browser. Microsoft recommends using Microsoft Edge for a fast, secure, and modern web experience that can help save you time and money. Try now”
Even more bizarrely it puts Opera as the top result, at least here in the UK.