After reboot I had a notification message "Make your Computer Faster".
I wouldn't touch one of them with a 40 foot pole on the open web but this was an official MS message in notifications so I figured it was worth a look as it might be some general advice about official new MS tools for tweaking, booting faster, cleaning dead files, newest iteration of the usual stuff.
It immediately launched into an MS Edge installation that had to be killed via process explorer. no dialog about "do you want to?" etc.
MS really has gone beyond the pale here.
What infuriates me the most is that this is aimed at nudging those who don’t know better. With older family members, a savvy relative or workshop can help them set up a functional environment, to pay bills, check Facebook etc.
Previously, I’ve advised to ignore messaging from web sites, but official OS notifications are important - like updates. Now, they can update the OS, click next/accept/ok and they end up with a different browser/bookmarks/ui and that be enough to take away their ability to do their errands.
So my mom, for instance, can no longer be self-sufficient. I have to tell her “oh that one is important” or “no this is just Microsoft trying to sell you stuff you don’t need/will be worse”. They’ve tricked her into the Edge default several times, because every update is an opportunity for MS to prey on her with full screen Microsoft-branded marketing posing as security/performance improvements.
In the sense that it will stay the same for years and won't break on its own or bother the user with requests of questionable motive.
It's a huge company, don't anthropomorphize it. It hasn't changed, it's a system for maximizing profits, it does what some people in it determined to be most efficient for that goal. If saying it "loves open source now" on their websites to "befriend" and attract a new wave of devs is most efficient, then that's what it'll do. When the situation changes, it'll kill competition using any means it can get away with just like it always did.
Many of the games I've tried, just kind of work. Path of Exile, for example, worked on my PopOS system (AMD CPU / Nvidia GPU) with no fiddling. (I switched a couple of weeks ago.)
Kept a dual boot but switching less and less.
> Installed Nobara (fork of Fedora made for gaming) and proceeded to install my copy of Red Alert 2 (my most played game) via Wine
> Try to run game, 'Error: xxx32.dll not found' or something
> Spent over an hour looking up forum posts on fixing that error, manually copying that dll and other modded variants of that dll to the install directory, but no cigar, still same error or other error, don't remember exactly
> Throw in the towel and went back to Windows where Red Alert 2 'Just Works TM'. Definitely no "year of the Linux" for me. I don't care how many thousands of Steam games work on Linux if they're not the games and apps I own and play. But good luck.
Edit: nice to see I'm getting downvoted for telling a personal story on this topic. Very emotionally mature of you guys.
But they get away with it. Nobody buys Microsoft because they're good. It's because they have so many fingers in the pie that you can't do without them. They know it and make their products just good enough to not be dropped in favour of something much better.
The tradeoff is that every Office user has an additional 10+ processes that consume enormous amounts of RAM, but looks like someone in MS Marketing managed to turn that into lemonade, because it means that the "make your computer faster" ad is likely accurate (for Office users). Thanks to the magic of caches and shared libraries, running Edge probably does use fewer system resources than running Firefox or Chrome when Edge-Electron is already running.
Well color me surprised.
Legal..? I'm sure their lawyers think it is?
I posted about this before, but MS got fined before by the EU for this kind of OS/Browser bundling in the late 2000s. For a while, we had an option at installation on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 to choose our browser.
These were still the days of Internet Explorer, so I don't know how much MS not having a competent browser factored into this decision, but I was really surprised that with a recent fresh install I did, this browser choice prompt was gone. Not to mention all the roadblocks thrown up by MS while trying to install an alternative browser...
At one point, I went to search for "Firefox" on Bing using Edge and this happened[1].
It's almost comical how desperate they are to keep you using Edge.
On top of that they peddled their browser in all their products (gmail, youtube, maps, docs, ...), claiming better and faster experience, more features. Sometimes they had to check user agent to deliver worse experience to make that claim truthful.
Perhaps it's just enough in the grey-zone that it is a "cross that bridge when we come to it" issue and that they don't need to figure out the specifics of any laws/regulation, because if they are on the wrong side of it, in the past it has been proven that these types of regulations are quite toothless.
This specific issue on its face seems a security thing, where users are warned against installing software from untrusted (as defined by microsoft) sources. It very handily doubles as a way to scare users into not installing competitors for their own applications (like browsers and office packages), of course.
Why do they? How do they profit from this?
Why should they not? Their browser market share is munuscule, and I actaully feel good if somebody takes some of it from Chrome, slightly decreasing Google's hold on absolute power in defining the web.
The answer is simple. The google anti-trust case clearly indicates this is _highly_ profitable. As the browser (chrome) is one of the leading ways of increasing Search Query Volume (SQV). SQV increases ad impressions thus increases ad revenue, thus maximizes shareholder value.
Bing has a similar ad platform and with Edge Microsoft will have many ways to send users to do queries in Bing.
Why leave a big piece of juicy pie like this on the table for google to sweep up?
And now Apple gets away with only allowing one browser engine on iOS, even if you try to go out of your way to use something else you can’t (third party browsers have to use the Safari engine built into the OS by App Store policy)
When Microsoft had it's browser mess it had near saturation level op dominance (>97% if I recall correctly).
Shipping a good and fast browser with Windows is perfectly fine, many will use it, some won't. Why do Microsoft care? The users are still running Windows. If anything this seems to undermine the value Microsoft place on Windows as a platform. Why not focus on making Windows better and if users want to use Windows to run Firefox or Chrome that's their choice.
I really don't see what value pushing Edge has to Microsoft. Are they just pining for the good old days of IE dominance? They dropped their own browser engine, so they obviously don't want to spend that much money on browser development, so why spend any at all?
[0] Of course they say it's all anonymyzed (at least if you are in Europe...) and no specific info is added to your profile, they are just interested in general trends etc., not individuals - but the fact remains you have little choice here.
https://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/201...
Since the spyware and add presenting malware in Windows is apparently insufficient they also want to get your data via bing and web browser usage and present you adds in those regions as well.
A strange species.
That's probably what I don't get, why is Microsoft even trying to be in the ad business? Sure there's money to be made, but there's also money in used cars. They are inherently a software company, while Google is a adtech company who happens to build software to support that business at a huge scale.
I looked, again, at how to remove Edge ... I don't have the will power for their shenanigans, they won that one.
Over the last few years MS have actually done quite a few things that would have changed my opinion of them. But they always back it to with a reminder they're still awful.
Prior to this was the convoluted process to buy Minecraft, my third time buying it, but first time buying a game from Microsoft. Jeez-louise, I needed three accounts: the child who is getting it, an adult to authorise the child to get it, and an Amazon account (somehow!?) to buy it ... having bought it, it was not simple to install it. They can't sell software, they have to control you, it's like signing up for an abusive relationship.
You can't because Edge is also the WebView component on Windows. The IE component is still there in its old broken, insecure glory and they have been replacing it with the Edge based WebView over time.
Reboot into "recovery mode" and use the command prompt from there to delete the Edge folder. Alternatively, boot into another OS that can mount NTFS read-write and do the same from it. You can use this "I wasn't asking" method to remove any — and I mean any — component of Windows you don't like. But of course make sure you understand what exactly you're deleting to avoid breaking your Windows installation. Move files instead of deleting them if you aren't 100% sure. I did this to Windows Update on my VM.
I’ve given up trying.
Apple actually does a serviceable job there, so that’s where I’ll stay until they’re older.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201020162028/https://support.m...
(it would really help if technical content was dated)
It seems like they are at it again. Really hope the DOJ is not gonna settle this time around (repeat offender and all) and actually see it through that Edge, Bing and Windows are actually spun off to independent subsidiaries that can not collude to illegally manipulate the consumers.
The US /EU protected the world from 20 or so years of this BS. I suspect Google, Firefox, Chrome, Social Media, maybe even Apple’s resurgence, etc as we know it would not have happened if it wasn’t for the them preventing MS from abusing their monopoly in the most blatant manner.
I will never use Windows again on any computer I own. Even if I want to do desktop PC gaming again, it won't be on Windows.
They think charging business 30% of their revenue is completely acceptable, so a fine must be something above that number.
Any fine on revenue below 30% is just a cost of doing business.
So if halon's razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.") is anything to go by it might be not on purpose, but who knows.
Governments really need to get a tight grip on those out of control corporations.
I spent the last 1.5 years making Windows a good development environment (supported by a home lab/san that is pure linux,) but I am increasingly frustrated at the user hostility from Microsoft.
I have so many layers of outgoing connection filtering, custom windows rules to disable telemetry, etc, but still cannot get away from the dark patterns that is the modern day Windows experience.
So, Linux it is.
But based on my experience with my work machine, the whole OS does seem to have it as a design goal that the user be forced to watch the PC reboot and install updates while they sit around twiddling their thumbs. Why else would "Install updates and shutdown" actually shutdown and then start installing updates when you startup again? Maybe they're planning to place ads on the update screen so they wan the user to be there to look at them.
But that's not what this is.
By saying "oh by the way go and get our browser instead" it's clear that Microsoft aren't just checking known signing keys, they are directly targeting Firefox and using that knowledge to present high-intent users with an alternative.
It betrays their real intentions, and that's something lawyers love.
So doesn't seem widespread to start with - outside of the MS tactics in general which are bull as always. If anyone knows which Win10 version have a restrictive installation method to start with, it will be useful to understand the actual impact
Once you disable the annoying parts it's not a bad browser at all, in fact it leaves both Chrome and Firefox in dust in terms of resource efficiency and speed on Windows.
It's only been a few weeks, but I don't have Windows installed on any of my PCs now. It's a shame that I still need lots of fiddling to figure out Nvidia drivers and why Wayland is not there yet, so for now I have to use Xorg, but for experienced users, it works really well.
I really wish it could be the same for newbies tough.
hello linux.
