Use an ad-filled browser controlled by a megacorp, with an engine built by another megacorp?
Hmmm, I dunno
Don’t forget the OS built by a megacorp snorkeling up all your data anyways
…that they ask you to actually pay for the privilege. Because remember, windows isn’t actually free (and you pay for it if you buy a pre-built).
I feel it’s important to point out that you can simply not activate Windows and use it indefinitely
Does make you wonder though where Microsoft is getting that money from
Corporate Users. My guess is, that almost any office job where you work on a Computer has Windows as OS. You have a license for your job. The license for home usage is bonus money to Microsoft.
At least I can mostly opt out there. Or use Linux
Sure if you trust that the opt-out switches actually work.
They must do something, or Windows wouldn’t constantly turn them back on with every other update.
For all we know, Windows forgot to actually implement the settings /s
and don’t get reset the next update.
Do you think Microsoft wants to get sued by the EU?
Those opt-out work. Or at least in the EU they do.
Well, on the other hand, said megacorp finances the only other engine (Gecko, Blink being a fork of Apples Webkit), so they don’t have to bother with monopoly restrictions.
Current web is broken.
I realize this, but technically Mozilla is still an independent entity. They also fight some Google attempts at Web DRM, so it’s still healthy competition
and web standards! chrome doesn’t care much about web standards. they regularly add new nonstandard proprieties that eventually wins because of their market-size.
who needs a standard when you are the standard /s
I hope to see servo on my device next to Firefox some day.
Nice 😎
aren’t they the same megacorp
Even better. After you’ve explicitly triggered the default change MS is like “have you tried the all new megacorp spyware? It’s not actually new, but identical to the spyware we already installed and absolutely nothing has changed in the last 10 seconds since you made the decision, but we figured we’d throw another churn barrier at you because fuck you; we own your OS. You’re our product now bitch, and that’s all you’ll ever be”
Sad but true
Don’t worry Gill it will set itself back as default next Tuesday
I’ve never had that happen. Either the US version of Windows is fucked, or people are bullshitting hard.
I had it happen once after a windows update. What it has done is put a shortcut on my desktop enough times that I wrote a script to check for and delete them whenever it does.
I’m in the US and have never ran into half of the stuff people say MS forces on them on a daily basis.
I think this has a lot to do with what license you bought. My old Win8 Pro key install has never had ads and shit pop back up or re-enable candy crush or whatever. One of our shitty laptops at work with a win10 home license I absolutely dread updating because there is some new bullshit nearly every time.
I’m on 11 home. :/
Same
I’m still on 10, but half the shit I see people complain about with Windows I’ve never experienced personally. Maybe I’m just lucky? Maybe I just read? I don’t know, but I’m not having the same experience as a lot of people on here.
In general any bad thing about windows that it manages to fixes still gets commented about online for several years after the fact. For example: BSODs stopped being a regular thing in windows user’s life very long ago, but it took another 10 years after that for people to stop making BSOD jokes online.
Ironically enough, I actually did have my first blue screen in likely 5+ years yesterday. I was so shocked by it I wasn’t even mad, just impressed it’s been so long.
There was a while there where it would default to Edge for PDFs and as a web browser after a update. Quite annoying for a factory full of PCs that I wanted to use Chrome and Adobe Reader instead.
I tried Edge for a bit but stuck with chrome. Recently I’ve gone back to Firefox but I’ve not had one of those major updates yet that even tries to get me to log into Microsoft as a log in so it will be interesting when that happens again if Edge shows up as the default.
From time to time when you update windows it’ll show you a welcoming setup again similar to the first time you logged in. In that process it will try to convince you to setup some Microsoft stuff on your pc, including changing default apps, but it shouldn’t do it on its own.
But sometimes it does. It happened once for me this year.
Well, I switched to Edge for work with the latest Chrome update (since internal apps were Chromium only), and was pleasantly surprised. It actually let me turn off almost all the junk, and is responsive in a way I haven’t seen in a Chromium browser in years.
Safari and Firefox for personal use though, and nothing compelling to make me change that.
The performance is pretty on-par with other major browsers now, but it is the obscene amount of popups built into the browser that irritates me.
I use edge for work every day, what popups?
Once you set it up it’s fine, but on first opening you have to click through a bunch of menus (no, I don’t want to share data, no I don’t want to sync my account, and so on). In other browsers it’s a small popup in the corner which you can ignore, and just google what you wanted to google. In edge they’re fullscreen and you have to click no on each one.
Probably a rather unique problem because I regularly set up new machines, most people just go through it once and never see it again.
You hit the nail right on its head! It’s pretty bad that there is no skip all option, and for some of them you have to manually uncheck before continuing.
I’m in the same situation as you where I often work on fresh virtual machines, and so I see this a lot too.
May be worth building a default config to “install” for those setups; that’s saved me quite some time when configuring new/spare machines at work.
its based off of chromium, so one would expect it to be as fast as most modern browsers.
its the annoyances built on top of them, and user privacy that matters in a browser nowadays
Same, I’m only allowed to use either Chrome or Edge on my work laptop, so I chose Edge.
Librewolf on my personal laptop and Firefox on mobile tho.
Bonus for Librewolf!
I love Firefox… But the listicle ads are seriously tacky and annoying. I do not want Pocket. And I do not want Pocket randomly re-enabled after a set of updates.
Maybe look at
BromiteCromite? Open Source Chromium browser where you don’t need to disable anythingBromite has not been updated since January.
One of the old Bromite contributors forked it: https://github.com/uazo/cromite
Yes, that one. Thanks for pointing it out
Mulch to
What does “built for Windows 10” even mean? It’s just a browser. It’s even cross platform.
Almost everything that runs on Windows was built for Windows. So it’s a true statement, but pointless. That’s like BF Goodrich advertising their tires as “built for cars”.
😂
Maybe they meant it integrates well with other windows 10 apps?
Integrates how?
It’s integrated into the OS
In what way is it “integrated”? Please, I’d love to know.
Microsoft Edge is integrated with File Explorer in Windows 10 through a feature called “Pick up where you left off”. This feature allows users to resume their browsing session from Microsoft Edge directly within File Explorer.
Their other apps use it or part of it in the background.
Kind of like old Windows apps always used Explorer when they needed a browser
I wouldn’t be surprised if the start menu was using Edge for their search/ads
You’re telling me, that Windows now shows ads in the start menu?
Sorry, it’s probably a stupid question, but i haven’t used windows since XP.
Most are in your system notifications but you’ll have “suggested apps” in the start menu for easy one-click installs
When you try to log out you’ll see ads for OneDrive and Office 365 apparently
There’s this
Wow - that’s really something.
It could almost be compared to Google’s feed, included in the pixel launcher…
For some time now, every 5th or 6th card is an ad … And over time they slowly look just like the normal news cards.
Yeah, nowadays we’re getting ads forced upon us - one way or the other ads have to be seen, preferably clicked on, by us.
deleted by creator
Edge is pretty good…
…for downloading Firefox.
I wouldn’t even use a proprietary browser if they’d pay me for it. Let alone a chromium based one.
You don’t even need a browser
winget install Mozilla.FirefoxTrue, I missed that winget is now preinstalled with newer windows versions. I don’t use windows a lot though, especially not for browsing the web.
This joke was funny when Chrome was superior, but now Edge is actually better.
Edge is stuff tacked on Chromium. How can it be better?!
Isn’t chrome also based on chromium? I would argue they are equally bad, because both are proprietary.
When I see the current version of Edge I’m reminded of those bloatware-packed OEM Windows preinstalls adding useless toolbars to Internet Explorer, except this time it’s a sidebar.
I’m disappointed, and when asked by people I recommend replacing Edge. Preferably with Firefox, but even Chrome is better.
It’s like saying Mac OS is just a Linux distro. It’s similar but actually pretty different when it comes to how it manages its memory.
Windows put a full page ad for windows 11 before my computer started, I’m never upgrading. Hope to God Linux gaming gets better by 2025
linux gaming is basically there at this point proton can run most games flawlessly unless you wanna play games with hyper aggressive drm or anticheat it mostly “just works”
As a linux noob, I’d say it 90% there. I got a new computer recently, decided to only install linux to see if I could dump windows entirely, expecting to dualboot eventually. The only problems I’ve had so far are Curseforge, MC realms, and One Shot. I’ve got Modded Skyrim and modded Hollow Knight working, I’m incredibly happy with linux gaming.
As Phuntis said, curseforge is easily solved with prism launcher. They have a nice GUI to browse modpacks and set up everything automatically. For mods that don’t allow direct downloads over the API, they give you a browser link you can open and automatically pull the downloaded files from your download folder.
The launcher also has integration into modrinth and a bunch of other useful features. IMO the better launcher compared to the official one, even if you don’t play modded.
Love Prism, love Modrinth, still can’t make modpack updates curseforge clients can use. Since everyone else on the server uses CF, I need to build the modpack on CF then import to Prism for myself.
I did see that making a CF modpack file might be possible soon though.
yeah I’m also quite a noob with linux I’ve only been using it for about a year and also dual boot my pc for the few games I have to for me it’s actually bethesda games mostly due to no mod managers on linux and I know there’s the workaround for MO2 which is what I use anyway but fomods didn’t work :/ I’m also actually playing through hollow knight on my deck at the moment though vanilla and that’s been working flawlessly as for curseforge dunno what you’re modding but if it’s mc I used prism launcher and that worked flawlessly way better than curseforge on even windows with that being full of bloat
Prism is life, I agree. My friends don’t, so I need a curseforge pack to distribute server updates with. The stupid part is curseforge has a working linux version, but it only does WoW.
The other one is playing on a realm. The desktop solution is supposed to be the Win10 version, but screw that. I’d love to see a mod that lets java join bedrock servers, but they all run the other way. The solution is running the android version with a third-party launcher.
It needs a larger user base before companies will make the native version for it
By not switching you play into a self fulfilling prophecy
deleted by creator
I switched back in 2019. It was pretty good then and it’s almost seamless now. Hell EAC works now and I can play Squad without any hiccups
I am glad squad works, haha
deleted by creator
Linux gaming is even better than Windows in many ways now
I hope gaming on GNU/Linux were bad, so I wouldn’t have wasted hours of my life :')
Sorry Gil, it’s still chromium ;c
Gee Bing. You really are pathetic. Respect yourself dude.
The weirder thing is I was replacing a users desktop the other day and updating default apps. Edge did its usual “pleas love me” bit but then so did Windows Mail as I was changing it to Outlook 365 of all things…
I really liked Edge like a year or two ago. It seems they are trying to destroy it as fast as possible.
deleted by creator
Have you used it recently? They’ve gone crazy with shitty toolbars, especially on windows
The right click menu has an entry to search what is highlighted with the default search engine next to an entry to search with bing.
I’ve been using Edge for 2 years now. No problems whatsoever ever. You can stop begging MS.
The begging is considered a feature
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
Microsoft tried to make a browser that had an edge, and they just decided fuck it and gave it the name Edge.
Idk, I really like Edge. It just has bad reputation due to Internet Explorer… It is actually very good imo.
It depends on what circles you’re in I suppose. But I suspect you’re right for most people that dislike it. For some of us it’s the Chromium engine it runs on, and/or the company it comes from.
Edit: So more ideological reasons. I imagine the browser itself works fine.
Yeah you’re right. I can see and I respect people’s reasons for not wanting to use windows / Microsoft products.
I just wanted to point out this as I think many people still consider edge as a bad browser. At least in my experience it works really well and I personally like the style it has and overall the “windows 11 aesthetic” Microsoft is choosing for their products.
