Man I hate Microsoft pre installing Edge on these laptops to push their browser. Anyways here is your laptop bro, also I pre installed Linux so I can push it to you.

Careful with that. Microsoft loves to periodically push updates that overwrite the boot sector to disable that dual boot configuration.

@Naich @ardi60 Totally agree.

I mean, Windows is just such a weird proprietary distro.

It doesn’t use the latest Linux kernel, or even a mainstream POSIX-compliant alternative like BSD. Instead, you have a strange CP/M-like monolithic kernel — I think they used to call it DOS — that’s been extended to behave more like VAX and MP/M.

It also doesn’t use either X11 or Wayland as a display manager. Instead, you have an incredibly unintuitive overblown WINE-like subsystem handling the display.

Because it doesn’t use Linux, Wayland, or X11, you are limited in the desktop environment that you can use. There’s really limited support for KDE, despite the best efforts of volunteers.

Instead, there’s a buggy and error-prone proprietary window manager that ships with it by default. A bit like how Canonical tried to ship Unity as it’s default desktop environment with Ubuntu.

And confusingly, they’ve named that window manager Windows as well!

That window manager lacks many of the features an everyday Gnome or KDE user would expect out of the box.

It also doesn’t ship with a standard package manager, and most of the packages ship as x86 binaries, so installing software works differently to how an everyday Linux user would expect.

There’s also only one company maintaining all of these projects. It insists on closed source, and it has a long history of abandoning its projects.

And sure, if you’re a nerd who’s into alternative operating systems, toying with Windows can be fun.

But if your grandpa is used to Linux, frankly he’ll be utterly bamboozled by the Windows experience.

I’m sorry to be glib, because Windows does have some nice ideas.

But.

Windows on the desktop just isn’t ready for your average, everyday Linux user.

#Linux #Windows #PC

I don’t think the goal is to lock you into their browser, since you still can change it through the GUI. It seems to be part of the recent push to block software which changes hidden settings. The end goal being to lock down the OS and prevent users from disabling features MS wants to push onto them.

This is the way

Lol … you can bypass the Windows restriction by deleting the System32 folder

It’s still going to artificially inflate Edge’s numbers from tech illiterate users that don’t know how to change it. There’s a significant number of users out there that will put up with Microsoft shitting down their throat before bothering to expend the few minutes it would take to learn how to change the settings themselves. The few that do try to figure it out will find Edge directing them to Bing which will make every effort to convince them not to do it. Meanwhile, Edge will steal all their bookmarks and tabs from Chrome, in order to further encourage users to just give up and use Edge.

It’s all calculated “dark patterns” shit, and it works. Microsoft counts on these people being so easy to corral.

And you can bet your ass after they implement this, they will push an update that “accidentally” resets the default back to Edge for everyone. Just to “clear the board”.

If you read the article you’d see that per Microsoft this is due to them not wanting the liability of an administrator changing settings without the users knowledge, then the user either not receiving a prompt for a default browser or their selection being ignored, both of which would violate the DMA.

I’m not really sure how the DMA applies to corporate-owned machines, at what point is the administrator the user?

Now I guess you’ve got to determine whether or not you take MS at their word or not. The example of blocked software was a script that edited a reg entry, for administrators to use. How does something’s like the prompt built-in to a browser like FF or Chromium asking if you want to set it to be the default browser operate? If it’s through setting this registry key lolol well played MS. Is ignoring user input from an uncontrolled third-party application and requiring the change be made in the Windows settings themselves a dark pattern, or at that point is it just malicious compliance? Although for all I know that’s not how the in-application prompts update the OS default file handlers.

We know. You keep telling us.

Don’t worry, someone will port it to Linux some day.

Yes, the article clearly indicates MS stated purpose here was to ensure that an end user is presented with the default selection options and their choice is respected, regardless of administrator actions outside the user interacting with the settings panel. MS is not trying to force everyone to use Edge.

Microsoft is the OG. The other two are just imitators. The only reason Microsoft happens to step carefully. Was a little thing that happened in the late 1990s. That all penalties were largely waived for. But still it frightened them enough to behave better for a short while.

But this isn’t a bad thing

That’s one take, except even the article notes that’s a weak argument.

You kidding? That means First party is now a protected method which will absolutely result in the expected outcome like they have done with every “feature” update blocking work arounds.

Incomprehensibly stupid, because all they have to do is ask the user to confirm. Forcing through their own default instead of asking is malicious.