When will they ever learn?
If you want to open Edge without actually wanting to open it, just accidentally click on one of the advertisements in the main menu or any info area widget. Those ignore the default browser and always open Edge.
My new work computer on both teams and outlook just open edge with any links too ignoring my default browser preference. My last one obeyed like a good computer.
There’s an edge redirector app you can get which redieects edge:// links to your default browser
You can change this in settings.
There are links that use a specific “edge” link type that you can’t assign to other browsers without admin access. So if it’s a work computer you’re kinda boned
You can definitely change Teams to use the default browser and not edge without admin access.
I’m pretty sure you can do the same with Outlook. Other links such as the start search menu sure you can’t change them.
one of the advertisements in the main menu or any info area widget
Okay, my biggest issue right with that has nothing to do with Edge.
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Microslop promising to improve windows 11 and give users agency back.
5 minutes later…
The OS should get out of my way as much as possible.
Just like government. This capitalist, privacy nightmare timeline sucks.
I prefer Firefox, so I was using that as default browser. Windows asked me every fucking time I started my laptop if I wanted to use edge as default. Sometimes it just went ahead and made the change anyway. Windows was consuming loads of my download data, fuck knows what for. Then the copilot stuff. Finally installed mint and feel like I got my laptop back.
Welcome to the Linux family. 🤌🫂
Thanks, feels good 👍
Windows was consuming loads of my download data, fuck knows what for.
Background updates of all the minor services running. I only had 360kbit/s for a while two years ago and windows could take a few hours until it was finished. You usually don’t notice it but I literally couldn’t use the internet until windows decided it was done.
I only had 360kbit/s for a while
they still sell dsl that slow here… and of course the telephone company charges those people even more than they do in town for 20-60mbit dsl or 100-1000mbit fiber.
When using Sunshine/Moonlight to stream games to our Apple TV, you can guarantee that if it begins to stutter it’s because Windows is downloading something in the background.
Was there no registry key that you could modify to stop that behaviour?
I’ve been down that road.
- It’s experimental
- It’s opt-in
- Opt out once when prompted
- Turn off once in Settings
- Turn off once in registry <-- we are here
- Turn off three places in registry
- Turn off every boot in registry
- Install 3rd party app to disable
- Install 3rd party OS to disable
Install 3rd party OS to disable
That’s the first step
And repeat all this horseshit for 50 other things that should be a simple toggle or that way by default.
My only regret is waiting so long to switch to linux. It’s like leaving an abusive spouse for that sweet young thing you’d been crushing on.
lol thanks OK. Appreciate the “we are here” touch, I get it now …
Yeah mean, yeah, probably. But I felt like they’d find a way round it in a month or so, or find something new to aggravate me with. It was getting like whack a mole.
There always is
I honestly might switch to Linux. I know people say that a lot, but gaming has been the only thing keeping me on Windows.
But I’ve also come to realize I just don’t have that much free time to game any more. Most of my computer use is putting YouTube on in the background or web browsing. I still occasionally game, but Linux support keeps improving and even if I only pick Linux supported games… I still won’t have enough time to play them all.
Gaming works great on Linux now and often better. The only scenarios I can think of where things are majorly behind are competitive games with anti cheat that doesn’t work on Linux and anything requiring peripherals with custom software, for example SIM racing. This means that the vast majority of games work great!
Sim racing works great for me. Anything from Moza, Logitech, and even my PXN wheel “just worked” out of the box on cachyOS. Bazzite is now getting wheel support. I did have to add USB descriptors for udev rules on my simmsonn pedals, and also learn to always disable steam input and use glorious eggroll proton. JacKeTus did a fantastic job with the ffb driver and I see him on matrix ALL THE TIME helping newbies and getting stuff working.
I game often, and 100% on Linux. Unless you’re doing competitive multiplayer games with kernel level anti-cheat (read: rootkit malware), games run perfectly fine.
Flash a distro onto a usb and boot from that to test drive it and ensure your hardware is compatible - zero risk.
As long as you don’t jump on AAA title games on launch day, you’ll be fine gaming on Linux.
That, or if you are a fortnite, LoL addict… Those don’t work for reasons totally up to the devs.
I’ll be that guy, use bazzite. Unless your doing advanced shit or VR it’s basically everything you need in a simple package. Shit I didn’t even have to install drivers for my… well everything.
Only annoying thing I’m finding is my Firefox audio goes wonky sometimes while using the built in audio booster (FF extensions that boost audio were even worse) but rebooting Firefox fixes it.
Come on in, the water is great!
I recommend installing Ventoy on a USB stick, then putting some ISOs on there of various distros to try. Like CachyOS, Bazzite, or perhaps Kubuntu.
You can boot into them straight from the Ventoy USB stick without having to format the USB between new tests.
And if you end up liking one over the others you can install straight from the stick.
You can do it, I believe in you random internet stranger!
You can test most Linux distros using a “live” image on a thumb drive. If you put Ventoy on a drive, you can try as many ISOs as you can fit on the drive.
Bazzite or Fedora are both really good places to start.
FYI, Bazzite may have issues with Ventoy. It is recommended to use the Fedora Media Writer. I learned this a couple months ago.
I don’t consider myself to be an advanced PC user, but even I was able to get Arch Linux to run with some googling and tinkering as my first dive into Linux. I really think you should make the switch if you don’t have any work restrictions. I dualboot still, just in case, but I can’t remember the last time I needed to use Windows.
Like you and the others say, if you have limited time gaming or don’t play AAA on launch day, that’s just one more reason not to use Windows! Good luck!
Doesn’t “consider [themselves] to be an advanced PC user…”
Picks Arch as their first Linux distro.
Found Linus Sebastian.
I only did it to try to impress people online lol.
Everything is like a Hodge Podge of fixes just to make it work, so if anyone asks me about the inner workings of everything, I wouldn’t be able to answer like 75% of it. I’m still learning.
Nah, he would have removed his DE.
Lol that loser can’t even install popos right
Zorin OS is a good one if you want a nice UI transition from Windows or Mac.
I just gonna go live in the woods and take up bird watching or something.
Pop_OS has been a piece of cake to use. Switched last year, never looking back.
I’ve seen this episode before…something something IE something something Netscape
in 98 they were taken to court because at one point you couldn’t even uninstall IE from your PC since, if I remember correctly, It was so tied into the file explorer it would break your system. they also made it difficult to download alternatives like Netscape.
I remember my Dad had a thing for “eMachines” PCs because A. they were cheap and B. most of the time they came preinstalled with Netscape as opposed to IE and he liked Netscape a lot better. Problem with this though is I liked to play X-Wing vs Tie Fighter and Jedi Knight online and the easiest way to do so was via Microsofts Internet Gaming Zone which ONLY worked on IE. and downloading/installing IE in the late 90s on a dial up connection took forever. and THEN once you did install it good luck uninstalling it.
in 98 they were taken to court
A wise (but evil) business decision to try again today.
Bahahaha I grew up with an emachine once we upgraded from our 386, then 486…
The emachine was the worst computer I’ve ever had. I preferred our Compaq Portable. I didn’t know it at the time but emachines were just Gateway’s bottom-tier garbputers. Trying to play anything on it was a nightmare. Even MIDI files sounded like shit compared to my friend’s 1GHz HP. The Rage II integrated graphics played Diablo II at 10FPS.
Horrible nightmare machine full of poop and sadness.
I wish they kept it. I’d love to have it on display at my house now.
yeah they were horrible, could barely run anything. I always remember the sticker on the front of it “you’ll never have to upgrade again!”
My dad would get deals on them because he would pay for like a years worth of internet service up front so we’d either get the emachines pc for dirt cheap or practically free. so depending on the deal that was being run we’d end up switching ISPs like every year. MSN, AOL, Prodigy, etc.
i’ve still got an ‘emachines’ here. granted, nothing inside is original anymore, except the optical with the curved silver bezel. has an am3 board in it now (originally a barton core on nvidia chipset). i keep it around because it has ide ports… and yes, i do use those. had to dig it out twice in the last month.
I have an idea. Linux should start automatically everytime you boot you PC.
IDK that seems pretty invasive
Perhaps just GRUB and waiting for my input one extra time to confirm I actually want to use my PC at that time
I just have one kernel and one Distro with secure boot. So I directly use UEFI.
Why would my browser Downloader need to start again after I download other browsers?
“Funny” news that bring me back to the last time I decided to switch to Linux.
I updated windows 10 and when my PC booted I got a full screen to setup edge. I wasn’t able to find any way to quit the screen. So I completed the set up and went to install Linux.
It’s crazy how they believe they own the PC of their customers… I mean, it’s in the name… Personal…
My Computer --> Computer --> This PC
Microsoft does not consider this your PC anymore.
Even non-techies know how and want to install a different browser, how many decades more will they try this pressure fueling of their shitty browser?
In fear of playing devils advocate a little bit:
Edge is not a shitty browser. Ad-infested, controlling, overwhelming, disrespectful, annoying yes. But not shitty.
It’s chromium-based so it’s quite fast and secure (unlike Internet Explorer that everyone loved back in the day) and it integrates well with the overall OS.
I wouldn’t use Edge, but it’s a decent default if you’re okay accepting Windows antics or too young to remember for how long Microsoft has been desperately trying to play catch up and failing.
It’s an opinion, don’t kill me. 😶🌫️
Edit: unrelated to the topic, but I’d like to thank everyone for not downvoting me for wrong think like what would happen on that other platform. Why is this community so nice? 😭
I’d argue that those behaviours are what make the browser shitty.
That’s also a fair point, in hindsight. I associate shitty to being insecure, slow, and borderline unusable. I have a middle of the road view on the privacy aspect because Chrome exists, it doesn’t care about your privacy but I think you’ll be hard pressed to call it shitty.
That said, I wouldn’t hold my breath and I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few months time Chrome comes with Gemini integrated by default. All your private data, straight to Google’s servers.
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I used it for a little bit years ago after it switched to a chromium engine. It was fine.
Edge quickly became my main browser. Its Tab Groups are borderline genius.
Firefox has tab groups, tab notes, tab categories, vertical tabs
Only thing is missing integration with teams and outlook.
Vivaldi also has tab groups.
I do like vertical tabs too… But Firefox has a plugin for that so I’ve been using Firefox the last year or so and rarely have an issue.
Firefox has tab groups too. I don’t know if the implementation is any different since I’ve never used them in either browser.
Mint guy here, since 6 months ago, best choice I have done. If you make some research, in few time you realiese you do not need Microsoft to live in the majority of the cases.
Linux Mint is so awesome.
I have many linux distros running in the house for servers and self hosted software but the one box i havent swapped yet is my daily driver system. Microsoft is pushing me ever closer but with some titles still not supporting linux and getting to the end of a day i just want to game not debug something.
Its getting close though. Fuck this timeline. I looked at Pop OS and bazzite as out of the box gaming distros but am open to anything.
Want games are holding you back. Between lutris and steam’s proton compatibility I personally haven’t run across much.
EA’s games and many anti cheat games arent able to be ran on Linux. Not because its technically not able to, but officially speaking, many anti cheat just ban Linux outright.
Shame.
All of EA’s new titles use Javelin anti-cheat. It uses a Windows kernel module, so it’s not possible to run with Wine/Proton.
Given that EA forces users to run what is effectively a rootkit just to play their games, I feel like the only good choice is to stop playing those games altogether. Or, at the very least, compartmentalize your gaming machine and the network it’s on.
Yeah this along with their insistent focus of producing AI slop makes me not even want to look at games from EA. I admittedly haven’t even tried any recent EA games but that has more been due to lack of interest in their recent titles.
So as i started to list out all software on my windows box to check for linux support i cane across a game. HBS battletech 2018, with the battletech advanced mod. Is a overhaul. They have linux instructions but its not a guarantee.
Between this and Lemmy, I’m ready for a switch to Linux now even though I don’t know how it works.
Honestly the popular linux distros are pretty polished / user friendly these days. You’ll run into little issues, and you need to be at least a little bit curious / tech savvy to figure them out, but it’s nothing a little googling can’t solve typically.
Do it! Just choose the most normie distro you can find (probably something like Mint or Ubuntu) and free yourself!
To give some balance from my experience, I don’t recommend Ubuntu.
I’m not interested in getting into a distro war. I think we should encourage people to get into the ecosystem via whatever user-friendly means possible. Once they’re in, then they’ll be a lot more likely to try out another distro.
At this day and age it works pretty much as you expect it to work. I’d recommend something like ubuntu (or kubuntu if you want it to look and feel more like windows). Something that is stable and not on the bleeding edge and mainstream so you can easily Google for help if you need it. Apart from that I think you can use a gui for pretty much anything you might need.
Little side note: the new long term support version of Ubuntu will be released this month. I’d wait for that so you have a pretty up to date version. If you need help or advice you can DM me if you like.
Thabk you, sir. I’ll fiddle around as I ready myself. I probably need to research a bit more.
Maybe you could try the system in live mode to get a feel. You can simply make an install USB stick and boot from that and just select the live install. This will start the system directly form the USB stick without installing anything and then you can just play around with it and get a feel. Just be aware that all changes are temporary and are not saved to the stick. Most major distributions have such a functionality.
similar to mac and windows
Some senior VP obviously has his annual performance bonus tied to increasing Edge market share, and is pulling shit like this to artificially inflate the numbers.
Ditto for Bing, Copilot, etc.
