Remember when courts declared Microsoft was a monopoly because they bundled their own browser, Internet Explorer, with the operating system? And they did it in a way that made it impossible to completely remove from the OS. Did they learn their lesson? I think they did, just not the lesson we wanted them to learn. Go ahead and try to uninstall Edge from Windows 10 or 11. Dive into the task manager sometime too and you'll see Edge sub-processes running under a surprising number of other apps. There is no Windows operating system any more, it's just Internet Explore refactored and rebranded as Edge all the way down. (Obvious hyperbole) At least Chromebooks were up front about it.
It is wild that people will say that using apt to install things is too hard, but then suggest a registry edit to remove Bing from seach. Windows just isn't as casual user friendly as it pretends to.
Honestly, with Flatpak and immutable base systems this is a place Linux is really excelling now too. Being able to show a novice user a shared package manager with a search and a bunch of common apps and them actually install/remove them in a safe manner with a high likelihood they'll work out of the box (since they come with all their deps in sync independent from distro) is kinda huge.
Don't really need sandboxed software for that. Ubuntu comes with their own software store and even if you only select deb, you just klick on install and you're done
It's a pretty mixed bag honestly. Sure there are some apps that we get in a mammoth poorly made appimage we'd probably have to have run in wine before or some terrifying statically compiled program embedded in a run script and that's probably a win.
The trade-off is every developer being their own distro maintainer, 100s of gigs of duplicate dependencies, broken containers with missing libraries, leaky requirements on the underlying system, and everyone needs to be a security expert to understand all the options in flatseal to expose the right features.
Also, instead of one distro source, I've got at least 3 and I've in the last week had to install programs from multiple sources trying to get a functioning version. This feels like the norm rather than an exception.
Also this week had an app image broken by a requirement on a removed system library outside the app and a flatpak missing a key library forcing me to dig up an old .deb version. The later I lost like 6hrs on because clearly libusb was installed on the system but I didn't realize I'd installed the flatpak and in wasn't in the container. Such fun.
Fwiw, this is not an endorsement of Windows. I strongly believe if most people spent half the time they spent fighting Windows learning Linux they'd never go back.
GUIs, even the Registry Editor, are familiar territory for a lot of users. Give them a blank screen cli, and there is no hint of what to do next. There are good reasons why the vast majority clearly prefer GUIs.
I'd even add that now 99% of the distro have a gui over the package manager. Have an android or iPhone? You already have experience in installing stuff in an easier way than windows
Once there are some fundamental changes in the Android framework, these old apps will actually become incompatible. So Google wants to prepare their users for that scenario, and force devs to update their apps.
"Windows is easy. I just install it and it works. What's so great about Linux?"
"You can customize it however you want"
"Oh yeah that sounds amazing. Okay I installed Linux, how do I make a customized desktop and set of desktop animations to record YouTube videos of so I can show off my uniqueness through my ability to customize?!?!"
"Read this long ass article and try to understand what it says to do"
I'm visiting that page from Firefox in Arch Linux on a Raspberry Pi 4.
Admittedly I'm running a user agent switcher because otherwise I get the mobile version of a lot of sites, but it's still funny to me. I like being able to say "the fuck it is."
I need to know what user agent you are using before I can make a proper assessment. "Haha Microsoft thinks my Linux computer has edge installed", if you present it outward as a Windows pc, isn't really fair.
I think of things that could be meme templated sometimes when I get annoyed by any hardware or software or both, but I never feel motivated to actually make it. Actually I've never made any meme images at all.
I got a free iMac recently and immediately tried to install some software on it and was told "we don't recognize this so you can't install it". Like excuse me WTF?
I'm sure there are workarounds. That's besides the point.
If they had said "we don't recommend you install this" that would be completely fine and understandable. But that's not what happened. I wasn't presented with any option to bypass it. I was just told no. I shouldn't have to Google how to do that. It's completely absurd.
Fun fact: it also won't let me turn off Bluetooth. How fucking batshit is that?
I so often can’t stand e.g. important privacy toggles being hidden deep in settings, dark patterns that obfuscate permitted but unprofitable behavior - so you’d think I’d be with you on this 100%.
And yet…
If they had said "we don't recommend you install this"
, grandma would hit OK without reading it.
For every dollar someone has paid tech support to help them install a desired app from an unidentified developer, I’d bet ten dollars have been saved from others not being able to install some spyware. Maybe that murky little dialogue box is good enough for the lowest common denominators that it outweighs the annoyance for us nerds? (Our small cost being we’re required to Searx once for the solution to learn how to bypass it)
I don't buy it. Because Apple has lied about this sort of thing time and time again. Giving us bullshit explanations about why they won't let us control "our" devices. "Security", over and over again they use this bullshit to explain away all kinds of self-serving shitfuckery. I'm certain it has far more to do with their 30% app store fees.
This stops users from installing malicious software. You are still able to install the software, even though it isn't recognised. You just need to right click, rather than double click.
Oops I made a widdle fucky wucky and set myself back to default browser.
Oopsies the castrated search bar that plies you with ads until you type the exact filename or program you were looking for accidentally put the website you download it from above the program installed on your machine, don't worry I'll open that in edge for you.
Its because they're fucken addicted to dark patterns. I want to set firefox as the default. That means any file that edge opens I want Firefox to now open. Except, Microsoft doesn't do that when you set a different browser as the default. I'd rather it change everything and then I have to change the PDF viewer manually, than have to change six or seven file types manually each time. Thus wouldn't be an issue if I wasn't working at my first corporate job, if my manager gave a shit to do anything, and if my company would stop changing everything and breaking my images every other week.
Ah I never tire of defenders of corporate shitfuckers
Whose computer is it? Mine or Microsoft's? Did they pay me or did I pay them? Should I also not be concerned about the regular pop-ups begging me to use it?
Did you ever stop and wonder why it is that MS so desperately wants you to use their browser?
A bit crass, but the truth is quite harsh too. While I do agree with your point overall; I don't think people are wrong to protest. We need consumers to bitch and whine about things rather than take corporate laying down.
So Chromebooks and Windows are switching, that's funny. Windows is gradually becoming more and more browser based, while Chromebooks are gradually moving away.
I just went ahead and deleted anything that looked Edge-related from all the system directories. Sure, my computer won't boot into Windows anymore, but all the more reason to use Linux!
Actually that method in the picture no longer works, but there is a better, though still convoluted, method.
Of course, have fun adding repos and installing better versions of browsers in Linux.
Edit: When I said "better versions", I was primarily referring to Debian, which installs FF ESR. You have to add repos and install the better FF standard.
What I meant was like with Debian, which is what I use right now, you get Firefox ESR, which isn't good if you want a reasonably updated browser and features.
To get it, you have to add a repo, ideally remove ESR, etc.
Yeah my comment was misunderstood. I was primarily referring to Debian, which installs ESR. If you want the up to date version, you have to add repos and such.
I would argue the entirety of debian is one big "ESR" so it's not out of place. If you want latest releases of software then Debian is not the droid you are looking for.
People need to stop being such noobs, getting software from repo.
It's crazy to trust precompiled software force fed to people by evil-big-foss corporations.
Real pros check every line for malware each time there's an update and compile from source.
Noob. How can you trust the underlying libraries and assembly code those functions/methods are coming from? Better get a debugger and watch those CPU registers while it's running.
