Microsoft blocks EdgeDeflector to force Windows 11 users into Edge
theverge.com
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Microsoft to Block Windows 11 Browser Workarounds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29201027 - Nov 2021 (105 comments)
You can no longer bypass microsoft-edge:// links using apps like EdgeDeflector - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29191244 - Nov 2021 (171 comments)
This is a lot more obvious once we change the URL from the submitted one (https://www.howtogeek.com/768727/microsoft-calls-firefoxs-br...) to the article it's copying.
Do they really expect people who go through the effort of installing a third party browser and setting it as default to switch back to Edge because of the grand experience they had with it when Windows opened some help article in it?
How much money do they make of the 0.000001% of users who do the above?
How much money do they lose because of the reputation damage and increased regulator attention because of it?
I cannot think of any scenario where, money wise, this is a net positive for MS.
I'd prefer it if these things opened in Firefox, but I can just as easily see how from an engineering perspective they want this mechanism and are willing to defend it. From that perspective, Firefox is intentionally fucking around with OS internals in a way that could create costs for their support org.
(edit: please don't shoot the messenger. I'm an affected user too)
Unfortunately I doubt they lose very much at all based on a move like this. To sophisticated users this is a huge red-flag, but I would imagine a vast majority of computer users barely know what browser they use.
Probably they use edge by default until they're cajoled into installing Chrome as their default browser by their google services, and then they're confused why certain things from chrome don't work when they've been led to a website from the search bar.
That's an absolutely atrocious result from a UX point of view. And it really makes you wonder about the incentive structures in the industry to contemplate the collective frustration suffered by hundreds of millions or billions of users just so some PO's can get a raise for hitting their KPI targets this or that quarter.
> they're cajoled into installing Chrome as their default browser by their google services. And do you really think 80% of the destop users clicked to install chrome because they click anything on the net?
I thought they removed the ad for chrome in google services.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
They certainly haven’t, here’s what going to google.com looks like in Safari: https://files.catbox.moe/ew6idm.png
The pattern you see there would still hold in the scenario I describe so long as Chrome is quite effective at getting people to install chrome through things like banners and email CTA's.
And linux users are probably more likely to fall into the category of sophisticated user than the general population.
I don't see any evidence in what you've presented that the average computer user cares at all about what browser they're using beyond "I will click until the annoying notifications go away".
I don't think the Wikipedia page supports this definitively.
Under summary tables [1], for October 2021, 2 out of 4 sources put Edge ahead of Firefox for desktop browsers (by more than the ones that put Firefox ahead of Edge). In older data, Edge+IE seems to beat Firefox.
Separately, Firefox being more used than Edge would not contradict most people using Edge briefly until they install Chrome.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...
I have set Firefox as deault web browser, but Teams still opens urls in Edge. And I could not find a way to fix it, or identify why Teams is doing it?
Open Edge and go to Settings > Profiles > Profile preferences and toggle off "Use Microsoft Edge to open links from other Microsoft apps".
Probably to increase the friction of using other browsers. It will be simpler for many users to keep all their bookmarks, history, and saved passwords in one browser. If Microsoft's products require Edge, it's going to channel more users to Edge due to reduced friction.
I’m not sure you have things configured correctly, or your Organization has added some thirty-party security stuff on top of Teams.
* MS (used to) allow the user to choose default programs in the spirit of "openness" (because they were legally told to).
* The default settings in programs have never been legislated...
* ...therefore do dark patterns in programs and set the default search in Edge to be Bing...
* ... and make it even harder (impossible? dunno, not using Windows) to change Bing to Google in Edge and drive all Windows users to Bing, and drive ad revenue.
"There's nothing that can't be solved with an extra layer of indirection".
The entire messaging of this OS is dystopian corpo garbage and then people are shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that it's a monopolistic shitpile kicking your civil rights in the nuts at every turn.
This occured just after a system update. It might even have said that edge was new and improved, but I am not sure on that.
The narrative has really pulled in Microsoft's favor and I think that's not too our advantage. Every conversation I have with them is about how they "used to be bad but are great for open source now".
Ah, and I installed Windows 10, that does not use Microsoft account(you might had to disconnect internet cable for that), so it might be the main problem.
Having ads at the OS level is just mind boggling, I get people can get used to anything but I really hoped there'd be a line where people just left in swarms.
I'm sick of having my attention preyed upon everywhere I look in that OS. It makes me feel insulted.
I won't miss Windows one second. Now just to find the right distribution environment...
The funny thing is, they're doing it for more than decade, and people believe that one day they won't do it. On the contrary, it'll get more and more aggressive.
No they don't, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to undermine the whole concept of "default browser" like this.
I think what they expect is that those people will keep using Edge "on accident" - because various bits of essential OS chrome will just keep opening it, no matter what.
After some time, those users will grow tired of manually copy-pasting the link into Firefox or whatever and just keep using Edge for those tasks.
Never underestimate the power of friction.
A lot of people don't understand what different browsers are, for them there is just "the Internet". I can tell my parents to just install and use Firefox. But they will then happily use a random Edge screen that was last visible to do their next search and be none the wiser. Meanwhile Microsoft will be raking in all their user data and advertisement space.
Shudder good God, we live in a terrible future.
If the unsophisticated user performs a search with the OS, and the links get clickjacked by a cracked browser and the user ends up installing malware as a result, they're not going to blame Firefox, or the malware-writer. They're going to blame Microsoft, because they were just using the OS. What's more the vulnerability won't be something MS can fix because it will be the fault of 3rd party software. So to prevent that possibility MS want end-to-end control over the search results.
Having said that I think a lot of the recent bad will toward MS is self-inflicted. One easy thing they could do is allow the paid versions (Pro and up) of Windows to have an "expert" mode that lets the user configure their OS the way they want, including removing all the telemetry and making all unessential apps/tools entirely optional, including Edge of course.
Also when you have a company the size of MS talking about a small decision like this as if the whole company is onboard and actively engaged in the decision making process is naive. It was most likely a decision made by a few people at MS. Not saying that excuses it, but often individuals in companies have their own misaligned incentives and make certain decisions for their own benefits.
How often do unsophisticated users identify where malware came from correctly?
I forget the name of it, but there's a fork one of the open source browsers that's distributed by neo nazi types. I stumbled onto it trying to find a copy of XP I could use in a VM to run some ancient software. I wouldn't at all be surprised if it had a backdoor.
How is this even a case? moreover the fact that MS is claiming it is for benefit of Users is itself suspicious
I'm reminded of those Safari-based jailbreak methods on iOS from the past.
It’s peanuts enough to not affect that many users, but loud and clear to send the message that Windows is no longer users’. It’s Microsoft’s.
If you step back a little, there is a clear pattern. Starting with the mandatory telemetry and forced updates in W10, cross-signing requirements for any kernel code, unyielding push for using web accounts for local logins and all the way up to the mandatory hardware TPM in W11 (which literally has no other major differences from W10) - the proverbial garden is getting all walled up whether anyone likes it or not.
An iteration or two more and the OS will be locked completely, with the only way in through the AppStore.
Fun times ahead. Mark my words.
I mean, obviously it’s BS, but are there PMs who actually think it’s better for the user to override the default browser for things like this? A side note: one frustrating aspect of this problem is that my browser extensions are never installed in Edge. So things like password autofill in a lot of the MS auth flows (which appear to be web-based, as far as I can tell) just don’t work
> things like password autofill in a lot of the MS auth flows (which appear to be web-based, as far as I can tell) just don’t work
Cynically I could believe this is partly by design. If they manage to get you into edge often enough, sooner or later you'll set up your workflows in edge as well out of annoyance. Maintaining two separate browser environments is a burden, and sooner or later a lot of people will give up and stick to the browser you have to use in many cases.
> Maintaining two separate browser environments is a burden
For my personal use I have 4 distinct browsers (FF, Brave, Ungoogled Chromium and Falkon) but I guess I'm probably an outlier ;)
"Need?" No. But that wasn't the question MS asked themselves. The question was probably "More data or less?" Framed like that, it's unfortunately obvious why they chose this route.
This is to avoid confusion; no chance of doing some administrative action accidentally because I recognize the different UI elements of Firefox vs. Edge.
Browser containers/profiles/whatever don’t present visually different-enough UX to each distinct persona.
/s
But I think that is in fact the difference. It's not that Microsoft wants you to use Edge for that so much, it's that they want you to use Bing for that. Edge is just so they can drive you to Bing.
Bing has been around for so long now, and it's always been mediocre. Surely it's not a profit center. Anyone have insight about that?
If so, what are they trying to gain? Is it a rogue PM at Bing or Edge or Windows shitting it up for everyone else?
No, it's just evil. An axe is just a tool unless wielded by a dark clown. Edge would probably be a reasonable browser in the hands of literally anyone other than microsoft.
a) become less corrupt b) become more corrupt c) stayed the same
https://www.information-age.com/ballmer-lobbying-fails-to-pr...
Although that's from 2006, in 2013 this article says the migration was finished: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-munich-rejected-ste...
But I'm not sure if they've stayed with Linux or returned to Microsoft in the last 8 years... EDIT, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux#Timeline, in 2017 some politicians said they're switching to Windows 10 by 2020, in 2020 other politicians U-turned on that decision.
After all, all of their legal troubles amounted to a financial slap on the wrist and the browserchoice requeriment which they managed to actually profit from (auctions), then dropped entirely when they saw fit.
By the time the government gets to slapping them again with another non-consequential fine, edge will have already managed to extract as much market share as they could with these techniques anyway.
When are they going to split the company? Never.
Do you have any sources that show that there were auctions for spots on Microsoft's browser choice screen?
Not sure if they profited but early on it was filled with dozens of trident(IE) skins and a broken random shuffle that put IE first most of the time. So they didn't loose anything with it.
There was no ban on Trident browsers. There were no auctions, either.
None of the reporting or sources from that time (or since then) support the existence of a ban or auction.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8545237.stm
I didn't find the full original MS agreement, but Google definitely did auctions in their equivalent EU agreement for search, so it's likely MS did the same. It was even featured here in HN not long ago, https://web.stanford.edu/~ost/papers/csa.pdf .
That is not a ban on Trident browsers. It just prevents Microsoft from creating or funding new Trident-based browsers to add to the list. But none of the browsers in the browser choice screen other than IE were funded by Microsoft. The agreement explicitly called for the top 12 browsers by market share to be included in the screen, which included several Trident browsers not funded by Microsoft.
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/cases/dec_docs/39...
> but Google definitely did auctions in their equivalent EU agreement for search, so it's likely MS did the same.
Which means it never happened. If it had, there would have been news about Microsoft doing it instead of Google.
In fact, the browser selection was based on market share, and the ordering was alphabetical, and this was documented in the agreement and in the news.
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2630060/mozilla-complains-...
That was Microsofts proposal, people complained and it was changed to be randomized [1]. Of course Microsoft had no motivation to make that actually work, so it generally didn't[2].
[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/12/micro...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/04/anoth...
I do not see how to parse the rule in the way you suggest. First, in legalese you normally use "and" here, even if you technically mean "and/or". Second, Microsoft is already forbidden from featuring other browsers that they fund by clause 10, so unless the point of this clause was to block Trident browsers, it would be redundant. Third, if we parse this in the way you suggest, we reach the conclusion that Microsoft is allowed to feature a browser they fund as long as it is not Trident-based, which is obviously nonsensical.
IANAL, but the only way to parse this that makes any sense is that it prevents Trident browsers AND it prevents browsers funded (partially AND not partially) by Microsoft.
> In fact, the browser selection was based on market share, and the ordering was alphabetical, and this was documented in the agreement and in the news.
Actually no, the ordering was random, and this was _again_ published in mainstream media and IIRC again featured here in HN, because there was a complain that the actual distribution used was not uniform at all https://techcrunch.com/2010/02/22/microsoft-ballot-screen/ .
Technically legal to do that since the agreement didn't specify the uniformity of the random distribution, but obviously dark-ish and flying against the spirit of the law. Microsoft eventually fixed it.
And if the selection was purely "for the top 12 browsers by market share to be included in the screen", then Seamonkey or even Netscape would have been included on top of browsers like "Slepneir" https://sleipnir.en.lo4d.com/windows (which happens to be Gecko). It's definitely not as simple as you're suggesting and other rules had more priority, plus whatever "metrics" they used behind the scenes since they added and removed browsers a volonté. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu#Revisions
> Which means [the auctions] never happened. If it had, there would have been news about Microsoft doing it instead of Google.
Fair enough.
However we have plenty of evidence that they have done whatever they wanted.
In fact I have now learnt that they decided to literally not show this screen to Windows 7 users for over a year with no apparent reason https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21684329 .
Edit: My point being, in this case it's an end-to-end experience, it's not a question of being able to configure anything. You get Windows with whatever Microsoft decides you can do with it. If that's not what you intended, then another vendor's defaults or an open operating system are a better choice.
No, they don't. iOS, macOS, Android (not sure about ChromeOS) all allow you to set a default browser and then the OS sticks to that default. In macOS, if I do a google search from Spotlight, it opens in Firefox. Clicking a link inside Mail on iOS opens in my default browser.
They haven't changed. They can't change. If you're at Microsoft or working with Microsoft because you think they will? Run.
I never quite understood what kind of difference it makes, but my computer feels like it’s my own again.
Anyway, on topic, yeah, eventually they’ll get antitrust slapped again.
Just user hostile actions in the name of "convenience" (for the product owner / business).
This is only for links using the microsoft-edge protocol, which is used by internal things like whatever this "News and Interests" widget is they have on the taskbar now. Regular web links will open in your default browser, Firefox or otherwise.
I'm ok with that. I doubt Microsoft wants support calls about how someone clicked on their widget and the resulting page didn't render properly because user was on X browser. As long as this is redirection for built-in OS things only, I'll give them a pass.
So to answer your question, yes. If a program is specifying "firefox://" and using it to mean "https://", then that should be considered a bug in the program specifying it. That bug can either be fixed in the program itself, or can have a workaround in an external program.
or... user wants to open in Edge.
EdgeDeflector just changed microsoft-edge links to https links so they would open in the browser the user chose. Users had to choose to install it.
Firefox and Brave just added microsoft-edge to the protocols they supported. Users had to choose to make 1 of them the default browser.
Imagine if Apple tried this. People would riot.
Anyway, I feel like the bigger problem is that Microsoft does not use https to open some simple websites. And people, including me, are upset about it. If they just used https instead of microsoft-edge, we wouldn't have any of those problems and everybody would be happy (probably excluding a hand full of people at MS). They could still use their own protocol to open some Edge-specific setting page or whatever.
I won't as long as the built in OS things can't be replaced easily.
It's not "X browser", it would be just Firefox with its workaround. And it's common practice to design websites with support for major browsers, so it shouldn't be such a huge burden letting users pick a browser.
Much less egregious behavior was deemed illegal circa 2000s.[1][2]
The EU went so far as to require that the default choice be set randomly based on current browser market share.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission
Unlike Android and iOS, you have Administrator access, the ability to tamper with low-level system configuration, customise the taskbar, and a boatload of other things. I'd spend hours just sat at the computer tinkering with passwords, how things looked, etc.
It's quite disheartening to see Microsoft restricting this once-semi-free platform I genuinely enjoyed using. Computers of 2010, 2006 etc. were very entertaining to customise and play around with, and part of me wants to go back to that era.
The Microsoft of 2010 and under, despite having a very different stance on Linux vs. today[0], was a lot better in many ways. There was a lot less unnerving surveillance back then. Cortana didn't exist. They tried their hand at things like Windows Live (a success), Live Mesh (bit of a flop IIRC), cloud storage, etc. but they felt more like additions to the operating system rather than some deeply-engrained spyware you can't quite get rid of.
Anyway, back on topic: speaking of Microsoft Edge, it always reinstalls itself whenever Windows updates. I use Windows less and less these days, as forced software on my own hardware feels unethical and immoral.
[0]: https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/linux-and-open-source/why-...
For Microsoft to label what Firefox and Edge are doing "improper redirection" is just rubbing it in. A problem of propriety is just one of failing to meet some conventional standard. But there's no community here whose mores are being violated, the convention is no more than whatever some VP wants.
“Windows openly enables applications and services on its platform, including various web browsers,” says a Microsoft spokesperson. “At the same time, Windows also offers certain end-to-end customer experiences in both Windows 10, and Windows 11, the search experience from the taskbar is one such example of an end-to-end experience that is not designed to be redirected. When we become aware of improper redirection, we issue a fix.”
If they could make it like the Windows 98 taskbar while they're at it, that'd be great
tbh it's annoying typing in a program name & getting search results listed. I just want to open a program by name without taking my hands off the keyboard
... and yet Firefox is essentially verboten in this context.
This statement from Microsoft sounds like a carbon copy of their approach that got them in trouble all those years ago:
Windows also offers certain end-to-end customer experiences in both Windows 10, and Windows 11, the search experience from the taskbar is one such example of an end-to-end experience that is not designed to be redirected.
The more things change...
I don't want an operating system offering end to end customer experiences or any other marketing phrasing. I want an operating system that gets the fuck out of the way so I can do my stuff. And their search experience from the taskbar has always been a dud experience that I avoid wherever possible.
To be fair though, Windows has been getting in the way since XP's default theme, so it's not really a sudden change of direction. It's an abusive ex that don't get why their relationships never seem to last.
If user clicks on e.g "Open in Edge" button and FF intercepts URL with Microsoft's "microsoft-edge protocol" and opens FF, then what's so shocking about the fact that MS is not happy about this?
inb4: I'm saying it as a FF user.
Clearly microsoft thinks they're getting something out of it and you've already bought their license, now you're also forced to use edge even if you dont realise it or want it.
It's not surprising that Microsoft is turning into a bully here, but I wouldn't call cynicism in general about MS being a bully to be overreacting.
What about stuff that doesn't really work in FF or has terrible performance and Windows/MS wanted to open it in Edge?
Responding to your edit: If Microsoft creates a new type of page that works well in Edge but not other browsers, they can make a new protocol for it and allow other browser to support the protocol if they want to. In fact that's exactly what happened here: Microsoft added a new protocol, Firefox said "we support this new protocol with full performance and functionality, so we should be able to open it".
PMs get paid based on idiot stats and the more the Internet Explorer Edge team can increase IE Edge usage the more they get in bonus payments. So they force it on their Windows users down their throat, completely disregarding how awful of an experience this is as long as they get a better pay check.
The same happened with Teams. The Teams PM managed to get Teams integrated into Windows 11 in order to increase its usage stats for a better bonus.
Honestly, I don't know why so many people, especially developers still use Windows. I am 100% convinced that developers on Windows who are still using Windows as their main OS for software dev have not tried another OS for at least a few months to give it a proper try. It's unimaginable how an intelligent human being would otherwise like Windows. There is nothing to like about it. Windows 11 was a massive downgrade from 10 as well.
Like another child comment said, I've tried multiple distros for years as well but always came back to win cause I can't be bothered to maintain two different OS in my flavor. Windows is cumbersome for sure but it can be mitigated at the end of the day. Windows is not my fave OS per se but just works in most cases..
I've been actually a mac user for a long time but it sucked on HW/SW in my case. I ditched mac like a couple years ago but now It might be in a better fit..
A combination of comfort in familiarity and lack of viable alternatives. Not everyone has the money to buy an expensive Mac. With Linux, you potentially end up working for the OS rather than the OS working for you, no matter how far Linux on the desktop has come. See the latest video from Linus Tech Tips on Linux, for example.
The irony is that in using Windows 10 and 11 you are actually generating revenue to MS from their data collection and ads integrated within the core OS. You are working for the OS. And it gets better when you realize this is a software you had to purchase to use.
lol. The OS told Linus exactly what it would do, warned him it might not be what he intended in ALL CAPS, and made him type a full sentence (with an exclamation point!) confirming that it was really what he wanted. And then it did exactly what it told him it would do.
That there was a dependency conflict for a short time there (less than an hour) is a legitimate annoyance. But developers should not be troubled by the fact that an operating system is actually obedient, or that its warnings actually mean something.
But sure, let's ignore the horrible UX and blame a newbie for not being experienced with how a terminal works.
But on Debian, Ubuntu, and other Debian-based distros, the desktop environment is neither protected nor essential, so this prompt or error message won't even come up if a dependency conflict requires removing the DE in order to satisfy the dependencies of some new app.
> a package installation shouldn't have asked him to nuke his GUI in huge wall of text, it should've rejected him
Experience helps, but it doesn't take an expert to tell that removing 90 packages in order to install 1 application doesn't seem normal. (Occasionally one does see things like that during major dist-upgrades.) The mere fact of the wall of text itself WAS a huge warning.
A package manager should offer to do whatever is required to complete the operation you've asked of it, as long as it won't brick your system (render it unrecoverable without recourse to external media or devices, or render the package manager itself inoperable). (If what you've asked it to do is sufficiently explicit, maybe it should even remove itself.) It should also give you the resources (as apt does, through `apt show`) to inspect each package marked for removal and installation, in case you don't know what they are.
One of the reasons I like Unix-like operating systems (aside from macOS, which violates this principle) is that they don't waste your time with tons of warnings and locks and gates that don't actually mean anything, or which prevent you from doing things that are in fact harmless and unlikely to cause you any trouble.
It's fine for distros like Pop!_OS to extend the notion of ‘bricking’ the system to include removing the desktop environment. But I'm not very interested in running systems which are designed to cater to people who want to use them (and use them recklessly, at that) without understanding them at the expense of users who are willing to learn how they work.
You're looking at it from a seasoned Linux user's perspective, not from the perspective of a guy who has used Windows for decades and can't remember the last time he needed to use the Command Prompt. I don't know if it's lack of empathy or unrelenting bias.
Is it hard to believe that millions of desktop users don't understand what a "package" or a "dependency" is? Windows doesn't link packages dynamically, it's just fat statically linked exe files, or exe files bundled with everything needed, like AppImages. For someone who's never known the concept of a dependency, expecting him to understand that wall of text is pretty elitist.
> One of the reasons I like Unix-like operating systems (aside from macOS, which violates this principle) is that they don't waste your time with tons of warnings and locks and gates
Yes, agreed, and I'm of the same opinion, which is why I use Linux as a daily driver. However, this is NOT the experience a new user or a complete beginner should have. A power user experience for beginner is like giving keys to a car to someone who's never driven one and asking him to drive in a metropolitan city with millions of cars on the road. You know what's gonna happen and it'd be pretty weird and apathetic to blame the beginner if he crashes his car and gets injured, which is what you're doing.
> But I'm not very interested in running systems which are designed to cater to people who want to use them (and use them recklessly, at that) without understanding them at the expense of users who are willing to learn how they work.
Sure, but then let's not proselytize Linux and how it's beginner friendly and how it's "better" than Windows or Mac when the intended usage involves knowing how to work on a terminal. Unless you can confidently say that this Linux distribution doesn't require you to touch the terminal, ever, not once, don't recommend it. This is why I don't recommend anyone to use Linux, not unless I want to waste their time and see them in pain.
I'm writing with Hacker News readers, and especially developers (as mentioned somewhere upstream in this thread), in mind as prospective Linux users. For them, I don't think what happened to Linus represents a difficulty they will struggle with or find difficult to avoid.
> Is it hard to believe that millions of desktop users don't understand what a "package" or a "dependency" is? Windows doesn't link packages dynamically, it's just fat statically linked exe files, or exe files bundled with everything needed, like AppImages. For someone who's never known the concept of a dependency, expecting him to understand that wall of text is pretty elitist.
It's not hard to believe at all. That's why, imo, distributions that target users migrating from Windows— especially distros that target Windows ‘power users’— should generally direct users away from package managers like apt in favor of package managers which avoid negotiating dependency conflicts in a single global namespace, like Flatpak, Snap, AppImage, Guix, etc.
I agree that Linus' experience was a problem, especially for Pop!_OS, given its mission. But I don't think apt was really ill-behaved here, and I don't think interventions at the level of apt's behavior are likely to be as effective as directing new users toward more appropriate tools when they ‘just wanna install Steam’, so-to-speak.
> Sure, but then let's not proselytize Linux and how it's beginner friendly and how it's "better" than Windows or Mac when the intended usage involves knowing how to work on a terminal.
Agreed, kinda. I've never recommended desktop Linux to a Windows ‘power user’, and nowadays there isn't really one I would recommend to such a person unless they asked me what to try.
I have recommended desktop Linux to totally non-technical people I'm willing to support, though. After the first week, I pretty much don't hear from them again until the hardware dies. I've also recommended desktop Linux to mathematicians and scientists who may have written some code before but don't really know anything about hardware, operating systems, or systems administration. They seem to do fine solving their own issues.
Not all developers are system administrators, which is one of the reasons why MacOS is vastly more popular among developers than Linux. Imagine executing `sudo apt install npm` or `sudo apt install python-pip` and having your desktop wiped out just because you were in a hurry and assumed that everything would work out (which, admittedly, it usually does). I know how to recover from that, not all developers would.
> That's why, imo, distributions that target users migrating from Windows— especially distros that target Windows ‘power users’— should generally direct users away from package managers like apt in favor of package managers which avoid negotiating dependency conflicts in a single global namespace, like Flatpak
Agreed when it comes to Flatpak (I despise it though).
> I have recommended desktop Linux to totally non-technical people I'm willing to support, though.
I've done that before and those people usually turn into help vampires, so I don't do it anymore.
This reliance on operator knowledge is present in a negative way (e.g., there's no confirmation dialog or trash system for running `rm` against a normal file). But it's also there in a positive one: programs report to you what they're going to do and provide you with tools to further inspect those reports.
Lots of Linux distros encode these safety mechanisms socially, or through their installation procedures. Distros that don't come with desktop environments help ensure that their users know which packages relate to their desktop environments and how by having the users install those packages themselves. This is famously true of Arch and Gentoo, but it's also true of Debian, on which Pop!_OS and its package management tools are currently based.
It's not a bug that every package you install with apt is related to every other in a uniform way, and managed in a uniform way with all the others. It's a feature, and an awesome one that developers should appreciate and enjoy rather than fear. But it also means that when you use apt to install anything, you're administering your whole operating system, and you need to act like it. That doesn't mean that you have to be extremely cautious, but it does mean that you can't be totally inattentive to dire and emphatic warnings.
If some distro wants to take on young users who can't read, or end users who think 'because I'm just installing an app, I don't have to think about anything the UI presents to me', it will be fighting an uphill battle as long as it tells users to 'install apps' via system administration tools that negotiate a global shared state, with maximal resource sharing, among every program and library installed on the system. And when they do put up more gates, three things will happen:
1. They will become a distro that many users outgrow after trying, because managing and customizing the distro will become annoying to them
2. They will become less and less attractive to users familiar with upstream and other traditional users for the same reasons
3. They will reinforce the same blindness to text, to warnings, and to the transparency of the operating system that these gates were set up to solve.
One of the results of these things is that the distro will increasingly become one used exclusively as a commodity, and predominantly by newbies or others who don't care to know what they're doing. (This could be a good thing, depending on the distro's goals.)
But there's a better way! If a newbie-friendly distro wants to present users with tools for installing applications (i.e., not operating system components) that are more or less safe to use thoughtlessly, they can direct users to package management schemes that don't involve resolving dependencies globally, or rely on the base system, like Guix and Flatpak.
And then they can even leave the system administration tools in place with, yes, some UX improvements (colored text, more concise output, requiring more explicit flags for potentially disruptive or deeply transformative operations), but without turning them into tools that think they know better than their users.
It's in this sense that Linus' experience doesn't indicate a fundamental problem with apt, or a reason that someone who is (willing to become) competent to administer an OS which is hesitant to overrule them should shy away from desktop Linux.
Obviously, Pop!_OS' goals are not aligned with Linus' experience. But that's more because apt was not the kind of tool Linus expected than because there's something fundamentally wrong with apt, or that Linux distros don't still need a tool that plays basically the same role in basically the same way.
Most people aren't going to run into this. The problem he ran into installing steam was only a problem for a short time, and I'm pretty sure the devs aren't going to allow that one to happen again any time soon. For your average non-power user, a desktop install will go fine, the steam install will go fine, and their favorite games will have a good chance of working properly. Obviously you can live happily in linux since I've been doing it successfully for a couple of decades. Once you get it set up to your liking, it's generally smooth sailing. Depending on your individual circumstances, though, that can be a chore, I admit.
I also remember the pains I went through learning DOS and it's quirks, Windows 3.1 and it's quirks, Windows 95 and plug and play, etc. Life in Windows hasn't been a cakewalk either. Things generally work a lot better now, but I shudder thinking about having to download a driver from somewhere, deal with the extra crap they throw in, run through it's installation program, etc. Don't get me started on trying to run something not bought from a company, but downloaded from a website somewhere. Yikes. Or just dealing with how MS breaks their own rules. Click on any non-MS program once, and it takes your click. Click on anything built by MS, and it just gives it focus and you have to click again to get it to do what you wanted to the first time. Windows is user-hostile if you don't walk their walk. Linux is user-friendly if you are open to the idea that a bunch of software built by well-meaning developers that do their own thing might not work as smoothly as something built from the ground up by a corporation.
I can't recommend linux to just anyone, even today, but for me dealing with user-hostile problems thrown at me by a corporation is much worse than trying to figure out a workflow that will make these tools built by separate groups work together. Or un-fsck whatever stupid thing I managed to do to myself today by trying to be fancy.
Exactly. If an operating system is offering a GUI for installing software, it should work. If it isn't working, it takes an extreme amount of bias to blame the user instead of the operating system.
> Windows is user-hostile if you don't walk their walk.
Windows 10 is user hostile only if the user in question is sensible enough to understand that an operating system can be user hostile. News flash, most people on Earth who use a laptop or a desktop couldn't tell the difference between Firefox and Edge and why they might wanna use one over the other. For such people, who are used to double clicking on exe files and using them without issues, Linux would be incredibly user hostile. You just need to look at things from the perspective of a beginner, not yourself.
> ... but for me dealing with user-hostile problems thrown at me by a corporation is much worse
Which is why I've been using Linux as my daily driver for more than 6 years now, but I would never recommend anyone to use it, unless I want to see them in pain.
Hardware support for most linux distros still suck.
This year I've used Ubuntu, NixOS, Arch and Zorin OS. My issues:
- Dell dock station won't work properly.
- Hibernation on Lenovo laptop won't work properly.
- Bluetooth won't work properly.
I'm using currently Zorin OS and it has the best user experience so far. That said, it still requires leg work to setup stuff compared to Windows 10 (I use it at $JOB). Ironically, I think using Linux in Windows is actually easier for many use cases as you can just wipe your distro clean if gets to a broken state.
What behavior are you observing with hibernation?
What happened was merely that azure was given the same freedom the Xbox division used to have to operate in their market niche as if they were an independent company with no obligation to promote Microsofts other products, and it's a question if that is actually going to last.
Do you really believe that is the only reason we don't have a native port of Office for Linux? If Microsoft released a version of MS Office for Linux tomorrow, that was just as compatible with the Windows version as the Mac version is, how many extra licenses do you think they would sell?
Microsoft will never change. Microsoft is the next IBM. Remember IBM? They are selling blockchains, quantum computers and magical AI products now.
Having a <0.1% of users bypassing your custom handler isn't relevant at all. But having 5~6% of them is not.
If your competitor (Microsoft) plays dirty and you play even dirtier (Brave, Firefox) at their own field, they will notice it, patch it and use it against you.
Since antitrust doesn't seem to work in the US... Maybe Microsoft will get another anti-trust fine from the EU and they'll forced to disable this handler at least inside the EU market.
It'll be a piece of cake, once their customers are angry enough, for a new tool to become popular that circumvents whatever "patch" Microsoft puts out.
The emperor has no clothes.
As an experiment I left Edge on the Taskbar for my users, with Chrome on the Desktop. Chrome is 3x more popular even though Edge is a) default, b) pinned to Taskbar, and c) Syncs automatically
I don't want my operating system to dictating behavior of taskbar, default browsers, etc. I'm planning switch to Linux, when I can figure which one. It will be laborious, as I have years of workflow helpers built in AutoHotkey, custom DLL's and some Win32 applications.
I never liked the Windows' command prompt / Powershell. All my servers have been Linux boxes so I've known bash way better, so that part will be really easy, in fact joyous to get rid of command propmpt / powershell.
I'm only slightly worried about technical problems, because I've periodically booted up to Linux from USB sticks. It's just small things are difficult, like getting 4K video to work smoothly etc.
If you’re very adventurous and have a lot of free time to explore, install Arch. Its documentation is excellent.
OG Debian if you're more hands-on with your PC.
I haven't used Windows as my main OS in a really long time -- 20 years? -- and crap like this is one reason why. I thought that, with Ballmer gone, they'd stop doing deeply wrong stuff like this, but here we are.
They cheated the license with Spyglass Mosaic for Internet Explorer - making it based on software purchases and then bundling it for free with Windows so they didn't have to pay any royalties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#Internet_Exp...
Then there's the Halloween documents, and the attempts at forcing ActiveX (and IE) on the early Web, etc. - the whole company is rotten.
They'll obliterate all competitors and become so profitable they'll force Oracle to take them out.
Tada! Market forces at work once again!
This kind of thing is especially apparent in interoperability -- Office on the Mac is currently as good as it's ever been; I never need to switch to Windows to get something done. Sharepoint (which is awful) now works properly on non-Windows platforms. There are excellent iOS builds of the Office tools. None of that was conceivable under Ballmer.
So yes, I'm old enough to have lived through all the things you mention, but I have also noticed a distinct change in MSFT's behavior in the last 7 years. I see this kind of browser tomfoolery as a return to the bad old days, for sure.
For example, if i'm using OSX, is there any situations where i'm forced to use Safari? I'm not aware of any, I believe I can delete Safari from Apps if I want and nothing terrible happens.
It does seem peculiar, i'm guessing it's more to do with being able to claim so many users, rather than ad flinging, but really, it's a bit weird and 90s if you know what I mean.
I don't want web-results in a task-bar-search at all. I'm trying to launch a program, not tell Microsoft-search the names of every program I launch.
Set to 0 the following keys (add them if needed)
- BingSearchEnabled (DWORD)
- CortanaConsent (DWORD)
I've been running w/ those since Windows 1903, and that's why I don't care about all those Edge shenanigans (except the default browser switcher).
All those sub-par web experiences in the Windows Shell are tiresome. Taskbar search breaking because of internet issues tops it all off nicely.
Used to be that Windows users would complain that Linux made them edit arcane config files, I guess now it's Linux users that complain about Windows needing you to edit arcane registry settings.
MS documented the change here, very buried:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...
Look under "Feature deprecations and removals" > "Search Results from the Internet" and you see:
"Windows 11 does not support disabling the return of internet Search results via Registry Key."
They imply there that you can still use Group Policy to make this change, but... that doesn't work either in the latest builds.
And you're right, the keys I mentioned don't seem to work anymore.
There's a policy called "Don't search the web or display web results in Search", which doesn't seem to work. Perhaps it requires Windows to be domain-joined?
Or perhaps they were referencing the "Turn off display of recent search entries in the File Explorer search box" policy, in which case it works. The description for that policy doesn't mention web results at all, which is odd. Anyway, you will have to kill SearchHost.exe for the policy to take effect, it will be launched automatically when initiating a new search.
Thank you, it's basically Chromium with MS spyware instead of the usual Google one
Now it's their computer, their OS and you should be happy they allow you to use their wonderful services.
I mean realistically how many times have you ever had to reach out to support regarding an issue with Office?
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
Hey team at MS who implements stuff like that: How does it feel working on this? Genuinely interested.
> but it makes Edge look bad, which is a shame because it’s not a terrible browser at all.
Maybe its not a terrible browser, but first impressions count for a lot. To even use the browser for the first time you need to sit through their sales pitch (for anyone who has installed windows recently, you'll understand that all the popups and so on take much longer than you'd expect). They practically beg you not to use another browser.
All this I'd say fine to. They have mistakes of the past to fix, and want people to give them a chance. Maybe not ideal, but the first time I saw this, I thought fair enough, I'll give them a chance.
As soon as you do that and cave to them, the first thing they ask for is all your data, with a massive obstrusive banner that's of course intentionally difficult to say no to. Not even Chrome is so brazen as that. You give them an inch and they take a yard
And the fact that they are so vocal against FF's hack is because it interferes with their telemetry golden egg.
If I'm being advertised to I'm not paying for the priveledge. There will be another work around I'm sure.
I can't add anything constructive this sort of stuff really annoys me and I end up on a rant.
Currently I have a permanent icon on the top of my settings panel "Web browsing: restore recommended" that I can't remove unless I go back to Edge.
The bing searches that appear in my taskbar search have never been useful and just pollute the local results I’m looking for. I’ve tried disabling them with regedit tricks to no avail.
Yet another reason to not install Windows 11, including telemetry, adverts, an always on internet connection, and abandoning perfectly functioning hardware in favour of TPM chips.
It almost seems as if they believe anti-trust has been effectively killed between then and now, and they're ready to poke the bear to verify that it's dead.
These cases are fought for years, and theorized over for decades. In the meantime, the companies have gained or lost market share, profits and future revenues move in whatever direction, and the court ruling and the fine have little importance.
This may have been different some time ago. Nowadays, however, rest assured that no internet company will be deterred by pesky things such as laws, morality or ethics. If market share is at stake, that is.
This goes for Microsoft as much as for Google and Facebook. Google settles important cases (data related) to not have any legislative interference, and will pay the fine for everything else. Microsoft would be foolish to do anything else.
The companies are more powerful than the legal systems in the EU. Not the EU, mind you - if the will was there. But it isn't.
Look at the fines, look at the dollars actually being paid. And then look at the prospect of gaining 30,40 maybe 50% market share in the browser market - now that all bets are off and Microsoft has gone back to just siphoning off all data without even giving normal users a choice. Yeah.
Don't be naive.
> To date, Google has been found guilty of antitrust behavior in the cases related to Google AdSense and Android, and has been fined over €8 billion (~$9 billion)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-gl...
> In the most recently reported fiscal year, Google's revenue amounted to 181.69 billion US dollars.
So over the course of a decade so far and ~4-5 different cases, the EU has fined Google for approximately 4% of their revenue of a single fiscal year.
Truly "slapping the giant".
*Edit: Conversion to dollars*
I’ve called the GDPR fines great because they’re finally actually hitting with real numbers.
For example, if breaking the rules to earn 0.1% of revenue leads to the same penalty as breaking the rules to earn 100% of revenue, the company might as well maximize the scale of each rule broken to improve the risk-adjusted return.
More reasonably, a fine should be proportional to the amount of incremental revenue that the company obtained by engaging in the illegal conduct, and that should be multiplied by the odds of getting caught (so the fine can’t be amortized as a cost of doing business).
I think this rhetoric claiming that fines are just a slap on the wrist made sense at some point when we were talking about million-dollar settlements, but now we’re talking billions, and in some cases it’s so much money that the company certainly didn’t increase their revenue by that much by breaking the rules. I feel like people are just repeating the same old argument and they aren’t thinking critically about the numbers. Companies do, in fact, care about being fined billions of dollars! It’s a big deal! That kind of money really does drive corporate strategy! Try asking your CEO for a billion dollars to build a new product if you don’t believe me.
I hope someone will take action against all these three companies but I don't think the laws have been written to deal with this.
Would "but Apple is doing worse" really work as a valid defense in court? Wouldn't it just provoke another litigation against Apple (if the court decided smartphones should be treated in the same way as personal computers)?
Are you sure about that? On Android my default browser is Firefox. If I email myself https://detectmybrowser.com/ and then open it in the Fastmail app on Android, it says I'm using Firefox.
I agree that Apple and Google are also guilty here, but MS is repeating actions which there is not only a direct legal precedent against, but one which involved them as the defendant.
The issue wasn't what they did, it was what they did in combination with their monopoly of the desktop market.
Apple gets away with what they want to do because they're a minority player in both the desktop and smartphone markets. It will be interesting to see how this changes with Epic's attempt in court with redefine the market to a fraction of the market.
What's amazing to me is how much platformization has happened since then, especially in mobile, where even though no one company is a monopoly, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are definitely flexing their "we own the platform" muscles quite as strongly as Microsoft did in the late 90s (or stronger), to the detriment of both users and developers.
But that doesn't automatically mean that the bit of MS that is dealing with Edge, or Windows, or Teams, is also as virtuous. In fact, they seem purely driven by business analysts who don't actually care about the product, just the metrics. If they did care, you wouldn't get nagged about Teams every time you booted up the computer, and you wouldn't see them trying so hard to keep Edge as the default browser.
It's generally foolish to expect multinational corporations to act as if they are motivated by virtue - the incentive structure is just not set up for that.
Additionally, there is a lot of legacy Win32 applications still in use by gov't and institutions.
I'm secretary of the parents association of a rather large European school, and face this argument at least once a year.
They may have taken some step in different direction when that was convenient or profitable but NEVER changed their attitude.
It wasn't always this way, but it is now.
Embrace freedom. Use Linux.
Oh I love wording of this. It's almost like Windows 10 is a piece of art and altering it to serve end user is somehow wrong. It's almost like they think it's up to them to decide how customers can use their OS.
F these weasels
[1]: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
at this point i am ready to jump the MS ship completely.
It's truly a new world for gaming in linux now. I've been on linux since the early 2000s and had basically given up on getting almost anything to run through wine. Now almost everything in my steam catalog runs fine.
Just a heads-up that it's not all roses, though. There may be games that run fine for some people but don't on your setup, and anything with anti-cheat is basically not going to run yet, though Valve is working hard on that problem. You may find issues with alt-tabbing from fullscreen games, you might find that some games rely on an api that isn't working in proton or wine yet. For example, I play Phasmophobia solo, and that works great for the most part but they rely on Cortana for voice recognition, and that isn't implemented yet. I can make noise and ghosts will hear me, but they won't understand what I'm saying.
In my opinion any issues you run into will be small fish in comparison to issues thrust upon you by Microsoft being Microsoft, but they will seem huge at first because you're probably used to trying to solve problems the "microsoft way". Once you get past a few you'll be doing great.
> Ah, the eternal cycle of: Microsoft does something bad, then people move to Linux, then they get dragged by Linux's rough new user experience, then they leave Linux, then things are fine for a while, then people mock Linux users for being paranoid, then Microsoft does something bad...
here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29201872
At this point we can skip the "mock" step.
And their browser is not better than ungoogled chromium or vivaldi or firefox. Their browser despite being copy of opensource hasn't even published the source (I understand its BSD). Will we get edgium?
Yes, apparently they can. There used to be huge threads here on HN on how today's MS has nothing to do with its past, that it's ridiculous to believe that the company will always stay the same, that the Ballmer epoch is all over. I mean yes, these people are right, MS is a different company - but will still do grayish stuff on the verge of legality, as long as they can go unpunished. And because corporations are not people, apparently we can only speak about the legal aspect, not the moral one (as if nobody was personally responsible for these decisions).
I'm big enough to admit that I was one of them. I genuinely felt that between VSCode, WSL, their involvement with improving Python, the improvements to Linux on Azure, Open Source .Net Core etc. etc. that Microsoft was changing and Windows was a genuine and valid OS option for developers. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and a second chance, despite having been an actively anti-MS Linux user through the whole "Open Source is cancer", EEE and anti-trust years.
Turns out I'm the sucker.
It's self-defeating IMO - the developer goodwill they gain with the projects you mentioned is immediately lost any time they pull stunts like this.
That's something they will never ever get. I could be convinced that VSCode is a great tool or that the azure cloud is a worthwhile alternative to AWS or the Google Cloud...
And then I remember it's microsoft, a giant software company so shady i refuse to run any of their software on my devices because every day theres a new dark UI pattern, a new advert injected somewhere, a new abuse of trust. Why would I EVER recomend any of their software to a customer of mine if I deeply distrust them and expect them to try to fuck me over some way or another any way they can.
Well, a part of it changed somewhat, because these things were unheard of in the past..
Windows was a genuine and valid OS option
..it's just that this bit didn't change.
for developers
Depending on the type of application, Windows can practically work perfectly fine for a developer, always has and probably always will. Just too bad said developer also has to deal with the not-so-sunny side of MS.
Public relations is concerned exactly with this.
Facebook gets hated far more than is necessary. As if it’s some evil far worse than other companies. Even just other major tech companies.
Amazon somehow is able to maintain a decent enough reputation. The disdain for Amazon is far less than Microsoft on HN. Or in general where people don’t care about Microsoft but are more or less okay or better with Amazon.
This is all anecdotal and my personal opinion of how big tech is viewed.
It’s frustrating with Microsoft because the bad behavior is completely unnecessary. They are torching their reputation and goodwill for what can only be marginal gains in usage share for a free product, that might ultimately lead to showing slightly more ads.
At least when Amazon screws over business partners, it is on my behalf (in the form of cheaper or better goods and services - Amazon Basics being a great example). When Microsoft screws someone they screw me. When Facebook screws someone, they screw me (or they did, before I deleted my account, good riddance).
Time for Linux developers to buckle down, rally behind standards that third-party developers can count on, and give the world a better platform that respects the user...because we know none of the big players will do that.
1. Microsoft has changed their hostile behavior in some segments
2. Microsoft has always been hostile in others, and that has not changed
In a company as large as Microsoft, any kind of transformational change is not going to be evenly distributed.
A charitable take on this is: Some parts of MS are as they have always been, but others have improved.
A slightly more pessimistic take: Microsoft realized they needed to change to say relevant with the developer community, and so they focused on that community only.
Moves like this certainly bolster arguments that MS never really changed, but I think it's more complex than that.
I was attempting to edit videos. I plug in an external hard drive with my footage, and... nothing. Well, not nothing. It's there in Devices & Printers. It's able to be ejected safely. Troubleshooter has no problems.
But nothing in Explorer or any other obvious place you'd think. Panicking, I plugged the same drive into Chrome OS. Literally three seconds later I was browsing my footage.
That's the point I got up from my desk and said, "I'm done." I'm so over Windows.
They spend how much time and effort shoving a Linux environment into things when they apparently can't even support widely-used filesystems. The fact my external drive is mountable by both Chrome OS (where the code for mounting is open source) and macOS (a closed-source OS used by a minority of the populace) but not Windows is an utter joke. I shouldn't have to spend all this time trying to access my files in 2021. This is something that should Just Work.
This was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I've had several minor and major annoyances with Microsoft's treatment of Windows ever since Windows 8, and none of them have gotten better.
- Constantly degrading your choice of default browser, as in the OP.
- WTF is "3D Objects" and why does it always bubble up from the pits of hell even when I delete it? Microsoft is very opinionated about the User folder in general, while I think they should be as hands-off as possible. Stop adding folders I didn't ask for and stop resurrecting them after they're deleted. Why is this so hard?
- Ditto the last point for OneDrive.
- Windows 11-specific, but adding ads to the taskbar? In a paid OS that the OEMs are already footing the bill for and bundling whatever extra crapware they want? https://betanews.com/2021/09/04/microsoft-crowbars-ads-into-...
- Obscuring local account creation to a ridiculous degree in Windows 10 (you need to literally disable Wi-Fi or unplug Ethernet to even see the option) has gotten even WORSE in Windows 11. Now you can't even set up a local account at all unless you shell out extra for Windows 11 Pro! They've learned nothing from the Xbox One always-online debacle, and honestly looking back, this should have been the dealbreaker. But I thought, "hey, I don't create accounts that often, this is something I can live with." No longer.
- The amount of analytics and data-gathering in Windows is the worst it's ever been, and worse than any comparable OS. "You can turn it off though." Well, maybe. Until Windows Update decides it knows better and turns it back on.
- This is purely aesthetic, but Windows 8 and 10 looked utterly horrible if you did anything more than look at the desktop and open the Start Menu. Clashing styles and UX edicts from decades of past releases, in very visible places. It gives the impression Microsoft just doesn't give a shit. And don't tell me "it's too hard to update everything in time for release." It's not everything, and Microsoft is a big boy with lots of money and developers. They decided they just don't care.
- When trying to migrate my files in preparation for moving to Elementary, I plugged in an SD Card and got BSOD'd immediately. Absolutely wonderful quality control. People complain Linux is buggy and you have to jump through hoops to do what you want? Windows is now that x100.
It's not getting better or even staying the same. Microsoft is actively making Windows worse for their own ends. Thankfully I have the choice and ability to install an alternative, but my heart goes out to those with no choice. It's Orwellian.
[this is a slightly updated version of a comment I posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29229881]
My initial reasons for my leaving the Microsoft world were because I didn’t agree with Microsoft’s ethics: it’s like being an exploitative, self-serving (as opposed to user-serving) conglomerate is wired into its company structure.
MS’s great work with VS Code got me thinking that maybe there’s some hope for them as an organization, but every time I peek back into the Microsoft world like this I’m even less inclined to ever go back.
I mean, their customers are actively developing workarounds for their shitty dark UX patterns, and their response is basically: “sorry, we insist that you adhere to our dark UX patterns”.
Fuck that. Life’s too short for that bullshit. Vote with your time, money and attention.
Somehow, privately-owned companies tend to actually give a shit about things beyond revenues and other practically meaningless numbers.
1. Public companies have tons of disclosure requirements, which makes it far more likely that someone notices their misconduct. That's a really heavy bias in the data.
2. Private companies are typically smaller, so the range of ways to abuse customers is smaller. Nestle can buy out the water rights for entire regions; the median private company probably couldn't buy enough water to mess up a city.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1118/
Call me stupid, but I’d be far happier without Apple or Google in my life, and am willing to pay the price for that in terms of inconvenience. I’m way happier without Microsoft, that’s for sure.
I wonder where we got off track.
We stopped enforcing the law against large companies. :(
Apple's behavior today on iOS is clearly worse than 90's era Microsoft Windows, but we had a semi-functional FTC back then, and we mostly don't today.
That's gone - industry got outsourced, the gap between Intel and TSMC is growing every year, Boeing's reputation will unlikely to ever recover, Hollywood is a joke, oil and gas extraction is perceived as villains, journalism in terminal decline, finance and pharma pure rent seeking. Software is the only thing left where Americans can say with a straight face that they're proud of it - hence the unwillingness to taint the crown jewels
However, as a human being, I hate them all for their practices. If it wasn't for the free software movement, I would have definitely dropped IT as a dear hobby of mine.
App stores weren't even a thing before Google and Apple made it the norm, and I would say the Windows Store is barely used.
Workaround: Fac€book, Appl€ and Googl€. It even works for the parent companies: M€ta, Alphab€t. The European union saves the internet again!
Use case: remember when Googl€'s motto was "don't be evil" rumour says they changed it to "be €vil"
Yeah, there are effectively two Microsofts. The dev/tooling MS is awesome. VS Code is great, .NET is unsexy but very solid, their recent efforts on Python are commendable, I've also heard good things about Azure.
The Windows/Office world, is, well...
One of the saddest things I've ever seen is how they decided to put ads on the Solitaire app. Is the massive UX degradation such a move entails really worth the extra ad revenue? For real? They don't give a damn, they've never given a damn, and now they're even stopped pretending.
The same goes for lots of organizations, which makes it really hard to vote with your attention, time and money.
Facebook is another example. Yes, React was really cool when it launched, and great innovation comes from the Facebook engineering team. But is it worth supporting their engineering team when at large, the organization seems to contribute more bad to world than good?
I'm torn myself and not sure what to think anymore. Same applies to Microsoft. I really want to like the new Microsoft, but it's hard to just forget the past and see past issues like this, and it makes my view on the rest of their tooling to be less favorable.
I don't know what their policy on accepting code contributions from third parties is, but the prospective value of those contributions should speak for itself.
While I do run windows at home you can easily enjoy the developer-centric Microsoft without enaging with the consumer side.
I know I could just use and promote React without using and promoting Facebook-The-Platform. My argument was more around that by using React and promoting it, aren't I indirectly promoting Facebook then? Same goes for Microsoft or any other company that has a "good" side and a "bad" side. How can we support the good side without supporting the bad side indirectly?
That's why I still run the Windows 3.11 Solitaire.
Yay backwards compatibility, it sill works on Win 10 :D
And the original deck design by Susan Kare is still the best one ever.
Cloud Services is the "cool" Microsoft and their cloud services are now the biggest profit center for them. They have Azure, developer tools and contribute a huge amount to the overall open-source world. The majority of their customers run Linux workloads and things like Kubernetes. Cloud folks at Microsoft don't care if you run Linux or MacOS as long as you run your web apps on Azure that's all they care about and they try to make it as easy as possible. These are the guys that developed Microsoft's first internal Linux distribution.
Satya Nadella comes from the Cloud/Azure part of the business. That's why Microsoft has been doing some really innovative and smart choices lately under his leadership.
The Windows group are the luddites at Microsoft. Instead of open-sourcing Windows and treating it as open technology something the Cloud group would love they still jealously guard it as proprietary. They only put WSL (Windows Subystem Linux) because the Cloud group wanted it. Windows group is living in the 1990's and still thinks you can make money on a desktop operating system. They put ads and use dark patterns because they're desperate to show that Windows can still make money. Their CEO is now one of the Cloud guys and for them that sucks.
To give an analogy, there might have been a time in East Berlin where people could have said: "It's fine that they check papers before crossing into West Germany. Your fears will be reasonable when they no longer permit entry."
Only a matter of time before Netflix demands remote attestation.
Which is completely absurd. Within minutes of Netflix/anyone releasing anything new I can download it via Usenet or torrents. Nothing anyone does will change that reality. They just continue to make it more difficult for the average user to access content via player requirements for various DRM schemes. Which funny enough pushes people back to pirating to avoid all the nonsense.
It must be soul crushing to work on DRM for any industry as your job. Knowing that no matter what you do, how clever you are, etc - it doesn't matter at all, it'll be bypassed very shortly.
I can't imagine doing this, to be honest if I were asked to implement DRM I would quit, or try to make sure there are fundamental flaws in the scheme, it's the only moral thing to do if you're put in that situation imo.
EDIT: To those upvoting me, software as a service is usually DRM, so maybe hold your upvote if you're complicit.
They already do on Android. Root your device and either play cat and mouse with Magisk and Universal SafetyNet fix, or get downgraded to L3. And even then, it's uncertain how long the USN hack will last, given that all it does is pretend the device doesn't have hardware attestation - once Google decides to mandate HA for all Android 12 and above devices (as all SoCs capable of running that should have some form of secure element), it's game over.
We need legislative action against anti-rooting measures and other shit that takes away control of devices from users, and that fast, but it doesn't look like it's high on the priority list for the next year of the Biden admin, and after that we will likely see, once again, a gridlocked Congress and in 2024 the Rise of the Sith again.
Well, as soon as they do that they become useless for me and I'll unsubscribe.
I don't know how many people are on the same boat, but between badly developed smart tvs and top boxes there are probably a large number.
Your information is a decade out of date. More than half of Azure instances run Linux, and it's a huge source of income for MS now. Billions huge.
The only real direction you can get everyone to agree on is "profit," and the nice thing about the existence of Azure as one of their major profit centers is that Microsoft now has a bunch of business that depends on Linux running well. A company mostly running Linux is already looking at them as third place behind Amazon and Google - if Microsoft risks making kernel developers unable to run Linux, they risk making kernel developers unwilling to accept patches to make Azure (or WSL) run Linux well. I'm not saying they're never going to try it, since the Azure org doesn't control the UEFI signing program, but I am saying there's a significant part of the company that will say that it threatens their profits to a scale much larger than the lost Windows licenses on consumer PCs.
Fun fact: every single example in the Wikipedia "embrace, extend, and extinguish" article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... is something that failed (IE is dead, Office 365 works great on non-MS browsers, MS has no influence on Java, MSN Messenger is dead, MAPI is dead, etc.). The only thing harder than getting a company the size of Microsoft to agree on something is to get the rest of the industry to go along with it too. The few cases where they've succeeded (e.g., the thing from the 1980s where they made OEMs pay them even for machines that didn't ship with MS-DOS) were when they had a sufficiently technically superior product they could use to bully people. They don't have that power anymore.
You're assuming the goal of these things was to replace the product, when the goal was to destroy the competitor.
Netscape is dead (and Firefox is dying), all the historical competitors to MS Office are dead or have negligible market share, Java never got enough market share to make it easy for people to switch away from Windows, AIM/ICQ/whatever are all dead (and worse, nobody really uses XMPP or other open protocols), hardly anybody runs their own email server anymore, etc.
They successfully destroyed all of the independent versions of these things, so that now their competitors are only the likes of Google and Facebook who get where they are by leveraging their own dominant market positions in other markets.
It's also kind of disingenuous to say "IE is dead" and "MSN Messenger is dead" and ignore Edge and Skype and Teams etc.
People arguably use MS Office out of habit and since it's a forced de facto standard at work. But, there is no reason they can't switch to LibreOffice for 95% plus of what people are doing.
Java was released by Sun Microsystems, a Unix vendor with their own hardware architecture. The big feature was "write once, run anywhere." Write the program once and it would run on Windows/Intel as well as Solaris/SPARC.
The Java language wasn't horrible and WORA was a big advantage in the days when there were half a dozen Unix vendors plus Mac and Windows and Novell Netware etc. So it was becoming popular, and every app the developer decided to write in Java was one that wasn't tied to the Win32 API and therefore Windows.
It's also possible to compile other languages to Java bytecode as along as they didn't use OS-specific APIs -- and Java provided platform-independent ones. So there was a real risk that everything would end up running on a platform-independent JVM. Which Microsoft successfully prevented from happening for long enough for Sun to run out of money and get consumed by Oracle.
1. Most programing languages sucked
2. Java was fresh and new
Java had a lot going for it. It was free, with a functioning IDE that had a working graphical debugger! MS had just about finished killing Delphi (which also cost $$) and over in *nix land the GUI libraries were fighting amongst themselves and Linux wasn't something even an average developer was going to install.
So you had Perl, raw C, the horrors that were DSLs and frameworks written in the c++ of the time, then Java came along.
Applets failed, sure. And back then everyone wanted their GUIs to look like the platform native UI (how times have changed!) but Swing was super easy to write UIs in.
I'd wager the majority of programmers, outside of ex-LISP folks, didn't know what closures were, and functions as first class objects wasn't on anyone's mind.
So all of Java's shortcomings didn't seem like a big deal. It "compiled" fast, had actual packages you could distribute and import easily, and the compiler errors made sense.
So yeah Java was a fresh breath when it came out.
Then c# came out a bit later and was basically better in a million small ways from day 1, except it wasn't open source so a community never built up around it in the same way.
Now days we are spoiled for languages to choose from.
Netscape died because browsers became a part of the baseline operating system. That wasn't Microsoft's choice, that's just de-facto reality (see: every other OS). Just imagine shipping a computing device today without a browser! Steve Jobs put it best (to a different company): You're a feature, not a product.
Excel was a vastly superior product to the competition. I used it back when Lotus was still running DOS character mode. The only really competitive product today is Google Sheets, because collaboration is a killer feature. And Google Sheets is doing very well.
Java was never a Windows replacement. And as a platform it is doing just fine.
Instant messaging died out due to Facebook/Snapchat/Twitter/Slack/etc. It's not like everyone is using Skype (which MS bought, not built, and long after the IM dust had settled).
Google dominates email, not MS/hotmail. And spammers killed the "run your own email server" approach. It requires professional knowledge to get email delivered these days.
Dropbox, which has also been falling apart trying to become a product.
They all do. IE is eee of HTML and the web. MS Java and VisualJ or whatever it was called was eee of Sun Java. ActiveX was eee of the web browser.
That wasn't Microsoft's choice, that's just de-facto reality
That's what BG said in his deposition, but MS was the only company who embedded IE into the OS to make ActiveDesktop and put VBScript and ActiveX into IE.
Java was never a Windows replacement.
AWT and Swing and browser applets were Windows replacements.
Instant messaging died out due to Facebook/Snapchat/Twitter/Slack/etc.
You're talking about things that happened ten years later. There was a time when one app would connect to every network.
Google dominates email, not MS/hotmail.
MS Exchange dominates email.
All of those efforts failed miserably. They have nothing to do with the actual reasons why Netscape died, why Firefox is trending down, why Java never became dominant, why Open/LibreOffice never replaced MS Office, why open chat protocols were replaced by chat services from Google, Facebook, Discord and Slack, why Java applets never caught on, etc.
The grandparent comment is right on the money with "You're assuming the goal of these things was to replace the product, when the goal was to destroy the competitor."
MS bought at least 10-15 years of dominance with EEE, vaporware, and other anticompetitive practices.
Just like Google killed RSS with Reader.
Just like Facebook bought WhatsApp and Instagram to avoid them potentially growing into replacements for Facebook.
The goal was to kill or delay an upstart that would distract users away from their core products, not to produce a successful competitor to the upstart.
Netscape
Netscape no doubt had its own problems, but MS deeply embedding IE into Windows 98 was a huge part of them.
Java
Actually Java was pretty dominant. Interactive web was either Flash or Java. If it was for entertainment, it was Flash, if it was for work or computation, it was Java.
Open/LibreOffice
Have you forgotten WordPerfect?
Java was never widely deployed on the web. The only services that ever used applets in any meaningful way were a handful of Asia-only banks. Applets were stillborn for a large number of reasons, all of which you can blame on Sun.
MS giving away IE for free torched Netscape's business model, but that seems like a strange objection - we all expect browsers to be free (and built into the OS) today.
In the case of WordPerfect, what I recall reading was that this was in small part because WP kept writing everything in pure assembly language for way too long, and in large part because MS gave Word a leg up with internal Windows APIs. This was raised in one of the antitrust suits against MS, but I don't recall which one. Either way, I had used a GUI WYSYWIG version of WordPerfect (for DOS) long before I'd ever even seen MS Word of any form.
Java was never widely deployed on the web.
This is a point that would have to be settled by numbers, and I don't have them. What I do know is that every simple web-based calculator app was written in Java, and that in my circles installing Java was one of the first things one did after installing Windows and a browser.
we all expect browsers to be free (and built into the OS) today.
I think this was a mistake. All that "you're a feature, not a product" nonsense is a distraction from the insane degree of consolidation we've tolerated in technology. There should be thousands of billion dollar tech companies each serving in interoperable niches, not a handful of trillion dollar tech companies.
Name one widely used (in the west) website that used Java applets. I can name exactly one, because I worked on the backend for it, but even in 2002 everyone knew it was an odd duck. Flash was still popular, activex still around, but ajax was a thing and everyone knew it was the future. Applets were a joke.
The market doesn't really care about your opinion of what is/isn't a mistake. Sorry.
Popcan was huge with multi-player games.
Microsoft gets no credit for these tactics.
To this day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_compatibility_issues_in_So...
There was a period in the early 2000s where that was everywhere, and that was when Netscape died.
Causing intentional problems with non-Microsoft Office products on Microsoft operating systems is what caused everyone to get locked into Microsoft Office file formats.
Microsoft successfully suppressed Java for long enough for Sun to die.
You can't just say "no it isn't" and make it otherwise.
> Microsoft successfully suppressed Java for long enough for Sun to die.
Tell me, how did Microsoft "suppress" Java? The main contention of Sun's lawsuit is that Microsoft was harming Java by adding features (most notably, delegate - ie closures). That almost nobody used. I know, I used them. There's no meaningful interpretation of the word "suppress" that applies here.
Furthermore, Java was always a cost center for Sun. There is no alternate history where Java somehow saved Sun. They made their money from selling hardware that eventually nobody bought.
Set aside your blind hate and learn from people that actually worked with these technologies in that era.
One way to suppress something is by diluting it or distracting from it with a bunch of slightly different options. Kind of like the spoiler effect in first-past-the-post elections.
So it's like Google making their services slow on Firefox? History repeats itself, only the names are different.
You mean C#?
E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B#Sun's_litigatio...
You're ignoring the actual EEE part.
Microsoft didn't just include a browser, they included a browser that didn't follow standards and had a bunch of its own extensions. Then since Windows was the largest platform, lots of web pages started using Windows-specific ActiveX controls and other IE-specific features on websites, and users had to switch to IE even if they preferred a different browser.
> Steve Jobs put it best (to a different company): You're a feature, not a product.
Steve Jobs did the same thing. You have to use their browser on iOS and its purpose is to be less capable than competing browsers to force developers into making native apps where Apple gets 30% of the developer's revenue and can exclude apps that compete with their own services.
> Excel was a vastly superior product to the competition. I used it back when Lotus was still running DOS character mode.
The history of Office goes like this. There were many competitors and many users preferred the competitors, but Microsoft intentionally made them crash on Microsoft operating systems so that people would use Office instead.
Then, once Office had the most market share and everybody was locked into it because all their documents were in its proprietary format, they used the revenues they denied to competitors to make Office better. Now you say, look how good it is! But how did it get there and why is nobody else?
> The only really competitive product today is Google Sheets, because collaboration is a killer feature. And Google Sheets is doing very well.
now their competitors are only the likes of Google and Facebook who get where they are by leveraging their own dominant market positions in other markets.
> Java was never a Windows replacement.
It wasn't supposed to be an operating system. It was supposed to make it easier for users to switch operating systems, which Microsoft successfully impaired.
> Instant messaging died out due to Facebook/Snapchat/Twitter/Slack/etc.
This is the one where they basically failed, because the network effect counterbalanced the leverage of the Windows monopoly. If your friends had ICQ then you installed ICQ even if you already had MSN Messenger installed as part of Windows.
But it was clearly still an attempt to do EEE. If they'd succeeded in getting MSN Messenger into a dominant market position then they could discontinue or cripple the non-Windows clients and lock people into Windows with it.
> Google dominates email, not MS/hotmail.
Outlook.com has 400 million users.
> And spammers killed the "run your own email server" approach.
Large email providers killed the "run your own email server" approach, by marking email from small email servers as spam even when it wasn't. Plausibly on purpose.
And we got large email providers to begin with because they were the ones who could overcome the Microsoft lock in to Outlook/Exchange. Gmail did that by offering 1GB free storage back when that was expensive and subsidizing it with Google Search revenues.
Ah, that explains why ActiveX took over the web and why I'm forced to read HN on IE. /s
> The history of Office goes like this.
I'm guessing you are way too young to have experienced it, because the history of Office was nothing like that.
> Java
Again, I'm guessing you didn't actually live through that era. I did. Hell, I even wrote Java desktop apps for a living in the late 90s. Microsoft did absolutely nothing to prevent Java from taking over the desktop; Sun managed to accomplish that all on their own.
> But it was clearly still an attempt to do EEE.
You can talk about "attempt" all you want, but there are still zero examples of EEE being successful.
> Outlook.com has 400 million users.
"Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide." - Wikipedia
> Large email providers killed the "run your own email server" approach
Man where do you get this stuff? I wrote a mailing list server that had a brief moment of popularity, and the underlying (Java!) smtp library that lots of other folks use still today. I know a thing or two about smtp, and I gave up running my own email servers a long time ago. Spam fighting requires a massive engineering team. Barring some sort of massive change in the protocols, the home email server is dead dead dead. Microsoft and Google are the symptom, not the cause.
It did take over the web, for long enough to kill Netscape. Then they stopped caring because Netscape was already dead.
> I'm guessing you are way too young to have experienced it, because the history of Office was nothing like that.
You're denying that Microsoft caused intentional problems for companies making competing products on Microsoft operating systems?
> Again, I'm guessing you didn't actually live through that era. I did. Hell, I even wrote Java desktop apps for a living in the late 90s. Microsoft did absolutely nothing to prevent Java from taking over the desktop; Sun managed to accomplish that all on their own.
For Java to pose a threat to Windows it had to be a large enough proportion of software to allow people to switch away from Windows. To succeed they only needed to keep it below that threshold, not keep anyone from developing any Java applications at all.
> You can talk about "attempt" all you want, but there are still zero examples of EEE being successful.
Explain Internet Explorer's market share circa 2004.
> "Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide." - Wikipedia
So a number of users larger than the population of the United States is to be disregarded because one other provider's is bigger?
now their competitors are only the likes of Google and Facebook who get where they are by leveraging their own dominant market positions in other markets.
> Spam fighting requires a massive engineering team.
The problem is completely the other way around. Receiving spam is a minor inconvenience. The biggest problem with running a small email server is that messages you send are marked as spam by large email providers even when they're not.
MS did destroy whole swaths of the industry that threatened it—on purpose. A lot of the initiatives failed later, but I'm sure they cried all the way to the bank and their record-breaking yachts.
That a lot of their competitors stumbled on their own was simple fate. Every company stumbles once in a while. Unlike MS which was bolstered by monopoly, a single significant mistake meant the end of most competitors. MS on the other hand was heavily insured with a river of money after the IBM deal.
This is not a serious take. Safari on iOS is a very capable browser and crazy things have been done with it. Where it does make it difficult to replace a dedicated app, this can be ascribed to security more easily than "Apple wants one of its major iOS features to be bad".
> Microsoft intentionally made them crash on Microsoft operating systems
This is not a serious take. I'd love to see proof of this. There are lots of reasons Office became dominant, some of them even anticompetitive; "MS made competitors crash" is probably not one of them.
> It was supposed to make it easier for users to switch operating systems
This is not a serious take. Java was never intended to make it easy for users to switch operating systems. Sun did not make "supplant Windows!" one of its KPIs, and the continued dominance of Windows is neither here nor there when evaluating whether Java was successful. Java's pitch was to make writing platform-independent code easier, but at best that's tangentially related to having users switch OS's.
> Outlook.com has 400 million users.
So?
> And we got large email providers to begin with because they were the ones who could overcome the Microsoft lock in to Outlook/Exchange.
You're replying to a comment about people who run their own web server, so talking about Exchange lock-in is neither here nor there.
It's hard to decouple the fate of Netscape from their catastrophic decision to rewrite their entire codebase from scratch:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
And probably wasn't GPL-licensed. That part introduces a slight problem to the EEE process. ;p
However the whole computing paradigm has changed. Laptops/PCs are now 'trucks' and the 'cars' of the computing world are phones, tablets and consoles. Ie. Laptops and PCs are mainly used for work now, and lots of that work is being done on Linux. Lenovo ThinkPads can be shipped with RHEL, Fedora or Ubuntu. Several Dell laptops (including the highest end workstations) can be shipped with Ubuntu. Framework and System76 of course are Linux friendly/default. And most other makers allow disabling UEFI from the BIOS menu.
Considering how much of MS' value is derived from Azure and that their main competitors are Linux-first (Amazon, Google), it'd be idiotic for them to try kill Linux again. You're right though, they'll probably try. I just have faith that enough hardware makers care about their users more than propping up WinTel like the old days (both Linux and AMD have made massive inroads).
Personally, I think exactly what is ruining Windows as a desktop OS is trying to cloud-ify everything and render it more like a "future of computing" operating system packed with useless AI, Metro apps, cloud integration, app stores, and locking it down for normal consumers. I mean, look at Microsoft deprecating fantastic apps like Windows Backup or Windows Snipping Tool. They want to transform Windows into a "hip" and "cool" Nadella-vision OS and that vision sucks.
I agree with the rest of your comment, but I don't think this really works. Windows remaining proprietary is something that makes sense from MS's POV. If, say, Windows 12 were to become open source, would you use it as a development platform or as a server? I for one wouldn't, the reason why developers don't want to be on Windows isn't that Windows costs money, it's that Windows is bad.
It only makes sense for MS to continue milking Windows until the bitter end. Eventually it won't be worth the effort any longer and Windows 19 or something will be a Linux distro.
Ignoring the question how much revenue they'd lose from such a move I don't think they could easily.
Windows doesn't consist only of Microsoft's code, but there is the whole legacy with OS/2, DEC/VMS and certainly a bunch of external companies contributing device drivers and things. I assume there are notable parts where Microsoft can't easily figure this out anymore. Code was moved and changed over time and for open sourcing they have to be sure about each line being ok to open source.
Look at Sun's process for opensourcing Solaris and where even OpenSolaris still had some binary blobs in some parts in the end after they went through the multi year process of going through it and rewriting different parts.
If anyone has the resources, it is MSFT, however investment in Windows has been on a downward trend, so don't hold your breath.
Azure? Not too much touching yet, I am an AWS guy (I can complain here just as much). But their office software and worse their office software APIs are abysmal. I am not registering an app and describe its function to access their beta graph API just to add a task to Planner. I fired the customer that wanted that.
Desktop does make money since most people use their office suite on a Windows PC. Windows isn't that important anymore, but it is still present. And the direction they go with TPM and notebook camera requirements is predictably bad.
You cannot open-source Windows anymore, that would probably be a legal nightmare. Maybe parts of it of course.
For legacy components that have been open sourced, the only one I can think of is conhost, which they're trying to get rid of anyway in favour of the new (and fully open-source) Windows Terminal and its console component OpenConsole.
[1]: so long as I am the engineering lead. You know how these big companies are :|
(edit to add: This isn’t meant to detract from your point, just to add additional info.)
Desktop Linux is indeed somewhat behind OS X or Windows. I'm currently on (somewhat dated) Ubuntu 18.4 from 2018, and it is more or less on par with Windows 7 from 2009. For me that's not a problem, I liked Windows 7 and actually stayed on it until 2018, but keep this lag in mind.
A user-friendly Linux distro like that was a gateway drug into becoming a terminal jockey though.
Maybe if I get really really lucky Haiku will be usable for my use cases by then, but that doesn't look very likely.
Every other day something breaks. We're spanning the entire range here, from petty stuff like Firefox missing fonts, to straight up the kernel not booting. And obviously everyting in between, like apparently the only way to receive Exchange mail is to pay for a Thunderbird add-on. Or setting up the VPN requiring arcane SELinux magic.
I honestly don't see how one can recommend desktop linux to someone without at least a minimal knowledge of how the OS works and some decent terminal-fu.
As sad as it is your parent is right. Non-technical users should just get a chromebook.
I've been happy running Cinnamon on Ubuntu LTS releases, and I like what I see playing with KDE as well. I've never had a kernel fail to boot (other than by hardware failure), and AppArmor is, IMO, far better at staying out of the way than SELinux. I can't help on the Exchange stuff, I've never had to deal with that.
It would be a little easier to just run Mint instead (Cinnamon being native there), but on Ubuntu you can just "apt install cinnamon-desktop-environment" and then choose Cinnamon the next time you log in.
What SELinux magic you had to do for VPN? All VPNs that I've set up were fine with just clickety-click in the GUI.
When somebody is used to (for example) Windows, he then approaches any problem the Windows way. But the Windows way may be not the optimal one on any other system. But since it was optimal on Windows and the person doesn't know anything else, then he will see suboptimal results anywhere else.
It is not just Windows -> Linux; the same problems will be experienced with Windows -> macOS. Even Microsoft had the same problem, when they redesigned Windows elements and the uproar it caused.
There was a period of maybe three years in the late '00s when Ubuntu was really killing it with their defaults & configs under Gnome2 and it really was quite nice, but before and after that, I've found going minimal and all hand-installed to be the only way not to constantly be angry at my machine and experiencing all kinds of mysterious brokenness.
In fact, accepting that what you can productively and pleasantly do with desktop Linux is a different (though overlapping) set of things than what's productive and pleasant under Windows or MacOS, and not trying to do those other things at all, is the path to contentment under desktop Linux, I think. At least until it gets a lot better, which, with all the Wayland shake-ups, seems really far off, if it ever happens. I think it's more likely Google's replacement will get actually-seriously-no-bullshit-quite-good for desktop use, before Linux does.
For the most part, though, I just stay on MacOS these days. All the time I lost to Linux during my decade or so of using it as my main OS on desktops and laptops taught me a lot, so wasn't completely wasted, but I just can't be bothered anymore. I just want to start up the machine and get stuff done. MacOS gives me plenty of glitches, I don't need even more, plus a ton more crashes and weird behavior. And I do want my computer to just do a bunch of nice stuff for me automatically, without constantly (instead, merely often) breaking or glitching or requiring me to set all that up.
Linux desktop is terrible only as long as you perceive it as an "other Windows" thing. No, it is something completely different. Instead - make a commitment, embrace it - and you will learn to love it.
Cloud Services are cool, and Windows are the weird ones. But within Windows there's the kernel team who are cool and customer-focused, and the User layer as the weird ones. Go another level deeper and you have fights between C++ and .Net, or historically the crusade for COM+. Or the transition to UWP, which clearly at most half the Windows UI team got behind.
Obligatory web comic: https://www.globalnerdy.com/2011/07/03/org-charts-of-the-big...
I can't speak for others but I'm more than willing to pay good money for a version of Windows that isn't actively user hostile and full of garbage. Like, give me a Windows 2000 UI on top of modern Windows underpinnings and I'll give you $500/year. They can even keep putting out the shitty version of Windows and just make it explicitly ad/creepy-data-harvesting supported. That might still not be enough to actually make them money, I can't say.
What I can say is that I feel like Window's current strategy is less about making money and more about actively trying to kill off personal computing for the sake of pushing everyone to subscription services.
That is what I use and that it what I set up for my less technically competent friends and family who are not good at navigating the ever-shifting sands of the Windows UI, the situation changing on them, a game they had not remembered installing appearing in their Programs. Working on the simple rhythm of muscle memory and repetition, they draw the Worm.
What, why?!
Means it's TECHNICALLY possible, and Microsoft actively takes away the option after 10 days?
Do people not hate this?
On macos the only way to revert is through full machine backups. That at least lets me think the upgrade is irreversible without backups, and then I am fine with it. :)
In the context of a discussion about Microsoft’s intentions, it is very clearly asshole behavior by Microsoft to have a perfectly good product that people want, but then put up artificial barriers like having a friend who knows how to get it and install it.
I would not downvote you for mentioning it, but it makes Microsoft look even worse than if they did not have LTSC at all since it removes their plausible deniability.
The last time I paid for MSDN was 2011 or 2012 but I was able to download and use everything ...
The usage constraints are mostly social/legal rather than technical, of course.
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
I think at least personally I've finally reached the tipping point where dealing with the annoyance of running windows apps on linux is going to be worth not having the huge host of annoyances microsoft is intentionally pushing onto me.
Because it's incredibly hard to outright impossible to get a legal version of this. AFAIK it's only available for MSDN subscribers, OEMs/ODMs/embedded device manufacturers and large-volume customers and illegal to resell; on top of that unlike regular Windows ISOs there are no public download links that you can then either activate with a key you happened to find somewhere or run one of the usual activation cracks.
No matter what, unless you are in a highly privileged position you do not have a way of obtaining LTSB without exposing yourself to legal or security risks.
ETA: Just had a look on a well-known torrent site - "LTSB" yielded no usable results (> 10 seeds), and "LTSC" only one that matches the seed count, and it doesn't even ship supposedly virgin ISOs but modified ones, so no way to know if at least the install media is free of malware (by comparing it to known MS hashes). Jesus, I didn't know the situation was that bad.
The latter part is the problem. LTSB/C keys are illegal to resell and MS regularly bans keys they suspect of having been sold.
Compared to MS Office, Windows is nothing.
There is no such plan.
Its almost comical.
Office 365 vs Google Suite is not even funny, if you have to use O365, that is. Dynamics 365 looks fancy at first, but make a few clicks towards settings and you can witness 5 different UX languages, one half-assed modernisation attempt laid on top of another. Plus the churn from ongoing attempts, pointless rebrands and nonsense invented by bizdev guys. Add the famous MS back compat policy and you have a special kind of hell.
Nope, there's only one Microsoft, and it's clever enough to know that they had to learn to wear the Jazz hat when dealing with the oldies and the Punk Rock one with the youngsters.
Would probably be faster if any other programs actually used their newer APIs. I really think burning people with WPF and introducing their shitty store was what many devs drove away. Wasn't really a C# (good language and good APIs in my opinion) guy for too long, but around the time Windows 8 was released, I left for greener pastures and didn't look back very often.
Once computers (especially windows) became ubiquitous they had to pay for themselves since user training wasn't picking up the bill anymore .
Despite this horrible injustice, you still visit your parents, right? :)
It's just that in the 20 minutes I sometimes have to kill on their computer I went from playing commercial games from my childhood to good solitaire to…bad solitaire. So much for nostalgia.
Azure is a total ripoff and I will never use it again.
And yet here we are. I think it’s more likely that Satya wants a perception that he doesn’t want Dark UX and then use it everywhere. Windows and azure is full of this stuff and it doesn’t make sense that people are secretly going against the CEO’s vision and direction.
I don’t expect CEO micromanagement, but if Satya wanted a positive user experience seriously, then the solitaire PM wouldn’t have added ads or at least would have removed them after the backlash.
I think Microsoft has really improved (eg, WSL, vscode, GitHub) but think it’s just PR about how great everything is supposed to be.
It’s like the Amazon ads that show happy workers getting degrees and stuff. I’m glad those things are happening but it’s just PR.
They could have kept on the Ballmer path and been a Windows and Office company forever, milking the existing base. That path would have likely turned them into IBM. Less relevance, less R and D, and tons of share buybacks.
Instead they bet the farm on emerging computing models. They pulled their money and top talent from the legacy products, and moved them into the new world. So the newer stuff is improving (Azure isn’t AWS but it’s a credible #2) and the old products lag. That’s just a result of the priority decision. They had the courage to starve their cash cow.
Lock-in exists both on the desktop and in the cloud (and all kinds of other places in tech) because that's what the business incentives are. It's a race to the bottom and no company can resist it and still have shareholders. We need regulation to make them knock it off.
Prior to being a SWE or SRE-SE I worked in Network Engineering. Seeing how most companies ran their DCs and treated the devs that were required to use them was illuminating. Everything was a "service desk" staffed with generally ticket handlers. It took ages for them to get things done, and you were almost always hunting for the person on the desk that just "got things done". I worked nights and my engineering line would get clear day-time-appropriate requests at nights because the most qualified engineers were in school and ended up on the night shift. Compute scheduling was no different. You now have APIs for both of these jobs.
My point being that the real innovation that made developers turn to the cloud was APIs. All these "availability zones" didn't exist in most company DCs, usually someone had a lever to throw to switch DCs at best, and even then they really weren't used. Downtime was expected. Those very same APIs could've been made by a coalition of those small and medium companies using the same technique Google used with Kubernetes: open source. By the time such a project started, it was already too late, and public clouds had built what they'd built. Not having open hardware also contributed to the problem, but again, nothing a coalition couldn't overcome.
Not trying to start a flame war, but I'm triggered.
Dotnet is probably the most polished, most modern language out there, and I have no idea what would you call sexy... Maybe all quirks with javascript or the mess that python is with special functions and the like?
Please untrigger yourself :)
I probably used the wrong word, but I agree. What I meant is that the entire .NET platform is very solid even though it doesn't get a lot of mindshare. Wasn't meant as a putdown of C#.
It's a non-trivial percentage of the ~25M professional programmers in the world. It has plenty of mindshare, just not within the communities that feed the HN userbase.
If there was a last straw to me ever using Windows again - I think that info was all I needed.
That’s my final nail in the coffin. It might sound dramatic - but it literally - - clearly - shows that there is no intention on providing value to customers with their software anymore, whatsoever.
It’s only going to get worse from here, and I for one am glad I already bailed.
…damn, but really? That hurts my childhood a bit. I have distinct memories of Solitaire from the 3.11 days. :(
Damn. :(
If only we could now get linux phone done ( and no, mobile ubuntu does not count ) to where desktop is today, I think I would be content.
How about Librem 5: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5?
There are some others - Sailfish OS, Pure OS, Plasma Mobile and Manjaro for ARM - there are a lot of Linux based phones nowadays(Android is one of them).
Now when I try to compare my current linux phone ( Pine ) with default Ubuntu to a cheapest android phone, the experience is just lacking. I know other OSs are available, and they were still underwhelming at the time. Has it gotten any better? I would love to try Librem, but I can't justify dropping $1999 for US version ( the non-US version has heavy lead time now ).
I am not saying the option is not there. It is just not ready for prime time.
The world is complicated. Solution must be systemic. You cannot rely on everyone doing the right thing.
When WhatsApp first shown (not owned by Facebook yet), some cellphone companies literally sued them (and lost), claiming all sorts of random bullshit.
Now everyone here uses WhatsApp, some services are WhatsApp only, as in... the service is basically a bot on WhatsApp and you send commands to that bot using WhatsApp.
I tried to not use WhatsApp, but when I saw the SMS fees... well, WhatsApp did forced them to bring fees down, but not by much.
I also tried to convince people to use other software, it worked partially...
1. Telegram, people here use this whenever WhatsApp is down, then they delete it again.
2. Kik, I was using it to talk to some poeple in other countries, for various reasons slowly this failed, the most bizarre one was a friend that lived in Alabama in US, seemly her phone company (AT&T I think?) detected her Kik usage and charged every single video chat we had as if it was an international phone call... as you can imagine this killed our Kik usage quite fast, we now use only Discord and e-mail.
3. Discord, only young people use that.
4. Slack, only works for work.
5. Matrix, Irc, etc... nobody I know in person uses it, people just refuse to use "techie" stuff.
6. ICQ, MSN, AIM, etc...: these were wildly popular here, ICQ was kinda killed by MSN, that then was killed by MS themselves for some reason. Nothing replaced MSN here.
There was Duo for Android to make video calls. Might be still around, but it is only for calls and not chat, so not really useable if you have to find other ways to send chat.
Skype was one of them that I still use, but it is probably ancient technology for younger people. Skype was offered to use for free of data charge by telecom company, so you could make video calls everywhere.
The problem with Whatsapp is that it comes together with Facebook and whatsapp is terrible for privacy - you have no control over how your number and other available information will be shared with other apps, who will collect that information and someone will publish that information available as database.
Can we have your information?
Can we have your information please?
Will you allow us to collect and sell your information?
Please give Edge a try, it's great, really!
And yet I can see that VS Code is great, though I don't use it myself. I use lsp-mode every day, and I think that's even more important than VS Code itself. And the LSP is brought to us by Micro$oft as well. Definitely a dichotomy.
I will give credit where it may be due however - I did install WSL for the first time, and while not perfect, it's pretty good! Better than Cygwin for sure is my initial impression.
Cygwin is a source level API adaptor, so recompilation is required. WSL is an ABI adaptor like the reverse of WINE. WSL2 is an adapted Linux kernel running in a featherweight VM.
I think Windows is also slowly decaying. Windows 11 is basically a slightly changed UI with new requirements for TPM or that a laptop has a front facing HD camera. Many probably know the type that makes decisions like that in large companies...
While Win now controls my computing experience like I'm some crofter on some clan chief's land, in 2021, linux actually handed back control and gave me more capacity to not have to deal with stupid windows shit. Time, time, time. Now I'm intent on getting rid of android. Google is starting to creep me out. Want to move to a linux phone. Just not quite there yet. Time, freedom, personal sovereignty.
And how about the fact that the de-facto reference implementation of LSP client (most language servers are developed against vscode) uses many undocumented and non-standard extensions [3] that are hard for other clients to implement?
These are dark patterns that claims to be FOSS-friendly. It could be that MS still has split-brains about their approach to open source [4], but that is still an indication that MS still has part of their old anti-user soul in them. Personally, I liked vscode, but I value my freedom even more. Emacs provides all the functionality and the freedom I crave. It is a bit harder to learn and modify - but I can live with that.
[1] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/240#issuecomment...
[2] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/128#issuecomment...
[3] https://github.com/microsoft/python-language-server/issues/4...
[4] https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/22/22740701/microsoft-dotne...
As someone who really isn't the target audience for HN, this sentence has a different meaning than you likely think. I vote with my time, money, and attention - and that vote results in me still using Windows. I've tried various Linux flavours every ~2 years for the last 20 (starting with Knoppix), and every time, some component doesn't work and I'm into the terminal within an hour of booting. Usually something to do with sound or display or wife/ethernet. Back in 2007ish, I managed to put in the numerous hours to make it work, and used linux for several years before something arbitrarily broke during an upgrade and I moved back to windows.
All that said, everything about Windows 11 looks terrible, and I'll not be downgrading to it. I haven't written them off entirely - I will stay on win10 ltsc for the time being. Did the same when windows vista and windows 8/8.1 were out (along with trying ubuntu, linux mint, kubuntu, etc)
"What on Earth are you talking about?" ... The point is, whether you like change or not is utterly uninteresting; most people don't. Vote whatever you like, and you have to suffer from Microsoft's BS forever (with only a hope that it sometimes eases). The alternative is that you could suffer from someone else's instead. The choice is yours.
(No one really falls in love "trying out flavours" of alternative software; the little differences just get in the way. However, it works both ways: those who don't usually use Windows find the little differences in Windows annoying.)
As stated, I used linux for an ~3 year period, using only one distro (I forget now if it was Ubuntu or Mint). When I've tried again, it's not "the little differences" that bother me - it's that my HDMI port doesnt work, or my audio doesnt work, or my wifi doesn't work, or (in my most recent attempt, using ubuntu 20.04 with hardware released between 2016 and 2018) all three at the same time.
> Android users don't like iOS, and iPhone users don't dig Android. Are they both right, or wrong?
They're both right. There are legitimate concerns with both. Same with linux, and windows, and mac OS.
The point is, with windows, I hack around to make things work in a way I like, but they work to begin with. With linux, in my experience, it takes hours of hacking to get things working at all, and then they arbitrarily break weeks to months down the line for no clear reason and require many more hours to figure out why.
I think it is because using Apple is not mandatory. Apple is an aspirational brand, you use their products because you want to. Microsoft's products are not; they pushed hard their product everywhere, and were difficult to avoid, if you wanted something else. That itself caused a much friction, and when they start to steer you somewhere you don't want to go, their products are not exactly going to be your favorites.
This is a desktop OS. You're comparing Windows 11 not letting users select which browser they'd prefer on a PC OS to iOS, which is a phone OS. A more apt comparison would obviously be to compare Windows 11 and macOS. macOS doesn't force you to use Safari, lets you specify which browser you'd like as a default, and respects that decision, only bothering you about it on major updates. Even then, only bothering you with a popup that asks if you'd like to try it.
You mean the way they made it "open source" but still managed to include enough proprietary bits that most add-ons don't work on FOSS builds of Code?
I've gradually come to appreciate that it's a bit silly to anthropomorphise mega-corps like MS, Apple, etc as a single entities, where such thoughts make sense.
At the top a lot of greedy self serving bullshit happens, which seems to be some sort of inevitable capitalistic or economic force of scale. But the effects of scale cuts both ways, hidden away individuals or whole teams will be doing their own thing based on a completely different set of principles and ideals. Although the umbrella they operate under burned my trust and patience long ago, I can still recognise the merit of tech that emerges from the individuals that work there.
It's very nice for you that you can tolerate a Linux desktop. But for an important product like Firefox, the discussion is about the monopolistic tactics that the dominant OS is doing.
Anyways, it was quite the insight into the level dysfunction that can ship when a company is that big, and I'm sure somewhere a manager is defending every step of that process and that it's my fault for not understanding it. Wild.
When I set a default browser, if the OS needs to open a web page I want to it to open in that browser. If Apple can do this properly, so can Microsoft. Tired of the excuses and corporate double speak bullshit.
It's untamed corporation behaviour, not bullshit. Not on this level.
Also, learn from Microsoft astroturfing manual, you should not use harsh sentences nor expletives to convey an idea. Try to frame it as a subtle doubt, in a polite way.
Unless you are a reverse astroturfer, in that case, you're doing well.
No, they've been doing this crap for decades. They don't deserve any respect or courtesy. It needs to be called out for what it is when they just brazenly think they can do whatever the hell they want because they somehow own the computer because it has their software on it.
What do you mean exactly and who are "we" ?
Take the state of Firefox extensions. Firefox is the only browser where you can't install an extension until you disclose the source code to Mozilla. Both Google and Apple allows users to install an extension from a local source in the release version of Chrome and Safari, without uploading the source code to their servers.
It's not just a privacy issue either. Mozilla employees can and will veto your unlisted extension that you were forced to upload for signing, so that it can be installed in your browser, and you wake up with your private and unlisted extensions having been remotely blocked by Mozilla.
It is reckless and arrogant to have this attitude, especially when you're a small player in such a competitive market.
Browsers have become platforms, just like an operating system, and Firefox is the only browser that took away the freedom to install extensions in your browser, on your own terms. They disrespect their users on their own platform just as much as Microsoft does when it comes to setting a default browser on Windows.