Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: MS forcing Edge shortcut on desktop

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Yesterday morning, I powered up my desktop with Win 10 Pro, and I noticed a shortcut for Edge browser on my desktop. I figured it must've been put there during the most recent update and sent it to the recycling bin.

This morning, I power up the same PC, and it's back. So as far as I can tell, the update forces the presence of an Edge browser shortcut on the Windows 10 desktop.

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This is the kind of shenanigan that happens when you use an OS that literally has third party advertisements in its start menu

I wish there was a genuine Pro version of Windows I could pay for that didn’t have any of this.

I think it's called Windows Server

I ran 2012 R2 as a daily driver for a long time.

Likewise - like for 8 years.

Now I'm on 2016, and actually just today started to investigate where to go from here. Probably will stick with Windows (2022) as host OS for my VMs.

What is Windows (2022)? Where can you get it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2022

LTSC doesn't, but it's not easily available through conventional retail channels. If you're putting a Windows machine in a kiosk, POS, machine, or similar commercial setting, though, LTSC is the way to go.

Weird thing is I use Surface kit, ie despite everything being from Microsoft I can’t pay them money to get a Windows (Workstation or LTSP) without ads.

>> I can’t pay them money to get a Windows (Workstation or LTSP) without ads.

If you could, they would be acknowledging that the ads were bad.

It would also provide a financial incentive for them to make the ads even worse.

Yeah, we tried to buy LTSC when I was working for an embedded startup. We found we couldnt just "buy" it, instead had to go thru a complex partnership with MS, which people told us could take months and lots of legal fees.

We ended up shipping standard Windows 10-- with candy crush saga.

“Windows 11 Pro for Workstations” doesn’t have 3rd party crap. You still get the MS crap though.

Its called Windows 10 LTSC. I have been running it for years and everytime I use a non-LTSC version of Windows, i'm baffled by the amount of bullshit MS manages stuff in their OS. It's almost as if they are actively trying to make people leave their ecosystem.

I tried switching to ltsc, all was fine for a few months, then I hit an issue with a game (actually I think it was several games). After a long time googling I discovered it wasn't fixable in ltsc. I can't recall exactly what it was, but it was enough for me to switch back to pro (I have a msdn license at work so I have access to whatever windows iso and licenses I want).

I have Win 10 Pro genuine that comes with my laptop and I still get candy crush icon and some others that I forgot, but microsoft team you can't remove it, it comes back every time so what are you talking about

It's called Arch

Well, in reality...

This is the kind of shenanigan that happens when you use an OS where the widespread norm is to run highly privileged executables with full access to your home (and desktop) dirs in order to install software. Or really uses full filesystem mutability for package/software installation.

Because I'd be willing to bet a pretty serious amount of money that someone tweaked the Edge MSI installer/updater package and accidentally re-triggered the "First Install Icon to Desktop" step on upgrades. Edge updates very, very frequently and Boom, bug.

It appears as though you can add a registry entry to prevent this behavior.

I found details in the ms.edge admx documentation

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-...

(An admx is for adding group policy templates but group policy is essentially a nice list of registry changes.

You (reader) can find the reg entry and enter it manually or might can download and install the admx package and make the change through your computers local group policy (gpedit.msc)

Well, only as long as Microsoft doesn't remove/break this solution.

Well yes, sure there is a registry setting to disable this behavior, but why? Why is this not opt-in by default? When did I ever consent to having an Edge shortcut on my desktop? Why are we expected to just passively accept this kind of stupid behavior?

Just once I would like to see whoever is responsible for something like this show up in the replies and be completely honest about how it’s hostile shitty behaviour, but on the other hand they increased Edge engagement by 0.5% which really impressed their bosses boss.

It’s certainly possible that the people who came up with this idea lost their jobs because of the latest layoff.

A man can dream.

This is becoming such a nuisance.

Last week I had to invest so much brain power to get around Microsoft’s dark patterns after installing an update. No, I don’t want to use Edge because it’s “safer”. No, I don’t want to redeem one month “free” of 365. No, please don’t “protect” my files with OneDrive. I am getting angry again from just enumerating this.

Does anyone have a list of all the dark patterns Microsoft has used to push IE, Bing, and Edge? It's truly astounding.

What I find astonishing is, that they were fined 561 million once by the EU, for not having an explicit "ballot box" where the user was offered different browser as alternative and now they can do way worse, without getting fined.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission

"On 16 December 2009, the European Union agreed to allow competing browsers, with Microsoft providing a "ballot box" screen letting users choose one of twelve popular products listed in random order.[45] The twelve browsers were Avant, Chrome, Firefox, Flock, GreenBrowser, Internet Explorer, K-Meleon, Maxthon, Opera, Safari, Sleipnir, and Slim,[46] which were accessible via BrowserChoice.eu. The automatic nature of the BrowserChoice.eu feature was dropped in Windows 7 Service Pack 1 in February 2011 and remained absent for 14 months despite Microsoft reporting that it was still present, subsequently described by Microsoft as a "technical error". As a result, in March 2013 the European Commission fined Microsoft €561 million to deter companies from reneging on settlement promises"

The only difference is, that back then IE was dominant and is not anymore. But Microsoft is still pretty much in a monopoly position for Desktop market.

This is a failure of the regulatory government agencies to do their jobs. If we actually had regulators that actually did their jobs, MS, Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, etc would have been smashed into dozens of smaller companies.

Probably has a lot to do with Chrome being dominant. When it’s clear most people are getting over the hump to go to a not built in browser, it’s not as big a concern.

Here's a guide on how to prevent this from happening: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/01/21/how-to-block-microsoft-edg...

> The workaround requires edits of the Registry. There is a global edit that applies to all Edge channels and edits for each individual version of the web browser.

> The workaround

is to uninstall Windows

Games

proton

Tried, not good enough. I don't understand why this conversation has to be had ad nauseam.

Counterpoint, I tried it and it was good enough for me. I play games every day and haven’t used Windows since 2020.

I used it for about 3 months for Monster Hunter World with some occasional visual bugs and artifacts, just had to tweak some settings to go from 3 FPS to 60 FPS (seemed to only use my GPU if I selected a particular DirectX version). One day a patch dropped and it went back to 3 FPS. Couldn't find a remedy, so I installed windows. No more visual bugs and artifacts and no more tweaking settings to play the game.

Ah I mostly play World of Warcraft and Guilty Gear Strive, both of which work almost flawlessly, in my experience, on Linux. I definitely understand frustrations around things just breaking when new content drops, that did happen to me when Shadowlands released but was resolved pretty quickly. I'm on a Mac now (for unrelated reasons) where WoW is native.

When did you try, and which genres? Out of all the 20+ games that I bought in the last two years, all of them were Gold or Platinum rank on ProtonDB. The only real issues these days are with anti-cheat stuff in competitive multiplayer games.

Must have been 2019

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34479899

> The only real issues these days are with anti-cheat stuff in competitive multiplayer games

Every game I play is a competitive multiplayer game.

With which anticheats? BattleEye and EasyAnticheat work pretty well with Proton nowadays, you won't have luck with stuff like Ricochet though.

There are still big games with BE or EAC which either don't launch still, or will sometimes allow you to play offline on Linux but won't allow you to join servers with Proton. Some examples: PUBG, Dead by Daylight, Ubisoft games such as R6 and For Honor, and Destiny 2.

Extra links for those who want to look:

https://www.protondb.com/explore?selectedFilters=antiCheat&s...

https://areweanticheatyet.com/

Does Escape from Tarkov run on Linux through Proton ?if yes I will install Linux on a separate partition tomorrow on my gaming workstation.

that's deal breaker enough.

linux is close, but it still doesn't have the desktop experience as good as windows by default

Vote with your money on where you want things to be in 5/10 years. If you keep buying games for windows no one will develop and sell for linux. MS had no power, it’s all in the consumers’ hands, but they just don’t want to do anything about it.

A theoretically perfect but largely non-viable solution.

if you're someone who is willing to invest time into researching regedit workarounds (which will eventually reset or cease to work), then looking into desktop linux is perfectly viable...and not theoretically, but practically perfect.

i used to do an enormous amount of Windows XP regedit tweaking and customization, using sysprep, rolling service packs into new ISOs, making use of https://ryanvm.net/forum/ scripts.

all of that has become practically impossible now. every update resets everything, regedits no longer work, and each update brings back the bloatware you've debloated using things like https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows.

the only recourse now is to disable TPM 2.0, which is a Win11+ requirement. or pirate that fabled LTSC windows edition because, you know, you can't actually buy it.

in 2020 after an unpreventable Win10 update fucked up my dual boot setup i finally called it quits and switched to EndevourOS (Arch) KDE/Plasma and haven't looked back; fuck Windows and its aggressive rent-seeking.

I have tried switching to Linux in the past and it was not for me. As upsetting as Microsoft’s recent decisions have been, it is not enough to make me change operating systems.

“Without labor, nothing prospers.”

— Sophocles

“Nothing in life comes easy. Everything comes with a sacrifice.”

— Rihanna

Choose the one you can identify with most…

How about “My choice of operating system is not an indictment of my character”?

My choice to continue using Windows involves far more than me being lazy. For one thing, my job involves developing software specifically made for Windows desktops. I have also been using Windows for over 30 years. Quite frankly I’m insulted by the insinuation being made here.

Linux is great, but it’s not great for me as a daily driver. No amount of evangelizing is going to shame me into upending my digital life.

No insult intended. Your previous comment made it seem like it's too difficult or not enough to warrant the effort. Use the tools that make you happy, no diss intended.

no HDR support

Yet another reason why I have been happily using only linux for my laptop daily driver for over a decade (work + home)

I already killed it twice.

I remember an old post in the Old New Thing about why the systray has no API to show/hide icons. (Answer: Because if it had an API, application would abuse it to force to show crap.)

Just open up a command line, change directory to your Desktop, and type:

    attrib +h "Microsoft Edge.lnk"

Then you never have to see it again.

That command sets the "Microsoft Edge.Ink" file as hidden, for those who were wondering.

Unless you have set hidden files as visible as some of us do.

You can add +s into the mix for "system file", AFAIK (this may have changed with recent versions of Windows 10 / 11) it is then controlled by the seperate "Hide Protected System Files" setting.

(But doesn't help if that setting is also disabled)

It happens when Edge updates which, like Chrome, happens fairly frequently so I can understand why you might think that it is forced. But you can delete it and not have it appear until Edge updates again.

Note that Adobe Acrobat Reader is one of many that does the same thing, it used to do it, stopped for a while, and is now doing it again.

My errant thought is that this sort of thing happens when the marketing departments gain prominence within an organization.

If it keeps reappearing while being unwanted, how can you call it not forced? Sounds exactly like it's forced upon you.

That's what I keep telling people about consent, but they're not very receptive. Strange.

It's not really forced, since it only happens sometimes. Look, I can see you might think something is still done without your consent and without your best interest in mind, but actually you can go an entire night or evening without anything happening! It only happens fairly frequently.

We just need to weaken words a bit until bad things that happen every so often are actually just normal things. Consent is not really necessary anyways, people just get used to being screwed with if you gaslight them slow enough.

Edge isn't so bad anyways. It's basically Chrome, and you already love Chrome. What you really wanted was an Edge icon on your desktop, so it's helpful that the software improved your experience. If you just try to understand instead of fighting it, you'll get used to it.

It's not really forced, it's just anticipated consent. You'll accept these small things eventually, we just haven't made you realize it yet.

If a person was doing the same thing we would rightfully call that "harassment".

Shame on every single <expletive> at Microsoft involved in this decision.

Create a startup script that deletes that file from the desktop every boot.

Not only is the icon forced on you, the whole browser is.

Also windows 11 keeps enabling windows defender real time protection. This behavior is common on windows: do not respect user preferences.

That's why you set all of your drive roots as excluded folders

not only W11, happened to me this week on W10 Pro after update, wasted minutes reenabling qbittorrent despite it was in exceptions already

Best defence is to have 100+ icons on the desktop…

Au contraire, best defense is to hide all desktop icons. Right-click on the desktop, choose View and look at Show Desktop Icons. If there's a check mark next to it, click on it to remove the checkmark.

It’s like they want us to hate them.

Microsoft Chromium, big deal…

What do they gain from use using it, browser tracking?

This is one hostile behavior from your OS you actually notice. How many you don't?

It really bugs me about Edge that it's actually a decent browser (well, Chromium under the hood is, but I also like the built-in vertical tabs), but Microsoft keeps going crazy w/ the shenanigans.

Example: I typically use Firefox on MacOS at work, but figured I'd give Edge a try. I've set my default search to DDG, but there's still plenty of ways to "accidentally" search via Bing. I also had to install an extension to make the new tab interface be about:blank.

Like come on. You've got a good, solid wrapper around Chromium, and this is the nonsense you make your users deal with.

What if you delete it, and then make your own shortcut to something else and give it the exact same name Edge was using?

Would it delete your shortcut, to make way for its own? Or would it see your shortcut and mistake it for its own?

I'm guessing it would create a new one called Microsoft Edge (1).lnk

If you use windows you must spend a few hours to try and prevent the OS from phoning home to Microsoft to get new methods to ignore user preferences.

Then, you can remove all the built in spyware, that’s enabled by default.

I switched to Mac OS during the Golden Years of Windows 7. Every year since then, Windows has gotten worse.

Not only has it gotten ridiculously user-hostile, but seemingly none of the standard gripes were addressed. Nothing seems to have meaningfully improved in the UX department.

You'd think that in a decade, they'd slip in some quality of life improvements, but the thing feels like a 2002 car built in 2012 with a tablet taped to the dashboard.

This isn't just an issue with Edge, Adobe Acrobat, and a few other apps (I forget which ones now) will add a shortcut to the desktop when they update.

It's super annoying, and doesn't seem to be a way to just disallow that behavior without uninstalling the apps (which I think with Edge you can't do anymore).

I'm very tempted to try a Linux installation on my next device, it might actually be worth the extra effort now.

Can confirm this is happening as well. I keep deleting it but it keeps coming back. Oh well, I might write a script to delete it automatically.

a script for that? seriously?

Well if you have to delete it regularly, the annoyance of that adds up (as well as the time I suppose), when you could quite easily schedule a task to delete it in Task Scheduler.

Takes seconds for ChatGPT or Copilot. Why not?

But remember, it's Linux that's only free if you don't value your time;)

Definitely not to "time sink parity" with Linux just yet. Depending on what you need your machine for, of course.

Eh... Let's agree that it varies by usecase and what bothers you, I suppose.

It's just a shame Windows is the only operating system in the world, otherwise we could all use something else.

Ah, but you see: my edge case. I cannot live this mortal life without my edge case and taking a stance as hellish as firing a VM, or dual booting on an NVMe device where the operation takes less than a minute, is just unimaginable, unendurable pain. I'm afraid there's nothing to be done and Windows must always be a part of life and thus I shall contribute to perpetuate the circle rather than make the slightest effort to slowly erode it over time.

If the vast majority of what you use your computer for is the thing you'd have to dual boot for, then dual booting buys you nothing as far as alleviating the annoyances and instead just brings you entire new classes of annoyances because Linux gonna Linux.

Does anyone (power users) really use the desktop anymore? Since moving back to windows, I've mostly used the taskbar and PowerToys Run to launch applications, and explorer to find files.

I’ve not been using desktop icons for decades, maybe W98 was the last time. I have never been fond of the cluttering ever since, especially on the larger displays (SVGA does not lend itself to many icons anyway).

To run things on Windows nowadays I mostly use the Alt+Space applet that comes with PowerToys.

I'm the exact same way, PowerRun all the way with desktop hidden.

But that's no justification for shifty MS behavior.

I mainly use it for shortcuts to folders that I access often. It saves time.

Spicy take: I wish the EU would actually look into this hostile anticompetitive behavior from Microsoft before they worry about goddamn USB-C on an iPhone.

I wonder what happens in case the desktop is full of other icons or even better: folders with important stuff). Get's one removed randomly to be replaced by Edge?

You realize that on windows at least, that the "desktop" is just a folder, and what you see as the desktop is just a rendering of that? In other words, there's no concept of limited amount of slots like you suggest, so if your desktop was entirely "full" and another item gets added, existing items don't get evicted.

Yes, sure. Sorry my comment was not that serious regarding loss of data. Now that I think about it something still has to happen regarding ordering / displacement of icons or something. Maybe it will be added to the folder but will not be shown.

Question: Is Edge your default browser? (It isn't mine, but I do have it installed. I have not seen this behaviour on Win 10 Home.)

Firefox with uBlock

> I do have it installed.

It’s not like you have the choice anyway. It’s impossible to remove it. Well it’s technically possible but it’s not easy and since Windows ignores your default browser settings, it continues to try starting edge and gives you an error when you want to open a webpage from anything windows (start menu, help …)

Same issue. This morning I'll check if it happens again. I was thinking I could mark it as hidden to solve the issue

They slowly bullied me into using Edge which I have used for some time now. Congrats, MS you won.

Speaking of, I'd love to get rid of the mandatory search bar on the Android home screen.

I think android let's you install whatever home screen you like

It does, although some devices (Samsung?) will force you back to the default homescreen with every reboot.

Other devices force you back to the default homescreen whenever you activate the google assistant via long pressing the home button, and you can't disable it.

Luckily both behaviours seem to be a minority.

Try an open source home screen launcher, I use this one, it's configurable to hell and back: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.deletescape...

cool, thanks :)

MS being MS. Lots on this site said it's a new MS, no more of the old shenanigans and yet here we are...

Windows never changed.

It was a “new Microsoft” because they stopped making windows the center of their existence.

now windows takes a lower priority behind xbox even within it’s own division.

I think it was really just residual PR intended to try and shake off the stink of Balmers run.

heres how you fix it:

getfedora.org

Not if you switch to Mac!

Not if you switch to Mercedes!

Yes, switch to Mac so you can get forced “Try Safari!” popups instead.

What? You may see a popup once, on first run after switching default, just like every other browser.

You also get it on OS upgrades. But seeing as these are only once a year this seems like not too big a deal to me.

Haven't seen any of these pop-ups thrown at my face in 3 years of using macOS. Also, your default choice for browser is respected throughout the system unlike Windows.

Web links in search not respecting my default and opening in Edge is one of most disgusting things I've seen.

And now you still don't control your system; you've just swapped your master for a different one. :D

Open-source is the only way to freedom. (And, fittingly, it's not the easiest.)

No, now I'm finally the master of my computing experience. I happen to like Apple's taste in this regard, and am happy to outsource many small decisions to them at a fee.

With Microsoft, I never enjoy their defaults, and they'll shove it down your throat. With Linux, there are no defaults, and I have to invest a lot of my limited time setting everything up.

When I'm using something free of charge I don't mind small annoyances like this.

Linux is also free and doesn't have this problem.

“ Linux is only free if your time has no value”

Meanwhile with Windows not only you pay for the OS but also with your time to make it approximate a decent environment (with increasingly less options ever new version).

Only when you start to learn to use it, just like when you start to learn to use Windows.

Tell me that after trying to get VR working in Linux. You'll have to buy an Index first of course, since it's basically the only one that works. Only just barely, of course.

I'll take your word for it, never tried and not interested in it at all. Though I'd suggest the lack of Linux support from VR vendors is nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with the VR vendors.

That line seems to often be said in threads where people are fighting against Microsoft's latest barrage of dark patterns. For some reason the time spent on dealing with that is never compared fairly: "Windows is only usable if your time has no value".

Even when that line was true, I could get Linux working with a few hours of effort

No amount of effort is going to make windows usable when there’s a company actively working to make it user-hostile

This quote dates back to earlier than 2010. I don't think jwz would agree with it in 2023.

On Windows you burn time eliminating ads, Edge, "set up your machine" popups, and other bullshit.

On MacOS you burn time papering over what is a completely incompetent OS for dev: containers, package management, fourty-fucking-five minute security patches, and other bullshit.

Linux generally just works.

jwz still complains about linux, but less than mac! He uses Linux throughout his club and tech stack and still grumbles but I think he's finally recognized over time that Apple's attitude toward the UNIX core of Mac and its non-commitment to backwards comptability have repeatedly burned him.

> “Linux is only free if your time has no value”

This motto, although actually true in the past, is probably no longer valid. Install the latest Ubuntu/Kubuntu with KDE/Plasma and you get a high performance, GUI-configurable, aesthetically pleasing desktop. You will need to drop down to the Linux command line only if you need to pull off some kind of advanced networking, virtualization, etc. setup. (While you're at it, switch to the free ZFS filesystem and enjoy disk bit rot checking without Windows Enterprise/Pro ReFS). The entire Linux system and almost all user apps upgrade automatically from a set of pre-defined online installer repositories. If you want to game, boot Linux on a CPU-integrated graphics card and pass-through your stand-alone GPU to a Windows-guest KVM-host (QEMU) virtual machine for 99% native gaming performance, no need to dual-boot.

GNOME is a joke for triple monitor, and KDE's multi-monitor support is somewhat broken.

Time wasted. I tried to install Windows recently on a completely wiped laptop. I couldn't do it, it failed after partitioning or copying in several different ways. I find comments online that it might be sensitive to what USB drive is used (might be?). I had a license and an image from Microsoft and one from the laptop manufacturer, both failed the same way. I've installed a bunch of Linux distros on it in the past with no problem. When reinstalling a Mac you just go into recovery and net install.

I find it bizarre that windows is as bad as it is.

Each desktop OS has its downsides. Nothing is clearly the best choice.

No, but the least-bad choice clearly isn't Windows.

Games.

I saw your same - not really valuable - comment above. If you're using Windows for games only, then having or not having an Edge icon on the desktop is not an issue.

If you're using it professionally, then it's annoying, along with all the ads, tracking, dark patterns and other bullshit you receive in Windows - especially that you already pay for a license.

Compare that with Linux, which mostly gets out of your way, doesn't track you and is free.

I've been using (Fedora) Linux for professional work for more than 5 years now and still very happy with it. I'm also gaming occasionally on a dual-booted Windows (browsing HN while Death Stranding is installing :)) and get annoyed every time when booting into it.

It always feels good to go back to Linux, where you can play most non-AAA game titles anyway.

> It always feels good to go back to Linux, where you can play most non-AAA game titles anyway.

With Proton you can play most games now. AAA or not. Like, Death Stranding, it works.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34479686

Would you consider (smugly) reminding people that Linux exists to be a "valuable comment"? GIGO

I prefer Windows

Free of charge??? Since when is Microsoft Windows free?

It’s not free. They just let people steal more easily these days. And some who steal it consider the ads as a justification.

It is indeed a $100-200 OS with ads in the start menu.

I'm pretty sure I paid over $100 for Windows 10.

I don't see the big deal, they replaced IE with Edge and IE has been in the desktop since Win95.

The desktop icon being shown once is reasonable but re-adding it after the user deletes it seems excessive.

So you're ok with the OS disrespecting your choices and changing things behind your back?

What choice? I didn't get a choice to not have IE on the desktop. Also, I haven't run Windows as a daily OS since 2003-2004.

Just drag it to the trash and move on with life. It takes two seconds.

That would be fine if it only happened once.

Read the post again, but clearly this time. It just takes a minute.

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