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Comment by mintplant | Hacker News Reader

It also switched my default web browser from Firefox to Edge and replaced the Firefox icon I'd pinned to my taskbar with an Edge one in the same position. Switching back required clicking a small link on an extra scare prompt buried in the control panel where the large, default button was to stick with Edge. No wonder its market share seems to be ticking up.

In addition the update cleared a bunch of my settings, including silently switching on some of the privacy-questionable features I'd opted out of previously. The update process itself wasn't pleasant, either: while I was away from my desk my laptop woke up from sleep, threw away everything I had open (including a running VM instance, risking data corruption), and launched into a patching process that cost me nearly an hour of work time.

I understand the importance of automatic updates security-wise, but Microsoft seems to be actively user-hostile here.

</rant>

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I just installed the Anniversary update. It did not replace my default browser. It did however suggest making Edge my default with an option to do so. I cancelled this.

It also added Edge to my taskbar but did not replace either Firefox or Chrome. Are you sure it replaced it?

Seems like some misinformation here.

Yeah, I'm positive. There was no user interaction involved: when I came back to my laptop, it was updating, and when the updated completed all the changes I described had been made. Privacy settings had been reset, Edge had become my default browser, and the Edge icon had taken Firefox's place on the taskbar.

MSFT thanks you both for your participation in an ongoing AB test.

It could be a Europe vs. other region thing, or similar, too?!

Or maybe they are putting all that telemetry to "good" use.

I've had the firefox icon disappear from where it was pinned on the task bar after an update as well.

Europe here: it did the same to me too in my main pc. Wondering what will happen to my laptop where I actively removed a lot of the telemetry functions with some scripts I picked up from github...

There's nothing which says that Microsoft does the same thing to all installations of Windows. They could be doing A/B-testing, treating installations in certain regions where they fear legal repercussions nicer, or just trying to confuse users, so that we bash each others heads in, instead of theirs.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

I feel at this point in our society the reverse proves true more often than not.

It's usually a matter of misaligned incentives. People are working in their own best interests within the structures available.

So true in America. I hate that quote so much because reality is the opposite.

Never attribute what Microsoft does to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice.

I guess it's not misinformation, I think it's a case that is more complex than expected.

You can create a desktop icon with a link to IE/Edge, Firefox, Chrome, but you can create also a desktop icon with a link to the current default browser.

The problem is that if you have selected Firefox as your default browser, then one of the default icons looks like a link to Firefox, with the Firefox icon, but it actually a link to the default browser. If you copy or drag&drop it, then it look like Firefox, but it's a link to the default browser.

It's very difficult to spot the difference, and after a few months you will forget what kind of link it was.

If the Windows Update changes the default browser (perhaps automatically, perhaps a confusing question in a popup), then your icon to Firefox will change to an icon to Edge.

(I had a similar problem when I changed the default browser form IE to Chrome last year in one of the computers at work.)

Installing the anniversary update, Microsoft did the following to my computer:

* Turned Fastboot back on, breaking my Linux dual-boot.

* Enabled remote desktop.

* All privacy settings set back to default.

All of these settings were previously turned off by me. I'm now in the process of removing MS products from my computers.

When I browse Hacker News I wonder if something I just wrong with me.

I install Linux (usually Lubuntu or Ubuntu once or twice Mint and Arch) on my dev machine about once a year.

In a few days (my current record is a week, last attempt <24hrs) I uninstall it.

Nothing just works. I was happy Wifi was working last try, then my computer crashed coming out of sleep. My hi resolution monitor doesn't work properly with a standard monitor. A few tries ago I couldn't even boot after install because of my NVIDIA card.

There's no standard for anything. On OSX setting my shell via chsh worked, Ubuntu ignores the same exact command. Applications can't just register themselves without distro specific tweaks so half don't bother, so every install I was firing up alacarte

For all the trouble I get a "free" OS, but do I need one? Do I really care if MS is tracking my clicks if it means I don't have to deal with broken drivers? Do I really care if RDP is enabled when half the time I was fixing stuff I was downloading source code I didn't take time to understand to compile and execute with full privileges?

The rabid hate people who write software for a living have for closed source software makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. Do these people just have super human capabilities to be able to keep up Linux dev machines and resist the temptation of working MS installs? Is Windows as bad as people claim and I'm just subject to Stockholm Syndrome?

Am I doing something wrong if all three of those things happening to me wouldn't be enough to even dream of installing Linux again? Because I feel Linux has done worst things to me for less benefit?

I've run Arch Linux and NixOS on a Chromebook Pixel, Macbook Pro, Thinkpad X1 Carbon (3rd gen), a custom built PC (nvidia) and an Intel NUC. The Pixel required a custom kernel, but even that was a one-line command to install from AUR. Everything has been a completely straightforward install. Yes, even the latest MBP, force touchpad and all.

The only issue you discuss that I've experienced is the problem with mixed-DPI monitors, and it's supposed to be resolved in the next release of GNOME.

I don't hate closed source software (Plex is probably my favorite software product ever), but I certainly have an extreme distaste for Windows. I've wasted way more time reinstalling Windows than I have debugging any Linux installs. (I'm at ~4.5 years of rolling releases in Arch and I've only had to take corrective action once or twice and it was announced ahead of time. And I'm running [testing] repos...)

When I read things like "On OSX setting my shell via chsh worked, Ubuntu ignores the same exact command" I start making some assumptions about user error since `chsh` works just fine in Ubuntu...

And then this "Applications can't just register themselves without distro specific tweaks so half don't bother, so every install I was firing up alacarte" simply hasn't been true for... 8+ years. I literally had to look up alacarte to remember what it is. Alacarte doesn't even do anything in a GNOME3 environment.

But anyway... I don't think anyone should really feel guilty about their OS preference. (I also think that most of the anti-Windows10 FUD is completely blown out of proportion and often borders on dishonest.)

The two examples you mention as "user error" are things that happened on my last try, which was last week. I don't get why "Applications can't just register themselves without distro specific tweaks so half don't bother, so every install I was firing up alacarte" is out of date when no less than 4 times that I installed software I had to fire up alacarte to add it. The closest Linux has to Windows-style "Start Menu/Programs" is the "applications" folders for .desktop files, but if I had to guess why applications weren't installing .desktop shortcuts like I'd like them to it's because there's nothing forcing the application menu to load from there, where OSX and Windows both have a singular application menu that installers know end users will have, and expect to see an entry in. A lot more software I installed didn't bother with .desktop files. I'm sure people would blame the software's creators for not including a .desktop file in the right location as part of installation, but to me it's just a symptom of the "freedom" you get with replacing DEs.

And the shell problem is just me describing a situation exactly as it happened, chsh would not change the terminal that Gnome Terminal used, I had to manually change another setting. It's not that chsh didn't work, it's that the default terminal application installed in the DE didn't respect it. OSX's default terminal respected it just fine. It's not a major gripe, I just thought it was suboptimal.

And on a somewhat unrelated note, I've always noticed if I say something is broken in OSX or Windows I get the usual "Well what do you expect, it's OSX/Windows" (usually with a "What are you doing in X install `whatispetdistro`"). With Linux I get "Well I don't know what you're doing wrong because X has worked for me just fine". Half the time what they considered fine is what I consider broken or suboptimal. But that's anecdotal, it might just be the people I've interacted with in the past.

>is out of date when no less than 4 times that I installed software I had to fire up alacarte to add it.

Alright, I'm curious... what software and what DE? The XDG spec defines a standard place to look for these files, and it's honored by KDE3, KDE4, Gnome2, Gnome3, MATE, Cinnamon, Budgie, ... and probably more that I'm forgetting.

So, if it's not happening, it's either a bug on the software for flat out not shipping it, or a packaging bug on the distribution's part for not placing in the correct place. But like I said, I've not encountered this in the wild for longer than I can remember.

>And the shell problem is just me describing a situation exactly as it happened, chsh would not change the terminal that Gnome Terminal used, I had to manually change another setting.

:/ I just tried it on a 16.04 install and on an Arch Linux install it worked as expected. Gnome-terminal defaults to "Run my shell" but has options to override it which are not on by default. You can see here where it uses your user set shell: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~vcs-imports/gnome-terminal/mast...

>With Linux I get "Well I don't know what you're doing wrong because X has worked for me just fine".

From my experience, most times when I sit down with a user, and walk through troubleshooting, I see things, ask and hear back "Oh right, I forgot I tried fiddling with that too, did that make it worse, oops!".

If these things are so easily repro'd, there are people who would love to have bug reports for them. I've filed a couple GNOME bugs before, it was a straightforward experience.

>high resolution monitor are you a game dev? someone who works with graphics? someone who does photo/video related work? shouldn't be using linux anyways. piss-poor OS for that type of work unless you want to spend time debugging stuff instead of working

>no standard for anything there is a standard, it's just not the standard you're "used" to. again, if you don't wanna spend time learning new paradigms-linux is not the way to go for you

>The rabid hate people who write software for a living have for closed source software makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. Do these people just have super human capabilities to be able to keep up Linux dev machines and resist the temptation of working MS installs? Is Windows as bad as people claim and I'm just subject to Stockholm Syndrome? probably, linux requires a "i'll fix it/patch it/install something additional if it doesn't work" mindset whereas MS and Apple sell a "it just works" mindset to you-which works until something breaks(eg windows 10 broke my wifi,had to do some drilling to figure out windows 10 was using some kind of wonky setting for it that my wifi chip didn't support)

It might be helpful when reporting anecdotal information about what the Anniversary Update does and does not change, to note which version of Windows 10 you have. Windows 10 Enterprise offers more control than Pro, which offers more than Home, as I understand. This may explain some of the differences in these observations.

None of those things really seem acceptable regardless of what version you are running.

Good point. The PC I'm referring to is running Windows 10 Pro.

I've noticed that every major update, Windows resets a bunch of settings to the default. It's like they haven't bothered to carry them over at all. Privacy settings and Edge are just the tip of the iceberg.

I upgraded 3x machines to 10.0.14393 and none of them changed my default browser or altered my taskbar icons. Although my browser was Chrome, not Firefox.

I did already have the Edge icon on my taskbar (pre-update) but the Chrome icon remained, as did it the default.

I might be confused, but I believe I started Firefox the other day, and got a prompt wheter I want to continue to use Firefox, or try Edge instead. I think it was not via a pinned icon, but via a http link opened from another app (default http handler).

I'm not sure how I think about this. On the one hand it's a bit sneaky, on the other hand it was pretty clearly written (click here to try a new browser, click here to continue using Firefox), and I don't know how you'd get somebody to try a new browser otherwise. Google hat at one point agressive Chrome ads on their main page. And Edge is actually a surprizingly decent browser, so if they ask me once nicely, and don't nag, I don't have a big problem with it.

I'm in the EU btw., I'm sure MS uses different approaches in different places. Replacing a pinned icon is really rude, especially since MS said this area belongs to the user, and no developer, not even MS, is supposed to change anything there.

Youtube still has a bar on top of the page saying that youtube is best experienced in Chrome.

My default browser remained the same, but I had the same experience with Edge and the Windows Store being pinned to the taskbar. I don't like the feeling of not being in control of my own machine.

I've had a similar experience too with both the forced updates (if I delay too long because I'm busy and need to get work done now just ignores my requests after a while and does it anyway) and it switching my defaults to whatever it ships with (like changed my file associations from vim to notepad or nothing, changing my default browser from Firefox to edge or chrome, or re-enabling the ads on the lock screen). I'm not sure if it's poor testing, apathy, malice, or assumption of user stupidity. I want there to be a "new, cool, and less evil" Microsoft and that my assumptions are wrong, but it's starting to look like that's all smoke and mirrors. I wish I could go back to Windows 7 without starting from scratch again, and that they asked before they updated me to Windows 10 (it's installed on a USB hard drive and the installer wouldn't let me go back because "Windows 7 is incompatible with USB boot drives" or some garbage like that).

Time to get another BrowserChoice.eu

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