Hacker News Reader

Comment by tored | Hacker News Reader

I recently switched from Edge to Firefox. Edge used to be great, but all "features" it has added the past year is not features I need, like sending my text input to Microsoft, showing online shopping suggestions, discover features, sidebar apps and what not. Edge also has a annoying bug in combination with AMD graphics card where the bottom of the screen flickers when watching certain video content in Edge, like Netflix (YouTube works). This bug has been there for months and still not fixed.

I also recently downgraded from Windows 11 to Windows 10. Windows 11 was just too intrusive and many non-configurable features. Windows 11 is also slower, has more bugs and more unstable than Windows 10.

I'm guessing that we need to abandon Microsoft's products when Windows 10 reaches end of life, not something I looking forward too because I'm not a big fan of Linux desktop nor the Mac desktop.

View on HN

I recently switched from Edge to Firefox

Right there with you. Somewhere in my comment history here six years ago was my suggestion for Microsoft to give up on Internet Explorer and create their own fork of Chromium.

They could’ve gotten massive adoption if they did it right. Instead I had to turn off their useless auto-coupon feature, be ever vigilant to keep them from switching my search provider to Bing, frequently turn off the distracting new tab content, etc.

Switched to Firefox and planning to dual-boot Windows 11 and Ubuntu soon.

> Switched to Firefox and planning to dual-boot Windows 11 and Ubuntu soon.

It doesn't help Microsoft apparently also managed to make dual boot more difficulty. Some years ago it was quite seamless, you could rely on automatic partition and it just worked. Today windows messes with the Linux bootloader after install, and to make it work I have to resort to advanced partition mode.

Yep, also see the section called ''About dual-boot with Windows and "fast-boot" enabled'' here if you rely on an Intel WiFi device:

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/iwlwifi

I gave up on dual boot long ago. I just bought another box and networked it to the main one.

Why even go through all that trouble in the first place?

Just add two OS'es to UEFI BIOS. Bootloaders easily break.

Windows doesn't support multiple EFI System Partitions on one system¹, and it will nuke the default EFI boot image (bootx64.efi) on the ESP it uses whenever it updates or does startup repair. So if you do this make sure you have configured the Linux system to write EFI variables and know that if you ever clear them, you may lose the ability to boot Linux until you perform a repair.

Dual booting sucks. Don't do it, especially if you're new to Linux.

1: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-clien...

It's always seemed to me that dual-booting sucks because Microsoft ensure it sucks. Basically every one who wants to have a Linux distro and Windows on the same box has to work around MS being a dick. Their hope is that you give up and stick with Windows, presumably. It just makes me more keen not to use Windows.

> It's always seemed to me that dual-booting sucks because Microsoft ensure it sucks.

Up to W7 it was quite well behaved. Afterwards, it was like Microsoft ensured there was debris clogging the emergency exits before setting the whole building on fire, to make hard for people to escape. Now W11 is full of dark patterns and tracking, and dual-boot is broken. Beginners lost a easy way to get their feet wet on Linux without upfront commitment to a full switch.

Dual booting sucks. Don't do it, especially if you're new to Linux.

I’m gonna give it a go. I first installed Linux from a shareware CD I purchased from my local Micro Center in 1996.

Still remember Slackware fondly! And qmail - great email program.

Sounds like you'll have to trouble managing your bootloaders should they break, and you might even enjoy learning some quirks about how both Windows and your distro of choice treat the ESP.

Have fun! May the source be with you ;)

Buy a second SSD, install linux and duel boot by switching UEFI boot option. You can even reboot into UEFI from windows and Linux. It's about as easy as it gets with minimal effort. Or you can setup an efi bootloader on Linux disk that allows you to launch windows instead. These days duel booting is easier than ever, duel booting via a single hard drive has always been a clumsy way to do it.

The Windows 10 LTSC IoT Edition still has 10 years of support, and you can apparently hack it to continue working until the 2038 bug takes the digital world down. Looking into this now.

the massgrave activation scripts work great and will perma register w a real license from ms servers. only thing id advise, if you use a pihole turn it off while running it as many popular lists block the activation servers (or related)

Edge's only real feature is that it works... sometimes. I use it only when i run across some work-related thing where edge is literally the only option, like stupid configs whereby msoffice runs inside the browser. Instead of just downloading a pdf i have to trick edge into "printing" a docx to a pdf format that i can then actually read like a sane person. When edge dies i will be first to dance on its grave.

wear a pair of throwaway shoes when you do; im sure that grave will be decorated with fluids and semi-solids of biological origin.

I use edge only as double page endless scrolling pdf reader. Haven't found the alternative yet

Chrome has two-page view for .pdf files.

Not sure which extension you are referring to. Just tried and couldn't open pdf with chrome

Hit Ctrl+O in Chrome and pick the file.

Sometimes server MIME types (or the download attribute on anchor links) force a download instead of letting Chrome just load the PDF directly. But it can definitely open local PDFs, I chucked Acrobat in the trash years ago when I found out.

No extension. It should work by default. Two page view is in the menu at the top right.

Didn't you hear? 2023 is the year of Linux on the desktop.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com