Windows 10 warns me to use a "Microsoft-verified" app
support.mozilla.org
support.mozilla.org
After reboot I had a notification message "Make your Computer Faster".
I wouldn't touch one of them with a 40 foot pole on the open web but this was an official MS message in notifications so I figured it was worth a look as it might be some general advice about official new MS tools for tweaking, booting faster, cleaning dead files, newest iteration of the usual stuff.
It immediately launched into an MS Edge installation that had to be killed via process explorer. no dialog about "do you want to?" etc.
MS really has gone beyond the pale here.
I think I don't have advanced stuff like DLSS and HDR though, maybe I could if I did some tinkering.
Current and next-gen PC hardware will always be optimized for Windows first, with some technologies being straight-up limited exclusively to Windows.
Not that gamers are losing out on anything valuable, of course. I run Debian stable and spend quite a few times gaming on it, and it turns out almost all the games that won't run on it aren't games worth playing altogether. But this is an opinion of the negligible minority like you and me. The Consumers will obviously care for the latest.
The only issue is that the few times it does crash, it takes out the compositor, but that's easily fixed.
Otherwise, I think I've got the highest graphics settings, though I haven't checked them.
Hey, even at the customer I work with now (a rather influential directorate), people have the option to choose Mac or Linux.
And: pro-tip, if you are going to work in such a place (public directorate), consider taking the Mac option because unlike with Windows PCs there are limits to how cheap the bean counters can get them and the budgets for hardware is optimised independently of the budget for hiring more people to cover for the fact that they aren't nearly as effective as they could have been and I am afraid - also the hiring budget. (The Linux option is the second best: you get the same hardware but with Linux you make the best out of it.)
That’s like one hour of the person using the machine’s time! To save them tons of frustration and wasted time from their computer thermal throttling while, say, hooked up to multiple monitors, compiling, and running a video call.
Funnily enough I've sometimes had problems with the reverse. I've got a bad back, and lighter laptops are easier for me to deal with than heavier ones especially when I'm on-call. But sometimes the only option available at work has been a 15" MacBook Pro or similarly sized Linux laptop.
I have a strong preference for Linux laptops but I'd really also like it to be small and lightweight!
And it is getting even more widespread as most of the "office" work moves to Office365 and such which are all cloud/web based, so which OS you are running literally doesn't matter anymore.
> Installed Nobara (fork of Fedora made for gaming) and proceeded to install my copy of Red Alert 2 (my most played game) via Wine
> Try to run game, 'Error: xxx32.dll not found' or something
> Spent over an hour looking up forum posts on fixing that error, manually copying that dll and other modded variants of that dll to the install directory, but no cigar, still same error or other error, don't remember exactly
> Throw in the towel and went back to Windows where Red Alert 2 'Just Works TM'. Definitely no "year of the Linux" for me. I don't care how many thousands of Steam games work on Linux if they're not the games and apps I own and play. But good luck.
Edit: nice to see I'm getting downvoted for telling a personal story on this topic. Very emotionally mature of you guys.
More generally, I usually have more success running older games under Wine than on Windows 10 or 11 - DXVK helps a lot with early directx9 games in particular, in my experience.
Not sure if it's why you get downvoted but RA2 definitely doesn't work out of the box on Windows.
I actually thought the launchers (Steam and Heroic) would automatically take care of that, but that doesn't always seem to be the case.
RA2 didn't "just work" on windows for me, but that's OK I'm holding out for OpenRA2 anyways.
Kept a dual boot but switching less and less.
Many of the games I've tried, just kind of work. Path of Exile, for example, worked on my PopOS system (AMD CPU / Nvidia GPU) with no fiddling. (I switched a couple of weeks ago.)
But they get away with it. Nobody buys Microsoft because they're good. It's because they have so many fingers in the pie that you can't do without them. They know it and make their products just good enough to not be dropped in favour of something much better.
What infuriates me the most is that this is aimed at nudging those who don’t know better. With older family members, a savvy relative or workshop can help them set up a functional environment, to pay bills, check Facebook etc.
Previously, I’ve advised to ignore messaging from web sites, but official OS notifications are important - like updates. Now, they can update the OS, click next/accept/ok and they end up with a different browser/bookmarks/ui and that be enough to take away their ability to do their errands.
So my mom, for instance, can no longer be self-sufficient. I have to tell her “oh that one is important” or “no this is just Microsoft trying to sell you stuff you don’t need/will be worse”. They’ve tricked her into the Edge default several times, because every update is an opportunity for MS to prey on her with full screen Microsoft-branded marketing posing as security/performance improvements.
In either case, it’s insane that it’s come to the point where Linux is recommended on the basis of UX for non-savvy people. I wish vendors has these options and support, but people who don’t have a savvy friend or family member will probably never even have a chance to consider it.
In the sense that it will stay the same for years and won't break on its own or bother the user with requests of questionable motive.
It can be configured to have a windows-ish layout very simply with their tweak tool.
It kept my parents' old hardware running years past when it would have become unusable and unsupported on Windows.
I just bought them a new cheap Beelink for around £150. More than powerful enough to run MATE for occasional browsing, emails etc.
With tailscale I can ssh in if needed for remote support.
I had a super old laptop that I installed Ubuntu Mate and gave it to my mom who needed a laptop for simple web browsing/email/YouTube. My mom is totally illiterate when it comes to computers btw.
Worked like a charm for a few years until the laptop finally stopped working for good.
I think Mint would have beem even better. Hell, I use Mint myself. Best OS available by any metrics I can think of. I like it so much that I now donate some yearly 20 bucks to the project. Using it for free feels almost like a steal.
I heard not a peep for tech support for years. One time someone thought she forgot her password, but it turned out she just had someone else’s computer.
Eventually the practice made enough money to get everyone on MacBooks, which honestly has given me more trouble (especially around all the system-level permissions for webcam and mic access seemingly resetting on random updates).
Never underestimate how many users just basically need a mobile kiosk instead of an actual computer.
Chromebooks are fine, but you need to trust Google. Macs are mostly okay if you're willing to eat the expense, because there's a limited amount of nonsense in the OS and a wide network of Apple Stores for support.
Which distro was this? The major-version-upgrade flow is very different for different distros.
IMO it would be difficult to make upgrading between major versions much easier than Fedora Silverblue — literally 3 clicks. (If you want to try it out, now is a convenient time to install Silverblue 38, because 39 is due out next week.)
The only customisation has been to switch to MATE desktop every time, which she finds more familiar. That might also imply sticking with Xorg? Overall though her experience has been good. But perhaps your grandmother uses a wider variety of apps. For her, it's mostly about videos (she does use the ISO automount feature in MATE and CD ripping), some document editing, a web browser, and video conferencing.
The last support call was about plugging in a projector. Turns out the projector was not turned on, and once it was on, it autodetected just fine. I then mentioned mirrored mode and monitor positioning, and that was about it.
Ubuntu is offering 5 years of LTS maintenance on 22.04, and if in 5 years she needs help with the upgrade, I don't feel that's a huge imposition, but she may well manage it on her own just fine.
I hate to say it, but ... don’t? Go the full managed-workstation route, put an LTS on there, and hope you’ll have a chance to do a version upgrade sometime in the coming years. I usually dislike the idea of using an LTS on a personal machine, but here, when the person using the computer isn’t the one maintaining it, it feels appropriate.
I agree it should be better, but it doesn’t feel like a grandma problem, it feels like a smart-and-willing-but-not-savvy problem. (Not that grandmas can’t be in the latter category, it just doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re describing.)
It's a huge company, don't anthropomorphize it. It hasn't changed, it's a system for maximizing profits, it does what some people in it determined to be most efficient for that goal. If saying it "loves open source now" on their websites to "befriend" and attract a new wave of devs is most efficient, then that's what it'll do. When the situation changes, it'll kill competition using any means it can get away with just like it always did.
The tradeoff is that every Office user has an additional 10+ processes that consume enormous amounts of RAM, but looks like someone in MS Marketing managed to turn that into lemonade, because it means that the "make your computer faster" ad is likely accurate (for Office users). Thanks to the magic of caches and shared libraries, running Edge probably does use fewer system resources than running Firefox or Chrome when Edge-Electron is already running.
Well color me surprised.
Legal..? I'm sure their lawyers think it is?
I posted about this before, but MS got fined before by the EU for this kind of OS/Browser bundling in the late 2000s. For a while, we had an option at installation on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 to choose our browser.
These were still the days of Internet Explorer, so I don't know how much MS not having a competent browser factored into this decision, but I was really surprised that with a recent fresh install I did, this browser choice prompt was gone. Not to mention all the roadblocks thrown up by MS while trying to install an alternative browser...
Perhaps it's just enough in the grey-zone that it is a "cross that bridge when we come to it" issue and that they don't need to figure out the specifics of any laws/regulation, because if they are on the wrong side of it, in the past it has been proven that these types of regulations are quite toothless.
This specific issue on its face seems a security thing, where users are warned against installing software from untrusted (as defined by microsoft) sources. It very handily doubles as a way to scare users into not installing competitors for their own applications (like browsers and office packages), of course.
Unless part of the calculus involves executives behind bars, I don't know what else we should expect from corporate behaviour; they're just following their incentives.
Uber was (relatively) vocal about their hope for regulation to catch up with this new world of taxi gigs ordered through an app.
And in the MS browser-choice case, the regulation was specifically designed for Microsoft and they had been found to be non-compliant once already.
How does that change the calculus? Clearly, not enough.
You can coordinate this with a coded message, such as:
"Our goal for 2023 is to make Edge a market-leading product, the best browser on Windows, and the customer's browser of choice. All executives ranked Vice President or above will receive $100,000 in shares for every percentage point increase in US browser market share this financial year."
Later you will be shocked - SHOCKED - to learn anti-competitive behaviour happened, when you were "just trying to encourage the OS and browser teams to cooperate on things like power efficiency and security"
At one point, I went to search for "Firefox" on Bing using Edge and this happened[1].
It's almost comical how desperate they are to keep you using Edge.
On top of that they peddled their browser in all their products (gmail, youtube, maps, docs, ...), claiming better and faster experience, more features. Sometimes they had to check user agent to deliver worse experience to make that claim truthful.
And now Apple gets away with only allowing one browser engine on iOS, even if you try to go out of your way to use something else you can’t (third party browsers have to use the Safari engine built into the OS by App Store policy)
When Microsoft had it's browser mess it had near saturation level op dominance (>97% if I recall correctly).
Why do they? How do they profit from this?
Why should they not? Their browser market share is munuscule, and I actaully feel good if somebody takes some of it from Chrome, slightly decreasing Google's hold on absolute power in defining the web.
Nevertheless I actually use Firefox with a vertical tab extension (there are many) as I find it overall better, also make use of its awesome container tabs (a very nice convenience leap from using multiple browsers for different purposes) and feel nice about using a browser which is kind of (I know it's not really, at least from the financial point of view) independent from privacy&freedom-hostile corporations and actually different from their one technically. Another reason is Edge somehow feels the slowest browser ever to me.
But besides this Microsoft also added a lot of user-hostile crap to Edge, like the "buy now pay later" schemes and the coupon notifications.
The answer is simple. The google anti-trust case clearly indicates this is _highly_ profitable. As the browser (chrome) is one of the leading ways of increasing Search Query Volume (SQV). SQV increases ad impressions thus increases ad revenue, thus maximizes shareholder value.
Bing has a similar ad platform and with Edge Microsoft will have many ways to send users to do queries in Bing.
Why leave a big piece of juicy pie like this on the table for google to sweep up?
Shipping a good and fast browser with Windows is perfectly fine, many will use it, some won't. Why do Microsoft care? The users are still running Windows. If anything this seems to undermine the value Microsoft place on Windows as a platform. Why not focus on making Windows better and if users want to use Windows to run Firefox or Chrome that's their choice.
I really don't see what value pushing Edge has to Microsoft. Are they just pining for the good old days of IE dominance? They dropped their own browser engine, so they obviously don't want to spend that much money on browser development, so why spend any at all?
Since the spyware and add presenting malware in Windows is apparently insufficient they also want to get your data via bing and web browser usage and present you adds in those regions as well.
A strange species.
[0] Of course they say it's all anonymyzed (at least if you are in Europe...) and no specific info is added to your profile, they are just interested in general trends etc., not individuals - but the fact remains you have little choice here.
It's almost like big corporations love to "exploit markets" wrapped in layers of feel good marketing.
Poor old Goldman Sachs, the victim yet again.
https://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/201...
That's probably what I don't get, why is Microsoft even trying to be in the ad business? Sure there's money to be made, but there's also money in used cars. They are inherently a software company, while Google is a adtech company who happens to build software to support that business at a huge scale.
Apple loves to tout its privacy but it's their own APIs that apps used to track you ...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/234529/comparison-of-app...
I looked, again, at how to remove Edge ... I don't have the will power for their shenanigans, they won that one.
Over the last few years MS have actually done quite a few things that would have changed my opinion of them. But they always back it to with a reminder they're still awful.
Prior to this was the convoluted process to buy Minecraft, my third time buying it, but first time buying a game from Microsoft. Jeez-louise, I needed three accounts: the child who is getting it, an adult to authorise the child to get it, and an Amazon account (somehow!?) to buy it ... having bought it, it was not simple to install it. They can't sell software, they have to control you, it's like signing up for an abusive relationship.
You can't because Edge is also the WebView component on Windows. The IE component is still there in its old broken, insecure glory and they have been replacing it with the Edge based WebView over time.
I’ve given up trying.
Apple actually does a serviceable job there, so that’s where I’ll stay until they’re older.
Reboot into "recovery mode" and use the command prompt from there to delete the Edge folder. Alternatively, boot into another OS that can mount NTFS read-write and do the same from it. You can use this "I wasn't asking" method to remove any — and I mean any — component of Windows you don't like. But of course make sure you understand what exactly you're deleting to avoid breaking your Windows installation. Move files instead of deleting them if you aren't 100% sure. I did this to Windows Update on my VM.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201020162028/https://support.m...
(it would really help if technical content was dated)
It seems like they are at it again. Really hope the DOJ is not gonna settle this time around (repeat offender and all) and actually see it through that Edge, Bing and Windows are actually spun off to independent subsidiaries that can not collude to illegally manipulate the consumers.
The US /EU protected the world from 20 or so years of this BS. I suspect Google, Firefox, Chrome, Social Media, maybe even Apple’s resurgence, etc as we know it would not have happened if it wasn’t for the them preventing MS from abusing their monopoly in the most blatant manner.
I will never use Windows again on any computer I own. Even if I want to do desktop PC gaming again, it won't be on Windows.
So long as repercussions aren’t more serious (see EU fines) or more personal (hold C-suite personally responsible for contempt of court or similar), nothing will change.
It’ll never happen though.
They think charging business 30% of their revenue is completely acceptable, so a fine must be something above that number.
Any fine on revenue below 30% is just a cost of doing business.
So if halon's razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.") is anything to go by it might be not on purpose, but who knows.
Governments really need to get a tight grip on those out of control corporations.
I spent the last 1.5 years making Windows a good development environment (supported by a home lab/san that is pure linux,) but I am increasingly frustrated at the user hostility from Microsoft.
I have so many layers of outgoing connection filtering, custom windows rules to disable telemetry, etc, but still cannot get away from the dark patterns that is the modern day Windows experience.
So, Linux it is.
But based on my experience with my work machine, the whole OS does seem to have it as a design goal that the user be forced to watch the PC reboot and install updates while they sit around twiddling their thumbs. Why else would "Install updates and shutdown" actually shutdown and then start installing updates when you startup again? Maybe they're planning to place ads on the update screen so they wan the user to be there to look at them.
But that's not what this is.
By saying "oh by the way go and get our browser instead" it's clear that Microsoft aren't just checking known signing keys, they are directly targeting Firefox and using that knowledge to present high-intent users with an alternative.
It betrays their real intentions, and that's something lawyers love.
So doesn't seem widespread to start with - outside of the MS tactics in general which are bull as always. If anyone knows which Win10 version have a restrictive installation method to start with, it will be useful to understand the actual impact
Once you disable the annoying parts it's not a bad browser at all, in fact it leaves both Chrome and Firefox in dust in terms of resource efficiency and speed on Windows.
It's only been a few weeks, but I don't have Windows installed on any of my PCs now. It's a shame that I still need lots of fiddling to figure out Nvidia drivers and why Wayland is not there yet, so for now I have to use Xorg, but for experienced users, it works really well.
I really wish it could be the same for newbies tough.
hello linux.