If you need more ammunition they recently also changed it so all links in Outlook opens in Edge even if it's not the default browser. You have to go to settings and find an entirely separate default browser setting to stop it.
I switched to Thunderbird because of that bullshit. It's getting worse. I'll be looking for a good Linux distro for my next laptop.
I didn't think that sort of thing happened anymore
It's because of shit like this that I'm glad I switched to Linux.
I wish I could. My gaming rig has an nvidia gpu and linux support really sucks because of the proprietary driver situation...
Steams new gamepad ui is a slideshow running at 5fps and I loose HDR so I have to remain on Windows for now. Every other desktop I own is UNIX tho.
A few others have mentioned Pop_OS! for their Nvidia driver support which is what I'm running too. I think I'm on version 535.93 or something like that. Most of the Ubuntu downstream (Ubuntu, mint, pop_os, etc,.) already include
The proprietary drivers in their repos. Pop_OS is known for Nvidia support being a bit quicker than the others.
I'd suggest looking into dual booting (thats what I do, there are a few things that work better on windows). It's super easy to set up, and it's an easy low risk way to see if it works for you.
My gaming rig has an Nvidia GPU as well, and it runs mostly without any problems (I've had to manually update drivers a couple of times) on POP!_OS
Can you try to run the big picture/ gamepad UI and see if it lag? This my only real issue blocking me from switching back
I have a RTX3070 and I never felt any lag using big picture/gamepad UI in Ubuntu/Manjaro/Endeavour.
But you can Dual Boot and only use Windows for gaming. I did that initially
I got a RTX 3080 myself and no matter what distro I used the new gamepad UI lagged so much that it was unusable.. maybe this has been fixed, I haven't tried it in a while.
Also are you using x or wayland?
But you can Dual Boot and only use Windows for gaming. I did that initially
Sadly I wont switch until this is resolved. But I use this rig only for gaming and navigate through gamepadui so I dont have to see Windows lol.
I use UNIX (Linux / macOS) on all other hosts.
Use X not Wayland on NVIDIA GPUs. I'm running nixos on my laptop / desktop and big picture works without issues on both hosts.
My reason was that I had heard windows 11 was considering ads in their file explorer. Win10 already has enough prompts pushing edge and OneDrive. That, and many of my professors use Linux, and the ease with which they would install Python or C compilers was too much.
Do it. It's not as hard as it used to be thanks to systemd-boot existing. I literally reinstalled Windows the other day and nothing happened to systemd-boot. GRUB, is a bit of a mess though.
Just a reminder that if you're using Windows, it's not your property but Microsoft's one
Right but licenses for pro are £200 RRP.
Don't then beg me to use your services, just fuck off and let me use Windows how I want
No different than Chrome.
They're talking windows in general
This goes for both chrome and bing: If a service is free, you are the product.
If a service is free, you are the product.
Linux?
You are the tester lol
True for Windows as well. Ever upgraded to a new version before the first SP? Linux just gets upgrades a lot faster than Windows (and I mean the conservative distros like Debian. Bleeding-edge distros are on a completely other level).
Microsoft have been known to ship a product with thousands of known bugs on its release date. In the networking space (Windows NT), there were Technet CDs that were released to fix all manner of known bugs just so the corporates wouldn't have to wait for a Service Pack
Perhaps a better statement would be, if a for profit service is free, you are the product. Obviously it's possible for someone to make free stuff if they want to, but if someone is making money from you using something, but you aren't paying them, then they're making that money by selling someone else access to you.
Linux is just an advertisement to contribute to open source
There needs to be a legally mandated option to turn off all recommendations and tracking, and to require consent to enable it in the first place.
So pretty much just an extension of GDPR. Sounds good.
Or the courts should force MS to split off into an os company, an online services company, an office productivity software company, and a gaming company.
If we had an actual anti-monopoly/umbrella corporation law that would be badass.
Hell Amazon would tank instantly, since they just operate on pumping AWS profits into their loss leader (Amazon delivery) constantly.
As usual, it's only Big Tech that's able to compete with Big Tech. They all love to throw their weight around when they can, and join forces when it's convenient.
Neither corporation should be defended or trusted with your data.
The only thing that's kinda funny here is the irony of Microsoft tryna poach Chrome users into their own... wait for it... Chromium-based browser.
Both of them also like to lease out their software and not actually let you own anything, expecting you to be happily complacent.
I've been using windows for nearly as long as it has existed and I used to always be happy with updates. Even windows vista, despite all its problem, still felt like an upgrade compared to xp.
Then windows 8 started changing things in a direction I was not happy with, but at the same time it also had improvements over win7. Windows 10 repeated that with plenty of bad things but still overshadowed by massive improvements in many areas.
At this point windows was at its peak in some areas, like stability (when was the last time you saw a BSOD without actual faulty hardware?) and usability. Multiple Desktops, WSL2, the new Terminal...so many great things added in win10 updates.
And then comes win11 and shits at everything. Removed a ton of core features that didn't need removing, broke a lot of compatibility with older stuff (something that Microsoft used to care deeply about) and adds... Nothing. It's been quite a while since win11 released and there's still nothing I can point at and say it does better than win10.
If you're going to do all sorts of stuff with my data you should at least try to make me happy with your product in exchange, not make me dread using it every time.
Thoughtful take! Ditto.
what does "Ditto" mean?
It an expression that means “I agree with what you just said”
ahh, make sense. Thanks
It's a bastardisation of the Latin idem dito
"say the same". I assume it means something like "this"?
Yes. "Likewise" and "I agree wholeheartedly" work as well
that's cool
It means "I feel the same way you do and would have said it myself, so I acknowledge and applaud that you said it first".
Which core functions did they remove and which did they break?
I can't say that I miss anything from Windows 10 or before that. I disliked the new settings they introduced at first but I think it has seen some improvments (or maybe I am better at navigating it?) but it has really grown on me.
Being backwards compatible can be important (I really appreciated it when I wanted to install a game for Windows 95 on Windows XP) but you have to cut support at some point in order to implement features otherwise not possible, or to just save time and money doing it. It is like trying to develop for the web and you still see people talking about support IE6 (or IE in general).
I'm sorry, but I just have to mention that I find funny that the features you chose to illustrate “peak” Windows are all prime Linux features. Including installing Linux itself as a sub-system. At that point might as well cut-out the middle man.
I do use Linux every day as well. It has its own set of problems, but not the subject here.
Well Windows 11 got me to use arch, for which I use btw
Hahahaha perfect
I tried installing arch but it would tell me there's no such thing as vda or something I looked it up but found no answer so I switched to pop!_OS
Love pop!_OS, Manjaro is a really cool and good fork of Arch that's easy to install if rolling distributions are something you're interested in
seems like a good idea to try it out, thanks. :D
Sometimes Microsoft is such a turd... I've seen this thing posted several times, however I didn't see the fix in this thread, so I'll post it here. Sorry, I couldn't find the Lemmy post that had the information on how to remove it, but I found one on Reddit:
It's basically a combination registry changes, and also directory modifications to prevent writing to the directory where BGAUpsell.exe resides.
It's pretty shitty we have to do this. Please, hold all your "switch to Linux" comments, because they are stupid, and superfluous; I see that dumb shit all the time since I came to Lemmy.
Finally, a person with an actual voice. I feel like the, "Switch to Linux," don't realize they sound like, "Just get an iPhone people." To me it all sounds like, "well if you don't like being in this country then just leave."
Linux is not the answer for all people the same as switching to an iPhone should never just be the answer.
I kind of get what you mean.
But I do find it kind of funny to compare the "walled garden" phone to the os that gives you the most freedoms. lol
Yeah it wasn't a great analogy.
It's not what they do it's the answers people give.
Compare them all you want but the day Linux truly becomes an OS you are crazy to think devs will keep all of of the stuff FOSS when their is money officially to be made. Just ask the RedHat users.
What else would be the answer, then? Windows is a commercial product by Microsoft. They will never get better unless forced to. They will keep getting worse for profit because, well, that's what they do.
The whole point about an open-source operating system is that you can make it yours, and nobody can take that away from you. And the more people use linux, the better it gets. Commercial closed sources products can never have the same qualities.
I don't get it. If a product sucks, why wouldn't you switch away from it?
"Don't suggest I leave my abusive husband, instead I'll complain about him to my friends until he magically gets better."
Christ, you guys sound like you have Stockholm syndrome.
AutoCAD, Revit, Photoshop, InDesign, SteamVR.
Pretty much sums it up.
If the alternatives are not there or lacking then people can't switch. If people don't use it and contribute (e.g. reports, donations) then it is difficult to justify creating alternatives.
This is not a stalemate however. It is a slow transition of pioneers frustrated with the status quo.
More importantly, the reason why all of those apps don't have Linux versions is not because of some anti-Linux conspiracy, but because Linux userspace has for most of its existence prioritized distro-packaged-and-provided software, at the expense and sometimes even exclusion of binary software distribution.
This is not just a technical limitation, but I'd also argue a cultural one, driven by folks who consider proprietary/nonfree software irrelevant and not worth supporting in a first-class way. Unfortunately, the companies who make both the software that entire industries are built around and the games that you play when you get off work disagree. Valve was probably the company in the best position to make native Linux games a trend, and the fact that they're more focused on Proton these days is pretty telling.
The only developers in the Linux ecosystem who I feel are taking the problem seriously are the Flatpak developers. They do amazing work, with great tooling that builds against a chrooted runtime by default. But it needs more widespread usage and acceptance, as well as better outreach to developers from other ecosystems who might've had horrendous experience making Linux builds in the past.
There is a future out there with native Linux builds of industry-standard tooling and even games. But it's a future the Linux community has to willing to actually work towards.
Is it not "serious" to work towards a better future because that's more difficult to obtain? There is a future out there where more industries are dominated by software that respects user freedom. The games industry has changed over the years and it is my hope people will not tolerate it forever. Even if I achive no impact with my games I can look back and see I tried for what I thought was the better moral outcome.
Is it not "serious" to work towards a better future because that's more difficult to obtain? There is a future out there where more industries are dominated by software that respects user freedom.
I do not believe that distros ignoring the problem of binary software distribution is actually accomplishing anything productive on that front. All it does is put a gigantic KEEP OUT sign for most outside developers who might have briefly considered porting their software. Package maintainers are also incredibly overburdened, and are often slow to update their packages even on rolling release distros.
Worse, it also inconveniences their userbase, pushing them to solutions their that bypass the distro completely such as third-party repos, Steam, Wine, Flatpak, Docker, or even running Linux in WSL. All of them function as non-free escape hatches, but all of them are inferior to distros getting their act together and deciding that binary software distribution is a problem worth collaborating on and solving together.
I tried to get wine to work on my RX580, and the card could t even support it. It's only the last few AMD video card generations that do.
Why not both? I don't see how proprietary software on Linux will slow down FOSS at all, and it'll only bring more users to Linux who otherwise have to use windows for their software, so overall more FOSS users in the community
And programs like Blender have already matured to a professional level, so I'm pretty optimistic that other FOSS apps will eventually follow, too
And, no, VS Code is not a comparable replacement no matter how many extensions you add. I say that as someone who uses VS Code for almost everything...except C#.
Yep, definitely have to pick the right tool for the job. If you use these things, you're stuck with Windows. Would be nice if you could install needed software on whichever OS you choose.
I've been running Linux on all the machines I own for years, but I still have to run Windows for work. Not everyone can just switch and I doubt there are many reading this who are unaware they could switch to Linux (or Mac, BSD, etc.).
Oh I also have one MacBook running MacOS because Apple decided to only allow iOS development and parental controls, of all things, on Apple devices running Apple software.
Yes MS and Apple suck but it's not as simple as "just switch."
Agreed. You're making compromises no matter what you choose as an OS.
The overwhelming majority of people who work on a computer are stuck with windows.
Another mass majority of people will buy a computer and use whatever is on it. They aren’t tech savvy enough to switch OS’s and they know how to use it because they use it for work.
You want more people on Linux? Get more companies to switch to Linux and get more box stores like Walmart and Best Buy to stock Linux OS’s on PC’s at sale.
Linux growth right now will be slow. It will still happen, but it’s not going to be fast. Steam released the steam deck which runs Linux and the OS saw a MAJOR spike in users. That’s because a device is being sold with Linux stock on it. Now do the same with laptops. Some will say desktops, but desktops aren’t as popular as laptops. It won’t hurt to package with desktops but laptops are key to that.
Because the product doesn't suck for everyone on the entire planet because you think it sucks.
"Christ you guys sound like you have Stockholm syndrome."
You guys sound like a fucking cult sometimes. Like Linux is this perfect OS or that doesn't break when a repository fails to update.
Wanna know what my first time with Linux was like, Everytime my mouse moved the screen refreshed. Every, frame.
Linux is not the answer for every person especially for my mom who barely knows how to send an email and the answer is to tell her how to boot from a live USB and expect her to understand partitioning a drive.
Look, I love Linux just as much as you guys but I also appreciate Windows especially doing the work I do. Linux is not the damn answer to everything.
And your analogy to abusing another human is honestly quite shit. Humans abusing another need to seek help.
Linux is not as great a replacement as every one makes out to be. The community is hella toxic. Frequently leads to them shooting them selves in the foot. Right now they're trying to pick a fight with Nvidia because they dared to call Linux's sacred GPL syscalls
The Linux community is full of elitist assholes who think they're special because they have the ability to install an OS. However, there are also amazing people making amazing tools, completely free of charge. You can't paint everyone with the same brush.
Honestly, I wish our governments would pump money and resources into open source operating systems so that we're not all bound to one OS under the complete control of one company.
My understanding of the Nvidia situation is that they are not respecting the kernel's GPL license, which isn't right. Nvidia has always done awful, selfish things, which makes sense as they are a market dominant company. It doesn't mean the Linux developers have to allow them to break the license agreement. Intel and AMD seem to be doing just fine, it's always Nvidia...
Honestly, I wish our governments would pump money and resources into open source operating systems
They do. The US NSA being of note with SE Linux.
It doesn't mean the Linux developers have to allow them to break the license agreement
Yes. Completely agree. The problem is, from my reading, is that Nvidia violated GPL by calling GPL functions as opposed to code stealing. The problem with GPL is that it forces everything to be GPL or you're in violation of the license. Link a GPL library, your code now has to be GPL. Called a GPL function, congratulations, your code has to be GPL. This critical fault in GPL has been brought up time and time again. Thankfully this issue is infrequently enforced. But that just means it becomes a ticking time bomb.
Let me be clear, I'm not defending Nvidia's actions. Just that in the blame game, GNU's toxic attitude should be called out
I see it here on Lemmy all the time, and you can just see it in this whole comment thread too.
I've been a software engineer for decades. I know my way around Windows, OSX, and Linux systems. I'm not a casual computer user. I AM a gamer though, and jumping through hoops to play games on Linux is not worth my time. Unless there is a native Linux distribution of the game, you're jumping through hoops trying to get it to run through Proton, or whatever other means. Driver support is another thing... Yeah it's gotten better, but sometimes it just like forcing a square peg through a circle hole.
No thanks, I'm very happy with my native gaming experience.
And sure, for dev systems, or servers, Linux is great. All of my professional work is interacting with Linux based systems, containers, etc. I also work on a MacBook Pro, so I understand the tooling for Unix systems is great for that work.
My personal life though, I'm not fighting Linux just to game.
BTW Starfield is great... Check it out lol. I just did a quick search for "Starfield on Linux". First results are something like "Runs on Proton after some tweaks". I'm good.
Linux people like security, it's a security concern to give Nvidia's proprietary drivers such low level access
If their calls violate GPL then I don't even know why you're being sarcastic. Not acceptable. Copyleft licenses HAVE to be respected legally. Silly to pretend like the license shouldn't have to apply to Nvidia. If a user wants to install proprietary Nvidia drivers, they still can. But Linux isn't picking a fight, GPL is what makes Linux Linux.
Know how to tell which Lemmy users are running Linux? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
Sometimes I doubt my OS choice ... but then suddenly microsoft reminds me why I chose it ;)
Coworkers have been complaining on Teams all day about how the Bing bar is suddenly showing up on their desktops. When did Microsoft stop giving a fuck about businesses?
I am so glad it wasn't just me! Like the article said, I legit thought I had some sort of malware on my machine. Which I guess is true, they just call it windows. I really only use my machine for gaming and every time I've tried to switch to linux I had all sorts of compability issues.
Open question to all. Is SteamOS all that it's cracked up to be? I'm still gonna have game by game issues right?
The only machine you wanna be using SteamOS on is the Steam Deck. Use a standard Linux distribution like Ubuntu if you're gonna do it on any other machine. The reason being that the version of SteamOS for generic PCs is horribly outdated, and the one on the Deck is very much built exclusively for the Deck's hardware.
Gaming mostly works out of the box with almost all games on Steam on Linux (SteamOS is not special in this regard) but there is an important caveat; be careful of games that use anticheat software - some work but others do not or may trigger bans. Check ProtonDB for your specific games to see if there are issues.
I use KDE Neon as my daily driver (LTS Ubuntu + latest KDE, which is the desktop environment the Steam Deck uses).
I haven't had many issues. For context:
I have to remote in to my work computer from home. I do that with Parsec, which I have via a Flatpak. Parsec has no issues and works identically to Windows.
I also have to use a specific VPN. This VPN requires a separate program on Windows, but in KDE it's baked into the OS.
Zoom is also a Flatpak. It has a few bugs that don't exist on Windows - namely Zoom likes to steal window focus whenever the host joins or someone shares their screen.
I also installed Flatpak Steam. I had to use Flatseal to give it more access than it had by default, but that was easy enough. You can go through your OS package manager but since KDE Neon is built on Ubuntu LTS those packages don't get updated frequently.
Most games run fine. Performance is usually a little worse than Windows, but I can still generally hit 60 - just with more dips than Windows has. Satisfactory and Jedi Survivor are the only games where I have seen noticeable issues compared to Windows. Baldur's Gate runs fine.
Some games are borked. These are usually games that rely on anti-cheat or intrusive DRM.
Running Windows programs can be tricky. Wine isn't intuitive to use. I usually use Bottles, but sometimes Bottles doesn't get the job done and I have to fall back to Lutris. Lutris is hard to use but generally pulls through. These are all Flatpaks.
I maintain a Windows installation on an old 2 TB NTFS hard drive. Linux gets my 4 TB SSD, but I've symlinked my documents folders to the NTFS drive so I can share things on Windows and Linux.
Sometimes I need to boot into Windows. Generally this is if I'm having issues connecting to my work computer on Parsec (these issues happened on Windows as well), in which case I need to fall back to RDP to go check on my work computer. My employer blocks me doing that from Linux, so I do it from Windows instead.
Otherwise, I usually boot into Windows to play Satisfactory, because it doesn't run well on Proton. Satisfactory's Vulkan renderer seems to implode on Proton as well for some reason; it causes flickering on X and crashes Wayland entirely. The DX12 renderer works but it just isn't as fast as it is on native Windows.
That said, I rarely boot into Windows. Maybe once every 2-3 months? But not beyond that.
SteamOS is mainly for the Steam Deck not regular PC or laptop. For a gaming distro I would recommend one of PopOS, Manjaro or Garuda.
I suggest grabbing the live image for each of them, booting it, and seeing how it feels without committing to anything. I usually test to see if everything works out of the box on the live mode — music, video, network shares, wifi, any peripherals you might have like headphones, fancy mouse or keyboard etc.
Thank you for the suggestions! I mean, the SteamOS was really my only touch point for linux gaming, I haven't paid attention much to linux since trying wine out like a.... decade ago? I'll give those distros a look and see what feels right! ♥
Basically a good distro + Steam is similar to Windows + Steam, with all the proton stuff and the same (optional) big picture mode as the Steam Deck. It'll handle setting up most games for you real nicely.
For a DE personally I love Plasma; xfce or Cinnamon would be my next choices. I don't understand why so many power users like the modern gnome (Ubuntu default)
Random other tangent: I really miss the old Big Picture mode. Few things about the new one are good, but most is worse and a few things are relatively broken still. I know I'm in the minority thinking that though
As a recent penguin I don't get the gnome thing either. To each their own and whatnot but to me it just reminds me of the weird themes from the early 2000s. I clicked into plasma loved it.
But, you know, it's Linux. So I can try gnome and tweak it anytime I want to see if it grows on me. Love it.
Pop_OS is the least maintenance intensive of the three, from my experience - if that is a concern to you
I use a steam deck for about 2/3 of my gaming and I rarely have issues with games. That said, I mostly play indie games, but there is so much of my library that is supported that I'm never going to run out of things to play. Proton has really done wonders for gaming on Linux. Are you wanting to play multiplayer games or brand new releases? Or are you more of the patient gamer type?
I wouldn't run steamos on a full desktop, but you can still get a lot of the benefits just by using steam on Linux. Definitely recommend trying it out.
Oh I am definitely a very patient gamer, my GF talked me in to baulders gate with her. But it's been years since I bought something new. The majority of my steam library is indie stuff. I poked around on ProtonDB and it looks like 70% of my library is rated highly. So I am thinking this is a serious option for me. Gonna give days or two to think on it before committing to the hassle of a dual boot, but all these tools and comments are giving me a lot of peace of mind to try.
I installed Pop OS on my laptop since it's pretty gaming friendly. Between that and the Steam Deck, Windows 10 might be my last version of Windows for personal use.
I did 2 months ago. The OS is truly awsome but many many software are just inferior to the windows version. For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page. You have to do it in two separate software or with a CLI application. I'm a daily anydesk user, I have license as well, their console is broken on ubuntu (or just gnome, not sure). I had to weed out certain things from gnome from a javascript file so I can use my PC while anydesk running. So depending on what you want to do it can be a very good experience or a borderline hell trying to replace your basic software with something worse.
I will not give up at this point and I stand by it it is not linux's fault, however you are not just using an OS but many software on that said OS and many of those software will suck.
Fortunately things like Photoshop no longer an issue as you have Photopea in the web browser. Web3 is really helping linux out.
For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page.
Xournal++ should be a proper PDF reader that can sign a PDF and add and remove pages. Haven't tried doing the latter personally though. It looks a bit old and might be hard to find, but it's always worked suspiciously fine for me and is still in active development.
The "Adobe Acrobat" brand apparently also has a web app for signing PDFs. This is like, the first web search result for "PDF signing".
I've also tried Inkscape import as vector and then reexport, which works fine for visually signing single pages. Just make sure you render the text to paths on import, instead of converting them to SVG text— And don't actually do this, because it's kinda dumb, so just use Xournal++ or the Adobe website instead, but there are options.
Granted, depending on how your experience with Xournal goes, these options are indeed not as convenient or easy as they should be.
Web3 is really helping linux out.
No! This term refers to, like, three three different things already, all of which have largely been either practical failures or grifts. Prescriptivism is usually just pedantry, but HTML5 web apps aren't even on that inauspicious list.
There are already solutions to sign a pdf or reorganize the sheets or make comments. My point was its all a separate tool which defeats the point. Like if you want to use paint and the fill bucket is in a separate application. Just makes no sense. I honestly willing to pay for a complete solution I dont want it for free.
For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page.
Unfortunately, pdf signing is problematic still on Linux, I use it as a daily driver and found a compromise with existing functionality. You can try okular, which is able to sign PDFs without altering them, but has a huge signature block and doesn't permit adding a scan of a signature.
My workaround: I created a stamp in the PDF reviewing tools with my signature, I can place that on the document and then sign it afterwards. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for pre-signed PDFs as it will alter the signed version.
Alternatively, LibreOffice Draw can sign PDFs, but also can't insert signature scans (yet, there's an open feature request) and is sometimes not understanding when PDFs change to landscape, in general it's not nice to render a many-pages document in LO Draw and hope that it won't mess up the document upon signing.
For adding / removing pages, I agree - it's a pity there's no GUI application, but I have gotten used to qpdf / pdftk and they are quite powerful and more efficient 90% of the time. Still doesn't excuse no GUI application, but it keeps me able to work.
Xournal++ is old, but it can directly write on PDFs with both pen tablet and scanned image insertion, and can probably add/remove/reorder pages too— Technically I think its file format links to/embeds the whole PDF file, and then probably exports a new one with stuff added on top, or something like that, but the end result is usually that you can directly edit the PDF.
Or do you mean some kind of cryptographic signing? Well, it looks like Adobe offers a webtool too?
I meant tamper-proof cryptographic signatures, yes. A webtool is absolutely out of the question if you consider that it means uploading your potentially confidential document to an enterprise like Adobe.
You can sign and remove pages using LibreOffice Draw
you can but it has many other issues as it is not a PDF reader. It has no bookmarks, every PDF is opened editable so if there are shapes or text you can accidentally move them, there is no continuous scrolling through a document it is divided into individual pages.
PDF is simply not solved on linux at the moment.
Is it actually something usable? I don't know of many active users of it.
Depends on what you want to use it for. Run age-old hardware requiring age-old NT-only drivers? Sure. Run modern games? Forget it. And for the age-old hardware stuff (think control board for an electron microscope or something) people usually use FreeDOS, the number of devices that specifically need 32-bit NT is comparatively small. And that's if they even upgrade at all often it's just easier to slap an RPi in front of ancient hardware to isolate it from and adapt it to modern surroundings (but yes mainboards with ISA slots are still getting produced, electron microscopes are expensive).
Pretty impressed at just how many notifications, popups and systems MS creates to continually try and funnel you into bing. At some point it moves past being annoying and now I'm just surprised at their tenacity / endurance
That and fucking OneDrive. Autosave isn't able to function on O365 without OneDrive screw you microsoft
What's so bad about OneDrive?
It's a fine service if you want to use it. But I don't want to use it so it should stop forcing it upon me.
Last weekend I talked my wife into trying Linux on her desktop on an extra SSD I had, she loves it. Loves that she can customize everything, says it's faster (especially boot time), we put it on her laptop last night
What distro did you go with? My friend is showing intrest in trying Linux but I'm not sure what to recommend him. I use more advanced distros myself but I want it to work well for him OOtB while also not requiring any tinkering. I'm think of either some ubuntu-flavour or fork, like Kubuntu or maybe Mint.
Mint is for sure a good place to start. I personally run EndeavourOS with Cinnamon desktop and it's been more trouble-free than anything Ubuntu based I've used (shocking, I know).
Interesting! I used arch for about 2 years on my gaming rig and it worked fine but I was worried if he went with something based on Arch that he would eventually run into issues due to not properly maintaining it (avoiding partial upgrades for example). But I'm probably overthinking it. If he sticks to a GUI for installing and updating packages and avoid messing with the terminal initially it should be fine.
I will add EndeavourOS to a small list of recommendations (rolling vs point release) so he can decide for himself.
Mint and PopOS! are the ones I've heard thrown about for "Users First Distro" ever since Canonical decided to do... whatever the fuck it is they're doing to Ubuntu proper.
I'm using Mint now, and have exactly one complaint: I don't like the default Cinnamon Firefox icon so I changed it, but every time there's an update to Firefox it changes back. All things considered, that's nothing to worry about.
Can't go wrong with mint, I've been using it for years.
You're not going to make me feel bad for Google
Nobody is feeling bad for Google ... if I was using duckduckgo, or anything else, I still wouldn't want to see those popups. Then again, that's one of the many reason why I stubbornly stick to linux ;)
I swear windows keeps getting worse, I have switched to MacOS 6 years ago and switched to Linux 3 years ago. I seriously never miss windows
Maybe it's because I disable things and go through the settings with a fine tooth comb after a fresh install but I never see this stuff. Not discounting others' experiences either. Can't imagine being inundated with this stuff like some are claiming they are.
I mean, yes, you can do that, but then that brings us to the question: why does the user have to do that, spend a lot of time changing settings to make an OS bearable? Imho, any OS should ship with sensible defaults that have the user in mind.
If there's little to no need to go through the settings, you probably will miss a lot of them and never know.
Also, I think after a fresh install going through some settings to check out what you have, what you don't have and what you can have is not something only power users should do, but that's a power user's opinion 😅
Thing is, most normal users do not care about the settings. They use the computer like a TV, turn it on and expect it to work.
Nothing is stopping power users from looking through the settings to find good things to tweak, of course, but setting weird defaults to make a user look at their settings is indefinitely worse than, say, an optional tour of the OS that greets the user on their first login.
Same. With Windows 10, everyone was like there are ads and shit in the Start menu and browser nagging and all that jazz - never ever seen any of them. After fresh install, I do my settings, let it sit for a while to do the Windows Update, delete (uninstall) all the unneccessary tiles from Start and that's it, literally.
I just got an ad in my PAID for MS Office subscription Outlook. If they start showing me ads, I'll be cancelling and using the free shit.
It's the only place I have seems ads so far..
I didn't feel like it was that much when I used windows either. But then I started dual booting linux, and I realized just how much I had been ignoring. I had just gotten used to closing every notification without reading it.
It's kind of cursed knowledge thing. It only takes like <10s a day, but once I noticed it it really bothered me.
Microsoft is using malware-like pop-ups in Windows 11 to get people to ditch Google for malicious google copycat Bing+Edge
Joke's on them, I switched. To Firefox
I'm never installing windows 11.
I'm switching to full time Linux after Windows 10 becomes 100% obsolete.
I'm praying that the steam deck helps Linux support for games enough to fully uninstall windows
Been using Ubuntu Jammy for about 6months now. Have had 0 issues with any games on Steam.
Takes some slight tweaking for other games, such as RA2 Yuri's Revenge, but it works.
If you have the patience for the occassional Google search you can switch any time.
How far behind do you think Linux gaming is?
Check protondb, I'd be surprised if you couldn't play 9 out of your 10 most played games.
Microsoft loves popups. It feels like it is at least a few times that MS office puts a pop up in front of some button that I’m going to click to tell me about a new feature that I won’t use. Admittedly, I don’t know how to tell users about new features in a better way, but annoying users can’t be right.
I remember an old anecdote from sometime around 2005, that Microsoft did a survey to see what features people wanted added to the Office suite, of the top 10 requested features, 8 were already in the products and the users didn't know about them.
The whole suite was bloated with stuff most people didn't need, or at least very rarely needed, but no one wanted to take time to take a class on Excel, or read patch notes, or whatever.
Microsoft is using malware-like Windows 11
Removed fluff
How are you guys seeing this? I constantly hear these complaints but never see it myself.
It just pops up randomly. Went to go make a coffee and when I came back there it was. I'm in the UK so it's not just happening to US people.
I'm just so confused. I've been running Win 11 retail since launch and before that I ran Win 10 since launch. I've never seen anything like this.
I'm in the US and the only time I see mention of edge is when installing windows and then again when changing my default browser, which is kinda silly but not something I bother wasting mental energy to care about when it's something that shows up once and then never again. I would love to see legislation in the US match what some of the European countries have but considering how things could be, it's of least concern to me. I paid for Windows once in my life via an OEM license I ordered from a German retailer and I've had about 16 or so computers since then and all of those have either been custom built machines, used computers, or parted together boxes so if they want to bug me about installing their browser which effectively will recoup revenue based on data from me which varies from useless to misleading and probably becomes a net negative and moves them further from their goal. Then sure, I don't mind clicking that "no thank you" button
Yeah, same.
I assume it's just a test they're running on specific groups of people just to see how effective it is in getting people to switch. I've never had any of these types of things happen to me either, so, yeah.
I'm not sure how this is different from Google pushing popups in every Google app to switch to Chrome.
I don't recall seeing a popup like this from Google, but even still a popup in the os should be for important messages not for advertising
They do, and it's also mentioned in the article. While I agree, for many people the browser is effectively their os, and so we shouldn't discount the weight of browser notifications simply because they're not originating from the host os.
I found edge mysteriously on my phone yesterday I'm not sure if the culprit was the bing app or the Microsoft launcher (not my main launcher I was just curious).
One thing I do know is I didn't install edge myself I use mull.
In what wild wild west can one app install another on your phone?
One where F-droid exists?
Surely that permission must be granted on install, no? Can’t imagine installing an MS app and granting “install whatever you want” permissions
There is a permission for it yes.
On newer Android versions you typically aren't prompted when you install the app but rather the first time it attempts to initiate an install of another app (or update itself)
That was my thought also I am on Android 13 and even double checked the permissions on the two Microsoft apps I had installed. I'll be watching to see if this happens again or to anyone else as I immediately removed edge once noticing it.
Shouldn't be possible I would never voluntarily download it, yet it got on my device somehow.
I bet the Bing app is full of trackers.
OK, that really makes me suspicious that they're installing Bing via MS Authenticator app as well.. Bing app showed up on my phone and I just noticed it yesterday. Hmmmm.
And I feel like that happened really quickly. It doesn’t feel like that long ago that Edge was a nice, nimble browser. Not this bloated naggy beast it is now.
I find Edge better than Chrome at the very least. Granted, I don't use either as my main options, but between the two Edge seems more responsive and lighter than Chrome (and before anyone misunderstands, I know they both use the same engine, I'm referring to ... well, prior to Google, I would have referred to it as the chrome, but can't really do that now... the application around the engine).
I want the old Edge (pre-Chromium) back. It is the best EPUB reader. Simple yet elegant. Sad they doesn't bring it back.
They should ditch the pop-ups and instead go ahead and make Edge/Bing the default without permission. There's nothing users can do but complain and accept it.
They are already half way there. File defaults often reset without an obvious reason. It's been happening since 10.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but that's how they got in trouble with Internet Explorer in the EU.
I mean on one hand, terrible behavior. On the other, good.
I mean, if it's just a switch to Bing it's not really any better.
I mean I see your point, but you cold also argue that anything that can weaken a monopoly is a good thing, in the grand scheme of things
Who’s monopoly are we talking about? If that’s the goal then Firefox + DuckDuckGo would be more sensible right?
My personal laptop updated itself from 10 to 11, and 11 is infuriating. Never mind the pop ups and ads, the whole thinf just sucks. This was just the extra bit of incentive that I needed to switch back to Linux Mint. Thanks, MS!
Man i need to take the plunge but i don't want to screw with my games. Does Linux still hate dual boot? I fucked myself trying with mint a few years ago and spooked myself
Linux loves dual boot, windows is the problem and always has been. But as long as you install windows first and Linux second, there's no problem whatsoever, the installer detects your installation and automatically adds multiboot. Installing windows after Linux means that you will have to restore the bootloader.
Ooh, this might have been my mistake. Ill give it another shot
Are you confident opening up the computer and replacing the storage device (probably SSD)? Dual boot can't screw up much of anything when you only put one OS drive in at a time.
yes, I just got a new (referb) laptop for the kids - fuck MS was anoying trying to install chrome on it (yes I know, but all their bookmarks/setting/etc in there...)
Use Firefox. The only major Browser that is not developed by some greedy Big Tech corporation.
Perhaps I just did something stupid, but I just found Bing and anothernMS app in my Android phone's app list... never explicitly installed those. I do have Authenticator, though (for work). Has MS stooped to piggybacking their crap from others silently now?
Apps cannot install other apps without your permission.
You probably just have a shit phone with loads of shovelware on it.
After 30 years on MacOS (yes, I am older than dirt), I switched to Windows 11. I love it. With a few software add-ins, notably Better Desktop Tool and Start11, as well as a deep-dive into Settings/Notifications, etc., it's useable, comfortable, fairly Mac-like, and not too annoying. I guess I'm lucky as I don't have any UI/UX baggage from past Windows OSs to drag behind me. Yeah, it's different than MacOS, but I can get stuff done.
This headline should be “Microsoft forces people to ditch Edge by using malware-like pop-ups in Windows 11 to get people to ditch Google.”
And it's pissing users like me off. I have one laptop for work and one for home. My work laptop has a professional work profile and for some of the programs I'm required to use I need Microsoft apps like edge and office. As a result I get these popups non stop when opening edge. I also am not an administrator on the work laptop so I literally cannot just decide to upgrade from windows 10 to Windows 11. If the damn thing would stop blocking my work flow with full page ads, that would be awesome.
I've never seen this pop-up before. Do I already have Bing as default?
Let me check with my psychic powers
I am the only one that use Linux and bing as a default search? (On firefox)
I personally think bing have better results than google right now
Check out some alternatives: searXNG - open source & self-hosted meta-search engine (aggregates results from many others, like google, bing, qwant, duckduckgo - configurable which ones.) list of public instances just pick one that's close to you physically and has a good uptime. duckduckgo - uses bing for most search results, but is way more private brave search - uses their own index, has a privacy-respecting privacy policy and the results are pretty damn good
I already know Searxng but never tried extensively, I might give a serious try
I've used duckduckgo but I remember was really slow loading results 🤔
For brave search, I've never took it seriously, I should try also this if you say results are good. But how they found themselves?
If you're using Bing anyways, consider switching to Ecosia, it's a non-profit search engine, they pull their search results from Bing and plant trees across the globe with their profits.
It might not be for extremely privacy conscious people because they do send some of your data (obfuscated IP addresses, user agent string etc.) to Microsoft because they use Bing but it's still orders of magnitude better than using Bing directly.
If you want privacy, I would recommend duckduckgo.
I've tried time ago but it seems to take the results and nothing else (I mean, no summary on top of the results, no table with restaurant number/time of opening ecc..)
-> I don't know how to call this
If you choose to use bing, then great. Problem is being forced to, or constantly nagged. (I personally use ddg)
DDG still uses Bing on their backend. But you won't get tracked for using it.
I don't like bing, duckduckgo is much better and privacy-friendly
I also agree bing is nowadays often superior to Google, they're also better than DDG imo.
While it's a good thing that Google gets serious competition, I don't know if Microsoft is the best company for that role. In both cases the incentives are not necessarily aligned with the customer.
Microsoft really needs an antitrust smackdown with their repeated behavior.
So does Google though if we're being honest.
Microsoft saying “stop using Google” is actually totally fine with me.
But only if they’re saying “go get Firefox.”
That didn't work in the 90s.
Or in:
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation
Kuduos to you doing your HW. :)
Yes
In retrospect, DoJ didn't go far enough back then and ignored Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior with BeOS.
Part of it was Reagan massively weakened antitrust law after Ma Bell was broken up.
This is why we can't have good things.
Ma Bell, the ill communication
Which sucked because BeOS was really good for its time.
I was so excited to try BeOS back then. I don't think I ever got my hands on a copy, but it just looked so good.
I got to play with a BeBox for a few hours at a friend's store and it was pure joy to play with compared to what Apple and Microsoft had to offer.
For anyone curious about BeOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzosnPSETzk
Also there's apparently an open source version of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-zgv0CZfco
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=MzosnPSETzk
https://piped.video/watch?v=6-zgv0CZfco
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Don't tell the other bots but you are my favorite 🤫
Looking at the lobbying with the MS-Activision mess, and how broken the government here is. I'm sure they would of gave in.
Yes they do!
If you need more ammunition they recently also changed it so all links in Outlook opens in Edge even if it's not the default browser. You have to go to settings and find an entirely separate default browser setting to stop it.
I switched to Thunderbird because of that bullshit. It's getting worse. I'll be looking for a good Linux distro for my next laptop.
I didn't think that sort of thing happened anymore
It's because of shit like this that I'm glad I switched to Linux.
I wish I could. My gaming rig has an nvidia gpu and linux support really sucks because of the proprietary driver situation...
Steams new gamepad ui is a slideshow running at 5fps and I loose HDR so I have to remain on Windows for now. Every other desktop I own is UNIX tho.
A few others have mentioned Pop_OS! for their Nvidia driver support which is what I'm running too. I think I'm on version 535.93 or something like that. Most of the Ubuntu downstream (Ubuntu, mint, pop_os, etc,.) already include The proprietary drivers in their repos. Pop_OS is known for Nvidia support being a bit quicker than the others.
I'd suggest looking into dual booting (thats what I do, there are a few things that work better on windows). It's super easy to set up, and it's an easy low risk way to see if it works for you.
My gaming rig has an Nvidia GPU as well, and it runs mostly without any problems (I've had to manually update drivers a couple of times) on POP!_OS
Can you try to run the big picture/ gamepad UI and see if it lag? This my only real issue blocking me from switching back
I have a RTX3070 and I never felt any lag using big picture/gamepad UI in Ubuntu/Manjaro/Endeavour.
But you can Dual Boot and only use Windows for gaming. I did that initially
I got a RTX 3080 myself and no matter what distro I used the new gamepad UI lagged so much that it was unusable.. maybe this has been fixed, I haven't tried it in a while.
Also are you using x or wayland?
Sadly I wont switch until this is resolved. But I use this rig only for gaming and navigate through gamepadui so I dont have to see Windows lol.
I use UNIX (Linux / macOS) on all other hosts.
Use X not Wayland on NVIDIA GPUs. I'm running nixos on my laptop / desktop and big picture works without issues on both hosts.
4800hs + 1650m / 13900kf + 3070
I don't currently own a gamepad, so I can't help you. I hope somebody else can help.
I want to dual boot because I prefer Linux for everything but some niche games. Just never got around to it. This is pretty motivating.
Check https://www.protondb.com to check the status of compatibility of the game on Linux
My reason was that I had heard windows 11 was considering ads in their file explorer. Win10 already has enough prompts pushing edge and OneDrive. That, and many of my professors use Linux, and the ease with which they would install Python or C compilers was too much.
Do it. It's not as hard as it used to be thanks to systemd-boot existing. I literally reinstalled Windows the other day and nothing happened to systemd-boot. GRUB, is a bit of a mess though.
My man! (y)
Just a reminder that if you're using Windows, it's not your property but Microsoft's one
Right but licenses for pro are £200 RRP.
Don't then beg me to use your services, just fuck off and let me use Windows how I want
No different than Chrome.
They're talking windows in general
This goes for both chrome and bing: If a service is free, you are the product.
Linux?
You are the tester lol
True for Windows as well. Ever upgraded to a new version before the first SP? Linux just gets upgrades a lot faster than Windows (and I mean the conservative distros like Debian. Bleeding-edge distros are on a completely other level).
Microsoft have been known to ship a product with thousands of known bugs on its release date. In the networking space (Windows NT), there were Technet CDs that were released to fix all manner of known bugs just so the corporates wouldn't have to wait for a Service Pack
Perhaps a better statement would be, if a for profit service is free, you are the product. Obviously it's possible for someone to make free stuff if they want to, but if someone is making money from you using something, but you aren't paying them, then they're making that money by selling someone else access to you.
Linux is just an advertisement to contribute to open source
There needs to be a legally mandated option to turn off all recommendations and tracking, and to require consent to enable it in the first place.
So pretty much just an extension of GDPR. Sounds good.
Or the courts should force MS to split off into an os company, an online services company, an office productivity software company, and a gaming company.
If we had an actual anti-monopoly/umbrella corporation law that would be badass.
Hell Amazon would tank instantly, since they just operate on pumping AWS profits into their loss leader (Amazon delivery) constantly.
Fuck yeah! Lets do some trust bustin!
As usual, it's only Big Tech that's able to compete with Big Tech. They all love to throw their weight around when they can, and join forces when it's convenient.
Neither corporation should be defended or trusted with your data.
The only thing that's kinda funny here is the irony of Microsoft tryna poach Chrome users into their own... wait for it... Chromium-based browser.
Both of them also like to lease out their software and not actually let you own anything, expecting you to be happily complacent.
I've been using windows for nearly as long as it has existed and I used to always be happy with updates. Even windows vista, despite all its problem, still felt like an upgrade compared to xp.
Then windows 8 started changing things in a direction I was not happy with, but at the same time it also had improvements over win7. Windows 10 repeated that with plenty of bad things but still overshadowed by massive improvements in many areas.
At this point windows was at its peak in some areas, like stability (when was the last time you saw a BSOD without actual faulty hardware?) and usability. Multiple Desktops, WSL2, the new Terminal...so many great things added in win10 updates.
And then comes win11 and shits at everything. Removed a ton of core features that didn't need removing, broke a lot of compatibility with older stuff (something that Microsoft used to care deeply about) and adds... Nothing. It's been quite a while since win11 released and there's still nothing I can point at and say it does better than win10.
If you're going to do all sorts of stuff with my data you should at least try to make me happy with your product in exchange, not make me dread using it every time.
Thoughtful take! Ditto.
what does "Ditto" mean?
It an expression that means “I agree with what you just said”
ahh, make sense. Thanks
It's a bastardisation of the Latin idem dito
"say the same". I assume it means something like "this"?
Yes. "Likewise" and "I agree wholeheartedly" work as well
that's cool
It means "I feel the same way you do and would have said it myself, so I acknowledge and applaud that you said it first".
Which core functions did they remove and which did they break?
I can't say that I miss anything from Windows 10 or before that. I disliked the new settings they introduced at first but I think it has seen some improvments (or maybe I am better at navigating it?) but it has really grown on me.
Being backwards compatible can be important (I really appreciated it when I wanted to install a game for Windows 95 on Windows XP) but you have to cut support at some point in order to implement features otherwise not possible, or to just save time and money doing it. It is like trying to develop for the web and you still see people talking about support IE6 (or IE in general).
I'm sorry, but I just have to mention that I find funny that the features you chose to illustrate “peak” Windows are all prime Linux features. Including installing Linux itself as a sub-system. At that point might as well cut-out the middle man.
I do use Linux every day as well. It has its own set of problems, but not the subject here.
Well Windows 11 got me to use arch, for which I use btw
Hahahaha perfect
I tried installing arch but it would tell me there's no such thing as vda or something I looked it up but found no answer so I switched to pop!_OS
Love pop!_OS, Manjaro is a really cool and good fork of Arch that's easy to install if rolling distributions are something you're interested in
seems like a good idea to try it out, thanks. :D
Sometimes Microsoft is such a turd... I've seen this thing posted several times, however I didn't see the fix in this thread, so I'll post it here. Sorry, I couldn't find the Lemmy post that had the information on how to remove it, but I found one on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/computerviruses/comments/149x25h/bgaupsell_what_is_this_bing_popup/jp896s0
It's basically a combination registry changes, and also directory modifications to prevent writing to the directory where
BGAUpsell.exeresides.It's pretty shitty we have to do this. Please, hold all your "switch to Linux" comments, because they are stupid, and superfluous; I see that dumb shit all the time since I came to Lemmy.
Finally, a person with an actual voice. I feel like the, "Switch to Linux," don't realize they sound like, "Just get an iPhone people." To me it all sounds like, "well if you don't like being in this country then just leave."
Linux is not the answer for all people the same as switching to an iPhone should never just be the answer.
I kind of get what you mean.
But I do find it kind of funny to compare the "walled garden" phone to the os that gives you the most freedoms. lol
Yeah it wasn't a great analogy.
It's not what they do it's the answers people give.
Compare them all you want but the day Linux truly becomes an OS you are crazy to think devs will keep all of of the stuff FOSS when their is money officially to be made. Just ask the RedHat users.
What else would be the answer, then? Windows is a commercial product by Microsoft. They will never get better unless forced to. They will keep getting worse for profit because, well, that's what they do.
The whole point about an open-source operating system is that you can make it yours, and nobody can take that away from you. And the more people use linux, the better it gets. Commercial closed sources products can never have the same qualities.
I don't get it. If a product sucks, why wouldn't you switch away from it?
"Don't suggest I leave my abusive husband, instead I'll complain about him to my friends until he magically gets better."
Christ, you guys sound like you have Stockholm syndrome.
AutoCAD, Revit, Photoshop, InDesign, SteamVR.
Pretty much sums it up.
If the alternatives are not there or lacking then people can't switch. If people don't use it and contribute (e.g. reports, donations) then it is difficult to justify creating alternatives.
This is not a stalemate however. It is a slow transition of pioneers frustrated with the status quo.
More importantly, the reason why all of those apps don't have Linux versions is not because of some anti-Linux conspiracy, but because Linux userspace has for most of its existence prioritized distro-packaged-and-provided software, at the expense and sometimes even exclusion of binary software distribution.
This is not just a technical limitation, but I'd also argue a cultural one, driven by folks who consider proprietary/nonfree software irrelevant and not worth supporting in a first-class way. Unfortunately, the companies who make both the software that entire industries are built around and the games that you play when you get off work disagree. Valve was probably the company in the best position to make native Linux games a trend, and the fact that they're more focused on Proton these days is pretty telling.
The only developers in the Linux ecosystem who I feel are taking the problem seriously are the Flatpak developers. They do amazing work, with great tooling that builds against a chrooted runtime by default. But it needs more widespread usage and acceptance, as well as better outreach to developers from other ecosystems who might've had horrendous experience making Linux builds in the past.
There is a future out there with native Linux builds of industry-standard tooling and even games. But it's a future the Linux community has to willing to actually work towards.
Is it not "serious" to work towards a better future because that's more difficult to obtain? There is a future out there where more industries are dominated by software that respects user freedom. The games industry has changed over the years and it is my hope people will not tolerate it forever. Even if I achive no impact with my games I can look back and see I tried for what I thought was the better moral outcome.
I do not believe that distros ignoring the problem of binary software distribution is actually accomplishing anything productive on that front. All it does is put a gigantic KEEP OUT sign for most outside developers who might have briefly considered porting their software. Package maintainers are also incredibly overburdened, and are often slow to update their packages even on rolling release distros.
Worse, it also inconveniences their userbase, pushing them to solutions their that bypass the distro completely such as third-party repos, Steam, Wine, Flatpak, Docker, or even running Linux in WSL. All of them function as non-free escape hatches, but all of them are inferior to distros getting their act together and deciding that binary software distribution is a problem worth collaborating on and solving together.
I tried to get wine to work on my RX580, and the card could t even support it. It's only the last few AMD video card generations that do.
Why not both? I don't see how proprietary software on Linux will slow down FOSS at all, and it'll only bring more users to Linux who otherwise have to use windows for their software, so overall more FOSS users in the community
And programs like Blender have already matured to a professional level, so I'm pretty optimistic that other FOSS apps will eventually follow, too
I'll add Visual Studio.
And, no, VS Code is not a comparable replacement no matter how many extensions you add. I say that as someone who uses VS Code for almost everything...except C#.
Yep, definitely have to pick the right tool for the job. If you use these things, you're stuck with Windows. Would be nice if you could install needed software on whichever OS you choose.
I've been running Linux on all the machines I own for years, but I still have to run Windows for work. Not everyone can just switch and I doubt there are many reading this who are unaware they could switch to Linux (or Mac, BSD, etc.).
Oh I also have one MacBook running MacOS because Apple decided to only allow iOS development and parental controls, of all things, on Apple devices running Apple software.
Yes MS and Apple suck but it's not as simple as "just switch."
Agreed. You're making compromises no matter what you choose as an OS.
The overwhelming majority of people who work on a computer are stuck with windows.
Another mass majority of people will buy a computer and use whatever is on it. They aren’t tech savvy enough to switch OS’s and they know how to use it because they use it for work.
You want more people on Linux? Get more companies to switch to Linux and get more box stores like Walmart and Best Buy to stock Linux OS’s on PC’s at sale.
Linux growth right now will be slow. It will still happen, but it’s not going to be fast. Steam released the steam deck which runs Linux and the OS saw a MAJOR spike in users. That’s because a device is being sold with Linux stock on it. Now do the same with laptops. Some will say desktops, but desktops aren’t as popular as laptops. It won’t hurt to package with desktops but laptops are key to that.
Because the product doesn't suck for everyone on the entire planet because you think it sucks.
"Christ you guys sound like you have Stockholm syndrome."
You guys sound like a fucking cult sometimes. Like Linux is this perfect OS or that doesn't break when a repository fails to update.
Wanna know what my first time with Linux was like, Everytime my mouse moved the screen refreshed. Every, frame.
Linux is not the answer for every person especially for my mom who barely knows how to send an email and the answer is to tell her how to boot from a live USB and expect her to understand partitioning a drive.
Look, I love Linux just as much as you guys but I also appreciate Windows especially doing the work I do. Linux is not the damn answer to everything.
And your analogy to abusing another human is honestly quite shit. Humans abusing another need to seek help.
Penguin sighing noises.
But I like being superfluous.....
What if I suggest switching to BSD?
BeOS is best OS ^^
Linux is not as great a replacement as every one makes out to be. The community is hella toxic. Frequently leads to them shooting them selves in the foot. Right now they're trying to pick a fight with Nvidia because they dared to call Linux's sacred GPL syscalls
The Linux community is full of elitist assholes who think they're special because they have the ability to install an OS. However, there are also amazing people making amazing tools, completely free of charge. You can't paint everyone with the same brush.
Honestly, I wish our governments would pump money and resources into open source operating systems so that we're not all bound to one OS under the complete control of one company.
My understanding of the Nvidia situation is that they are not respecting the kernel's GPL license, which isn't right. Nvidia has always done awful, selfish things, which makes sense as they are a market dominant company. It doesn't mean the Linux developers have to allow them to break the license agreement. Intel and AMD seem to be doing just fine, it's always Nvidia...
They do. The US NSA being of note with SE Linux.
Yes. Completely agree. The problem is, from my reading, is that Nvidia violated GPL by calling GPL functions as opposed to code stealing. The problem with GPL is that it forces everything to be GPL or you're in violation of the license. Link a GPL library, your code now has to be GPL. Called a GPL function, congratulations, your code has to be GPL. This critical fault in GPL has been brought up time and time again. Thankfully this issue is infrequently enforced. But that just means it becomes a ticking time bomb.
Let me be clear, I'm not defending Nvidia's actions. Just that in the blame game, GNU's toxic attitude should be called out
Yeah well said.
I see it here on Lemmy all the time, and you can just see it in this whole comment thread too.
I've been a software engineer for decades. I know my way around Windows, OSX, and Linux systems. I'm not a casual computer user. I AM a gamer though, and jumping through hoops to play games on Linux is not worth my time. Unless there is a native Linux distribution of the game, you're jumping through hoops trying to get it to run through Proton, or whatever other means. Driver support is another thing... Yeah it's gotten better, but sometimes it just like forcing a square peg through a circle hole.
No thanks, I'm very happy with my native gaming experience.
And sure, for dev systems, or servers, Linux is great. All of my professional work is interacting with Linux based systems, containers, etc. I also work on a MacBook Pro, so I understand the tooling for Unix systems is great for that work.
My personal life though, I'm not fighting Linux just to game.
BTW Starfield is great... Check it out lol. I just did a quick search for "Starfield on Linux". First results are something like "Runs on Proton after some tweaks". I'm good.
Linux people like security, it's a security concern to give Nvidia's proprietary drivers such low level access
If their calls violate GPL then I don't even know why you're being sarcastic. Not acceptable. Copyleft licenses HAVE to be respected legally. Silly to pretend like the license shouldn't have to apply to Nvidia. If a user wants to install proprietary Nvidia drivers, they still can. But Linux isn't picking a fight, GPL is what makes Linux Linux.
Know how to tell which Lemmy users are running Linux? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
Sometimes I doubt my OS choice ... but then suddenly microsoft reminds me why I chose it ;)
Coworkers have been complaining on Teams all day about how the Bing bar is suddenly showing up on their desktops. When did Microsoft stop giving a fuck about businesses?
I am so glad it wasn't just me! Like the article said, I legit thought I had some sort of malware on my machine. Which I guess is true, they just call it windows. I really only use my machine for gaming and every time I've tried to switch to linux I had all sorts of compability issues.
Open question to all. Is SteamOS all that it's cracked up to be? I'm still gonna have game by game issues right?
The only machine you wanna be using SteamOS on is the Steam Deck. Use a standard Linux distribution like Ubuntu if you're gonna do it on any other machine. The reason being that the version of SteamOS for generic PCs is horribly outdated, and the one on the Deck is very much built exclusively for the Deck's hardware.
Gaming mostly works out of the box with almost all games on Steam on Linux (SteamOS is not special in this regard) but there is an important caveat; be careful of games that use anticheat software - some work but others do not or may trigger bans. Check ProtonDB for your specific games to see if there are issues.
I use KDE Neon as my daily driver (LTS Ubuntu + latest KDE, which is the desktop environment the Steam Deck uses).
I haven't had many issues. For context:
I have to remote in to my work computer from home. I do that with Parsec, which I have via a Flatpak. Parsec has no issues and works identically to Windows.
I also have to use a specific VPN. This VPN requires a separate program on Windows, but in KDE it's baked into the OS.
Zoom is also a Flatpak. It has a few bugs that don't exist on Windows - namely Zoom likes to steal window focus whenever the host joins or someone shares their screen.
I also installed Flatpak Steam. I had to use Flatseal to give it more access than it had by default, but that was easy enough. You can go through your OS package manager but since KDE Neon is built on Ubuntu LTS those packages don't get updated frequently.
Most games run fine. Performance is usually a little worse than Windows, but I can still generally hit 60 - just with more dips than Windows has. Satisfactory and Jedi Survivor are the only games where I have seen noticeable issues compared to Windows. Baldur's Gate runs fine.
Some games are borked. These are usually games that rely on anti-cheat or intrusive DRM.
Running Windows programs can be tricky. Wine isn't intuitive to use. I usually use Bottles, but sometimes Bottles doesn't get the job done and I have to fall back to Lutris. Lutris is hard to use but generally pulls through. These are all Flatpaks.
I maintain a Windows installation on an old 2 TB NTFS hard drive. Linux gets my 4 TB SSD, but I've symlinked my documents folders to the NTFS drive so I can share things on Windows and Linux.
Sometimes I need to boot into Windows. Generally this is if I'm having issues connecting to my work computer on Parsec (these issues happened on Windows as well), in which case I need to fall back to RDP to go check on my work computer. My employer blocks me doing that from Linux, so I do it from Windows instead.
Otherwise, I usually boot into Windows to play Satisfactory, because it doesn't run well on Proton. Satisfactory's Vulkan renderer seems to implode on Proton as well for some reason; it causes flickering on X and crashes Wayland entirely. The DX12 renderer works but it just isn't as fast as it is on native Windows.
That said, I rarely boot into Windows. Maybe once every 2-3 months? But not beyond that.
SteamOS is mainly for the Steam Deck not regular PC or laptop. For a gaming distro I would recommend one of PopOS, Manjaro or Garuda.
I suggest grabbing the live image for each of them, booting it, and seeing how it feels without committing to anything. I usually test to see if everything works out of the box on the live mode — music, video, network shares, wifi, any peripherals you might have like headphones, fancy mouse or keyboard etc.
Thank you for the suggestions! I mean, the SteamOS was really my only touch point for linux gaming, I haven't paid attention much to linux since trying wine out like a.... decade ago? I'll give those distros a look and see what feels right! ♥
Basically a good distro + Steam is similar to Windows + Steam, with all the proton stuff and the same (optional) big picture mode as the Steam Deck. It'll handle setting up most games for you real nicely.
For a DE personally I love Plasma; xfce or Cinnamon would be my next choices. I don't understand why so many power users like the modern gnome (Ubuntu default)
Random other tangent: I really miss the old Big Picture mode. Few things about the new one are good, but most is worse and a few things are relatively broken still. I know I'm in the minority thinking that though
As a recent penguin I don't get the gnome thing either. To each their own and whatnot but to me it just reminds me of the weird themes from the early 2000s. I clicked into plasma loved it.
But, you know, it's Linux. So I can try gnome and tweak it anytime I want to see if it grows on me. Love it.
Pop_OS is the least maintenance intensive of the three, from my experience - if that is a concern to you
I use a steam deck for about 2/3 of my gaming and I rarely have issues with games. That said, I mostly play indie games, but there is so much of my library that is supported that I'm never going to run out of things to play. Proton has really done wonders for gaming on Linux. Are you wanting to play multiplayer games or brand new releases? Or are you more of the patient gamer type?
I wouldn't run steamos on a full desktop, but you can still get a lot of the benefits just by using steam on Linux. Definitely recommend trying it out.
Oh I am definitely a very patient gamer, my GF talked me in to baulders gate with her. But it's been years since I bought something new. The majority of my steam library is indie stuff. I poked around on ProtonDB and it looks like 70% of my library is rated highly. So I am thinking this is a serious option for me. Gonna give days or two to think on it before committing to the hassle of a dual boot, but all these tools and comments are giving me a lot of peace of mind to try.
That's why they try to sell Windows 10 Enterprise instead of professional. You can block most of that in Enterprise.
I installed Pop OS on my laptop since it's pretty gaming friendly. Between that and the Steam Deck, Windows 10 might be my last version of Windows for personal use.
It's in Windows 10 now too
I got that popup the other day. I'm this close to switching to Linux
Microsoft IS the malware
The malware's coming from inside the operating system 👀
This is the epitome of what the Linux community loves to read on the internet. Got any distros in mind?
Kubuntu should be solid. Not to hard to install and yeah.
Ah mate, 2 months in going full endeavour OS, not looked back. Not perfect, but very close to now and all my devices run it, its amazing.
I did 2 months ago. The OS is truly awsome but many many software are just inferior to the windows version. For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page. You have to do it in two separate software or with a CLI application. I'm a daily anydesk user, I have license as well, their console is broken on ubuntu (or just gnome, not sure). I had to weed out certain things from gnome from a javascript file so I can use my PC while anydesk running. So depending on what you want to do it can be a very good experience or a borderline hell trying to replace your basic software with something worse. I will not give up at this point and I stand by it it is not linux's fault, however you are not just using an OS but many software on that said OS and many of those software will suck. Fortunately things like Photoshop no longer an issue as you have Photopea in the web browser. Web3 is really helping linux out.
Xournal++ should be a proper PDF reader that can sign a PDF and add and remove pages. Haven't tried doing the latter personally though. It looks a bit old and might be hard to find, but it's always worked suspiciously fine for me and is still in active development.
The "Adobe Acrobat" brand apparently also has a web app for signing PDFs. This is like, the first web search result for "PDF signing".
I've also tried Inkscape import as vector and then reexport, which works fine for visually signing single pages. Just make sure you render the text to paths on import, instead of converting them to SVG text— And don't actually do this, because it's kinda dumb, so just use Xournal++ or the Adobe website instead, but there are options.
Granted, depending on how your experience with Xournal goes, these options are indeed not as convenient or easy as they should be.
No! This term refers to, like, three three different things already, all of which have largely been either practical failures or grifts. Prescriptivism is usually just pedantry, but HTML5 web apps aren't even on that inauspicious list.
There are already solutions to sign a pdf or reorganize the sheets or make comments. My point was its all a separate tool which defeats the point. Like if you want to use paint and the fill bucket is in a separate application. Just makes no sense. I honestly willing to pay for a complete solution I dont want it for free.
Unfortunately, pdf signing is problematic still on Linux, I use it as a daily driver and found a compromise with existing functionality. You can try okular, which is able to sign PDFs without altering them, but has a huge signature block and doesn't permit adding a scan of a signature. My workaround: I created a stamp in the PDF reviewing tools with my signature, I can place that on the document and then sign it afterwards. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for pre-signed PDFs as it will alter the signed version.
Alternatively, LibreOffice Draw can sign PDFs, but also can't insert signature scans (yet, there's an open feature request) and is sometimes not understanding when PDFs change to landscape, in general it's not nice to render a many-pages document in LO Draw and hope that it won't mess up the document upon signing.
For adding / removing pages, I agree - it's a pity there's no GUI application, but I have gotten used to qpdf / pdftk and they are quite powerful and more efficient 90% of the time. Still doesn't excuse no GUI application, but it keeps me able to work.
Xournal++ is old, but it can directly write on PDFs with both pen tablet and scanned image insertion, and can probably add/remove/reorder pages too— Technically I think its file format links to/embeds the whole PDF file, and then probably exports a new one with stuff added on top, or something like that, but the end result is usually that you can directly edit the PDF.
Or do you mean some kind of cryptographic signing? Well, it looks like Adobe offers a webtool too?
I meant tamper-proof cryptographic signatures, yes. A webtool is absolutely out of the question if you consider that it means uploading your potentially confidential document to an enterprise like Adobe.
You can sign and remove pages using LibreOffice Draw
you can but it has many other issues as it is not a PDF reader. It has no bookmarks, every PDF is opened editable so if there are shapes or text you can accidentally move them, there is no continuous scrolling through a document it is divided into individual pages. PDF is simply not solved on linux at the moment.
I use Journal++ to sign pdfs. Works with hand written as well as scanned signatures.
Lots of linux communities on lemmy.
Or there's ReactOS: https://reactos.org/gallery/
Is it actually something usable? I don't know of many active users of it.
Depends on what you want to use it for. Run age-old hardware requiring age-old NT-only drivers? Sure. Run modern games? Forget it. And for the age-old hardware stuff (think control board for an electron microscope or something) people usually use FreeDOS, the number of devices that specifically need 32-bit NT is comparatively small. And that's if they even upgrade at all often it's just easier to slap an RPi in front of ancient hardware to isolate it from and adapt it to modern surroundings (but yes mainboards with ISA slots are still getting produced, electron microscopes are expensive).
I remember feeling like this, then I made the switch and I haven't thought about it again
Pretty impressed at just how many notifications, popups and systems MS creates to continually try and funnel you into bing. At some point it moves past being annoying and now I'm just surprised at their tenacity / endurance
That and fucking OneDrive. Autosave isn't able to function on O365 without OneDrive screw you microsoft
What's so bad about OneDrive?
It's a fine service if you want to use it. But I don't want to use it so it should stop forcing it upon me.
Last weekend I talked my wife into trying Linux on her desktop on an extra SSD I had, she loves it. Loves that she can customize everything, says it's faster (especially boot time), we put it on her laptop last night
What distro did you go with? My friend is showing intrest in trying Linux but I'm not sure what to recommend him. I use more advanced distros myself but I want it to work well for him OOtB while also not requiring any tinkering. I'm think of either some ubuntu-flavour or fork, like Kubuntu or maybe Mint.
Mint is for sure a good place to start. I personally run EndeavourOS with Cinnamon desktop and it's been more trouble-free than anything Ubuntu based I've used (shocking, I know).
Interesting! I used arch for about 2 years on my gaming rig and it worked fine but I was worried if he went with something based on Arch that he would eventually run into issues due to not properly maintaining it (avoiding partial upgrades for example). But I'm probably overthinking it. If he sticks to a GUI for installing and updating packages and avoid messing with the terminal initially it should be fine.
I will add EndeavourOS to a small list of recommendations (rolling vs point release) so he can decide for himself.
Mint and PopOS! are the ones I've heard thrown about for "Users First Distro" ever since Canonical decided to do... whatever the fuck it is they're doing to Ubuntu proper.
I'm using Mint now, and have exactly one complaint: I don't like the default Cinnamon Firefox icon so I changed it, but every time there's an update to Firefox it changes back. All things considered, that's nothing to worry about.
Can't go wrong with mint, I've been using it for years.
You're not going to make me feel bad for Google
Nobody is feeling bad for Google ... if I was using duckduckgo, or anything else, I still wouldn't want to see those popups. Then again, that's one of the many reason why I stubbornly stick to linux ;)
I swear windows keeps getting worse, I have switched to MacOS 6 years ago and switched to Linux 3 years ago. I seriously never miss windows
A malware company using malware practices. Nothing to see here, gents.
Maybe it's because I disable things and go through the settings with a fine tooth comb after a fresh install but I never see this stuff. Not discounting others' experiences either. Can't imagine being inundated with this stuff like some are claiming they are.
I mean, yes, you can do that, but then that brings us to the question: why does the user have to do that, spend a lot of time changing settings to make an OS bearable? Imho, any OS should ship with sensible defaults that have the user in mind.
If there's little to no need to go through the settings, you probably will miss a lot of them and never know.
Also, I think after a fresh install going through some settings to check out what you have, what you don't have and what you can have is not something only power users should do, but that's a power user's opinion 😅
Thing is, most normal users do not care about the settings. They use the computer like a TV, turn it on and expect it to work.
Nothing is stopping power users from looking through the settings to find good things to tweak, of course, but setting weird defaults to make a user look at their settings is indefinitely worse than, say, an optional tour of the OS that greets the user on their first login.
Same. With Windows 10, everyone was like there are ads and shit in the Start menu and browser nagging and all that jazz - never ever seen any of them. After fresh install, I do my settings, let it sit for a while to do the Windows Update, delete (uninstall) all the unneccessary tiles from Start and that's it, literally.
I just got an ad in my PAID for MS Office subscription Outlook. If they start showing me ads, I'll be cancelling and using the free shit.
It's the only place I have seems ads so far..
I didn't feel like it was that much when I used windows either. But then I started dual booting linux, and I realized just how much I had been ignoring. I had just gotten used to closing every notification without reading it. It's kind of cursed knowledge thing. It only takes like <10s a day, but once I noticed it it really bothered me.
Microsoft is using malware-like pop-ups in Windows 11 to get people to ditch Google for malicious google copycat Bing+Edge
Joke's on them, I switched. To Firefox
I'm never installing windows 11.
I'm switching to full time Linux after Windows 10 becomes 100% obsolete.
I'm praying that the steam deck helps Linux support for games enough to fully uninstall windows
Been using Ubuntu Jammy for about 6months now. Have had 0 issues with any games on Steam.
Takes some slight tweaking for other games, such as RA2 Yuri's Revenge, but it works.
If you have the patience for the occassional Google search you can switch any time.
How far behind do you think Linux gaming is?
Check protondb, I'd be surprised if you couldn't play 9 out of your 10 most played games.
Fuckin A. Same.
Microsoft loves popups. It feels like it is at least a few times that MS office puts a pop up in front of some button that I’m going to click to tell me about a new feature that I won’t use. Admittedly, I don’t know how to tell users about new features in a better way, but annoying users can’t be right.
I remember an old anecdote from sometime around 2005, that Microsoft did a survey to see what features people wanted added to the Office suite, of the top 10 requested features, 8 were already in the products and the users didn't know about them.
The whole suite was bloated with stuff most people didn't need, or at least very rarely needed, but no one wanted to take time to take a class on Excel, or read patch notes, or whatever.
Removed fluff
How are you guys seeing this? I constantly hear these complaints but never see it myself.
It just pops up randomly. Went to go make a coffee and when I came back there it was. I'm in the UK so it's not just happening to US people.
I'm just so confused. I've been running Win 11 retail since launch and before that I ran Win 10 since launch. I've never seen anything like this.
Depends on the laws of the country with the language you picked during setup.
e.g. use UK english or German for setup and change after.
At least until they switch to detect via IP range or whatever.
Oh maybe that's it. I've also never seen any kind of popup or ad (same thing for my Samsung TVs) that I've seen people mentioning.
I had no idea why I might be spared.
I'm in the US and the only time I see mention of edge is when installing windows and then again when changing my default browser, which is kinda silly but not something I bother wasting mental energy to care about when it's something that shows up once and then never again. I would love to see legislation in the US match what some of the European countries have but considering how things could be, it's of least concern to me. I paid for Windows once in my life via an OEM license I ordered from a German retailer and I've had about 16 or so computers since then and all of those have either been custom built machines, used computers, or parted together boxes so if they want to bug me about installing their browser which effectively will recoup revenue based on data from me which varies from useless to misleading and probably becomes a net negative and moves them further from their goal. Then sure, I don't mind clicking that "no thank you" button
Yeah, same.
I assume it's just a test they're running on specific groups of people just to see how effective it is in getting people to switch. I've never had any of these types of things happen to me either, so, yeah.
I'm not sure how this is different from Google pushing popups in every Google app to switch to Chrome.
I don't recall seeing a popup like this from Google, but even still a popup in the os should be for important messages not for advertising
They do, and it's also mentioned in the article. While I agree, for many people the browser is effectively their os, and so we shouldn't discount the weight of browser notifications simply because they're not originating from the host os.
I found edge mysteriously on my phone yesterday I'm not sure if the culprit was the bing app or the Microsoft launcher (not my main launcher I was just curious).
One thing I do know is I didn't install edge myself I use mull.
In what wild wild west can one app install another on your phone?
One where F-droid exists?
Surely that permission must be granted on install, no? Can’t imagine installing an MS app and granting “install whatever you want” permissions
There is a permission for it yes.
On newer Android versions you typically aren't prompted when you install the app but rather the first time it attempts to initiate an install of another app (or update itself)
That was my thought also I am on Android 13 and even double checked the permissions on the two Microsoft apps I had installed. I'll be watching to see if this happens again or to anyone else as I immediately removed edge once noticing it.
Shouldn't be possible I would never voluntarily download it, yet it got on my device somehow.
I bet the Bing app is full of trackers.
OK, that really makes me suspicious that they're installing Bing via MS Authenticator app as well.. Bing app showed up on my phone and I just noticed it yesterday. Hmmmm.
The fucking bing bar pop-up!!
You don't need to add "-like", The Verge. This fits the definition of malware.
While both companies are predatory I would never use Edge because its so bad and bloated its not even funny.
Edge is just Chromium now.
And I feel like that happened really quickly. It doesn’t feel like that long ago that Edge was a nice, nimble browser. Not this bloated naggy beast it is now.
I find Edge better than Chrome at the very least. Granted, I don't use either as my main options, but between the two Edge seems more responsive and lighter than Chrome (and before anyone misunderstands, I know they both use the same engine, I'm referring to ... well, prior to Google, I would have referred to it as the chrome, but can't really do that now... the application around the engine).
I want the old Edge (pre-Chromium) back. It is the best EPUB reader. Simple yet elegant. Sad they doesn't bring it back.
Why not just use Calibre?
They should ditch the pop-ups and instead go ahead and make Edge/Bing the default without permission. There's nothing users can do but complain and accept it.
They are already half way there. File defaults often reset without an obvious reason. It's been happening since 10.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but that's how they got in trouble with Internet Explorer in the EU.
I mean on one hand, terrible behavior. On the other, good.
I mean, if it's just a switch to Bing it's not really any better.
I mean I see your point, but you cold also argue that anything that can weaken a monopoly is a good thing, in the grand scheme of things
Who’s monopoly are we talking about? If that’s the goal then Firefox + DuckDuckGo would be more sensible right?
Search wise? No. Competition wise? Yes.
Google has too much power.
And instead I simply dropped Windows.
Install Linux, problem solved
My personal laptop updated itself from 10 to 11, and 11 is infuriating. Never mind the pop ups and ads, the whole thinf just sucks. This was just the extra bit of incentive that I needed to switch back to Linux Mint. Thanks, MS!
Good thing I don't use Windows.
Is that legal?
Something something pot called the kettle black
lol I use Linux
Man i need to take the plunge but i don't want to screw with my games. Does Linux still hate dual boot? I fucked myself trying with mint a few years ago and spooked myself
Linux loves dual boot, windows is the problem and always has been. But as long as you install windows first and Linux second, there's no problem whatsoever, the installer detects your installation and automatically adds multiboot. Installing windows after Linux means that you will have to restore the bootloader.
Ooh, this might have been my mistake. Ill give it another shot
Are you confident opening up the computer and replacing the storage device (probably SSD)? Dual boot can't screw up much of anything when you only put one OS drive in at a time.
yes, I just got a new (referb) laptop for the kids - fuck MS was anoying trying to install chrome on it (yes I know, but all their bookmarks/setting/etc in there...)
Use Firefox. The only major Browser that is not developed by some greedy Big Tech corporation.
Perhaps I just did something stupid, but I just found Bing and anothernMS app in my Android phone's app list... never explicitly installed those. I do have Authenticator, though (for work). Has MS stooped to piggybacking their crap from others silently now?
Apps cannot install other apps without your permission.
You probably just have a shit phone with loads of shovelware on it.
Old news, try to get something new to talk about!
But I already ditched it
Let them fight.
After 30 years on MacOS (yes, I am older than dirt), I switched to Windows 11. I love it. With a few software add-ins, notably Better Desktop Tool and Start11, as well as a deep-dive into Settings/Notifications, etc., it's useable, comfortable, fairly Mac-like, and not too annoying. I guess I'm lucky as I don't have any UI/UX baggage from past Windows OSs to drag behind me. Yeah, it's different than MacOS, but I can get stuff done.
This headline should be “Microsoft forces people to ditch Edge by using malware-like pop-ups in Windows 11 to get people to ditch Google.”
And it's pissing users like me off. I have one laptop for work and one for home. My work laptop has a professional work profile and for some of the programs I'm required to use I need Microsoft apps like edge and office. As a result I get these popups non stop when opening edge. I also am not an administrator on the work laptop so I literally cannot just decide to upgrade from windows 10 to Windows 11. If the damn thing would stop blocking my work flow with full page ads, that would be awesome.
I've never seen this pop-up before. Do I already have Bing as default?
Let me check with my psychic powers
I am the only one that use Linux and bing as a default search? (On firefox) I personally think bing have better results than google right now
Check out some alternatives:
searXNG - open source & self-hosted meta-search engine (aggregates results from many others, like google, bing, qwant, duckduckgo - configurable which ones.) list of public instances just pick one that's close to you physically and has a good uptime.
duckduckgo - uses bing for most search results, but is way more private
brave search - uses their own index, has a privacy-respecting privacy policy and the results are pretty damn good
I already know Searxng but never tried extensively, I might give a serious try
I've used duckduckgo but I remember was really slow loading results 🤔
For brave search, I've never took it seriously, I should try also this if you say results are good. But how they found themselves?
If you're using Bing anyways, consider switching to Ecosia, it's a non-profit search engine, they pull their search results from Bing and plant trees across the globe with their profits.
It might not be for extremely privacy conscious people because they do send some of your data (obfuscated IP addresses, user agent string etc.) to Microsoft because they use Bing but it's still orders of magnitude better than using Bing directly.
If you want privacy, I would recommend duckduckgo.
I've tried time ago but it seems to take the results and nothing else (I mean, no summary on top of the results, no table with restaurant number/time of opening ecc..) -> I don't know how to call this
If you choose to use bing, then great. Problem is being forced to, or constantly nagged. (I personally use ddg)
DDG still uses Bing on their backend. But you won't get tracked for using it.
I don't like bing, duckduckgo is much better and privacy-friendly
I also agree bing is nowadays often superior to Google, they're also better than DDG imo.
While it's a good thing that Google gets serious competition, I don't know if Microsoft is the best company for that role. In both cases the incentives are not necessarily aligned with the customer.
I find it ironical when a huge company diverts efforts into aggressive marketing instead of improving the product itself, it feels like a loss-loss