Microsoft announces vague changes to the default web browser setting for Windows Insider. Nothing but wishful thinking. Still force-opens web links in Edge.
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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I don’t like how any of these big tech companies try and force us to use their spyware vs letting people make an informed choice. I don’t agree with the technique, but the silver lining may be that we desperately need competition with browsers and the reality is that this is how US predatory capitalism works now. Companies take advantage of people because we have no proper regulation in the tech space. Maybe some people will switch to from Chrome to Edge (reskinned Chrome) Ranking for privacy on a 1-10 scale imho
Chrome 0 Edge 1 Firefox 5 Brave 6 LibreWolf 9
It got installed edge on an android phone as well.
While Microsoft doesn’t normally control anything on android, my workplace requires a Microsoft intune to be installed to run the company email or teams on your phone. This effectively creates a workprofile with it’s own play store and a forced install of several applications such as edge
Demand they provide a work phone. Never put Microsoft’s stuff for work on your personal devices!!!
You should demand a work phone but work apps are usually insolated from the rest of the system for both yours and your employers benefit.
It enables your job to track you off hours. Did you go to a protest on the weekend your company doesn’t approve of? If you aren’t careful, you might give it permissions to your photos. If it’s some form of 2FA, it might desire access to your SMS. In earlier days, the Outlook app use to be able to wipe the phone, it is more sandboxed now. But can you see how allowing access to your private information is a bad idea? Just say no. If it’s for work related apps, they owe you a device to run it on.
The amount of tracking the intrusiveness of it highly depends on the type of management they used.
MAM or work profiles are most often used for personal devices and it grants the employer the ability to only manage specific apps and or profile.
MDM enrollment is used for corporate owned devices and is more capable.
Here is some documentation for MS Intune, it will be slightly different for other providers but it will be roughly the same: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/apps/android-deployment-scenarios-app-protection-work-profiles
Absolutely.
I would never do that to my personal phone, I installed that in a old phone that I had laying around.
That works, too. Glad to see people not trusting work apps on their private daily devices.
That’s your workplace doing that, not Microsoft
By your logic it was my school that wanted us to learn MS products, not Microsoft. Are you sure about that?
Yes, otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered with Intune…
I don’t get your point, what does Intune have to do with the topic?
The original comment I replied to was talking about Intune, and having to use Company Portal on mobile devices. What are you on about?
Right, back on track. I’m sure a company wouldn’t use, and require their employees use a program unless people in charge are already familiar with said product or there was a deal made for them. I don’t know where the guy works but I’m sure that’s a safe bet, my point is Microsoft is known to make deals with schools/uni to teach only their products instead of alternatives. It’s why their products are so used - why learn something new when what you’ve been taught does the job
Yeah seems like a request for a work provided phone would fix it. A guy I used to work with bought a burner flip phone when something like this was required and got the company to provide a work phone. After a month or two he would just openly use his normal phone and no one batted an eye.
Who still uses Windows anyway?
Most people who use PCs.
Idc, i use Linux.
Now im wondering if I can install Edge on Linux.
Use Flatpak.
One of the only times I’d prefer a flatpak or a snap… Jail the hell out of that browser.
You can, and there’s a Flatpak for it, too
Oh there is a flatpak. That’s somehow hilarious to me.
…why would they?
Water is wet.
On a serious note. MS is still evil.
They were flying low, that’s all, it is still the same shitty company.
For now
I’m afraid you might have misread the title… unless you’re very optimistic
lol you’re right. I misread that, my bad.
One of the top reasons I finally went Linux and I don’t regret making the change one bit.
How surprising. The company that only knows how to do one thing won’t stop doing the thing.
In other news, company doesn’t think it’s to blame for it’s bad products says ‘it’s the consumers fault for having expectations of quality.’
Not just that. Every windows update I have to go through the fucking setup screen. No I don’t want an office subscription, no I don’t want onedrive, no don’t tailor ads, no don’t collect telemetry.
There’s always linux
I really can’t think of any valid reason to use Windows in 2023 other than “it’s required for work” or “I’m just a gamer.” Not being a gamer myself I’m not sure how valid the latter is though.
I’m a professional gaymer and i use pop os daily
“No reason to use Windows except 2 of the biggest reasons to use a PC.”
If that’s all you need from your computer you might as well downgrade to a boot loader with audio support
Adobe software for creative work. Afaik there’s okay replacements, but not great ones. Also, migrating your Lightroom catalog to a new software is kinda a ridiculous task
Because windows just works. I don’t want to deal with linux.
No it doesn’t, it needs constant babysitting if you want it to remain stable. Even then, watch out for updates that’ll wreck your workflow, device drivers and/or the OS itself. The thing is hodgepodge code with layers of bullshit added on through the years. It’s a mess.
Maybe for a small percentage of extreme power users who live on their computer. For me Windows lets me access all the programs and media I need with zero problems. I can not imagine Linux being anywhere near as hassle free.
Oh wow, you mean it does the very bare minimum that any OS should do?
In what context? Opening programs and playing media? Lol
Yes, it does what 99% of users require from it. On Linux I would immediately run into a bunch of programs that wouldn’t work out of the box, at which point I’d need to get into emulating. Which is something I do not want to deal with.
Windows works flawlessly without hassle, Linux does not. Easy choice to make.
It does not.
Have you used it? Lol
Still can’t play most competitive fps games on Linux. There’s a couple, but the majority are still windows only.
My reasoning is that it’s way too inconvenient to need to restart my pc multiple times a day if I want to play games. Add in that my audio solution doesn’t work at all on Linux (GoXLR) that requires me to use a separate set of peripherals and it just becomes less of a hassle to use windows over Linux.
By „can‘t play“ do you mean natively? Because proton makes it possible to play a ton of games.
Anti-cheats block Linux. EAC theoretically supports it, but from what I can tell it’s a less secure option for both windows and Linux, ensuring a lot of devs never turn it on.
Also idk what it is, but proton performance seems to be ~1/2-1/3 of what I get on native windows for pretty much every game. Had to give up on BG3 on Linux after I maxed out at ~40fps and huge stutters.
Then there’s something wrong with your setup. At most, I’ve seen 20% fps loss through proton.
I’m sure there is, but after a few hours of trying to get it to work it wasn’t worth it anymore and no tweaking was necessary to make it work perfectly on windows.
This is the 3rd time I’ve had the same issue. Major fps drops in every game played. This has happened over multiple Distros and multiple years. I don’t enjoy having to spend hours configuring a game just to make it run 20% worse than if I just installed it on windows.
Maybe we have different standards, but i am more than happy with 20-25 fps on low to medium settings.
Also, most competetive games that i know run on very old machines without that much issues.
20-25 fps is happy? That’s not suitable for fast paced games.
Destiny 2 explicitly says they’ll never support Linux. Same with CoD. Older competitive games run without issue. Newer ones done.
Minimum acceptable performance for me is 4k/120fps on medium/high settings. (I have a 3090)
Settings > System > Notifications > Suggest ways I can finish setting up my device to get the most out of Windows
Disable this, there are a few others in that area you might consider disabling too
The ONE time I miss reddit awards.
You will just have to use good old poorly drawn images of coins.
Thank you!
@lustrum
They just keep getting worse and worse! I’ve decided to investigate whether one of the Linux distributions is able to be my daily driver. With everything being a web app these days, incompatibility with business programs I use is no longer an issue. The only question now is, are my peripherals compatible?
@abobla
have u tried making installation media with Rufus? they’ll let u use a local account and skip all that. also tiny 11 is what I use, cuts out Microsoft’s bullshit
I ditched Windows like 15 years ago and never looked back. How can you cut out Microsoft’s bullshit when Microsoft’s bullshit is literally the OS? I’m not talking about spyware, telemetry, etc. I’m talking about the actual OS itself and its trash APIs, structure, etc.
What you’re talking about seems like a half-measure, the problem isn’t just a few things you can strip out of the OS, the problem is the OS itself.
yea it only cuts some of it out, like one drive, edge, etc
as a gamer, Linux just doesnt work for me.
You could grab the ISO and use ventoy. No need to format USBs again and again. Can store multiple ISOs and whatnot.
Rufus is a fucking godsend.
Love the username. CBB TV 4 life
Now it just needs to stop forcing windows 11 on windows 10 users
the title says that Microsoft hasn’t stopped forcing Edge.
Oh shoot
I read it the same way. I thought maybe this whole google getting taken to court business for manipulating their way to top search engine scared Microsoft by nah…