Current-era Microsoft continuing to push the boundaries of consent.
Microsoft Edge is a good browser but for some reason Microsoft keeps trying to shove it down everyone’s throat and make it more difficult to use rivals like Chrome or Firefox. Microsoft has now started notifying IT admins that it will force Outlook and Teams to ignore the default web browser on Windows and open links in Microsoft Edge instead.
Ran into this about two weeks ago. It can be turned off.
Here’s the setting to change. It’s under File -> Options -> Advanced
God I hate Windows and their dance with monopolistic behaviour. They’ll bring out a “feature” that changes how a program works so you have to change it back, in the hopes that most people don’t do it. They keep doing it with browsers because they siphon away enough users each time that it’s worth it for them.
Windows should have a default browser choice in settings, and any program you use should automatically use it no matter what, unless you physically change it yourself. It shouldn’t even be possible for them to do. I really need to learn how to use Linux. I’ve got a spare SSD. Fuck it
Linux is not even difficult to use and there is no telemetry slowing down the hardware you paid for and feeding some greedy org with your user data. Ubuntu desktop is perfectly fine as a daily driver as long as you don’t use it for gaming or windows apps through Wine. Thats when it becomes more complicated and error prone.
When Windows 10 hits EOL we might actually arrive at the year of Linux. I’ve been daily driving Arch (obligatory, I use arch btw) for the past 7 months and aside from a few hiccups where I tried to tweak absolutely everything and NVIDIA shenanigans, neither of which was the fault of the underlying kernel or OS, it has been dreamy. Never going back.
Ah you must be from the IUseArchLinux.FYI instance. Lol
They have a point. After the Win10 EOL, the only secure option for hardware that doesn’t meet Win11 requirements will be Linux.
Gaming works surprisingly well. The last few years have made it a one-click affair for thousands of games with the efforts of the Proton team.
Even then, with the effort Steam has put in, there is a lot more support for games on Linux, one way or the other, than there was before, and not necessarily as difficult, either. All of my admittedly small collection of frequently played games should work on Linux. I need to refresh my Windows, maybe it’s time to try Linux out for my gaming machine.
The day I can play all my games on Linux and know the games i want to play will come to it, I will rejoice. I want so badly not to be stuck on Windows.
This is why, while I’ll probably never get a steam deck myself, I am all for people buying it en masse.
More users will force game publishers to opt for native Linux support, just so they can advertise their products as deck-compatible.
It’s not that hard to use and it’s worth the transition. Gaming on Linux is pretty reasonable at this point, most stuff is in the browser or has a Linux app now too.
Do it brother, try out a “just works” distro like ubuntu or mint. I switched to linux 1,5 years ago, im never looking back again.
That is a terrible dark pattern. “Let me just change the defaults away from the option that literally is the default setting (default browser) to the thing I want users to use instead”.
Straight up maliciously ignoring “default browser”.
Good to see. And if there’s a setting, there’s probably a registry key behind it storing the value…it’s about 30 seconds in group policy to set it back to “Default Browser” for everyone at my company once I know which one it is.
Had to do the same thing to uncheck the “Also set up outlook on mobile device” box when Outlook initially adds the mail account last year…
MS’s main goal nowadays seems to be to find new ways to annoy users by advertising their own crap instead of producing a useful product that gets our of your way and just works.
wow… this is hot garbage, windows products should auto-register the default programs… why!!!
Good to know, but this is trash. Sucks, because Edge is good now.
I stopped using Windows and converted to Linux. I’m not going to be “one of those people” and tell you that you should too, but I’ve been using Linux full-time for 3 years for gaming, work, and personal stuff and never felt the need to go on Windows except to use my VR headset, which I haven’t used in months. I just built a new PC and haven’t even bothered installing my Windows SSD into it in the last 4 weeks since I built it. I may never and just sell my VR headset.
I’ve been wanting to switch to Linux but it just looks like one of those things I’d dive head-first into and have no idea what I’m doing, not to mention I have years of random shit on hard drives formatted for Windows.
I’d love to do it, but it all just looks so overwhelming, maybe i’ll think about it more seriously if/when I ever replace my current laptop. What flavor do you recommend? I mainly use my computer for gaming but sometimes school too, plus id like it to be as windows-like as possible just so I don’t have to worry about a major shift in usability.
Is there a way to convert windows content to linux-compatible files? Can I just save the files I want to a USB drive and move them? Nothing I wanna save is specifically windows, mostly game files and/or photos
Not op, but I’ve been using various flavors of Linux off and on for a couple of years.
First I’ll note that in pretty much any flavor you pick should be able to retrieve data off those Windows drives. You’ll probably need NTFS support if you want to read from the drives directly, but I’m not 100% certain about the details so do a little searching before taking the plunge. Files generally should work fine. Images saved in any common format (.jpg, .png, etc) will be fine. Game files could be trickier. If you mean the actual files for running the game, you’ll either need a dedicated Linux version or run them through a compatibility layer like WINE or Proton (this may take a bit of luck to get working). If you mean things like save files then that all depends on the particular game… you’ll need to research moving data across operating systems for each game. For regular computer files, though, it is usually as simple as throwing them on a USB drive and dragging and dropping them.
Given that you want to do some gaming I would be remiss to not mention that, even in the best cases, Linux gaming can still be a little hit-or-miss. This is greatly exaggerated if you have uncommon hardware. For instance, Linux gaming on Intel ARC video cards is pretty rough right now. Sooner or later you will find a game that doesn’t work right, and you may not be able to fix it. Such is life.
As for picking a flavor (colloquially called a “distro”) that can get a bit complicated. If you just want a jumping-off point without the full breakdown, then Pop!-OS is probably a good starting point. They aim at being a more newbie-friendly distro, and they have a big enough community that you should be able to find help if you get stuck on something.
You should know that when you’re installing Linux, you will usually first boot the computer using a USB drive with the distro of your choice. This is called a live environment, and it gives you a chance to test out a distro without making any permanent changes to your computer. Of course, once you actually do install the new OS it will wipe all data from the computer’s drive so make sure you’re ready.
If you want to get a bit out in the weeds of picking a distro then read on, otherwise you can ignore the rest of the comment. If you choose to take the plunge then good luck, and I hope you enjoy it!
There are two major families of Linux that I think you should consider: Debian-based and Arch-based. There are a lot more than that, but IMO these are the most appropriate for your use case. Of the Debian-based distros, I’d recommend the aforementioned Pop!_OS, Ubuntu, and Mint. Some good Arch-based options are Manjaro, Endeavour, or possibly Garuda.
When in doubt, a Debian-based distro is probably the right choice. Any of the distros above should do the trick, but all are a little different. I already described Pop!, so I won’t rehash it. Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distros ever. Probably the most popular for home computers. As a result, there is a wealth of forums and other users you can ask for help. If you run into a problem in Ubuntu, someone else has had to deal with the exact same thing and probably made a forum post about it. Linux Mint, in particular with their “Cinnamon” desktop was made to feel a bit like old Windows 7. It’s not exactly like Windows (no distro is) but if you’re a long-time Windows user then Mint feels strangely comfortable. Like Pop! its userbase is smaller than Ubuntu, but still more than substantial enough to help out with the most common hangups.
Anyone who knows about Arch Linux would probably raise an eyebrow at recommending any form of it to someone new to Linux, but in my defense, most of the development in Linux Gaming is being pushed by Valve right now, and their new SteamOS 3 (which is what the Steam Deck runs by default) is Arch-based. AFAIK SteamOS 3 is not yet available for non-steam deck systems. Valve has stated they intend on releasing it as a fully-fledged distro, and if that ever happens then it will likely become the de facto standard gaming Linux distro. Until then, I suspect that running another Arch-based distro might result in fewer issues while gaming. That said, while the distros I’ve named are much more user-friendly than vanilla Arch Linux, the Arch family is generally less beginner-friendly than their Debian counterparts. Some quick notes: Manjaro is fairly popular but a bit weird as far as Arch distros go, Endeavour is clean but I’m not super confident in their noob-friendliness, and Garuda has a gorgeous desktop and is probably the most feature complete for gaming but it includes some power-user tools (chaotic-AUR) out of the box that I wouldn’t recommend for new users.
On a final note, if you want to learn a lot about how to use a Linux system, and in particular the command line, you could try installing vanilla Arch. This is almost certainly a terrible idea; you’d have to be more than a little masochistic to try it. If you want your computer to just work then steer well clear of this option. Arch has a reputation for being non-user friendly and borderline hostile to newbies for a reason. If you decide to try this don’t expect anyone to hold your hand. And don’t ask for help on the Arch forums unless you’ve done everything by the book, to the letter, and you’ve actually tried everything else first. But making vanilla Arch your first distro would be a pretty chad move.
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SteamOS being publically available would be the best. Until then, if I ever get around to building a new setup (if I ever round up the $$$) I might look into a Debian distro. As far as learning about Ubuntu goes- does it have a lot of requirements for running? Could I install Arch or something a little more friendly on an old laptop or something so I can train myself on the basics?
Just plug it in. Linux will read it. You don’t need to do anything. Also I highly recommend Fedora with KDE Plasma.
This is the way.
was planning on switching to linux but then payday 2 dropped support for it. too bad I guess
All linux distros can read and write windows formatted drives and files.
What kind of files are you concerned by? Pretty much all pictures, videos, docs, etc. will all open on Linux without issue. The only real thing you have to think about is the applications you use and whether they can be run on Linux or have acceptable alternatives.
Most of the things I have could run on a Steam Deck, the only exception being a few games owned by Microsoft and only available on the Windows Store. Most of the files I would transfer would be save files from different games, though most of them could probably be uploaded to Steam Cloud
I’ve been using Linux since the first Ubuntu release in 2004. I still use occasionally Windows 11 for work, but about 95% of the time I use Linux.
What distro? Mentioning you love Linux but not saying what distro you use is like when someone posts a still frame of a brick wall pulled from their favorite movie, saying “I love this movie, everyone should see it” but doesn’t say the name of the damn movie. :) I’m curious!
I run Pop_OS!
Sweet you came back to answer!!! I hadn’t heard of that distro—about every 10 years I mess with Linux and I’m getting close to the 10 year cycle beginning again. Would pop OS work well on an i7-4770 with a GTX 1060ti with 16 gb of ram or is it built for bleeding edge systems?
That hardware will be suited fine to run any Linux distro in general. None of them have an especially demanding desktop environment. I’m rocking an RX 550 at work on pop OS’s cousin Ubuntu.
Is there a performance hit for windows gaming in Linux? I’ve read it’s come a long way but is it virtualization that will bog down on my CPU or is it something else?
I really should check my notifications more often.
I can’t really say from experience, as the only game I’ve played on Linux that isn’t Linux native is Starcraft, and that’s not exactly a demanding game these days. Linux is on my main workstation, but I still have a Windows PC as my main gaming PC, so I haven’t had a reason to check out how well the virtualization & compatibility stuff works.
My intuition says you’ve still got enough CPU oomph to muscle through any such virtualization overhead though.
I’ve been using both for a good while by now, Linux is good but damn I know that’s a sacrilege but I still like Windows.
Granted, I heavily customized my Windows install, made all the adjustments I wanted and threw out most of the nagging garbage and my locked down work computer is definitely worse.
Windows just… works most of the time, and it’s fluent and does what I want.
At the end of the day, most of the direct user interaction with an OS “directly” is task bar, start menu and file manager. And for all of these things, there’s a lot that annoys me on Linux. In Windows, I’m very happy.
Just to give one example. I like the individual entries in the taskbar to fill the entire width dynamically. If there’s one entry, it fills the entire taskbar, you get what I mean. On Windows, that’s a registry tweak. On KDE, that’s basically impossible. Like, I’m sure somewhere in the source code for the panel there’s a way to rewrite that, but frankly, that’s close enough to “basically impossible” for me.
I’m in this same boat. I enjoy gaming too much to be able to ditch Windows completely, but I have it very, very customized.
I enjoy gaming too and do it on Linux just fine. None of my normal games don’t run on Linux thanks to Valve’s work on Proton. Apex Legends, Mechwarrior Online, Halo MCC/Infinite, and much more all run on Linux without a hiccup.
Unless you firewall it… It is pinging bill gates every time you click start…
“continuing to push the boundaries of consent.”
If by “push the boundaries” you meant “completely ignore them”, then yes. This kind of behavior from MS, or any vendor, should always be considered strictly unacceptable.
This kind of behavior from MS, or any vendor, should always be considered strictly unacceptable.
Yep but especially from MS since their OS is just so incredibly widespread that they pretty much have a monopoly that they abuse.
@Pechente somebody needs to sue them as a reminder.Maybe 23 years is a long time to forget?
That sounds illegal, especially since they already lost an anti-trust lawsuit for Internet Explorer browser two decades ago. I guess they have enough power now that they don’t have to worry about silly things like laws.
That whole antitrust thing was just the US gov’t gaining leverage over MS. Once they got that, MS was forced to enable surveillance on their customers by the gov’t. Now that they’ve “played ball” for all this time, they are being allowed to resume their previous activities.
So true. You’d think they’d have learned a lesson for their BS with Internet Explorer. I’m sure we’re all aware, but here’s the Wikipedia link from that case for those that need a refresher.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.
Yeah what the hell is going on?
There was a lawsuit and in Windows 7 Microsoft was forced to offer a browser choice program that allowed users to pick different ones.
Nowadays everyone just forgot about that?
Browser lock in is worse than it ever has been since the 2000s and is approaching levels of monopolistic behavior we haven’t seen since the internet explorer vs Netscape debacle, if not already worse than that.Every ecosystem forces their own browser and the only way to circumvent it is with hacks.
To access certain one drive elements on android in the browser with Firefox, it tells you to open the page in chrome to proceed. If you do that, the Microsoft login page then asks specifically for using edge to sign in.
It’s insane that nobody cares. I went back to Firefox as soon as manifest v3 was announced, but nobody cares.
It’s alarming and once people realize what happened it’s too late.
That’s what we call malware!
Remember when Microsoft got raked over the coals for this kind of behavior, in the 90s?
Remember how bored everyone got of ignoring news about the massive issues in the 90s that still affect everyone? You still can’t bring it up without people’s eyes glazing over. Drives me nuts that people just don’t give a shit.
I do, and I hope it happens again.
Ran into this yesterday, when my manager opened a link and had to call me to help because it didnt autofill his passwords.
This “productivity increase” cost my corporation 15 minutes the first time anyone ran into it.
It’s fucking annoying, admittedly edge is good on its own merits, but you know what pushes me to not want to ever use your product? Anti-consumer practices.
I have been very happy in using FF for my main browsing. It has adblock, NoScript and SponsorBlock. Since I use NoScript I jump on Edge when I want to use a trusted website for payments but I really want to use it less when it does this shit.
I can’t wait for the excuse “OoOooh wooooops, that’s a bug! Sowwy EU we did not mean to do anti consumer pwactices” as a way to dodge blame
Using Firefox is the only real way to circumvent much of the bloat of the modern web. UBlock only works 100% functionally on Firefox, Chromium-based browsers just don’t give add-ons the functionality that they need to block 100% of nasties. Until that changes (which it likely won’t) I see no reason to switch off Firefox.
brave also works very well for this. Just don’t use any of the other chromium based browsers and you’re fine.
you can use a secondary firefox profile. starting firefox with the
--no-remote -pswitches allows to load it alongside the main profile (-p loads the profile manager and --no-remote suppresses the “open new window in existing profile” behavior
Sort of related, but this reminds me of a really annoying thing that’s been happening on my work windows 11 machine.
Any time I launch chrome from VSCode to attach a debugger, edge launches along with it, and directs me to a page that says “try the new bing.”
Absolutely infuriating, makes me want to uninstall edge.
I mean, why not just uninstall edge then?
Good luck with that lmao
You can absolutely do it, the one that comes to mind is a small batch file you can download that disables it. I know there’s plenty of other ways too though if you’re not comfortable with that
Edge is an OK browser that’s rapidly being bogged down with bloatware, just like Chrome which it sought to destroy. I’ll keep using Firefox and hope the same thing never happens to it. At least they finally killed off IE.
I use it on my gaming machine because it’s there and it isn’t chrome. But it keeps harassing me with browser shopping notifications, recommendations that are always about AI, and you have to visit a pasted-in flags page to disable them. It’s shit
Not that I like the current Chrome, but with all this forcing down your throat Edge from Microsoft, I hate Edge 10 times more. I guess Firefox is the only good alternative even if its is not Chromium
Yeah I’ll probably just switch to FF. But I use it so infrequently on there it’s not a priority.
I’ve been using Vivaldi a lot more though. Especially on my phone
Especially because its not Chromium
I quite like Chromium. Maybe is my tinted glass when I just switched from Firefox/Explorer. The fact that your browser would pop up almost instantly instead of taking those 2-3 seconds to start was quite revolutionary (Firefox of course caught up quite soon on that regard, Microsoft had to adopt Chromium to do the same).
But yeah, the current bloatware and resouce gourging are quite bad when looking at it impartially.
In no sense is Edge is a good browser. It is built for ads and tracking, and makes surfing the web inherently unpleasant.
Idk, performance wise is as good as chrome, and chrome is the standard. I use brave with extra privacy plugins, but saying that edge is a bad browser because of the tracking is weird when so is chrome and virtually everyone uses it.
You can install ublock origin and any other chromium based addons.
Performance wise, Chrome is dogshit anymore. A decade ago it was great. I returned to Firefox a couple years ago and haven’t looked back.
Isn’t ublock origin getting blocked on chromium soon? I switched back to Firefox a few months back to avoid that.
I also switched from saving passwords in the browser to Bitwarden so that I wouldn’t be tied to any single browser (or OS) and that has been great.
The creator of uBlock origin has been releasing uBO Lite separately to prepare for Google’s fuckery. You can read about it here: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/platform/mv3/description/en.md
That’s good to know. It seems like almost all browsers are chromium based right now so having an option of real ad blocking is great.
I am amazed that anyone can browse the web or watch YouTube without ad blocking.
I am amazed that anyone can browse the web or watch YouTube without ad blocking.
Right? It’s so good to know there are still other reasonably people out there.
Whenever I see someone (nearly anyone) else’s phone or pc being absolutely inundated with ads I can’t help but wonder if they’re allright in the head. There are so many mobile games that I never knew were ad-ridden until I saw them on someone else’s screen … eg. Wordfeud, there’s apparently a video ad playing each time you submit a word. Wtaf…
The bitwarden thing I agree with, but I got fed up with Firefox not working correctly for some webpages I work with because let’s be real, it has such a low user base that web devs don’t optimizer for it anymore and some even deploy Firefox breaking changes because the is analytics show that it doesn’t even matter.
If the adblocker stops working correctly though? It’s FF time again baby.
Ah, you’re probably right. I mostly hate Edge because I never chose it, downloaded it, or installed it, and of course it can’t be deleted. It triggers all my “intruder alerts”.
I have used it some at work, and hate it, but that’s mostly because work wouldn’t let me install adblockers.
Heh, I actually really like it for work. With a adblocker of course, I’m scared of your workplace.
Since its a Microsoft product, and any consulting firm wotlrth their salt works with Microsoft, it’s actually really nice to open any link in teamdls and for everything to automatically log into the corporate account through the SSO. I’d about trackers at work, the while pc might be monitored for all I care.
At home that’s a whole different thing though, brave with extra privacy stuff because I got tired of some pages not working in Firefox anymore.
I dislike almost every Microsoft product, and always prefer the alternatives, but que sera sera. :) I don’t doubt that it works.
We’re required to use Microsoft Teams at my office, and oy, what an endless annoyance. If you’re in an MS environment all day, can you tell me how to make Teams understand that I’ve read something? All day every day, any time there’s a message in Teams, I spend five seconds reading it, then ten seconds trying to get Teams to stop marking it “unread.”
Agreed about Firefox, except I love it so much I haven’t given up on it. I just can’t. Been using Firefox since 1957. When a site doesn’t work, I jump to Chrome and it’s almost invariably OK. Only a slight hassle, plus that I hate Chrome too.
My trick with teams is to go to the notifications tab (the top one), and to click anything popping up there. Reactions are weird though, sometimes people’s reactions don’t show up there and I need to go to the chat, to the message they reacted, yeah these are annoying. Most of the time doing a swipe through the notifications tab is enough though.
The only good thing about Edge is that it can play x265/hevc natively… I use Firefox for everything, but when watching x265 I have to use edge, unless I want to transcode.
This kind of horseshit is CONSTANT with Windows updates. I see customer PCs where I know I’ve set the default browser to Firefox or Chrome, and lo and behold, suddenly everything is opening in fucking Edge.
Oh crap, I thought it was just something I overlooked at work. It has been happening to me too
How arent Microsoft engineers annoyed by this themselves?Do they even use the products that they make?
Not having a job is more annoying
Only at work
I’m really interested in this info. Lots of senior staff at Google use iPhone. How many engineers do?
Also I remember lot of people at the Skype team quitting after Microsoft acquired them and forced them to use Windows
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The dev tools always sucked. The browser itself was bloated Chromium.
The best msedge era for me was just as vertical tabs came out.
The Browser was really slim, hat some interesting UI Design choices that set it apart from chrome.
Nowadays it has so many adware elements and pointless settings that I don’t really enjoy using it anymore.
My day to day browser is ff and I’m mainly using chromium based browsers for development and compatibility checks, as well as on my laptop to save power when watching videos.
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