This is the best summary I could come up with:
I haven’t been able to replicate the behavior on other PCs, but a number of X users replied to my post about this saying they have experienced the same thing in the past.
Zach Edwards, a privacy and data supply chain researcher, freshly installed Windows and replied to my post on X to note he had found a new prompt during setup that reads:
Given the full-screen prompt that disappeared just before I experienced the issue, how Microsoft convinces people to turn this setting on will also be important.
Microsoft has a history of using the sort of tactics we’ve seen from bloatware and spyware developers to promote its web browser.
Those have ranged from Windows updates that have launched Edge and pinned it to the desktop and taskbar without permission to polls or prompts when you attempt to download Chrome.
Microsoft Edge is actually good, so I sure hope the team building it isn’t about to resort to more tricks to get Chrome users to use it.
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Microsoft is the fucking worst with their trick questions and constant nagging.
They do this because they want you to use Edge which steals search results from other search engines.
Microsoft Edge is actually good, so I sure hope the team building it isn’t about to resort to more tricks to get Chrome users to use it.
Edge is good compared to IE which was a dumpster fire, and arguably about as bad as Chrome. Both are privacy nightmares and desire nothing more than to harvest your data for ad companies. I trust Google a hair more than I do Microsoft. I don’t use Chrome. That should tell you something.
I disagree. Chrome is a simple well designed browser that happens to be run by a company that tries to push things we don’t like, such as FLoC.
Edge is full of bloatware and dark patterns. You’re probably thinking of the early versions of Edge when none of that crap had been added yet… but trust me it’s a very different browser now. In fact it’s worse than IE ever was.
Meh. My work gives me the choice of Chrome and Edge. I decided to try edge to get access to bing chat last year, and I’ve found it to be a pleasant experience compared to chrome. It’s got some neat features, and the built in copilot AI can be handy. I haven’t missed chrome (or Google for that matter) in the year I’ve been using edge. It’s fine. Still use Firefox on my personal laptop and phone though.
worse than IE ever was
This argument can be made for spying/telemetry, but I don’t think anything will compare to how bad the IE user experience was for years. It ran so slowly, and took forever to get features like tabbed internet browsing. It started to get more functional towards the end once it started losing market share, but that was after years of it being complete garbage while having absolute market dominance.
Nonsense, Edge is a top tier Chromium browser. Vivaldi is another good Chromium option although I no longer use it. Chrome while a decent browser however is irrelevant in my eyes on any W10/W11 since Edge is part of OS.
Every day I use both Edge (only at work) and Firefox (home and work), both have pros and cons. I tried to switch from Firefox to Vivaldi less than 1 year ago, but there are some thing in Chromium based browsers that I did not like when compared to Firefox. Bookmark management was a big one (no tags).
Edge re-installing itself after I’ve manually taken ownership of its files and purged them from the system 6 fucking times is what’s going to finally drive me to abandon windows and go full linux.
I just haven’t had the time or energy to rebuild my software stack on a still pretty new to me OS. (emby, the Arrs, Ombi, nginx, and more)
I setup a debian machine a while ago and have been slowly trying to get used to it while migrating a few things, but It’s hard when windows is so engrained in most of what I’ve done on pc.
Mostly because they got there first tbh.
I started with Plex and was immediately unhappy with their always online model, shitty support, and data harvesting practices. (which has gotten significantly worse over the last few years)
Moved to Emby as the only alternative I’d heard of at the time (7 years ago), and was immediately impressed with how much easier it was to use, it’s stability across all platforms I use, their friendly and helpful forums, and their stance on keeping your server your own (no telemetry or dependency on external servers). I pretty quickly purchased a lifetime premier license and it’s never failed me.
From there I learned of Jellyfin but by then had no reason to move. Beyond that, I’m just not really a fan of Jellyfins origins (ie forking emby because they didn’t like Embys licencing) and their development has regularly lagged behind the others largely because they lack funding to keep a dev team AFAIK. (keep in mind thats an opinion from a distance, I don’t pay much attention to Jellyfin as I’m happy with Emby)
I moved to Fedora (KDE Plasma) about a year ago. I had researched alternatives for all I needed.
I installed it on a new machine and kept an old windows machine running.
It took a month or so to get things how I liked.
I miss some things in Windows but found some real time saving features in linux, on the whole I am better off.
And I feel a whole lot safer.
Side question:
Know a good place I can learn linux user/group/permission management?
I don’t understand it well enough so I do a stupid amount of things as root…
A good start is using something like sudo rather than logging in as root.
sudo gives your command root permission when it runs. That way you can delete the password from the root account and it can’t be logged in with. sudo will ask for YOUR password and then check if you have permissions to elevate your command to root level.
In a simple setup, you can just use for anything you would normally do as root.
This can protect you from mistakes too, when running commands that you’ve mistyped. For example, if you want to do “rm -rf ./*” to delete all files in the current directory, but you forget the dot (period); if you’re at a root prompt, you just deleted your entire filesystem. If you’re not, then you get a permission error.
Edge re-installing itself after I’ve manually taken ownership of its files and purged them from the system 6 fucking times is what’s going to finally drive me to abandon windows and go full linux.
This sort of thing is why I finally switched my gaming PC - I was spending a bunch of time fighting to get Windows to do what I wanted that I figured I might as well be doing all that work on Linux.
At least Linux doesn’t deliberately fight me. When I have to spend time getting Linux to do something it’s because developers haven’t gotten to it yet, not because corporate are enforcing their vision of how I’ll use my system.
To play devil’s advocate, that’s because Edge is the system web view used for system components. Removing it means certain UI for system components won’t be able to be rendered. It’s the same reason why uninstalling Chrome from Android breaks a bunch of stuff. They should decouple the web view from the browser but here we are.
I don’t care. None of the stuff that breaks is even remotely important to me.
If I’ve made a point of removing a piece of software; reinstalling it, re-adding shortcuts in 3 different places, and changing my default back to edge with every system update (and now automatically harvesting all the data from every other installed browser) makes me want to personally lynch Satya Nadella. (Microsoft’s CEO)
Actually, Edge WebView2 is a separate system component pushed out via Windows Update (can also be bundled with individual apps), and is independent of Edge the browser.
So you can actually uninstall Edge the browser completely if you wanted to, and still keep using Webview.
Of course, it’s a different story that Microsoft like to sneak it back in as part of an update or something.
Exactly. Those OS updates are most likely fixing / reinstalling Edge since it is either considered corrupted or to push newer version. Set different default browser, unpin it from taskbar and you are good to go.
All these “fixes” and “debloaters” in a long run most likely will cause problems.
Were you on a Windows Pro license and did you tried using group policy settings?
I keep hearing people being frustrated that low level solutions don’t work, but I’ve not heard of anyone having these issues who has used the official tools Microsoft provides for Windows sysadmins (and power users) to actually manage this sort of thing.
I get that logically, it shouldn’t matter whether you put a sign up telling Edge to fuck off when you’ve bulldozed it down six times, but Windows sees that it’s gone and your settings (by default with no group policy config) indicate it shouldn’t be gone, so it “helpfully” rebuilds it.
Power users are not their market for normal home licenses. Those are for the people who don’t know the difference between Edge and Chrome and need protection from making dumb mistakes like deleting Edge and ending up without any web browser. Unfortunately, those are the grand majority of computer users, and it makes good business sense to take advantage of “just helping” to provide a locked down ecosystem and push your software on power users who don’t know the management options available.
Windows doesn’t do a good job advertising these features, and has made them harder to find by getting rid of a lot of their old non-cloud sysadmin training courses, because it doesn’t help them make money. But by no means are these options non-existent.
They offer a Windows version for power users. It’s the Pro license, and it doesn’t cost significantly more if you’re buying a cheap “OEM” key.
If you want to make Windows work for you, look at the tools they have for on premises (non-cloud) Windows system administration in small companies.
KMS (key media server) is one way to manage Windows license keys for multiple machines in a domain. KMSpico emulates that setup on a single machine (no server needed), allowing safe spoofing of whatever level Windows license you want, using the same systems and technique meant for actual sysadmins. Last I knew, that was the safest way to spoof a license if you don’t have the ~$15 for one.
Group policy is one of a few ways to push consistent Windows configuration and settings to multiple machines in a domain. It is also an option for managing settings on individual Pro licensed Windows machines. Most of the time when you find weird registry key changes online to enable/disable Windows features, those are part of what Group Policy changes when you use it to disable a feature the proper way. Windows respects group policy options through updates, and releases update to group policy templates as needed. They don’t want to fuck with their big business clients that can actually hurt their bottom line, so they keep those working.
I do have a pro license (for RDP), but I’m not familiar with the group policy editor. Wasn’t aware it could disable Edge. I’ll have to explore that more. It’s rather absurd a user has to go to those lengths to keep data they’ve deleted, deleted.
Still gonna move to linux. Been a long time coming.
I seem to recall a federal lawsuit about this kind of behavior with Internet Explorer. Does changing the name of the browser magically nullify the original legal settlement?
There was nothing that came of that because they were let off the hook with a slap on the wrist when Republicans took over the government.
The difference is IE was the dominant web browser. Despite having a terrible user experience it had the vast majority of the market share due to being the bundled web browser.
Microsoft is absolutely abusing windows market share to push edge, but it hasn’t worked (yet) so they’re not getting in trouble for it.
