@[email protected]
I remember decades ago when a US court convicted Microsoft to seperate their browser from windows. The court wrote the verdict that Microsoft ilegally tried to prevent competion . Since Microsoft lost it shouldn't be difficult to file the next suit . @[email protected]
During the Clinton era Microsoft was a hair's breadth away from being broken apart for all its anti-competitive monopolistic shenanigans -- including the browser war thing that you mention.
But then Bush Junior got into power (I resist using the words "was elected") and he swept all that away.
As I recall:
Microsoft Windows used to have good online help, circa 1991-1994 (Windows 3.1).
It was based on the Rich Text Format (RTF).
Then Microsoft added a web browser, and called it Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer really wasn't very good for exploring the internet, apparently because its development had been rushed and it didn't display some things like other browsers would.
Then Microsoft argued in court that its web browser was an integral part of Windows, which Windows could not work without.
Then the judge removed the web browser from his own Windows-based computer and experienced no problems.
Then Microsoft changed its online help to HTML and made us use its web browser to access it.
Apple had to learn the hard way: Under the DMA (thanks @EUCommission !) they were forced to give users a choice regarding the default search engine and browser on their systems.
What are we going to do about Microsoft misleading users?
It is still required, as Google had to do the same with Android, offering multiple search engines and presenting them to the user (at least that happened to me with my phone), but after doing it in Windows 8.1, Microsoft probably thought that it was enough compliance to keep "those nagging EU politicians" away.
@[email protected]@[email protected] Well, I ditched Windows many, many, many years ago, but Plasma still doesn't make any sense to me, so I use XFCE. But thank you for Plasma!
@[email protected]@[email protected] I've been using Plasma 6 as my daily driver for three weeks now, and it's really good! I'm grateful for all the time that developers, testers, and doc writers have spent on this project. I decided to ditch Windows after getting yet another nudge to "please create a microsoft account".
@Opisek@kde That's actually funny you should mention that, I didn't even realise I was replying to Lemmy users sometimes until today. That's the beauty of the Fediverse. I have never even touched Lemmy but I can totally reply to you guys via Mastodon. Or hell, even via Pixelfed.
@[email protected]@[email protected]
I love KDE so much. If I didn't rely on certain creative software for work, I'd ditch macOS in an instant.
And I think that's one of the reasons people just aren't able to switch over from Windows.
But hey, every other computer in the house that isn't a Mac runs Fedora KDE. 😃
I feel the same about KDE and Windows. I only keep Windows for some music production stuff and legacy .NET application maintenance. The rest of the time I avoid it and use Linux and KDE, a far more pleasant experience.
@qaz@shanesemler I can vouch this. The way Garuda used Plasma for a while lagged the heck out of my desktop. They switched it up a few versions ago and runs like butter now.
It doesn't say anything about repairing, this is such a low class clickbait.
All it says is that the default settings are changed, and they recommend resetting to their service. Because of course a company is going to recommend their own services. Would be a bad company if they didn't.
This is the actual picture they used in the article:
A tip for if things went wrong, like if some virus installed a weird browser and set it default, and you want a quick fix.
It isn't saying that if you installed any other browser the system is broken and it should be repaired to Edge. That is just ridiculous and why I call this clickbait.
It is aimed at people who don't even know what a default browser is. You know, the average user.
If you look at the screenshot, you can see this is the "Repair tips" tab/button. I don't know what it looks like, but it does say something about repairing.
It showed up on my feed. I see similar advice posts regularly "Just ditch windows and..."
Aside from my work tools not working on Linux natively, there are usually a few other steps involved in making the transition. Most people don't want to fuck around with that sort of thing.
I played around with Ubuntu back in the early 00s, before reverting back to Windows.
I looked into what was the easiest current distro to install in order to revive an old laptop. The consensus seemed to be Mint. It works fine and the old hardware was all recognized and so on. I'm still primarily a Windows user, even with all the the BS that goes along with it.
t won’t do anything on its own, you need to accept the repair step
Do you know what else works like that? Pop-up tech support scams. The target doesn't have to do anything, but it's become a thriving business in many poor regions (Kolkata, India is notorious) and a problem for moderately tech-illiterate users.
I would even say that this anti-feature promotes bad personal security practices because the user may be more inclined to believe "your computer needs repair" pop-ups if the first one they encounter comes from a legitimate, trusted party.
Yes, it's not a great security practice, and it probably should work more like "we've noticed you have randomly changed your search engine from google/ddg/bing/whatever to this 'random search engine no-one heard about'' instead of blindly reverting to edge and bing.
It seems to be a tool for tech illiterates. A power user will know how to avoid malware, and remove it if they catch it.
They should do a much better job than that, but helping people that don't know what they're doing is not itself a bad thing.
@[email protected]@[email protected] Guess what, Firefox does the same thing (a refresh will reset your privacy settings and your default browser, all of which affect Mozilla’s revenue streams) but they’re a tad sneakier/cleverer(?) about it.
(Firefox is not private by default so getting you to reset your settings is how they try to influence you to return to their preferred configuration.)
@Aaron@[email protected]@[email protected] Yes, to non-private defaults. Let’s put it this way: if Firefox’s defaults respected your privacy, Mozilla would go bankrupt tomorrow.
@aral@[email protected]@[email protected] I wouldn't call that one deceptive design tbh, it says what it is doing on the box, resetting the browser to its default state. That includes search engines and privacy settings. Resetting settings to defaults is a completely normal feature that many apps have, and can be useful for fixing issues.
@Bro666@[email protected]@[email protected] Which would make perfect sense if I had said “Plasma forces you to use Firefox.” Would you like any other straw men to rile against?