If you don’t use Bing with Edge, Microsoft will tell you your computer needs repairing.
They are not wrong.
To mend your machine:
- Ditch Windows
- Install Plasma
- Your computer is ready.
@[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.)
@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.
@dajix @[email protected] @[email protected] It’s deceptive. They know exactly what they’re doing. That’s why they also ask if you haven’t used your browser for a while.
@aral @[email protected] @[email protected] I still dont consider this deceptive design. A prompt to reset is perfectly normal in programming, and it would be weird if they did not reset privacy settings with that. Resetting settings is resetting ALL settings. In fact, since resetting is often used for fixing issues you are having in your browser, resetting security settings is a good thing, since some of them can break sites.
Shh! You’re messing up their bizarre soapbox interjection! They want everyone to switch back to chrome because they’d rather Google have access to your data instead
@aral @[email protected] @[email protected] Wait, but isn’t the whole point of a refresh to reset everything?
I agree though, out of the box Firefox has become pretty bloated.
@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]
Here, you dropped this…
Because, guess what? Plasma does not force you to use Firefox either.
@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?
- “Repair” computer.
- Use MS Edge for the first time.
- Use bing.com for the first time.
- Search for “best Linux distro for gaming”.
- Ditch Windows.
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?
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_1689
Is the browser selection on Windows no longer required in EU?
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.
I just found out that the agreement between Microsoft and the EU commission was only valid between 2009 and 2014. So MS is no longer obliged to make the change of the default browser easy.
What a shame, as now it would be more needed than ever :c
But thank you for correcting me.
Ehh, time to play a bit of a devil’s advocate.
“Bing with Edge”,
- it’s talking about search engine in edge
- a lot of malware will change your search engine, so that may make sense, for less knowledgeable people
- it won’t do anything on its own, you need to accept the repair step, for your default browser and/or search engine in edge to change
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.
If you aren’t using Bing on Edge, then I’m sorry to say you are streets behind my friend.
Coined and minted!
@[email protected] @[email protected] I’d like to use Plasma, but the last time I tried it, it didn’t run very well on my PC.
Compared to Windows? Because then it’s probably not plasma but the underlying distribution.
@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.
@qaz No. I use XFCE. I tried Plasma not even a year ago. Moving windows around made the low frame rate obvious.
You also could try Linux Mint cinnamon
This is actually of frustrating
I don’t even use Edge and I’m upset
Damn, if anyone ever uses Edge, this might be an issue.
Gotta love it when edge users try to tell me “It’s not that bad” and “It’s based on chrome now”.
Those aren’t exactly selling points…
@[email protected] @[email protected] I have fixed three laptops this way. Can confirm. 👍
Fuck Plasma!
Message courtesy of the XFCE gang
Backed by the GNOME possee
What is wrong with all those kde links in the comments? Are y’all bots?! Hella annoying.
You know you don’t have to click the links right?
Mastodon users need to mention the user and the community name in order to make or reply to Lemmy comments.
They probably either use a different client, or a different federated service, that lets them mark multiple participants in each post of the thread.
I think they may be using mastodon and that’s how you post in a lemmy community via mastodon, using the @ tags.
Federation is taking some getting used to I guess.
@[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”.
So repair it.
With Linux!
@[email protected] @[email protected]
I use DDG on Edge, and haven’t seen this.
I’ve got Mint on an old laptop. It seemed to require the least amount of fuckery to get working. No idea what Plasma is.
I just want an OS and browser, not a project.
You literally typed this in a KDE community, how do you fail to know what Plasma is?
Browsing All does that.
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.
Using Linux is hardly a project anymore, unless you want it to be one. Plasma is just an interface, you can get many distros with it if you want including Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE, Kubuntu, Arch, and so on.
You have to realize just how alien that sounds to anyone unfamiliar with the Linux ecosystem.
I was vaguely familiar with different distros, and how it’s basically the Lego of operating systems, from tinkering around with it twenty years ago.
It was funny asking for recommendations and getting everything from Mint to Arch.
For someone else who had absolutely no idea, and who’d only ever used Windows, it would absolutely be a project.
@[email protected] @[email protected] I hope this can get out there, 'cause I feel like on here, you’re pretty much preaching to the choir. :)
