Windows just keeps getting weirder. There's this regrettable dichotomy between (1) a rock solid OS core with great features like Hyper-V, PowerShell and exceptional back-compat, and (2) a crap, sluggish, inconsistent UI slapped on top, laden with ads, "Rewards" Points and tracking.
MacOS allows you to "hard click" (long click) a text selection in any application, which pops up a bubble that lets you do a web search for that phrase. But the search only launches Safari. I wasted at least a couple hours scouring boards and kext files, screwing with automation macros, trying to find a way to make this potentially helpful shortcut not open Safari, but instead open Firefox. Eventually I just gave up. Apple buried the decision so deep in the OS that it's basically impossible to change the default browser for search.
Safari and Firefox does not allow other search engines also.
For Chrome/Edge I have added a lot of small shortcuts for IMDB, post tracking codes, geoip and many more "not search" things to search bar. Just keyword and %s in search url is needed.
Just for the record, you can absolutely change the default search engine in Safari and Firefox. I use kagi in both, so bangs are supported everywhere.
Firefox for iOS supports keyword and %s url scheme for search engines. I am not sure why extensions are needed in desktop.
You can change default search engine, but you cannot add extra search engines in Safari without building your own extension (and paying apple for it)
Firefox for iOS supports keyword and %s url scheme for search engines. I am not sure why extensions are needed in desktop.
So does Firefox desktop...? Extensions aren't needed, just right click on a search field and add it. You can customise placeholders and keywords too
It just creates messy bookmarks. Greatest UX for search...
https://superuser.com/questions/7327/how-to-add-a-custom-sea...
The resulting search shows up in the search UI, whether you have firefox configured for a seperate search bar or have their default of the address bar also being the search bar. This is the same as the extension method.
If your complaint is that they also show up in bookmarks, then ehh, whatever. Most people either don't use bookmarks or have a giant dumping pile. If you're one of the 1% that organizes them, just put all your search bookmarks in their own folder.
I am not sure why extensions are needed in desktop.
They aren't. Why do you claim things that aren't true?
Okay, extensions or bookmarks must be used to create custom search.
Wait, what? There's OpenSearch and web extensions which let you add more search engines (removing builtin ones is harder though).
Ok, then tell me how to add search engine to Safari iOS/Desktop and Firefox Desktop without building and downloading extra extensions.
Search url: https://api.hackertarget.com/geoip/?q=%s
For Firefox Desktop, just create a bookmark with your search URL and assign a keyword to it, e.g.
URL: https://api.hackertarget.com/geoip/?q=%s
Keyword: @geoip
Okay, it is possible. But firefox UX is the greatest. You must use bookmarks to config search.
And now I have many nonsense bookmarks because I want to use them as search
The UI is weird, that said, the feature goes back 20 years, see e.g. http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained/comments.htm... I wonder if it existed all the way back in a version of Netscape Navigator?
On Firefox Android, you can also just go to into settings, search, manage search engines, + add search engine. So, basically, exactly where you would expect it.
I think on desktop it's just as easy? Can't you just right click on most submit forms?
Parent is talking about MacOS, not iOS.
It's bullshit like this that makes linux attractive.
I always think this, then remember I also like sound, Bluetooth, and low-power sleep.
Maybe 2025 will be the year of the Linux desktop.
Support for the other two may vary based on hardware, but sound seems to have mostly been solved by pipewire.
the EU Commission would like to know your location
Meh. Apple already know your location, and its not in EU.
I utilize the 'select/highlight`–'search web` flow numerous times throughout the day. I am on iOS and, like you, was unable to force the 'search web` highlight selection option to default to a non-Safari browser. However, I use the functionality you speak of through a different invocation: 'select/highlight`–'define`–'search web`. Interestingly enough, this procedure — once a non-Safari browser is set as the default web browser for the iOS device and/or the specification of preferred search engine — redirects towards the user's browser (as well as search engine) of choice. I shall investigate these functionalities' behavior on macOS — id est, desktop — tomorrow possibly and will get back to you noduerme. {Edit: deletion: " . . . ~such~ redirects . . . "}
Do Google next, Mozilla.
Oh wait.
yeah Mozilla never complains about harmful design on chromebooks. Strange!
I mean, yes, Google pays Mozilla. But also, Chromebooks are barely relevant compared to Windows.
Windows is barely relevant compared to Android and iOS
Well browser choice is definitely not an issue on Android.
Whereas iOS...
It is for Firefox.
If they were a non-biased actor they would commission a study across all systems, not just what's convenient for them and Google. They are more and more ridiculous by the day and deserve their tiny market share.
Why does it matter whether they're biased if they're correct? Plenty of short sellers are biased (massively so) yet that doesn't necessarily undermine their analysis.
Do Mozilla next, Mozilla!
Deep analysis of Pocket and other crapware would be nice.
Well, of course we use Pocket if the native browser bookmarking function doesn't save the full text of the page for search. Why can't we have the tiniest improvement for bookmarking in browsers in 25 years? It's like they took an oath to never improve it.
I removed it all the time, but after update it came back like a malware.
Is there a way to use bing chat from Firefox yet?
Not an answer but better alternative: Kagi. Paid, but it pays for itself. Not affiliated. Just satisfied.
Kagi does not have an equivalent to Bing Chat does it. The latter is an AI.
It does have a competing product. AI chat augmented with search results.
It has exactly that with access to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral AIs, but you have to pay for the Ultimate plan.
How about for people where having to log in to search is a nonstarter? Has a method to be able to take payments without the ability to track the users been invented yet?
If you are not comfortable with trusting their claims of not saving search history(which is very reasonable not to belive so imo), you don't have to use it. They also take Cryoto so if you think crypto is .. a thing, you can do that.
Use a burner email and pay via Bitcoin?
Is there a way to use bing chat from Firefox yet?
Bing Chat has been working with Firefox for a while now.
When the fuck is this going to stop!
Microsoft lost this monopolizing tactic in a court case decades ago. It seems either no one remembers this fact or that Microsoft hopes it's so.
Regulators will you please damn-well regulate. In simple English, do your fucking job.
To be fair to the regulators, they have been busy lately:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-googl...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/12/...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/...
Perhaps so. But they're too late the damage has been done. Unfortunately, they should have acted 30+ years ago. The need to regulate back then was just as obvious as it is now.
It's not the same situation as back then. 1. They don't have the same browser market share at all. 2. They don't have the same operating system market share they used to either (specifically, they lost the mobile space - which is how majority of people in the world access the internet). 3. It's easier to use another browser now on Windows then back when it was at its worst in 00s (where IE was more or less part of explorer.exe / core of Windows).
Above can make a huge difference legally. Specifically your reference to the previous court case, which was built on point 1-2 above. Key word here being monopoly and how it's defined.
Apple lived (until a few weeks ago, still do outside EU) in a world where it's OK to have it basically impossible to install another (real) browser on it's biggest OS, or install any app of your choosing without their blessing (and a 10-30% cut on revenue!) for that matter.
It's complex for sure.
It's unfortunate imo that Mozilla/FF got squashed by Chrome, and also made some questionable strategic decisions in the last 10-15 years. Performance, simplicity, stability and keeping up with me web tech being key USPs of Chrome, compared to competition. Note that absent from that list is monopolistic abuse (even though Google has it's fair share of that as well). In other words, you don't win the browser war by simply using monopolistic abuse as a strategy, you need to primarily win on value to your end users. That's at least how it's been in the past.
"It's not the same situation as back then. 1. They don't have the same browser market share at all."
That's essentially irrelevant because (a) Microsoft complied with the Court's ruling and allowed other browsers to be installed without hindrance, that's not the situation now; (b) you're painting a picture as if Microsoft was disadvantaged by the situation now and thus it's unfair to impose such restrictions again this time. To that I'd add that in case you haven't noticed Microsoft has just passed three trillion in value, it's only second to Apple in achieving this milestone. Thus the changed situation hasn't disadvantaged it one iota.
I'd maintain that Microsoft has only managed this incredible feat because throughout its 48-year life it has consistently used unacceptable, bullyboy monopolistic practices at every opportunity.
Essentially, Microsoft's growth has been at the expence of competitors who haven't had the size and finacial power to stand up to its market dominance no matter how good their products were. Such bad behavior has screwed both the market and product development for everyone—small and medium-sized developers, hardware manufacturers and end users. Just about the only entity that hasn't been screwed by its unacceptable business practices is Microsoft itself.
The most significant reason for Microsoft's unfettered growth is that the regulators have been asleep at the wheel for decades—no doubt encouraged to 'sleep' by millions plowed into lobbying.
On the matter of Mozilla, I'm certainly not an apologist for the company, in fact over the years I've been very critical of Mozilla including here on HN. Yes, the dominance of Chrome from that other monopolist Google has had a lot to do with Firefox's downfall, but that said Mozilla has been shooting itself in the foot for decades. Why and how is pretty obvious and well known so I won't debate that here.
Get help, man. Don’t let the internet make you this angry.
Dark patterns are certainly evil. I don't think they help the company in the long run.
However, I just went on a sort of browser deep dive for the best browser on windows and came away, surprisingly, with edge.
The requirements were vertical tabs, keep my chrome extensions, and got out of my way.
Brave, firefox, chrome, and vivaldi all had issues that couldn't be resolved in the UI. For example, firefox's tree style tabs still kinda requires that you keep the top tabs for some uses.
I didn't even consider edge at first. The rewards/shopping/bingwhatever integrations were disqualifiers. But apparently, you can disable all of them fairly quickly.
The pdf viewer is also better than chrome's with extended options.
I guess I also must admit the benefit of not fighting windows because I'm doing what they want.
We'll see if their next forced update reverts to their awful defaults but for now, I'm happy with it. At least until arc browser is available.
It's a real shame that Microsoft is so schizophrenia here. If they were to respect their customers, they would gain far more than they would lose.
The dev-focused arm seems to understand long term customer goodwill but the OS/browser team does not.
I’m also in a similar position, trying to choose a good browser after a fresh windows install. While edge is nice, the lack of containers alone is making me want to switch to Firefox. Not dealing with Google’s new cookie bs and not having a restricted ad blocker is just a bonus.
Hiding title bar and tab bar were confugurable before. When you installed tree style tab it automatically made the tab bar hidden at that time. It was the most customizable dev browser.
Then they rewrote the the UI engine replacing XUL and made Firefox a more 'user friendly browser' copying all UI features of chrome sacrificing the customization options.
I am a heretic now who is running Windows 10 with WSL2 and edge as primary browser due the points you mentioned.
You're painting awfully broad strokes (Edge is the best for windows) for a very personal preference (vertical tabs).
firefox's tree style tabs still kinda requires that you keep the top tabs for some uses.
Hm, I've been using Tree Style Tabs for many years without the top tabs visible and I've never needed them back.
For example, Apple’s decision to allow alternative browser engines is only effective in the EU.
And don't forget it's been done in the most painful way possible. Yet, I've not seen any reports from Mozilla about ios' practices over the past decades, or the after.
And don’t forget Apple’s restriction on alternative browser engines in iOS and iPadOS is the only thing keeping most websites from becoming Chrome only.
If that would be true, the websites would only support Safari and Chrome. But it's not true and websites work just fine on Firefox - so stop peddling this crap to defend lockout of choice.
There are plenty of websites that have degraded performance or functionality in Safari and Firefox. The most obvious being many of Google's products.
Mozilla probably cares more about the Chrome/Blink hegemony than Safari. If not for iOS requirements inflating Safari market share the browser market would be at least 90% Chrome or a Chrome derivative.
I kind of get the vibe that Mozilla is laying the groundworks for Microsoft vs Netscape Round II - or at least some kind of antitrust litigation.
I really wish they'd go after Apple and Safari. Safari is basically the modern day IE. Whenever I do anything slightly weird, I'm fairly confident it works in chrome/Firefox and almost sure that it's broken in safari.
The fact that you can't test on Safari without osx is insane. Some bugs can be reproduced in other WebKit browsers (I test with epiphany) but some are safari only. Not to mention the fact that Safari is the only choice on Apple mobile devices.
I believe Apple is significantly worse than Microsoft in regards to browsers. I wish Mozilla would focus on them.
They won't. They already have given both Apple and Google pass when chrome was launched or when smartphones took of. Mozilla sees Microsoft as devil's incarnation while Google and Apple are the ally in their holy war.
I am saying this as a developer who was using Firefox since firebug v0.8 era.
About time!
I hope so. But a lot has changed, notably the financial power and sheer size of their counterparts. We're talking about three of the most valuable companies in the world.
Is it that bad with the enterprise edition?
Anecdotally, I haven't seen any notable difference between the enterprise edition I have at work and the pro I have at home. I don't use Windows that much, actually, so I'm fine with Edge. Even so, I get the feeling that every other day it's trying to get me to "improve my experience by using Edge" or some such.
The best part is the "let's get you connected" or whatever crap it says when you first start it. I often connect to fresh VMs over RDP, so it's always a joy to get to sit through the crappy stuttering animations just so I can tell it to leave me alone.
I've had Outlook start opening Edge even though Firefox was set to as default browser. This was on EE.
LTSC is how Windows 10 should be. It's a pleasure to use.
There's something worse: only the enterprise edition respects certain group policies which it doesn't in the pro, all related to default application settings and such. Same with Office 365 subscriptions, you need some higher level than for example business standard to have it honor the "open links with system default browser" group policy. Unfortunately not covered in the Mozilla report.
Mozilla took aim ... and wiffed ... big time.
Edge hasn't displaced Firefox, Chrome has.
But they have about 600 million ($) reasons to avoid pointing this out.
Let's face the facts --- Mozilla is Google's bitch and has been for a long time. And this is just the latest example.
600 million ($)?
They've got ~$6000 (?) million from Google over the years. In a total distortion of reality Edge is the downfall of Firefox, not the reason they spent $6000M for 3% market share because they made every mistake they could make. Everyone else would be belly up already, but $600M/year makes it hard to die.
The fact that new browsers are popping up left and right (like Floorp) should tell Mozilla there seems to be demand for something that isn't FF.
(Written from FF with Tab Center Reborn as a vertical tab)
...there seems to be demand for something that isn't FF.
There is a demand for something that is really privacy focused.
In other words, something that isn't directly connected to Google with a blatantly obvious conflict of interest.
But all the other alternative browsers use Google's Blink rendering engine. How is that less associated with google?
Outlook has been a nightmare lately regarding this. It could be that it is my organization that pushed this, but links never open in the default browser, and get routed through a Microsoft link, which for some reason does not work on Edge. The only way to open links is to right-click them, copy, open browser, paste in address bar.
Nope this is intentional by Microsoft and the group policy settings to change this only work on the most expensive Office 365 subscriptions. You can change it manually in the settings though to open with the system default browser.
Do you know how?
Go to "File" -> "Options" -> "Advanced" and set "Open hyperlinks from Outlook in" to "Default Browser"
iPhone browser choice: https://imgur.com/a/jFa5A5j
Please don't post memes to HN.
Are you being serious?
It's fair enough I shouldn't have posted it.
They even let Edge running at startup in the background - ignoring that my choice on Windows will always be Firefox.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/startup-boos...
Aha... thanks for reminding me. Firefox asked me yesterday if I wanted to let it run on startup. The options were "Activate" and "Not Now"
To me this reads like it's going to behave like many apps nowadays, there is rarely a "No, go away", but only "No, but annoy me again in the future".
One time after an update Firefox loaded a page that said "Thank you for loving Firefox". Eww, no?
God damnit, why do I tolerate such asshole behaviors from our OS and browsers? Chrome also deserves a duck you..
there is rarely a "No, go away", but only "No, but annoy me again in the future"
Same with those damn YouTube shorts. They even have a dedicated button in the toolbar that cannot be hidden, on the mobile app.
Isn't there a dumb / light version of Windows 10 that removes all these anti-features and bloat?
I just want to play games and surf the web with FF.
Windows 10 (IoT) LTSC 2021. It lets you uninstall Edge with just a right-click. And it doesn't have any 'modern apps' and Store preinstalled.
But a normal consumer can’t purchase that version of Windows, can they?
in a non-shady/license-compliant wayThe most annoying attempt to foist Edge as a browser is the (new?) setting of a separate default browser for opening links in Outlook 365. Took me 10 minutes to understand why Edge opens. WTF.
Hey, do you remember where this setting is?
If someone has to use Windows, I recommend using a version like LTSC. I use this version of Windows 10 for video games and it lacks anti-features like taskbar search talking to the internet, the nagging to use Edge. Even then I discovered Edge to be running in the background recently.
If you leave Edge installed it will start automatically and run in the background by default. But that can be disabled in the settings.
If you don't intend to use Edge, I suggest you uninstall it before you give Windows internet access. Because after Edge receives some updates, it becomes harder to remove.
Are Mozilla going to fund the same study into Chrome’s anti-competitive practices or are the only going to do it for the browser makers that don’t fund them?
Well done to Mozilla for commissioning this report. An interesting read that confirms what we always thought was happening. We should encourage similar kind of reporting.
I use Firefox as my daily driver though the browser has an increasing amount of annoying stuff. It's added a VPN, some sort of email relay, and other random popups I never asked for.
I had to install Google Chrome on my (Mac) work laptop recently in order for the expo/react native debugger to work. Every time I open it I get a nag prompt to use it as the default (instead of Firefox)
I tried editing the raw config files with some values stack overflow suggested would disable it but it hasn't worked. Not a huge deal because I don't need to open it too often, but still annoying that there isn't a "don't ask me again" button
Tip: winget install Mozilla.Firefox
User hostile design patterns are everywhere these days... I wish that there were inspectors who were as powerful as health inspectors, empowered to make companies to fix their dark patterns.
I know I am missing the point. But how did they not call this "The House Edge"?
There's a great talk by Evan Czaplicki [0] that outlines the financial significance of browsers. It helps make sense of why Microsoft (and Apple) act(s) in this way.
Related discussion from earlier in the week:
Microsoft stole my Chrome tabs, and it wants yours, too
The first and last pages are nothing more than a test of how much toner the printer can hold.
WSL2, power toys and hands down the best window management of any OS, I hate working on my MBP just due to the difficulty of managing different windows and aligning them on the same desktop.
FYI -- on my MBP I use a program called Spectacle to snap windows around, and I now have no complaints relative to what you can do on Windows.
Development on Spectacle ceased[1] and it looks like the community may have rallied around an open-source program called Rectangle, which is open source. At least, judging from this single Reddit thread lol:
https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/kazpcn/spectacle_alter...
[1] Although when I search for it now, I see an update from 2023 on softonic? Although the original dev's github repo for it hasn't been updated in years. https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle
I use Rectangle for this purpose.
If you have it already, another alternative is to use BetterTouchTool and set it to override the behavior of the green corner button. For me it works just like Windows where there’s “minimize” on the yellow button and “maximize” on the green. I still use gestures like exposé but never have to worry about switching desktops or getting stuck in full screen.
+1 to BTT. I also love how they have a (fully disable-able) drag to split, similar to Windows' hot edges
I use Amethyst, but it's keyboard, not mouse driven, so a bit different.
I use Rectangle and still have complaints about Mac window management. Rectangle itself is great, but it's discernably a patch over a bad window management paradigm, and the awkwardness underneath pretty regularly shows through.
As just one example—the dock is atrocious for a browser-centric workflow. I only ever have 2 "apps" open at a time, but I have 6 Firefox windows and 2 IDE windows, and remembering where I put a specific window (or even that I already have it open!) is a chronic problem. I know about right-click to show all, but the text that pops up is small (it's a context menu, not a first-class navigation element) and that doesn't help with the discoverability problem.
I'm sure that there are other apps to patch the other aspects of the system that irritate me, but if you have to install 4 third party tools to get something close to how good Windows is out of the box then I'd say OP has a good point.
*bad window management for you Believe it or not, some people actually do like to have free moving windows and such.
Also you seem to be ignorant of a lot of features of macOS, like cmd-tab, focus an app, cmd-up arrow to show the windows of the app, and so forth. Or swipe down from the trackpad on a Dock icon to show the windows of the app.
Anyway, YMMV as always. Personally I find the window management atrocious not because of the way it was designed, which definitely works for me (and I hate the Windows’ one), but because of the bugs which they insist on never ever fixing…
On the opposite side, would you (or anybody) know of a program to show windows in a cascade/overview style, on windows? So for example have one or 2 “main” windows, and have some/all the other windows in a cascaded view in the background. I would think it would help productivity a lot.
(PowerToys doesn’t do this by itself, you have to select every window in place if I’m not mistaken.)
I use BetterSnapTool.
Probably seems weird to you, but I've never got on with the Windows UI. There's too many things that steal focus. I've been XFCE for too many years now, but it doesn't change significantly that I find I have to invest time learning what's changed.
There used to be a 'tile windows' since windows 2.0 or something like that, but it did just that, splatted the windows to take up all the space.
One thing I like about X11 and Windows doesn't do it, is alt-dragging from anywhere in the window, last time I used Windows you couldn't move things around by holding alt and left clicking anywhere, you could only do that from the title bar, which means you can't slide the top of the window off the screen.
The other major thing for me is selection copy, if you highlight text, you can't middle mouse button to paste it, you have to ctrl-c first, which is just more steps.
I rarely get focus stolen on Windows 10. They now make it very difficult for applications to do this (see the allowed conditions here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/... ). In contrast, focus stealing is a way of life on XFCE, and I just have to put up with it. The settings they recommend to fix it don't actually help.
Really? There's two programs I know of that will take focus and they're both authentication prompts. The sort of thing that cranks my handle on Windows were mostly from the browser and almost anything else.
With XFCE though, I'm quite happy with the level of focus stealing, things that seem to be justifiable are at the right level, like authentication prompts.
Out of interest, what are the things that take focus for you? Maybe we're running totally different sets of programs which might give me an impression that isn't warranted.
Long time XFCE user here. Steam will absolutely steal focus. I usually start Steam and then move over to something else like the terminal or web browser and multiple times during Steam's startup it will steal focus. I just want it to start up in the background. Aside from that, I agree focus stealing isn't a huge deal in XFCE. (XFCE 4.18, Debian trixie/testing)
you can't slide the top of the window off the screen
You can use "move" in the system menu. Once activated, the arrow keys in the keyboard will move the window outside the desktop window, not sure if you can do it using the mouse somehow.
Interesting, I didn't know that, I think I'll stick to alt-moving, it's been very convenient so far!
power toys is buggy. It has had this bug that shows on non-US keyboard layouts, and of course it will never be fixed because who cares about non-US keyboard layouts?
Meanwhile on KDE I have an easy option to swap caps lock and ctrl, without having to install some weird .exe file off github.
Powertoys got a significant update for foreign users just 4 days ago.
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases
I'm subscribed to the issue. I'd have gotten an email if it was fixed.
I have a question for you: If you make a Pie Chart with the time you send on each OS: Linux, Windows and Mac, what will be the percentages? Specially while you were young.
Of all the languages I speak, German is the more chaotic language by far. But most native Germans consider it the best/easiest.
For me the Windows management of Windows is horrible, but I spent like 90% of my time in Linux were I was young, even using things like "screen" that uses the command line and shortcuts to be the most efficient thing I have ever used (while requiring learning the shortcuts before becoming productive).
Today I use Mac like 95% of my time, control Linux machines with it and use Windows when the force of circumstance obliges me the 5%.
When I was young I was mostly using Windows. For the last 15 years or so it has been macOS. I made a number of attempts (sometimes lasting months) to use Linux but it never stuck.
My conclusion is that usability is mostly about getting used to how things work and a tiny bit of customisation. There are no significant usability differences between operating systems.
The _only_ thing that I have never gotten used to and that keeps slowing me down is that app switching (Cmd+Tab) in macOS is MRU while switching windows (Cmd+`, Cmd+Shift+`) within apps is circular.
I'm finding it impossible to remember whether I have to go forward or backward to get back to the window I'm looking for within an app.
Sorry for being off topic, but just tried powertoys based on your post, and holy cow! What an amazing piece of software. I particularly like the file unlocker feature, and the Windows implementation of Quick Look.
Huh? You can't even snap windows to screen edges.
Is that Fancy Zones which is part of power toys?
BetterSnapTool is great for this. Check it out.
Out of curiosity, how many window managers have you used on Linux? I found some superior choices there but I do agree that Windows is generally ok with Mac being dead last.
Many years ago, they used to charge a not inconsiderable amount for Windows. Given the trend towards making an OS cheap/free, I wonder is this some corporate response driven by a department somewhere that is charged with balancing the books.
That's the worst part (and I know that most people will never buy a license because they get it through their OEM or just crack it) but Microsoft are still happy to charge you £220 for a Windows 11 Pro licence [0] and shove ads in your face.
[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h...
The second all my games are fully compatible with Linux natively, I'm ditching that horrible "does it all, but poorly" corporation.
I've been seeing this sentiment since 2001 at least. No one ever follows through; if they did we would have seen this already in the desktop stats.
You will, whether you consciously realise it or not, switch to playing windows exclusive games the minute all your games run on Linux, hence you will never switch.
Well you can see it. Linux is used by 4.25% of all English speaking Steam users. And its trending upward.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
That's a statistic that is irrelevant to my point.
It is not a statistic of Linux desktop share, it's a statistic of existing Linux users, not windows migrations.
Yes it is. The Y axis is "Percentage of Steam users". The fact that the Linux percentage is increasing means that the the percentage of Windows users are decreasing. The graph shows a trend of migrating from Windows to Linux.
"% of desktops amongst Steam users" is significantly different from "% of desktops".
Stat counter also has Linux going from 2.5% in 2021 to 3.8% today: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
(And yes, this excludes ChromeOS and Android)
>I've been seeing this sentiment since 2001 at least. No one ever follows through; if they did we would have seen this already in the desktop stats.
There has been an inflection point crossed lately, because of Proton and the Steam Deck. Linux is at 1.95% market share on Steam today. A year ago it was 1.3%.
As I pointed out to another reply, this fact is not relevant to the point I made.
You may as well say "but the sky is blue", which is also true and just as irrelevant
I think we are at an interesting reflection point. Desktop Linux is to the point where it does pass the grandma/cousin tests for usability/install. Games were one of the big items from a compatibility perspective. Combine that with Windows 11 not working on older, viable hardware... 2025 is going to be interesting.
Those of us who used it on desktop Linux helped drive the handheld, which is really accelerating compatibility. When Windows 10 hits EOL, folks got to go somewhere - and many are not going to toss out their hardware for new.
How recently have you tried. Obviously YMMV, but all mine already are. Proton is a thing of beauty.
Microsoft kicks me from online play if I use proton… Coincidence?
Then stop buying games that are not?
OEM licenses are not exactly free or cheap. I was perusing the local shops a couple of weeks ago and the same exact laptop without a Windows Home license is always $100 cheaper, no exceptions. More than that for Pro or whatever the fuck it's called. So most people will buy a license, they'll simply not be aware of it. How convenient for MS.
"OEM" licenses sold by retail is not at all representative of what actual PC makers pay, which is of course going to massively vary. I wouldn't be surprised if some manufacturers, especially those who have been flirting with Linux, have instead been paid to install Windows.
Microsoft are still happy to charge you £220 for a Windows 11 Pro licence...
You can buy Windows 10 Pro OEM licenses for less than 20€ online. I did just that for a familiar three months ago. The installation was validated and associated with the Microsoft account no problem.
Then you can "upgrade" to Windows 11 free of charge, if that's your thing.
It’s weird right? 1. keeps me firmly on the platform, I find it a delight how often things “just work”. Run a linux app? Just works. Hook up some niche 15yo printer? Just works. Run a game/demo made 20 years ago? Just works. Even MS Paint very much still just works.
It all just works and then the perfectly good Mail app is forcing my mom to switch to the new Outlook, which is Mail, but messier, with ads. What?
I wish Satya Nadella would pull a Steve and yell at some people for this shit. It’s eroding trust in the company that they maintained for so many decades, that can’t be a good long term game can it?
Just to check, are you suggesting a Steve Ballmer yell or a Steve Jobs yell?
No confusion there for me, Ballmer's signature move is throwing chairs. Soo many chairs are waiting in the Windows department...
Hahaha o yea forgot :-) I mean a Steve Jobs yell, not sure that a Ballmer yell would’ve worked equally well on the product people.
Having been yelled at repeatedly by an exec, please don't really do this. It is never constructive. Even yelling by Steve Jobs was unwarranted. If you have to yell at people there is a bigger problem which must be resolved first.
Nadella probably cheers for more ads revenue, more Azure lock-in, more o365 subscriptions, more edge market share and more silly AI usage because those must be the KPIs at this point, and it doesn't really matter nor shows in those KPIs whether they grew from inherently user-hostile patterns or based on merit and quality.
Game made 30 years ago needs dosbox, an open source project, to just work.
Game made with directx6 20 years ago will render in CPU and just work but be so slow to be unplayable. Then you need to replace the .dll and make it link with an open source library that reimplements dx and converts the calls to the new API, so that it can actually render in hardware.
Yes, solitaire.exe still works. 3d games less so.
I'm full of games like star wars jedi outcast or so that no longer work on windows.
When I was a kid it was just a crappy, sluggish, inconsistent UI built on top of DOS.
That was the “Windows 95” lineage. NT was solid from the start (which is why MS then also made it the basis for XP).
NT was far more resource-demanding (i.e. "sluggish") than 9x due to all the abstractions - it's just the hardware that progressed so fast in a few years that it was kind of irrelevant.
I feel like almost all software since roughly the advent of the CD-ROM, when distro size stopped being a major limit, has been in a race to outbloat Moore's Law.
That's true, NT was much more resource demanding but there were other mitigating factors too. Drivers were either inefficient and or badly written, the video driver imposed inflexible rules on software's access to the underlying hardware and its plug-and-play feature was brain-dead from the outset. Most of these problems weren't fixed until Windows 2000.
Incidentally, I've always thought W2K—taken all round—as the best version of Windows, it's the version with minimal dross and useless stuff and MS hadn't got into spying on users by that stage.
I should have added /s. It was Windows 3, actually. But I was just riffing on the parent to point out that we've come full circle.
I don't know, Windows 11 came with many things I've wanted for years:
- notepad with tabs
- shell UI with tabs, VT-100 support and ability to replace the shell
- Paint.net with AI
- even Windbg has massively improved
Ahhh, tabs... it only took 40 years!
I sometimes think I’m the only person in the universe who doesn’t prefer tabs. I already have a way to manage multiple windows worth of content: my OS’s Window Manager. Why would I want every application I run to also implement its own custom window management—visually and functionally inconsistent from every other application’s custom window management?
I feel applications that do tabs are just like applications that do their own custom quirky File-Open dialog even though my OS provides a standard one.
Meanwhile Notepad++ has been free for 20 of those.
With five tabs open in Notepad, since they are placed in the titlebar, there remains only about 1 cm of titlebar by which I can grab the window to drag it around. This area is distinguished only by a short vertical pale grey line like a pipe character, because it's not cool to have a border around any interface element any more apparently. So I often drag a tab off the window by mistake and have to put it back and hunt for the small part that's actually the titlebar.
Then there's the way they put search into a fixed floating window, which when you search upward sits on top of the search result, obscuring it.
Some much this. I wish there was an option with the current core but something like a lightweight Windows 2000 UI.
WinPE and other stripped-down unofficial "distros" of Windows do exist. Someone will try to run the Win2k shell on a Win11 kernel, if it hasn't already been done. Based on what MS has done with backwards-compatibility, I wouldn't be surprised if it almost "just works".
Win10's UI on Win11:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o6ysyb/so_i_repl...
I actually once saw the Win 7 UI appear behind the Win 11 UI in Acrobat Reader.
Not sure if this was some Acrobat specific stuff or if it’s still “there” in general.
Serious question: Where do you see ads? I’ve used Windows 11 since it came out, and have never experienced a single advertisement.
Did you install it? They advertise cloud storage, office software, and gaming in the setup process.
Maybe that’s it. I untick all of the boxes during install and use a local account instead of a Microsoft account.
This is a great summary. Terminal and WSL2 were really nice additions to all of that other cool shit like hyper-v, sandbox, etc. But, I still rather just use Proxmox/Linux...