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Just use Firefox. Skip all this bullshit.
I came to say just this…
Why is the person downloading chrome in the first place. Firefox with ghostery and ublock origin is the way forward
Ghostery is redundant with total cookie protection
Is total cookie protection on Android? Is that the strict cookie setting?
As far as I’m aware it’s available on Android. It’s built into Enhanced Tracking Protection.
Awesome! That’s what I love about Firefox
Just use Linux and Firefox. Skip all this bullshit.
Friendly reminder that winget comes preinstalled on Windows 11 now.
winget install Mozilla.Firefox
You can install Firefox without even opening Edge!Btw, MS stole it.
Not exactly “stole”; the author was fine about the code being used in this way. What they were upset about is the lack of attribution and communication.
Isn’t this what licenses are for?
The license was Apache 2.0, and there was a tiny bit of attribution…just enough to cover the license requirements.
On Windows 10 too. I always just download from the website or store but I recently experienced the pretty fun of updating my apps over CLI for some reason
winget install Vivaldi
great solution. instead of Chrome or MS-Chrome, you install V-Chrome. Such a big difference! It really is a completely new theme for Chrome, isn’t it? Oh and they have a built-in adblocker which is far less capable than uBlock Origin but it is built-in! isn’t that great?
It’s not just skin. If it was just like any other Chromium based browser I wouldn’t bother but there isn’t any browser that has great features like Vivaldi which makes working with multiple tabs a breeze. And they don’t collect any telemetry either. Not even crash logs.
Plus, you can say pretty much that every browser with built-in adblock is worse than uBlock Origin… That’s not the point…
Functionally speaking, Vivaldi is more different than chrome than Firefox is.
Do you need an MS account?
Which is something you will need to do to not accept their privacy invasive terms and conditions that you have to accept before using the bloated data harvesting browser.
Dude, nothing is more suspicious than when a developer of a supposedly free app nags you to use their app. Why do they even want you to use Edge so badly? You’re never going to pay any money for it, this screams “give us your data, we want to sell it”.
I know, I was thinking that about Lemmy too. An issue or not we don’t yet know!
The neat part about the fediverse is that no matter how badly behaved a dev may be, there’ll be enough people to fix their behaviour and work around it. Look at mastodon, gorgon made a few questionable choices but glitch and all the other forks work around it and enough community servers exist that you could block mastodon.social and never miss a thing.
Just like with Lemmy there’s already kbin and countless other alternatives that all integrate with each other and enough community servers.
But with browsers that’s stopped being a thing a long time ago as the modern web is far too complex for small groups of indie devs to make their own browsers.
I can’t instantly jump to nefarious purposes. I mean I’m sure there’s nefarious purposes baked into it, but it’s reasonable that a marketing group knows the common reasons people leave their product. I’m guessing these listed options will actually trigger a popup/page that explains how to correct these exact things, like a FAQ. I’m not trying to be apologetic for MS, it’s just that the choice between edge and chrome is how you balance your data… Emissions? Both suck for that reason
It might be reasonable, but the question still stands: why does Microsoft put so much effort into trying to convince people to use Edge? The purpose of Edge is to have a preinstalled browser so that you can start working right away and don’t need to rely on 3rd party software to do basic tasks. Great, I get that. Every OS has their own preinstalled browser. But what I don’t get is, why do they actively try to stop you from using a different browser? Why do they put in so much effort to stop you from installing Chrome? Why do they not put in the same effort when you try to install Notepad++ or Paint.Net? What’s so special about a browser, compared to other standard software? I can think of anti-consumer reasons, like harvesting and selling your data. And yes, Chrome isn’t any better in that regard, but at least you make the choice yourself.
The answer is very simply advertising and affiliate revenue. If you use Chrome instead of Edge, Google gets the money from their ad engine, and Microsoft gets nothing unless you actively use Bing.
Microsoft Rewards gets you used to using Bing, which can then serve you ads on your searches instead of Google, earning money for Microsoft while giving you tiny fractions of a cent in points as a gamification strategy.
Edge has shopping features that work just like Rakuten or Capital One Shopping, where if you “earn” cash back, Microsoft gets a cut of the sale.
Honestly, it doesn’t bother me much. Edge has some pretty great features added in and it actually actively saves me some money and cuts me in where Google wouldn’t. Plus, it somehow is less of a memory hog and feels snappier than Chrome.
It’s a great browser and is a huge upgrade from Chrome from a performance perspective if you don’t value their extra features and just turn them off. Not sure how Google took Chromium and made it run like shit wit Chrome when I feel like there isn’t much extra underneath the hood.
Why downloading chrome when you are using edge? Download Firefox.
This is the way, or even better use LibreWolf
I need chrome to download firefox
And then use Firefox to download Lynx.
Nah. I’d rather download another browser (besides chrome of course)
Nearly all are chrome under the hood. What’s your alternative?
Firefox?
Well yeah but the comment I was responding to said, Firefox? Nah. I’m wondering what alternative to Firefox they would choose that is not chromium based.
*chromium, not Google Chrome
Such as…
webkit based thing?
switching to Linux + Firefox was the best thing ive ever did
I wish I could but I couldn’t get steam games to work on it.
Anything that’s steam deck certified should run flawlessly on Linux
What was you doing?
Other than enabling proton for all games in the settings, you shouldn’t have to do anything else to get steam games working.
Well, unless the game itself uses anti-cheat and the developer hasn’t enabled support for Linux, anyway.
Been running only Linux for 3 years and the only time I couldn’t get a game to work was trying to play some 15 year old RTS games cross platform with friends.
Based on the massive about of replys I feel like it was user error which would be highly likely. I will give it another try.
Which games, and how long ago did you try? Proton has come a long way in the last few years.
I tried for about 5 hrs on Pop OS. Should I be using something else?
havent touched windows in like 2 years and only once had a problem with games not running
I’ve just converted my last Windows PC, meaning my gaming desktop, to Linux, now I need to figure out how to run SOLIDWORKS on it … thinking a VM with GPU passthrough, but I’m a bit scared of the endeavor, despite having been a regular Linux user for I guess almost two decades.
I am using a 20gbps ssd with windows to go on it for my windows install so that when I plug in the ssd I boot to windows and when I restart and unplug I boot to linux, might be a solution for you?
I have kept windows on a separate ssd, but I find dual booting very disruptive, I don’t want to reboot to change between tasks, I’ve tried it already in the past and it sucks.
This is why I am unfortunately back on windows. I use a couple programs everyday, and unfortunately they do not run on Linux. And there is not a usable alternative either.
I was rebooting to windows, doing what I had to, and then rebooting again. But it is just so disruptive and not user friendly.
This ^
I’ve tried dual booting multiple times over the last few years, but always end up with windows as the primary because restarting my computer 6+ times a day got so disruptive. Until the windows only software moves I’m going to be on Windows.
Have you tried creating a windows VM inside of Linux?
I haven’t tried side loading windows to be fair. I was trying to move away completely from the windows environment.
Wine?
Eh good luck with that. SOLIDWORKS sits firmly at the GARBAGE rating on the Wine AppDB
SOLIDWORKS sounds like it works perfectly, or it is not living up to its name and you should get a refund.
Use RDP apps to the cloud or something.
What does SOLIDWORKS do?
CAD/CAM, I design 3d parts with it
Have you tried Lutris?
No, I haven’t. Would that make any difference? It’s not a game
Perhaps I have misunderstood, but I thought there were some cases where you could use it for applications that aren’t games.
But there’s a good possibility that I’m wrong.
What was the problem?
Are the games that you play reported to work in Linux? Check out ProtonDB and search for some games you care about. It’s possible they don’t work but based off user reports, most likely they’ll work okay out of the box and work well with some tinkering.
Thanks for this info I will have to check.
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Not seeing the option “Because fuck Microsoft”
In all seriousness tho, I use Firefox because it’s not reskinned Chrome.
“I prefer giving my data to Google”
“Firefox”
That would be the Cancel button, because anything else would be giving Microsoft free data.
“My reason is not listed”
“Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft”
Wow. If there ever was a reason to run, this is it.
To Firefox, sure. But if you’re on Windows and your preferred alternative is Chrome you really might as well stay with Edge and benefit from the integration into Microsoft’s ecosystem. Either way your data is being harvested.
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I remember that nightmare vividly, my old company was using that piece of absolute garbage up until 2017 or so, until all the critical crap that had it as a hard requirement was replaced.
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Adding a negative number is the same as subtracting a positive number.
I learned that in school.
remind me again how this isn’t anticompetitive?
This. Regulators are a joke
Edge can’t be anticompetitive if no one is using it
Imo asking why you leave is fine, many programs and extensions do it. The problem is that you never chose Edge but still have to use it to download another browser!
remember in the 90s or 00s when Microsoft had that antitrust case, and when you loaded up IE, it asked you what browser you wanted? We need that again, along with the antitrust case.
Why are you downloading chrome? You are supposed to download Firefox.
They are BASICALLY the same, only difference is whom they send your data to.
I’m not trying to defend Google here, but I use Edge every day for work, and it’s definitely not as good as Chrome or Firefox. Both Chrome and Edge are based on Chromium, so core functionality is the same, but Edge has no shortage of crappy annoying changes that make it frustrating to use.
preach brother, firefox always looking for ways to improve and offer you a chance to take control to do it your way.
The tragedy of edge is that it is technically a fantastic browser for windows but made by Microsoft.
Just thinking about the engineers that built such great memory management and security features that no other browser has just to have the marketing guy come in and say ‘yeah put these three layers of bloat on top oh and don’t forget to add the new backdoor we need…’ only to see that all their work is basically a tech meme…
I guess they must get home and cry while hugging their stock options and 300k/y contract the poor guys…
Those guys all got Balmered or something because Edge is now Chromium based.
The first sentence is the most fantastical example of circular reasoning I’ve ever seen!
Windows users really do all live in denial.
I’m actually alright with this, which seems to be an unpopular opinion. It seems totally sensible for them to ask why you don’t want to use Edge and would rather use Chrome.
If we want to prevent monopolies, we need healthy competition. If Microsoft improves Edge based on this user feedback to create an actually good product, then we all win. It means that if Firefox starts to pull the shit that Google is doing, we have a solid alternative.
Of course the manner in which Microsoft does this matters a lot, but the actual concept itself is a good one.
I’m actually alright with this, which seems to be an unpopular opinion. It seems totally sensible for them to ask why you don’t want to use Edge and would rather use Chrome.
I wish for Microsoft to mind their business when I download another browser. A web developer or someone excersizing their freedom of choice should not need to deal with petty and sorry looking surveys.
On the other hand, it is fine to ask how the browser experience is like but not this.
If we want to prevent monopolies, we need healthy competition. If Microsoft improves Edge based on this user feedback to create an actually good product, then we all win. It means that if Firefox starts to pull the shit that Google is doing, we have a solid alternative.
Unfortunately, this privacy invasive feature goes against this concept because it already made the browser worse. Also, Edge is chromium based. Mozilla, Apple’s Safari, and Chromium are the only true browser choices. Edge may bring some UX features, but they are data harvesting focused and not the core browser mechanisms. Microsoft is taking the work Google, and the chromium community puts into the code base and then running their own data harvesting UX on top. It is not a “alternative” browser choice, ever.
With Microsoft’s track record, this survey is not to improve the browser but to harvest more data to pinpoint your identity and behavior to sell to advertisers and data analysts. So the “manner” Microsoft does this is more of a reason for not wanting to have this.
Yeah that’s fair. If they just open a tab that says they’re sorry to see you go but would appreciate feedback, that’d be fine. Trying to block the download to say that, not cool at all
I think it’s a conflict of interest to leverage their position as an OS provider to do this. If they want feedback they can pay a market research firm like a normal company. God knows they have the money.
Its the browser that pops it up. Go download Firefox on Chrome and the same thing happens.
My problem with all of it is, they’ve built that shit into the browser. That means baked into the browser, it is watching what I’m doing and doing things on its own based on what I do.
It leaves the door open for them to bother me/phone home anytime I do something that isn’t in their interests. Are they going to add in similar things for me looking for windows, office, GitHub, or Xbox alternatives?
I feel like a lot of users won’t use edge because of spite. It’s intrusive and manipulative stuff like this which has angered a lot of people. Admittedly, this is one of the more harmless reactions.
Edge: "Nobody likes me. :( "
Microsoft: "Don’t worry. We will make them like you. >:] "
It’s none of Microsoft’s business if I’m using their web browser or not. They shouldn’t be blocking my use of another product just because I don’t like theirs.
But they’re not, you can still download and use any browser you like.
They are throwing unnecessary blockades (the article mentions 4 popups/warnings that Edge is just as good as Chrome).
I just went and downloaded chrome from Edge. Nothing got in my way. There was a notification in the corner suggesting I use edge, and then a banner at the top of the page after I downloaded it, but literally nothing got in my way.
Sure, it’s mildly annoying, but nothing got in my way or prevented me from getting Chrome.
And downloading firefox gave zero notifications or banners, it was just normal. Same with Safari.
I really don’t see what is preventing me from using other browsers here.
If they’re that crazy over their browser, how much other shit are you sending them you don’t know about?
The competition between Chrome and Edge is very shallow, they’re two slightly altered and heavily branded reskins of chromium, the real competition would be Firefox and it’s forks (mullvad, waterfox, librewolf) (and maybe webkit aka safari) Vs chromium but there’s no big corporation behind those (except safari, but it has many of the problems that big corpo chromium browsers have) , so they’re struggling a lot.
Microsoft is synonymous with “healthy competition!” /s
Edge collects your “ctrl-f” in-page searches. Fuck that with a cactus.
I assure you that no percent of the people this poll is aimed at make decisions because of that. They don’t even know about it.
Started daily driving Linux on a laptop 20 years ago. Moved my desktop to it by 2007. I haven’t ran Windows at home except in a VM (5+years ago) since around 2009. I’m much happier with the quirks of Linux than I am using Microsoft products.
At this point Linux desktops have maintained a more stable UI, quirks and all. The main thing is the freedom of choice. If I want a standard start menu/toolbar interface that just works, KDE. Classic lightweight look and feel? XFCE. Stripped down tiling WM? i3. Then there is also Gnome Shell if you’re into that sort of thing ;)
However I know for certain that next year I won’t be forced to use a UI that totally scraps functionality I’ve been used to for 20 years and changes everything for the sake of change.
MS changes things without giving the customer a choice, from the Ribbon interface that started in Office, to the tile based launcher of Windows 8 and now the awful start menu of 11.
I have a windows partition for my tax software and last year I managed to run it under Wine, so haven’t booted it in a year. Gaming under Linux is great now thanks to Steam/Proton!
Windows is just one big advertisement jfc and M$FT the audacity to charge $200 for it?! 🏴☠️
It is a marketing OS for sure.
15 years ago I used to set up Linux HPC systems and we did a windows one for a testing project. Back then it was sort of a head scratcher, but I could see some use in it. Now? I don’t know about that.
