This shit is absolutely atrocious and shows how far we’ve fallen.
Microsoft almost got broken up as a company over simply BUNDLING a browser. Now they’re actively hijacking other installs to put big warnings up and redirecting to theirs. It’s absolutely bonkers this is allowed.
Is this a real screenshot or just an out of context meme? I’ve never seen this prompt when installing other browsers on any of my PCs running Windows 10 over the last 7+ years of it being out.
Edit: It seems to be real. That is craziness. I also realized that all my licenses are Professional or Enterprise (those only on my work-issued devices), so I’m assuming that’s why I’ve never seen it. Like the other comment pointed out, they had their feet put to the fire over simply bundling Internet Explorer in the late 90s, yet nowadays they get away with this shit.
Yes I’ve seen it before. Once Microsoft even updated their virus definitions to auto-delete the chrome installer when downloaded. Thankfully they reversed that one pretty quickly, but I had to completely disable all Windows virus protection to install chrome for a relative.
I wondered why Chrome wasn’t “Microsoft verified“ anyway. Do they mean it’s not from their store?
Found someone’s screenshot in response to “How to install apps that are not Microsoft-verified”:
So I’m guessing they’re punishing those who don’t distribute through their store. (Where I wouldn’t be surprised they offered fewer features)
Many new PCs (generally the cheaper priced ones) come in S mode now, where you can only install Microsoft store apps. You can turn this off to allow regular PC programs too, but they require you to set up the Microsoft store before you can disable it.
If you’re trying to set up a new PC without a Microsoft account (which is getting increasingly hard), you can’t disable S mode. There was a workaround that involved booting into recovery mode and running some commands/registry edits, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft has blocked that too by now.
This is also the biggest reason Valve supports Linux and ChromeOS. Microsoft really wants full control over what software people can use on Windows, and Valve is worried about getting pushed off the platform.
And they actually wonder why tech literate people shit all over them every chance they get. This is some trash human behavior.
It’d be like if you sprayed fart spray all over your neighbors table at a flea market because they also have a few pokemon cards for sale but they’re in better condition than yours.
“Rather than improve myself I’m going to block others from doing better than me” is the corporate worlds motto ATM. Race to the bottom
Depending on your security settings you do get the prompt for the windows app store thing when you install programs outside of it…
But yeah this looks fake
I can confirm it’s not. I always get this warning whenever I do a fresh install of Windows 10 and try to install Chrome.
Ive given Edge a shot before and it was pretty decent. Sucks for M$ this is how they behave when people don’t chose them.
When they first went to chromium it was decent. Then every update since they add more bloatware and popups saying to add their tracker so you can get discounts and shit.
Uninstalled windows and swapped to Firefox. Now I don’t deal with any of that
I tried edge when it first came out. It didn’t support add-ons and had no adblock. I didn’t try it for very long. If they have since added that support, good for them… it should have blocked ads from the start of development.
They replaced the original Edge with an Edge/Microsoft branded Chromium fork a few years ago, so it supports all addons Chrome does.
Fuck Chrome
All my homies use Firefox and LibreWolf
Google payed billions in fines for making chrome default on android and now has to ask which browser you want when you setup a device.
Microsoft on the other hand actively hinders the installation of other browsers. This is a huge lawsuit just waiting there.
Microsoft.
MICROSOFT.
NOBODY IS GOING TO LISTEN TO YOUR “HEY MAYBE THIS IS A VIRUS” WARNING IF YOU HAVE TO CLICK THROUGH IT TO INSTALL CHROME.
My memory might be weak on this topic but Microsoft has already went through a lawsuit due to not allowing people to use other browsers. And that case made Bill Gates lose money.
Might be this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.?wprov=sfla1
Also, not trying to be smart or anything but Microsoft isn’t run by Bill Gates anymore. All these shady things started happening after he left. I think he allowed the Company to buy him out because he was getting too old. I’m not really sure on why he did/allowed that.
All these shady things started happening after he left.
Not really, they have a history of this kind of thing. They just calmed down a little between roughly 2005 and 2015.
The big antitrust case when they killed Netscape was in 1998. Bill Gate’s deposition from that case is kind of interesting to watch as a historical document. It’s on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90W55zhFBOuZuhgxBsjpgDy0o3ll1PSz
In that lawsuit their “Embrace Extend Extinguish” strategy in which they tried to smother open standards became public too.
They tried with Java and their J++ language too, but failed luckily. And lost a lawsuit against Sun on the way.
Plenty of shady monopolistic things happened under Gates as well. The original Explorer antitrust lawsuit dates from the late 90s, the ACPI debacle, etc.
Creepy. 😭
I mean it’s always been the modus operandi at Micro$oft from day one when they fucked over the guy who wrote DOS.
I know. I am a Linux enthusiast myself. After Sadya got in the position, Microsoft suddenly became to get interested in Linux, contributing to projects and even funding them. But to this day, I still do not trust them.
Never trust a Big Data Partner. 🤣
Unfortunately Linux has tons of them nowadays. Google, Amazon, Microsoft are three of them that I know. And not just in kernel, but they also contribute in other projects in the ecosystem.
These lawsuits take a long time and cost a fraction of what it would cost them to not do that.
Na it’s a slap in the wrist. by the way there’s more lawsuits and several examples that don’t have lawsuits
I remember this because Bill Gates was literally the richest person at the time but lost his position due to lawsuits like this.
the chad “sudo apt install firefox” vs the virgin “noo dont install a different browser,use edge”
“it’s already installed”
Ah damn, it’s the Ubuntu snap version.
sudo apt install firefox-esr
The chad Windows equivalent:
winget install Mozilla.Firefox(Or something like that. If in doubt,
winget search firefoxand use the ID. UseCtrl+InsertandShift+Insertto copy and paste it incmdor a different terminal)sudo pacman -Syu firefox, btw
Y’all are installing malware to replace malware.
Firefox all the way!
To be fair, non-malware OSs come with Firefox preinstalled.
Spyware
Sadly Firefox is also slowly becoming malware.
Bro… the demonification of non-manifacturer software has GOT to stop. On huawei its even worse, enabling third party installing forces you thru like three screens and u have to wait 10 FKN SECONDS before u can click thru each…
The very, VERY WORST thing about macOS Sequoia is how cunty they’ve become over software downloaded from the internet.
Downloaded an update for Freetube yesterday. Dragged it into the Apps folder, tried to open it.
“Nah bruv. Put it in the bin” said macOS. No other options. Ignore, or trash it.
I’m a canny user, so I know that I now have to open the Security settings and click a button to say I’m happy to use the app.
Return to the app to open it.
“Nah bruv. Put it in the bin. Or open it if you’re stupid. Whatever”
Only then will it open.
Some software, usually stuff downloaded from GitHub, requires me to run a command in Terminal before it’ll run. Tried to install Librewolf via Brew the other day, and had to use Terminal to remove and replace the signature because Finder couldn’t even recognise it as a usable app.
Stupid shit.
Don’t forget that macOS literally contacts Apple server for every binary you execute. When there was an issue with those servers, only Apple software was launchable.
You’re telling me, maaan— they’ve been so up in their feelings lately. I bought a Mac OS X (old as fuck, I know) from some guy on Facebook and when I got home I reset it and set it up. Then Mac like —you can’t update this Model because *. Like— bruh… You won’t let me update this dinosaur to 2019? They have the ability because it is within its compatibility but they just don’t do it. It’ll start “Installing…” then it never starts or finishes. It just wastes my Internet running forever moving files back and forth forever then says “Update not allows for Mac OS X” like —WHAT THE FUCK?! How you going to act like I can update, then just give an error after a billion years wasting my internet then be like “Update not supported” or some shit? 🤦♂️ All these companies are freaking stupid.
If you’re trying to install a newer version of macOS than your Mac will allow, then Opencore Legacy Patcher is your friend.
Thank you so much for that! I’ll try it as soon as possible. I’m stuck on, I think it’s the MacOS X 10.1.
It seems like it’s still possible to disable Gatekeeper on macOS 15: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255759797
I haven’t tried it though. It’s so rare that I want to run something unsigned, I prefer leaving it enabled and then allowing whatever it is I want to run.
You seem like a good dude so i woukdnt wanna poke fun at your choices, but why even use macos😭 is linux on mac not usable enough yet or do u just use mac cus u happen to have one
I’ve used Macs since 2007, when Apple weren’t quite so shitty, and macOS wasn’t so irritating. I’d only ever used Windows until that point, so Linux wasn’t anywhere on my radar.
Linux on Intel Macs is solid. I have Mint on my old 2011 MacBook. Linux on M-series Macs is still, by all accounts, a work in progress. I’ve dipped my toes into Asahi, but I’d not really fucked with Linux at that point so got a bit overwhelmed and couldn’t work out whether the issues I was having were because of Linux in general, or because Asahi was still being smoothed out and optimised. But now I’m quite a bit more familiar with Linux, and have just been given an M1 mini so I’m going to dig back into it. If that works out for me, I’m going to do the same on my M2 MacBook.
Fair enough, the fact people go so far to make the thing run on such a wide variety of hardware is incredible to me. Shoutout to the community fr
Huawei
Well there’s yer problem
Should be installing Firefox anyway, otherwise why don’t you just use Edge, it’s also Chromium…
Only options available to me on the work computer are Chrome and Edge. FWIW, I use Edge, but still I understand the choice between the two.
I use Firefox, even on iOS where it’s kinda bad, but I will defend Edge and say that I hate these memes of chrome being better than edge when that has not been the case for a very long time. When edge switched to chromium, it was just straight up better and lighter than chrome, I would even argue that it was good before going chromium too, but was just missing a lot of popular addons.
Dude, who even cares if it’s better? Why would you ever willingly give Microsoft even 1% of a chance to yet again gain some market share that they can abuse?
Fuck Edge, and fuck Chromium, too. Librewolf or Firefox, accept no lesser browsers.
It just seems like Microsoft desperately trying to get anyone to use Edge lol
I wouldn’t be surprised if you clicked “install anyway” and another warning popped up that said “Please just use Edge? Just try it for a little bit? Pretty please? We’ll be your best friend if you do”
IIRC, people have previously reported that Windows 11(?) switched their default browser back to Edge after installing an update.
That’s been going on since 10 already at least.
I hate them both and use neither. But probably I would use edge over chrome if I had to choose
They’re the same, and one requires you to jump though hoops to install. OTOH Edge has rounded corners on the viewport which is weird as shit. And that dumb side bar…
Well send Balmer to your house with a box of cookies! (Disclaimer: box may be empty depending on length of trip)
ballmer retired from microsoft over ten years ago.
Tim Microsoft?
Yeah, I didn’t bother looking up the current guy’s name because Balmer is funnier.
Microsoft knows this has so much power with a certain computer user demographic and I hate it so much. It was the worst, having to teach people to install certain useful software while also directing them to override big scary warnings…“But just this time! Don’t do it all the time!”
It made me look shady, it made the software look shady, for no good reason.
…And you just know, sadly they’re the same kind of users that will probably repeat that pattern with a suspicious .exe they got in an email.
Microsoft’s malware is just protecting you.
Game recognises game.
Stop, I can only switch to Linux so much
Can’t decide what’s a better meme, this or installing Chrome over Edge 🤔🤔🤔
Didn’t Microsoft just recently get a law suit for such practices or am I mixing it up with Google (who now can’t pay Mozilla anymore to ship their browser with google as the default search engine)?
