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Just use Firefox. Skip all this bullshit.
I use Firefox because I want you use a web browser whose main focus is browsing the web.
Great, because it comes bundled with an extension to show you news article you may be interested in, occasional ads for their other paid services and will regularly nudge you into donating money so that it can be used for many purpose beside improving the browser.
This is interesting, maybe I changed a settingn years ago but when I start fire fix it just takes me to an empty window until I type something in. Doesn’t try to sell me anything
This is my biggest gripe about Firefox. It keeps trying to recommend “Search with Amazon” instead of google search and a bunch of small little ads baked into the home landing page.
Does it send all your data to china, ms, or google?
Seeing that neither Edge nor Chrome does either of those outside of regular browser operations, which also happens with Firefox, I’m not sure how that’s relevant.
I really really want to believe in firefox but the corporations behind it are way too fishy.
The whole setup of mozilla foundation and mozilla coporation stinks. Mozilla asking for donations when the donation amount is barely 1 percent of their income.
That’s an odd complaint. If they didn’t ask for donations, donations would be a lower % of their income. How many donations do you need before you can ask for donations?
It’s not a matter of how many donation do you need, it’s a matter of why are you asking for donations in the first place. When half the donations barely cover the salary of the head honcho through shifting restricted cash between organizations, you have to have some confidence to prominently display “We exist to advance the interests of people who use the internet — not profit for shareholders.” on your summary.
So dont donate?
Mozilla used to be much smaller and did rely on some form of donations to continue development. That may not be the case today, but the option is still there for those who’d like to
If a corporations earns halve a billion. Does it really need donations?
The whole concept of a parent company owning the foundation is fishy. Its just as strange that firefox seems to be like by privacy people when the owners are as instranparent as mozilla.
Firefox is open source. Check it out for yourself or find a fork that works better for you.
The whole concept of a parent company owning the foundation is fishy.
The non-profit foundation is the parent company. It has some taxable subsidiaries that, among other things, handle certain revenue-generating business deals.
You say that like it is any better.
A non-profit that owns a for-profit company is very well not realy non-profit. Just because all their profit is made by one of their subsidaries? And yet mozilla stand itself on some kind of moral highground.
A non-profit that owns a for-profit company is very well not realy non-profit.
All of the profit of the subsidiary goes to the nonprofit parent, in furtherance of its nonprofit mission. The subsidiary doesn’t exist to make anybody rich but just to earn (taxable) income for the parent.
Earning and profiting are two very different things.
I really really want to believe in firefox but the corporations behind it are way too fishy.
You’re right. Let’s continue using browsers made by Google or Microsoft instead. No fishiness there at all!
Use LibreWolf then.
isnt Google watching you all the time not fishy as fuck for you??
I could rail against Mozilla’s management for hours, but if they’re bad enough for you to write off the browser, Microsoft and Google must be radioactive.
I guess you can still use Arachne.
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
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.
Do you need an MS account?
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.
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 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.
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.
Why downloading chrome when you are using edge? Download Firefox.
I need chrome to download firefox
And then use Firefox to download Lynx.
This is the way, or even better use LibreWolf
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?
I don’t use Edge BECAUSE they keep begging and throwing ads at me for it. It’s off putting, desperate and exactly what I don’t want.
I don’t use it because the Edge splash screen is chokka ads and news stories I don’t want.
I don’t use Edge because I find Bing annoying, and prefer duck duck go and google in that order, and I’m sick of constantly being nagged to use shit I don’t want.
Microsoft get it in your head, you are an operating system. Your job is to Operate MY system. Do that well. And by all means build more software, make it optional and installable by choice. If it’s good and works for me and not for you I will use it.
I don’t use Chrome either. It no longer works for me. It now works for Google first.
Ive recently downgraded Firefox from browser number 1 to number 2. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not the best.
Currently I’m enjoying Opera because it feels fresh and zippy and works for me , but I’m not loyal. Edge if you do good, maybe I will use you too. But stop your pathetic shit.
I used Edge since the beginning, until they decided to fill it with bloat. It’s getting worse than Chrome. Now I’m using Firefox that is still a browser instead of an application trying to replace all applications.
This is basically all proprietary software 🙃.
It serves the company first and foremost. The user’s needs are an afterthought.
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Late reply, sorry just going though my messages here. But I get all the Linux love, however I assume you’re a developer or a writer. Linux is incredibly niche and basically a non option for a vast load of industries.
Im a professional video editor and animator. Adobe is my bread and butter. I can’t use another option realistically either as it mostly doesn’t exist or I have to send out my projects to other creators and need to be able to talk to other PCs.
Linux doesn’t support Adobe, it doesn’t support about 80% of my other creative softwares, it won’t play nice. Windows, for my use case runs like a dream.
Until Linux gets broader adoption of actual pro level applications for the film industry (and many others), it will always be a niche OS for coders and web devs sadly. I’d sooner roll back to windows XP than use Linux.
Microsoft is a cloud provider these days, Windows doesn’t make enough money, that’s why they are desperate to monetise already paying customers.
Azure/entra or whatever the fuck they call it this week is where the real money comes from
I share the same sentiment. The push of having Bing crap all over the place with the inability to make the browser more vanilla is just a turn off for me. As a former and technically current Chrome user, I have found the overall user interface to be pleasant and easy to use. At work, Chrome is the preferred browser so I continue to use it there but for personal use, I moved to Firefox. It’s definitely taken an adjustment to get used to a few small differences but I haven’t hit anything that breaks my experience to need to go back to Chrome yet after a few months on Firefox. The ability to customize Firefox to the level of detail that’s possible is pretty impressive. While I don’t go crazy with customizations because I feel it potentially adds to future tech debt I don’t want to deal with as things change in Firefox, I like having the option.
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.
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.
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.
What does SOLIDWORKS do?
CAD/CAM, I design 3d parts with it
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.
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.
That’s what MS would love to be the reason. Integration with the ecosystem. I still remember the nightmare IE6 was.
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.
Indeed. I did web development at the time and I distinctly remember nightmares of doing things by the book and then having to spend 30% more time to make the whole thing work on IE. Sometimes you had to address IE6 and 7 separately. No amount of Microsoft PR these days can’t save them from hatred I have accumulated back then.
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.
“Didn’t you lose a lawsuit over this in the 90s?”
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.
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.
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!
