@kde
I remember decades ago when a US court convicted Microsoft to seperate their browser from windows. The court wrote the verdict that Microsoft ilegally tried to prevent competion . Since Microsoft lost it shouldn't be difficult to file the next suit . @kde
During the Clinton era Microsoft was a hair's breadth away from being broken apart for all its anti-competitive monopolistic shenanigans -- including the browser war thing that you mention.
But then Bush Junior got into power (I resist using the words "was elected") and he swept all that away.
As I recall:
Microsoft Windows used to have good online help, circa 1991-1994 (Windows 3.1).
It was based on the Rich Text Format (RTF).
Then Microsoft added a web browser, and called it Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer really wasn't very good for exploring the internet, apparently because its development had been rushed and it didn't display some things like other browsers would.
Then Microsoft argued in court that its web browser was an integral part of Windows, which Windows could not work without.
Then the judge removed the web browser from his own Windows-based computer and experienced no problems.
Then Microsoft changed its online help to HTML and made us use its web browser to access it.
Oh, hey, I already did that! I'll have you know that once I did, my computer was no longer broken and my life changed— Colors became more vivid. Birdsong sounds sweeter. Food tastes better. My wife got even hotter. And I even discovered the secret to nuclear fusion!
Joking aside, ever since switching to Linux, my machine had never run better.
I have rescued several laptops that were struggling with Windows by installing Linux, and KDE Plasma is excellent these days. My 7 year old Dell XPS, which had become unusably slow under Windows 11, runs OpenSUSE Tumbleweed like it's a new machine.
@kde@kde
I love KDE so much. If I didn't rely on certain creative software for work, I'd ditch macOS in an instant.
And I think that's one of the reasons people just aren't able to switch over from Windows.
But hey, every other computer in the house that isn't a Mac runs Fedora KDE. 😃
I feel the same about KDE and Windows. I only keep Windows for some music production stuff and legacy .NET application maintenance. The rest of the time I avoid it for Linux and KDE, a far more pleasant experience.
@kde@kde Guess what, Firefox does the same thing (a refresh will reset your privacy settings and your default browser, all of which affect Mozilla’s revenue streams) but they’re a tad sneakier/cleverer(?) about it.
(Firefox is not private by default so getting you to reset your settings is how they try to influence you to return to their preferred configuration.)
@aral@kde@kde I wouldn't call that one deceptive design tbh, it says what it is doing on the box, resetting the browser to its default state. That includes search engines and privacy settings. Resetting settings to defaults is a completely normal feature that many apps have, and can be useful for fixing issues.
@aral@kde@kde I still dont consider this deceptive design. A prompt to reset is perfectly normal in programming, and it would be weird if they did not reset privacy settings with that. Resetting settings is resetting ALL settings. In fact, since resetting is often used for fixing issues you are having in your browser, resetting security settings is a good thing, since some of them can break sites.
Shh! You're messing up their bizarre soapbox interjection! They want everyone to switch back to chrome because they'd rather Google have access to your data instead
Apple had to learn the hard way: Under the DMA (thanks @EUCommission !) they were forced to give users a choice regarding the default search engine and browser on their systems.
What are we going to do about Microsoft misleading users?
It is still required, as Google had to do the same with Android, offering multiple search engines and presenting them to the user (at least that happened to me with my phone), but after doing it in Windows 8.1, Microsoft probably thought that it was enough compliance to keep "those nagging EU politicians" away.
I just found out that the agreement between Microsoft and the EU commission was only valid between 2009 and 2014. So MS is no longer obliged to make the change of the default browser easy.