There’s a word for software that does actions without the user’s permission or knowledge.
That word is MALWARE
Every piece of software does things without your permission or knowledge.
If it does what you wanted it to when you installed it, it’s doing things with your permission. If what it was going to do was clearly and correctly explained during the download or install process, it’s doing things with your knowledge.
It’s like a motor vehicle. You don’t need to know how an internal combustion engine works to be able to give informed consent about driving it, but if it starts rolling away after you park it, you’re going to either get it fixed or get a new car.
You understand and give explicit permission for every piece of the kernel?
Do you trust Microsoft? If you do I might suggest we find you a nice quiet padded room.
Imagine someone attempted to (or even succeeded in) pushing malicious (or even just poor, “bad” code into the kernel. What do you suppose would happen? Oh wait we don’t have to imagine. Some people tried, and got admonished publicly.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22410164/linux-kernel-university-of-minnesota-banned-open-sourceWho said anything about trusting Microsoft? No piece of software is going to ask you for permission for every single operation it does. Malware is more than just that.
This is beyond pedantic. You and everybody else knows exactly what they meant.
If we’re going to call something malware we better be damn sure we understand the definitions of it.
Good news! The original comment provides that!
software that does actions without the user’s permission or knowledge
And yet still all software does that!
You’re delusional. Have a nice day though.
Delusional for understanding that all software does things without your explicit permission to do them? Lol ok
I’d be shocked if Edge installed itself and take over Firefox data in my linux install. Impressed, but also very shocked.
Imagine using Chrome in 2024.
I have found a lot of websites over the last few months acting up if I’m using Firefox.
I have chrome for work and if I switch they work flawlessly. It’s small things like menus not expanding or elements not loading.
There’s a push on unifying browsers.
I’ve been Firefox and duckduckgo for years and it’s getting a bit annoying. Obviously the trade off is worth it I do not want the big tech products but finding good alternatives is getting hard.
DDG has gone downhill in recent years.
Everyone says “problems with websites in Firefox!”
Nobody has examples
I was about to say this. I never find any websites that doesnt work with Firefox so I’m genuinely curious.
I bet it’s their ad blocker, or they have set their Firefox settings to the privacy level that says “this will break some web sites”.
I can’t test that but that’s the closest thing to proof so far!
I use Firefox on Linux and FreeBSD for my daily driver.
I was not able to book flights on Thai airways website 6 months ago until I loaded it in chrome/chromium instead.
It’s really really rare imo but that’s one example in recent history.
That sounds more like an issue with them using some proprietary browser bullshit than a problem with Firefox.
But what, practically, is the difference? If more and more websites use shit that only works in Chrome or Chromium based browsers, the effect is the same. The web doesn’t work as well for Firefox users.
One is a browser following web standards and the other is a shitty company adding non-standards based development features intended to lock users into there browsers.
It was shitty when Microsoft did the non-standard features to lock in with Internet Exporer and it is shitty that Chrome does it now.
100% this. People loose the wood for the trees with these kinds of things. If something doesn’t work in one browser but does in another then 99% of people are not technical enough to understand or care why not. They just know it doesn’t work. That makes it a problem for Firefox. Whether it’s by their own making or not.
Can you prove that right now? I can’t test that without a link
Oh, and I can’t seem to get tiktok videos to play on Firefox on Android? Not a major issue, but my sister keeps sending them to me in particular for some reason, so…
I’ve always had TikTok blocked so I maybe o idea about that
Also a privacy browser not allowing the least private thing ever? Colour me shocked
I mean, yeah. I’m none too bothered by that one, but it’s still an example.
Wow, that random news article I hit 16 days ago where the page kept flickering and reloading, but didn’t do that when I copied the URL into Brave… I really should’ve recorded that domain so I could defend myself against some stranger online!
Sarcasm aside, I don’t think it’s generally the major websites that you bump into this with, however, there are many edge cases that occur for plenty of folks, whether they’re in college and have to use that “secure browser” extension that only supports Chrome, or the fact that some websites, especially in business, that simply refuse to support browser and will prevent access otherwise.
I’m a Firefox user, so this isn’t to say that Chromium is the way by any means, but hopefully to shine a little light on the fact that we’re all on different parts of the web with different experiences, questioning their experiences so that you can hopefully find an extension or something to pin the blame them does not absolve them of their experience, just a show of elitism.
Firefox HAS gotten much better, but unfortunately, Capitalism’s gonna Capitalism
Oh noooo a random shit news site doesn’t load good cuz they don’t do web design good
Still no examples
why are you being so abrasive?
Of course web sites not working on firefox is an error on the web sites part, was that even in question?
Because I’ve seen this over and over again and it’s always the same. Nobody has replied with a single URL, just vague anecdotes.
MS Teams. Works for chat, but not for receiving audio/video calls/meetings.
I can think of 2 websites that didn’t work right over the past 10 Yeats. Both were credit card payment sites and just had weird issues like couldn’t hit the submit button. I figured it out and just used edge for them. I never found any site that I use often that has issues yet.
“I can think of”
no proof
No personal stuff obviously but nobody actually has proof
Samsung bill pay which is a tdbank site and joss and main furniture credit payment site… didn’t think I had to list them to be taken seriously. Plus I am for Firefox, it’s all I have used for 15 years now.
It happens rarely to me, and when it does 99/100 its the adblocker blocking something it shouldnt.
Not a very big website, but the service my therapist uses for teletherapy doesn’t support anything outside of chromium.
try switching your user agent. it’ll likely work fine.
red medical will act up if you don’t use a chromium browser.
I don’t want you to post personal stuff but that’s still just “it doesn’t work” with no proof
Well, it’s a specific example, even if I didn’t give any way to test it. Better than just saying “some websites don’t work” since I’m actually indicating the particular one that doesn’t.
I guess your two options are to trust that I’m acting in good faith when I say it or to assume I might not be and disregard the example. Either way doesn’t affect me much; I’ve already submitted tickets to the service asking for Firefox support, so with any luck it won’t even be an issue for too long.
After a ton of “Firefox sucks because a website doesn’t work but I won’t tell you which one”
I don’t care to think anyone saying they is saying it in good faith
No one said Firefox sucks
They’re saying the websites suck, obviously it’s not Firefox fault if the webdev behind the site is a dumbass/actively works against Firefox.
I just gave you an example of menus not expanding.
I’m not dogging Firefox I’m saying there is a consorted effort made to reduce it’s usefulness.
Okay where
That’s not proof
Create any website with an element that is fixed on the bottom of the page and try to move the page in the mobile Firefox then.
DDG has gone downhill in recent years.
Not as much as Google though, so I’ve been feeling like it’s been getting better and better, but it’s just a comparative feeling.
To me it’s worrying because it is where Google was when I jumped ship for DDG.
I am getting tailored results that I do not want. Everything I search even with location off gives me local to very local responses.
If I open a link and then go back to the results page all the results have changed order.
Makes sense. I can’t blame you for taking that position. I think we need a paid search engine: if you’re not paying you’re the product, after all.
Sometimes those websites lied that they don’t support Firefox. For example, google meet didn’t support background blur on Firefox? Change the user agent to chrome and it suddenly worked!
As for simple stuff such as menu or elements not loading, it’s usually the dev copy pasted outdated code/css that uses WebKit/Bink-specific prefix even though Firefox already support them if they removed the prefix. Nothing we can do about that except pestering the dev to fix it or overriding it yourself using some css overrides extension.
Firefox + uBlock Origin and I have no issues with any websites.
Which ones are you having issues with and what is happening?
You have to complain if your work does chrome specific stuff.
I use brave search, and it works great!
Saying that you use Brave seems to result in instant downvotes in lemmy. Kinda makes sense given the fediverse demographic simply don’t align with Brave’s CEO.
Also, mentioning Kagi often results in replies accusing ads and shilling because Kagi is a paid search engine (with free trial), but it worth checking nonetheless. They reached 20k paying users recently, not bad for a new paid search engine. The fact they’re able to convince 20,000 people to pay for search engine means the search result is pretty good.
Oh, I also dislike the CEO, but the search engine is good enough that I can’t find a privacy-friendly alternative Edit: I am also broke as fuck so I can’t afford to pay for a search engine
Brave may be persona non Grata around here, but props to them for actually crawling the web. Just about every other private search engine uses APIs from Google/Bing or scrapes/proxies results from other search engines.
Yeah exactly, and its the only private search engine that actually gives me good results for tech troubleshooting, although if another private browser gets equivalent results I’m jumping ship immediately
DDG has gone downhill in recent years.
I haven’t noticed this at all.
I’ve been a frequent DDG g! bang user over the years, but now almost never have to go it. Granted I use kagi for most searches now, but my phone still defaults to DDG, and I’ve noticed that it works just fine.
Google and therefore kagi are still better for stackoverflow indexing I believe, at least that’s how I remember it
What is DDG g! Bang?
Yeah it is really odd I can’t understand why it does it because the initial reason I moved to DDG was because of their big marketing push on not putting results or users into bubbles.
Bangs is a cool DDG feature that redirects your query to another search engine in this case !g is Google
Does it filter out the shite?
There is no modification, it just redirects you to the site
Does it prevent Google from getting your info or something so or what is the benefit in this over using Google?
Honestly, I’ve tried switching but can’t find a browser that works as well. I found Kiwi Browser on Android which is still chromium based but at least it’s something, but still need to use Chrome from time to time as websites won’t work on Kiwi.
Firefox just doesn’t perform as well comparatively, lacks features and then as you go down the list of alternatives it gets worse and worse.
So not from lack of trying, but at least for me it is the best browser particularly if you can install enough extensions to remove a lot of garbage.
Not to sound snarky, but what are you missing from Firefox that chrome does?
For some reason, my Firefox with ublock removes all of the mobile ads from pages I visit. I miss finding it about all of the hot singles in my area.
On PC, Group tabs for me. I find it extremely useful for efficiency. There’s nothing equivalent on Firefox even with extensions.
I could just give up on them admittedly but once you get used to something it’s hard to change and I fucking hate having too many tabs open.
On Android, the performance was just worse than chromium based browsers. Not sure if it was something wrong with my settings, but I’m talking like at least 1-2 second lag differences in loading a basic Web page. Makes it unusable for me.
Have you tried Simple Tab Groups? It adds a drop-down menu that allows you to create separate environments for different uses. This was one of those things that I also couldn’t live without, and somebody turned me onto this extension. It’s even Firefox recommended.
Yeah it doesn’t do what I want unfortunately. I tried a few extensions but they couldn’t replicate it well enough.
Thanks though!
They won’t answer, because they can’t answer.
For me, I’ve noticed a few websites that complain that firefox “is an out of date browser, you should use something more modern”. My bank’s website does that, but still works fine as far as I’ve been able to tell.
I have a couple of websites that I go to that do not like working in Firefox but work just fine in Chromium browsers.
The worst offender is Microsoft admin 365. It will open, and it will work, but if you edit a user and save your edits you can’t click on the back button inside of the window that has popped up for editing and instead you have to close the entire section and reopen it to go back to the main screen.
Aside from that, for netdocs you have to open the local host port of your netdocs app in firefox (https://localhost:(port number)) and approve to bypass the security restrictions in order for netdocs to work.
There are a handful of another apps with similar issues and most of them are from software vendors that I have to use for work.
There’s one that I can’t mention because it would dox me that if you don’t use it in Chrome it simply does not work because the JavaScript that they use for generating the app checks to see if you are in a Chrome browser and straight up fails if the user agent does not return Chrome.
I can work around that for myself but I can’t work around that for all 17,000 of our employees, and since the entire business runs on this application then we are locked in.
Laughs in Firefox.
Microsoft Edge is actually good, so I sure hope the team building it isn’t about to resort to more tricks to get Chrome users to use it.
Edge is good compared to IE which was a dumpster fire, and arguably about as bad as Chrome. Both are privacy nightmares and desire nothing more than to harvest your data for ad companies. I trust Google a hair more than I do Microsoft. I don’t use Chrome. That should tell you something.
Nonsense, Edge is a top tier Chromium browser. Vivaldi is another good Chromium option although I no longer use it. Chrome while a decent browser however is irrelevant in my eyes on any W10/W11 since Edge is part of OS.
Every day I use both Edge (only at work) and Firefox (home and work), both have pros and cons. I tried to switch from Firefox to Vivaldi less than 1 year ago, but there are some thing in Chromium based browsers that I did not like when compared to Firefox. Bookmark management was a big one (no tags).
I disagree. Chrome is a simple well designed browser that happens to be run by a company that tries to push things we don’t like, such as FLoC.
Edge is full of bloatware and dark patterns. You’re probably thinking of the early versions of Edge when none of that crap had been added yet… but trust me it’s a very different browser now. In fact it’s worse than IE ever was.
worse than IE ever was
This argument can be made for spying/telemetry, but I don’t think anything will compare to how bad the IE user experience was for years. It ran so slowly, and took forever to get features like tabbed internet browsing. It started to get more functional towards the end once it started losing market share, but that was after years of it being complete garbage while having absolute market dominance.
Meh. My work gives me the choice of Chrome and Edge. I decided to try edge to get access to bing chat last year, and I’ve found it to be a pleasant experience compared to chrome. It’s got some neat features, and the built in copilot AI can be handy. I haven’t missed chrome (or Google for that matter) in the year I’ve been using edge. It’s fine. Still use Firefox on my personal laptop and phone though.
My chief complaint is performance. Some of the saas we use has some complex renders and edge really struggles with it. Works perfect in Firefox though ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Microsoft is the fucking worst with their trick questions and constant nagging.
They do this because they want you to use Edge which steals search results from other search engines.
Sell your soul to Microsoft!
YES, please
not now
Linux and Firefox gang rise up.
I only use it in a VM and only for Visual Studio which is only for one class. It does nothing outside of that class
My main OS is Linux Mint
Why not just use vscodium?
For college so I can follow along with the textbook
But vscodium is exactly the same as VScode, just without the proprietary tracking from Microsoft.
Why do you need a VM for Visual Studio?
So that I can follow along with the textbook for college
I used to se in camp firefox, but ungoogled chromium just feels so much better now
Ungoogled chromium is worse than Firefox in term of features, no? Why use it instead of Firefox?
Because it has all the features I actually want and none of the ones I don’t need. Firefox also isn’t anywhere near as privacy respecting as people think. And lacks features that even ungoogled chromium has (like websql). I’m kind of surprised about the downvotes tbh. Hive mind much?
Because it has all the features I actually want and none of the ones I don’t need.
Can you elaborate more on those features? I can’t see see how ungoogled chromium is better than Firefox since it removes basic features such as sync.
As for engine-specific features such websql, I don’t think it’s matter at this point unless you need to use websites that only works on chrome on regular basis. For day-to-day browsing, those chrome-only apis only serves as another data point for analytics providers to do fingerprinting.
My opinion on using chrome-only apis is it’s harmful for the web because each website that only works on chromium engine bring the web closer and closer to browser monoculture, just like back then when ie6 dominated the web.
If you worry about Mozilla’s stance on privacy, there are also plenty of forks that provide “unmozilla’d” Firefox.
I’m kind of surprised about the downvotes tbh. Hive mind much?
I didn’t downvote you btw
I don’t need more than the basics, things like hardware acceleration and extension support, although websql and the likes are occasionally useful. I don’t sync, I don’t need pocket or a vpn, and mozilla telemetry has caused my laptop to almost be rate limited by my pihole before. Ungoogled chromium does exactly what I need it to do while feeling faster than firefox. Idk if it actually is, but sometimes feelings are enough. And with the market share of chromiums engine, I don’t think the potential fingerprinting of its features is statistically relevant.
There is a net effect in browsers and in rendering engines especially.
The more people use chrome engine (that is pretty much everyone except Firefox) the more web developers support only Chrome because… Cost/layoffs.
For this reason i make a point in using only FF (except for websites that already don’t work with Geko).
Monopolies are not good for anyone (especially with current Google attitude)
Saying “everyone except Firefox” is not accurate. Iceweasel, Pale Moon, Librewolf, etc, they all use the Gecko rendering engine. Are they a fraction of a blip in the ecosystem? Unfortunately, yes.
I kind of want to checkout Iceweasel off name alone.
I think I did once many years ago, and it looked like pretty much Firefox with a different theme. I’m assuming today it looks more like its own thing.
How to prevent this: don’t use Chrome.
In this case the problem is MS, they could (or already) do the same thing with Firefox.
So the real fix is not using Windows.
Even better tbh
Or Windows.
Or Edge.
Suprised pikachu face
A lot of us could just stop using that garbage OS.
Problem is there’s too much professional software that simply won’t run on Linux, things you spend all day in and even if you can get it to run in a sandbox the experience sucks (because it’s too resource intensive, otherwise it would get all SaaSy and force you into the cloud), like CAD software, 3D modeling tools, editing…
Monopolistic behavior is monopolistic behavior. MSFT needs a beatdown.
Sometimes the switch is surprisingly seamless, though. Autodesk Maya has an official Linux version, Blender is more than competitive now. For photo and video editing, Krita has become the better Photoshop for me and DaVinci Resolve has a native Linux version as well, with the additional benefit of letting me completely avoid Adobe. The ex-Allegorithmic tools also have Linux support and can be bought on Steam even.
On the other side, I haven’t had much success running Clip Studio Paint or Daz 3D and a VM is rather frustrating to use (the lag between pen and screen just feels weird).
photopea is also really similar to photoshop
99% of people don’t need this kind of software.
99%? Based on what data?
I made it up.
But realistically, how many people use something other than MS Office, Outlook and a browser?
Most.
(Also a made up statistic)
Use those professional softwares on a work PC/laptop, and don’t use it for anything personal. Use a separate device for your personal use.
It’s resource intensive stuff used for personal projects, CAD workloads benefit from more cores and more RAM so what you’re really saying is to have two top of the line machines running in parallel along with a KVM switch because you’re probably alternating between the two on your personal time. Too wasteful.
On the contrary, there is a lot of professional software that doesn’t run on Windows!
da Vinci resolve “works on linux”
If those are sarcasm quotes, I do all my video editing with DaVinci Resolve on Linux. It works beautifully, with the same amount of features it has on Windows. I’d even say it performs a little faster when huge files are involved. The only restriction I know of on Linux is that it’s picky about importing AVC (H.264) files, but FFV1 and all the mezzanine formats are supported, so I never needed it.
Yeah I know, but it’s a lot better than 15 years ago. I run professional grade, paid for and licensed, video editing software. Native Linux support.
I don’t need all that crazy excel wizard crap so I’m good with libreoffice.
There’s one game I haven’t attempted to run in a long time on Linux which may work just fine now for all I know, but the rest of my stuff works great these days.
I realize the alternatives to some programs are not always that great but they can sometimes get the job done decently enough
Better for sure, but still no meaningful/full-featured CAD tools on Linux. No “works on Linux” in quotes, nothing at all.
Yeah, I don’t do cad so I have no knowledge of that.
None of that stuff works with wine I guess?
Not really. I’ve gotten one to work but it was dogshit. Very complex software doing lots of geometric computation, very resource intensive and will leverage all the GPU you give it. If you can get it to “run” in wine, even if the driver compatibility is perfect which it’s not, every hiccup will be disruptive (like surfaces failing to render).
plus many USB devices need drivers, and god knows the OEM isn’t gonna make them. i.e. steering wheels, stream decks, some audio interfaces. i know there is a software for streamdecks, but i imagine it’s not even half of what it could do on windows.
At least all joysticks, mice and keyboards implement the HID standard and work effortlessly. The drivers they make you install on Windows are usually just tack-on products for things like configuring RGB profiles. Even professional audio interfaces and mixers (I’m currently running the SSL2+) just connect and work thanks to the USB audio standard (which transmits lossless 24-bit audio up to 192 kHz over USB).
If you’re referring to digital cameras or smart watches, yes, the former is a hit-and-miss and the latter… a total miss (Garmin Connect, I’m looking at you).
Not all Audio interfaces work. I use a GoXLR and I can’t get any output from Linux to my audio setup. Can’t read the microphone either.
Not all products work as easily as you say.
And that spyware of a browser, which is even easier.
From the article: ‘So I went to install the same Windows update on a laptop, which actually resulted in it failing and me having to do a system restore. Once the system restore…’
Who needs to continue reading the article before realizing the malware is Windows itself?
So either Linux has effortless, painless updates that never break, or Linux is malware.
Which one is it?
🥸one can argue that only most distros are malware under this definition
When everything is malware, nothing is.
The difference may be Windows forces to update, while i.e. Ubuntu has several older versions still working.
No it doesn’t, unless you have it set that way.
I love Linux but most complaints about Windows is just lack of user knowledge and getting mad that it doesn’t work like Linux.
Windows updates anyways after several restarts choosing not to. I guess it’s some kind of default setting that may be set off too.
What about importing tabs without consent? Is that also lack of user knowledge? Even when it was turned off in settings?
Who cares? Stop using Chrome.
Does the user have a gpo that enables the setting? That’s what it sounds like to me considering:
I haven’t been able to replicate the behavior on other PCs, but a number of X users replied to my post about this saying they have experienced the same thing in the past.
I’m also not clear if they are saying when they checked the setting was disabled, or if they’re saying it was enabled and they don’t recall setting it.
Of the 100s (possibly 1000s) of complaints I have about Windows, and Microsoft in general, some dude whose not sure how Edge imported settings is pretty far down on my list. Especially when the claim doesn’t come with a before after screenshot, or the ability to reproduce it.
If it is due to policy, Edge should show expected setting greyed out and display message along the lines “your organization is managing this setting”.
This sounds like some niche bug.
Right but they didn’t include a screenshot. To my hazy recollection it still shows you what the setting is even if it’s org managed. Their description isn’t exactly clear to me either:
I found a setting in Microsoft Edge that imports data from Google Chrome on each launch. “Always have access to your recent browsing data each time you browse on Microsoft Edge,” reads Microsoft’s description of the feature in Edge. This setting was disabled, and I had never been asked to turn it on.
The last line isn’t clear to me if it was disabled when they checked, or if they think is was disabled before they checked and when they checked they discovered it was enabled.
To your incredibly valid point, it very well could be a bug in the buggiest software known to man, but the fact that it isn’t reproducible means I really doubt that, “MiCrOsOfT wAnTs My ChRoMe TaBs.”
Nice. So user got auto switched from Google’s chromium to Microsoft’s chromium? That’s almost just a skin. More worried about it stealing Firefoxs’s tabs. Specially since I like my addons.
I would genuinely like to see Edge open all 848 tabs I have hoarded over 61 Chrome windows. I wonder if it could do it faster than Chrome manages. After rebooting, Chrome reopens, with all my tabs intact, in about 5 minutes. Provided a sanitary shutdown, that is. It takes more like 15 minutes for it to become responsive again after a (rare) crash.
Clearly I have lost control of my life.
And yes, before you get on my case, I am working on switching back to Firefox after using Chrome for the last decade. It just takes a long time to pare down all these tabs.
I wonder if it could do it faster than Chrome manages.
It would probably be the same time, Edge is just Microsoft Chrome after all.
Is there a benefit you see for having open tabs instead of bookmarks ready to open when needed?
Yes! Bookmarks are for things I’ll need to reference again and again in the coming years. I do keep a tightly-curated bookmark collection, I just don’t want it clogged up with a bunch of stuff I can’t foresee needing in the long term.
Tabs are for things I’m working on right now and don’t need bookmarking for the long term. And, for what it’s worth, most of the browser windows are custom-titled, so the windows themselves are a lot like bookmark folders, while the tabs are like temporary bookmarks.
Plus, the ability to search through tabs by hitting Ctrl+Shift+A means that it ends up being faster to search through my tabs than my bookmarks, without using the mouse. ex: Ctrl+Shift+A, Type needed page, up/down arrows if needed, then hit enter to move to the tab. With Ctrl+Shift+O, you don’t get the same ease of scrolling the results without tabbing through a bunch of junk first.
There are other reasons, including neurological ones surely, but those are my primary justifications.
Thank you!
I don’t understand the tab hoarder mentality. I can’t stand having too many tabs open it makes everyone disorganized and less useful.
My workflow is to open random links and searches in private tabs and then when I’m done with the search I just close the window and they’re all gone. I also split subsequt searches up into multiple private windows with a few tabs each so once I find what I need on one search I can close those and have the ones I’m still using ready. If there’s something I need to reference later I can move it over to the regular browser window or bookmark it.
Makes it easier to manage and doesn’t get out of hand that way.
You’re thinking about this too productively. I have forty tabs open because I’ll get to it later and every time I see my fifty tabs it’s a reminder to get stuff done. Then I close a few tabs, look at the other seventy and feel a sense of accomplishment!
It’s not because I have a semi-crippling executive function disorder that I pretend is just a curiosity about the world and a love for learning.
So awful that they have to steal sessions now.
