Bing Image Search doesn't come into the picture I think. It's Bing Image of the Day. It's usually a generic picture like hidden waterfalls or some spot in Ireland or some cave city in Turkey. The lock screen adds a nice factoid too with each picture.
MS is just as capable of tracking as Google through the operating system. It's definitely branding and the only substance to it is that Google is the bad guy.
I often see this "both sides" argument and don't agree.
Google has Google Analytics, YouTube, libraries, or even fonts in almost every single webpage. They have billions of email users, which means all human email users can have a profile built about them without having any relationship with Google.
If that weren't enough, they have a near-monopoly on low-cost smartphone OS installs and are a massive chunk of all installs. Android is the most-used operating system.
The scope of Google's reach is breathtaking and inescapable.
Microsoft can only track via Windows, which is diminishingly important to consumers as Android wins the OS wars across platforms.
Also, unlike Google, Microsoft doesn't rely on AdTech and tracking for its survival. Google has no businesses that can replace tracking for them.
You're getting at exactly my point: Microsoft mostly charges its users. We are users and customers. Google has many services where the customers are advertisers, and we are the product.
Their actual paid services (G Suite aka Workspace, Google One, etc.) are not their bread and butter, so tracking us is an existential issue for them.
> Google is more consumer focused.
No, they're not! See above. I would call them one of the least consumer-focused companies out there. They don't follow through with products, and most of their products aren't even for consumers! They're for advertisers.
> Microsoft doesn't rely on AdTech and tracking for its survival.
Well, it advertises to you in its start menu and even has scummy ads in its built-in browser homepage. And it makes you log in with a Skype/Outlook/Windows account to install Windows 10 (maybe you can bypass it by avoiding wifi during installation? I didn't check).
Whether or not it needs these for its survival doesn't seem like much of a distinction, and possibly even more of a fuck-you that it doesn't need to do this for its survival. In fact, that it does this at the operating system level is worse to me than it being done when I use applications that work by talking to remote servers because you simply can't escape it. Meanwhile I can simply avoid Google products.
The HN discourse around Microsoft these days really just shows that Microsoft's attempts to buy back goodwill with things like VS Code must be working. Often we talk here as if Bing is some indie underdog.
> Whether or not it needs these for its survival doesn't seem like much of a distinction
Of course it is. If you let someone into your home, and one of them is going to die if they don't steal food from you, which person is more likely to steal food from you?
Google's business model literally does not allow it to be ethical.
> The HN discourse around Microsoft these days really just shows that Microsoft's attempts to buy back goodwill with things like VS Code must be working.
I see a lot of people with your point of view. Are you still influenced by your perceptions of Microsoft from the Ballmer and Gates days?
I was also in the industry at that time, and today's Microsoft is just a different company. It's leadership is different, most of the Baller/Gates people have left, and their policies are completely different.
VS Code is great, but Microsoft isn't doing anything to lock you into it. I don't use it at all. TypeScript and .NET are both IDE-agnostic, for example.
Companies aren't people. They don't have consistent cultures, personalities, or beliefs. Microsoft sucked in the past, but they're the only large tech company that I'm not actively angry at on a daily basis anymore.
The alternative explanation is that your view is simply an opinion, one that is not shared by others. Why must it be some kind of conspiracy theory of Microsoft trying to "buy" goodwill? They certainly have goodwill from our company. We're in biotech and the backwards-compat of Windows has saved us from re-buying new versions of very expensive LOB software. No other OS has the level of binary compatibility of Windows, and commercial software is not guaranteed to work across OS versions.
Windows as a dev box is a tiny niche use-case that is over-represented on HN.
>Meanwhile I can simply avoid Google products.
That maybe true for you, but for most people, its far easier to avoid Windows than Google.
I built my first PC recently and was surprised that you have to give Windows 10 a Skype/Outlook/Microsoft account just to initialize the OS installation, even if you want to switch it into "local login only" after installation is complete.
Bing's biggest advantage might be its willingness to power other search engines. DDG, Qwant, Ecosia, Swisscows and about a dozen other alternative search engines [0] are all powered by Bing.
The exceptions are Runnaroo (Google), Startpage (Google), Mojeek, and Gigablast (both use their own index).
Bad experience might have been caused by the Getty vs Google lawsuit. Getty wasn't happy that Google provided direct links to images, bypassing the need to open the webpage.
That's not a feature. That's a bribe from Microsoft to use Bing. It's not sustainable and even if it's a temporary gain for now, it's the wrong incentive to use an opposing search engine.
I am not suggesting only use google because google is awful, but Bing shouldnt buy users, it should actually be good to get them.
I'm in no way accusing you of killing any competition but that's the obvious goal a company like MS has, what do you think? If they had the lead in the search market they wouldn't offer to pay users to use their product.
And as far as getting back their their money, you would still not be parted with your cash, they'd just use/sell your data and cover their loss from paying you in the first place. If I were you I'd continue to get paid to use their service, it's the best deal you can get right now especially that Bing is not likely to overtake Google any time soon.
Oh the days of Bing Cash back bonuses. I remember when they were offering 25% off ebay purchases for going through bing. In fact, I bought several high ticket items including an engagement ring.
One thing they do much much less of is soft censorship. They don’t sanitize their suggested search phrases (as much).
So if a million people Bing for ‘Rob Snob is a carpenter ant eater’ and you type Rob Snob is ... it will dutifully suggest ‘a carpenter ant eater’ unlike google which soft censors such things.
I believe they don't show certain phrases in the suggested searches but don't disallow you to search and receive results for those phrases.
A great example of this would be that they stopped autosuggesting the word torrent at some point in time despite returning torrent results if you searched for it explicitly.
They stopped suggesting, but didn't stop indexing.
Right now, not really. But they already own GitHub, could easily acquire Stack Overflow, and probably then make a play at being the best developer focused search engine. Even then though, still probably no.
Years ago, I used Google’s search API (written by Nelson Minor). When they canceled the service, I started using Bing search APIs, and never looked back.
Rewards are good, I get about $10/mo. I also like Bing because it brings competition on Google. The results are good for nearly everything I search for.
The name Bing! sounds itself very porny. Sometimes I'm thinking that that they did a survey on the likability of the brand name unknowingly on a large pool of porn viewers and it naturally came up with Bing. Well, probably not but at least it is used for previewing porn
This is quite literally the first time I heard about Google rebranding G Suite—and I'm the super admin for my org. It seems very strange that I didn't get any emails or anything from Google about rebranding their product.
Edit: I just checked admin.google.com and there aren't any references to the new name or billing model, so I assume that they're still rolling it out beyond the marketing page at https://workspace.google.com.
Google search from Tor nodes generally gets CAPTCHA or rate-limit blocked regardless of whether you go through DDG or not. Google Web Search is effectively unusable via Tor.
I used to be able to do some interesting analysis through automated commandline searches on Google, looking at the estimated results count (see, e.g., https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...), with some ... very creative rate limiting.
Because of how Google restricts information, that analysis took about 10k searches (1 each per term per site), conducted over a week or so.
Last I looked into extending those analyses that route was utterly broken --- non-JS, plain-HTML results simply aren't produced, let alone rate-limiting and bot detection. Scripted search doesn't contribute to ad views. (Though neither do adblocked ones.)
DDG by contrast has its 'lite‘ search. Unfortunately for my research uses, no result set counts.
There may be APIs for these or other services, I've not yet looked into that.
Bing mobile app (Android) backend leaked 6.5TB of user data in September https://www.wizcase.com/blog/bing-leak-research/ "The exposed data includes: [...] Search Terms in clear text, excluding the ones entered in private mode [...] Location Coordinates"
Google got fined for just setting the default search engine on Android as Google. At least you could change it. Meanwhile, Windows 10 uses Bing in the search bar and there’s no option to change or disable it.
It’s pretty irritation when I search for a specific file that I know exists on my computer, but the search bar decides to search Bing for results instead.
The only way to disable it is to edit the registry (!), which I recommend doing because now results from my computer are delivered instantly instead of having to wait for Bing to load.
I’ve had to do it few times now on different machines as having this on has broken the normal search completely. If bing doesn’t respond one cannot do any local search, basically breaking it completely.
Windows has basically 2 reliable ways to launch programs. You can pin them somewhere, or you can launch Windows Explorer and navigate to the executable. Some other ways will work most of the time, but not always.
Now... I'd be happy if I find some KDE setting that makes search deterministic, because it's going on the same direction. Navigating the start menu still works all the time, but search is infuriatingly broken.
I don’t think when people say Windows is more user friendly than Linux they’re specifically thinking of bing search on Windows I think that it has to do with the ease of usage and availability of software and familiarity the average person has with it.
To your point though not being able to disable or replace Bing in this capacity isn’t something I’m okay with either. I also wish you could truly turn off telemetry without registry hacks and such
I've used Windows as my main operating system since I 3.11. Sure I dabbled with Debian and Gentoo when I first go into CS, and I've had a few runs trying to use Fedora and Ubuntu as my main systems, but when I eventually landed a job in a Microsoft rich environment and got bored with having to screw with settings I settled on windows and OS/X on my laptop. OS/X even became Windows for about a year when WSL came about and I happened to get a surface pro.
But these days I really can't fathom using Windows for anything but video games, and well, work because I have to. It's such a terrible user experience for me, and I wonder where it all went wrong, because I used to genuinely like it.
This is really interesting. I've felt the opposite.
I remember thinking about Windows a lot: how to get it to work better/faster, for example. I used Linux as my daily driver for 20 years.
Then I just got tired of having to Google obscure Linux issues, edit config files, and reboot all the time. I wanted something that just works.
I went from using three OSes (macOS, Linux, and Windows) every day to using Windows and now honestly never have to think about it. It's not a joy, it's just... nothing. Everything works flawlessly.
I did get one of those telemetry killer apps, but otherwise it's all just stock Win10 Pro.
Funny, I have the complete opposite issue. I struggle to get anything to work in Windows (dev wise) without hours of tweeking. Windows also has shown me that a GUI doesn't necessarily mean efficient.
I've done C#, Node/TypeScript, PHP, Java, Kotlin, Python, and Go development on my Windows machine without any issues. The mainstream platforms know they have Windows users and seem to do a great job of supporting them.
I used to use Docker to meticulously duplicate my staging/prod environments on dev machines, but honestly don't bother anymore. My CI/CD environments would catch any of those issues, and I don't run into them much anymore. Having first-class support for Linux containers is great, though.
>Then I just got tired of having to Google obscure Linux issues, edit config files, and reboot all the time.
So is this the normal state of Linux then? Every few years I'll take some time to try and "learn Linux" by installing a distro and try to use it as part of my regular workflow. It's always been a never ending train of very specific and obscure, time consuming issues. My personal motto for Linux is "It Just Doesn't Work" (at least for desktop). Even basic stuff like Wi-Fi and the login screen often doesn't work correctly and requires more tweaking. Using MacOS, it's different and you have to get used to things. But it's not an bottomless pit of time sunk into fixing configurations. Windows isn't perfect, but at least I don't feel like I'm wasting my time.
To be fair I don't think Linux is bad (obviously or it wouldn't be widely used), just that those who like it, either enjoy solving these issues or started with it during a time when they could spare the effort, and so they built up enough experience for it to no longer be a chore.
Yes. I would also say it's part of the fun for some people.
I used to be obsessive about optimizing my workflows using customizations that are only possible on FOSS nix systems, but eventually I got other hobbies. Now I just want my OS to disappear in the background and "just work".
Honestly the telemetry is arguably better from a security perspective. We already trust Microsoft out of necessity, so what additional harm does the telemetry?
I was trying to say that installing a closed-source program with admin privileges is technically a bigger security risk than allowing Microsoft's telemetry, and it's arguably a bigger privacy risk as well.
I bought a System 76 darter pro and wifi and printing and bluetooth and sleep and so on work equally well to my partner's macbook air. I probably sound like someone with stockholm syndrome for saying this, but there is only one tiny problem which doesn't bother me which is that the laptop randomly hard powers off in the middle of use 1-4 times per week. Since everything I do autosaves, meh.
The truth is it varies, largely based on your personal setup.
Personally, I think the "mean tweaking time" of an average Linux is very low now. I spend almost no time forced to tweak things, except maybe a bit after installation. In concrete terms, for me it's usually a few hours of work spread out over the first 3 weeks. It might be 3-20 hours tops, but some of that might be setting up cool new fancy fun things rather than necessary configuration. From then on I rarely have to touch configs for years.
That being said, I do read of some people having really painful bugs that take forever to fix. You can mitigate this by using mainstream distros on well supported hardware. Ubuntu and Fedora are your best bets for stability.
A decade or more ago, tweaking and maintaining felt like a constant Sisyphean struggle. Now I can throw Ubuntu on a laptop and 90% of the time it's fine after installation.
>Even basic stuff like Wi-Fi and the login screen often doesn't work correctly and requires more tweaking.
I haven't had wifi troubles on Linux in over a decade. Nor any login screen issues. Maybe things are better now, or maybe you've had bad luck with the hardware you're using. Ultimately it boils down to your individual setup. I know how frustrating these issues can be. Anyways, good luck!
It depends on the user. I use a mix of Windows as my primary desktop, a MacBook Pro as my main portable so that I have a good Unix handy (as well as VMs), an iPad as my tablet, and a Google Pixel 3 (soon to be 5) as my phone. It's whatever helps the user get the job done best.
This is one thing makes me tend to distrust Microsoft regardless how many people are chanting "MiCROsoFt is ReAlLy ChAnGed FoR ThE BeTTer". No, they always tries to grab something from you, little things here, little things there.
I got a Windows 10 Phone, and Edge is the only web browser that is available (Version 38.14393.2551.0 currently). According to my setting, Google should be the default search engine rather than Baidu which is an unremovable option for Chinese user.
However, from time to time (randomly I'd say), when I open Edge, the Baidu homepage pops up with a mystical tail "?tn=<a number>" in it's URL (while my setting is Google remind you).
Now, maybe you're thinking "Ha! this guy got a malwared Windows 10 Phone, kudos!". Well, guess what, thanks my slow Internet, I caught the redirector address hosted on go.microsoft.com right before it opens Baidu.
Well, to be completely fair, it's not the dirtiest little game that they've played during their entire existence. And, at the very least, they are indeed redirecting me to the HTTPS service rather than HTTP one. So I guess I should thank them for the merciful and care?
Windows 10 keeps on installing Edge and luring me to set it the default web browser. It even looks exactly like chrome so users like my mom unknowingly start using it. I find that very deceptive.
Windows 10 is a horrible OS as far as I can tell. It tries to do things for me that I don't want to and I have to spend a few days to remove all the crap and bloat on a fresh setup then I have to figure out how to stop services that try to update and remove all my changes. I am using Windows 10 strictly for work otherwise I'd not touch it with a 10 foot pole. It's sad to see so many young people embrace Microsoft but I know their relationship won't last, I was one of them years and years ago.
That's not my experience.
I'm no longer using Chrome as a daily driver, but when I first installed Chrome it was because IE was extremely unusable buggy and fell be hind a lot at the time and FF was great and all but a bit slow and and eating a lot of RAM. Chrome was fast and light
I remember seeing memes about what Internet Explorer: Q:What is IE good for? A:To search and install Chrome.
Thats anecdotal and the memes were after it got popular.
Just because many of us purposely installed chrome, doesnt disprove that Google used many dark patterns to get people to click buttons or bundle it with other installs early on. Back then, Chrome used many of the same tactics as Yahoo and Ask toolbars, and even today the google.com home page warns you as if google doesnt work right in other browsers.
You might be right but I personally installed Chrome because I wanted to. Well, first to try it then to replace IE on other computers. I'm sure they abused dark patterns as well as the whole industry almost never hesitate to do so.
103 comments
[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadI know DuckDuckGo is supposedly private. And has bangs & cheat sheets. But what is Bing's competitive edge? Heard it's good at images.
They have a pretty picture on the front page each day. That was the argument a client gave me once why she used Bing.
This is meant without snark. It's probably the first alternative people will go to if they're wary of the level of tracking Google is capable of.
Google has Google Analytics, YouTube, libraries, or even fonts in almost every single webpage. They have billions of email users, which means all human email users can have a profile built about them without having any relationship with Google.
If that weren't enough, they have a near-monopoly on low-cost smartphone OS installs and are a massive chunk of all installs. Android is the most-used operating system.
The scope of Google's reach is breathtaking and inescapable.
Microsoft can only track via Windows, which is diminishingly important to consumers as Android wins the OS wars across platforms.
Also, unlike Google, Microsoft doesn't rely on AdTech and tracking for its survival. Google has no businesses that can replace tracking for them.
Office 365? The thing that a whole host of businesses rely upon for email, spreadsheets, presentations?
MS has just as much of an opportunity as Amazon does for spying on its cloud customers through Azure too.
Google is more consumer focused. MS has a good split between consumer, business, and gaming - those combined will rival Google.
Their actual paid services (G Suite aka Workspace, Google One, etc.) are not their bread and butter, so tracking us is an existential issue for them.
> Google is more consumer focused.
No, they're not! See above. I would call them one of the least consumer-focused companies out there. They don't follow through with products, and most of their products aren't even for consumers! They're for advertisers.
Well, it advertises to you in its start menu and even has scummy ads in its built-in browser homepage. And it makes you log in with a Skype/Outlook/Windows account to install Windows 10 (maybe you can bypass it by avoiding wifi during installation? I didn't check).
Whether or not it needs these for its survival doesn't seem like much of a distinction, and possibly even more of a fuck-you that it doesn't need to do this for its survival. In fact, that it does this at the operating system level is worse to me than it being done when I use applications that work by talking to remote servers because you simply can't escape it. Meanwhile I can simply avoid Google products.
The HN discourse around Microsoft these days really just shows that Microsoft's attempts to buy back goodwill with things like VS Code must be working. Often we talk here as if Bing is some indie underdog.
Of course it is. If you let someone into your home, and one of them is going to die if they don't steal food from you, which person is more likely to steal food from you?
Google's business model literally does not allow it to be ethical.
> The HN discourse around Microsoft these days really just shows that Microsoft's attempts to buy back goodwill with things like VS Code must be working.
I see a lot of people with your point of view. Are you still influenced by your perceptions of Microsoft from the Ballmer and Gates days?
I was also in the industry at that time, and today's Microsoft is just a different company. It's leadership is different, most of the Baller/Gates people have left, and their policies are completely different.
VS Code is great, but Microsoft isn't doing anything to lock you into it. I don't use it at all. TypeScript and .NET are both IDE-agnostic, for example.
Companies aren't people. They don't have consistent cultures, personalities, or beliefs. Microsoft sucked in the past, but they're the only large tech company that I'm not actively angry at on a daily basis anymore.
Windows as a dev box is a tiny niche use-case that is over-represented on HN.
>Meanwhile I can simply avoid Google products.
That maybe true for you, but for most people, its far easier to avoid Windows than Google.
The exceptions are Runnaroo (Google), Startpage (Google), Mojeek, and Gigablast (both use their own index).
[0] https://www.searchenginemap.com/
I am not suggesting only use google because google is awful, but Bing shouldnt buy users, it should actually be good to get them.
I'm estimating that I've received somewhere between $250 and $300 in rewards during that time.
What competition has suffered because of the existence of Bing?
I think this is the first time I've been accused of killing competition by using a product with 3% market share.
> they'll take your peanuts back
I've already cashed out; they can't take that back.
When they stop paying me to use their product, I'll probably go to Duck Duck Go.
And as far as getting back their their money, you would still not be parted with your cash, they'd just use/sell your data and cover their loss from paying you in the first place. If I were you I'd continue to get paid to use their service, it's the best deal you can get right now especially that Bing is not likely to overtake Google any time soon.
So if a million people Bing for ‘Rob Snob is a carpenter ant eater’ and you type Rob Snob is ... it will dutifully suggest ‘a carpenter ant eater’ unlike google which soft censors such things.
A great example of this would be that they stopped autosuggesting the word torrent at some point in time despite returning torrent results if you searched for it explicitly.
They stopped suggesting, but didn't stop indexing.
Never seen either - I use Firefox as my primary browser and 95% DDG, 5% Google for search.
¹ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
Years ago, I used Google’s search API (written by Nelson Minor). When they canceled the service, I started using Bing search APIs, and never looked back.
Edit: I just checked admin.google.com and there aren't any references to the new name or billing model, so I assume that they're still rolling it out beyond the marketing page at https://workspace.google.com.
I’m not sure what the point is in this context.
I used to be able to do some interesting analysis through automated commandline searches on Google, looking at the estimated results count (see, e.g., https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...), with some ... very creative rate limiting.
Because of how Google restricts information, that analysis took about 10k searches (1 each per term per site), conducted over a week or so.
Last I looked into extending those analyses that route was utterly broken --- non-JS, plain-HTML results simply aren't produced, let alone rate-limiting and bot detection. Scripted search doesn't contribute to ad views. (Though neither do adblocked ones.)
DDG by contrast has its 'lite‘ search. Unfortunately for my research uses, no result set counts.
There may be APIs for these or other services, I've not yet looked into that.
It’s pretty irritation when I search for a specific file that I know exists on my computer, but the search bar decides to search Bing for results instead.
The only way to disable it is to edit the registry (!), which I recommend doing because now results from my computer are delivered instantly instead of having to wait for Bing to load.
https://www.howtogeek.com/224159/how-to-disable-bing-in-the-...
People say Windows is more user friendly than Linux. I beg to differ.
Windows has basically 2 reliable ways to launch programs. You can pin them somewhere, or you can launch Windows Explorer and navigate to the executable. Some other ways will work most of the time, but not always.
Now... I'd be happy if I find some KDE setting that makes search deterministic, because it's going on the same direction. Navigating the start menu still works all the time, but search is infuriatingly broken.
To your point though not being able to disable or replace Bing in this capacity isn’t something I’m okay with either. I also wish you could truly turn off telemetry without registry hacks and such
But these days I really can't fathom using Windows for anything but video games, and well, work because I have to. It's such a terrible user experience for me, and I wonder where it all went wrong, because I used to genuinely like it.
I remember thinking about Windows a lot: how to get it to work better/faster, for example. I used Linux as my daily driver for 20 years.
Then I just got tired of having to Google obscure Linux issues, edit config files, and reboot all the time. I wanted something that just works.
I went from using three OSes (macOS, Linux, and Windows) every day to using Windows and now honestly never have to think about it. It's not a joy, it's just... nothing. Everything works flawlessly.
I did get one of those telemetry killer apps, but otherwise it's all just stock Win10 Pro.
I used to use Docker to meticulously duplicate my staging/prod environments on dev machines, but honestly don't bother anymore. My CI/CD environments would catch any of those issues, and I don't run into them much anymore. Having first-class support for Linux containers is great, though.
So is this the normal state of Linux then? Every few years I'll take some time to try and "learn Linux" by installing a distro and try to use it as part of my regular workflow. It's always been a never ending train of very specific and obscure, time consuming issues. My personal motto for Linux is "It Just Doesn't Work" (at least for desktop). Even basic stuff like Wi-Fi and the login screen often doesn't work correctly and requires more tweaking. Using MacOS, it's different and you have to get used to things. But it's not an bottomless pit of time sunk into fixing configurations. Windows isn't perfect, but at least I don't feel like I'm wasting my time.
To be fair I don't think Linux is bad (obviously or it wouldn't be widely used), just that those who like it, either enjoy solving these issues or started with it during a time when they could spare the effort, and so they built up enough experience for it to no longer be a chore.
>I did get one of those telemetry killer apps
Which one do you use?
Yes. I would also say it's part of the fun for some people.
I used to be obsessive about optimizing my workflows using customizations that are only possible on FOSS nix systems, but eventually I got other hobbies. Now I just want my OS to disappear in the background and "just work".
> Which one do you use?*
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 (recommended by other HN users, but would be interested to know if anyone has any concerns about it)
Which is why I like Linux. I just don’t have to worry about telemetry at all.
Edit: Here’s a comparison of Windows 10 privacy tools. I wish there was one with a “yes” in all three columns.
https://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/14/comparison-of-windows-10-p...
Honestly the telemetry is arguably better from a security perspective. We already trust Microsoft out of necessity, so what additional harm does the telemetry?
Personally, I think the "mean tweaking time" of an average Linux is very low now. I spend almost no time forced to tweak things, except maybe a bit after installation. In concrete terms, for me it's usually a few hours of work spread out over the first 3 weeks. It might be 3-20 hours tops, but some of that might be setting up cool new fancy fun things rather than necessary configuration. From then on I rarely have to touch configs for years.
That being said, I do read of some people having really painful bugs that take forever to fix. You can mitigate this by using mainstream distros on well supported hardware. Ubuntu and Fedora are your best bets for stability.
A decade or more ago, tweaking and maintaining felt like a constant Sisyphean struggle. Now I can throw Ubuntu on a laptop and 90% of the time it's fine after installation.
>Even basic stuff like Wi-Fi and the login screen often doesn't work correctly and requires more tweaking.
I haven't had wifi troubles on Linux in over a decade. Nor any login screen issues. Maybe things are better now, or maybe you've had bad luck with the hardware you're using. Ultimately it boils down to your individual setup. I know how frustrating these issues can be. Anyways, good luck!
I got a Windows 10 Phone, and Edge is the only web browser that is available (Version 38.14393.2551.0 currently). According to my setting, Google should be the default search engine rather than Baidu which is an unremovable option for Chinese user.
However, from time to time (randomly I'd say), when I open Edge, the Baidu homepage pops up with a mystical tail "?tn=<a number>" in it's URL (while my setting is Google remind you).
Now, maybe you're thinking "Ha! this guy got a malwared Windows 10 Phone, kudos!". Well, guess what, thanks my slow Internet, I caught the redirector address hosted on go.microsoft.com right before it opens Baidu.
If you curl the address, which is https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=625115 to be specific, you will found:
Well, to be completely fair, it's not the dirtiest little game that they've played during their entire existence. And, at the very least, they are indeed redirecting me to the HTTPS service rather than HTTP one. So I guess I should thank them for the merciful and care?Windows 10 is a horrible OS as far as I can tell. It tries to do things for me that I don't want to and I have to spend a few days to remove all the crap and bloat on a fresh setup then I have to figure out how to stop services that try to update and remove all my changes. I am using Windows 10 strictly for work otherwise I'd not touch it with a 10 foot pole. It's sad to see so many young people embrace Microsoft but I know their relationship won't last, I was one of them years and years ago.
Which is exactly how Chrome got so popular. Two wrongs and all.
I remember seeing memes about what Internet Explorer: Q:What is IE good for? A:To search and install Chrome.
Just because many of us purposely installed chrome, doesnt disprove that Google used many dark patterns to get people to click buttons or bundle it with other installs early on. Back then, Chrome used many of the same tactics as Yahoo and Ask toolbars, and even today the google.com home page warns you as if google doesnt work right in other browsers.