Current-era Microsoft continuing to push the boundaries of consent.
Microsoft Edge is a good browser but for some reason Microsoft keeps trying to shove it down everyone’s throat and make it more difficult to use rivals like Chrome or Firefox. Microsoft has now started notifying IT admins that it will force Outlook and Teams to ignore the default web browser on Windows and open links in Microsoft Edge instead.
Tell that to literally every single company. Name one that actually uses Linux for user desktops and laptops.
Windows has such a monopoly on business user-facing systems, it’s not even a competition.
The funny thing to me is I’m a sysadmin and I use a linux desktop and most of the devs I work with do also. The only people that use Windows desktops are end users that pretty much only use Office anyway and their PCs are basically used as advanced typewriters plus youtube. The C-suite has Macs but demands desktops run Windows because it’s all they know. We’ve even gotten rid of all the garbage legacy apps so the only reason we use Windows is the stuck habits of people that don’t even use Windows themselves.
But I know we’ll never stop paying MS. Windows is basically the Imperial measurement system or qwerty keyboards at this point. Our grandchildren will use it because our grandparents used it, well- not exactly but you get the idea.
Devops here. The company I work in has enforced managed Windows laptops.
What I did was to get BIOS password, test everything in Arch Linux VM, everything works - my work laptop now runs on Arch Linux.
Been 4 months and haven’t got cought. Also managed to get rid of company’s proxy server and DNS, because companys resources are available without proxy via VPN, and everything else - via proxy, so I wrote a bash script with the help of ChatGPT that implements “VPN Split” post-VPN connection, also removes company DNS servers from /etc/resolv.conf and 🎉. Works like a charm. I can even open p*rnhub and company wouldn’t even tell as it goes directly through my router. Also the laptop is now fast AF, zero proxy configuration (unlike in Windows for WSL), it’s perfect now.
And that’s in a large international company where Windows/Macs are enforced. I guess I am genius there… 😅
My employer insists that only Windows is acceptable, which makes my life in software engineering very difficult. No Mac, no Linux, only WIndows. I had to fight tooth and nail to get anything else and now they are still trying to get me to go back to using Windows because “we don’t support” anything else.
Newer companies tend to be Mac and GSuite… Haven’t seen the legacy Microsoft stuff often in startups.
I worked for a start-up and got to use a Linux laptop. I just installed it myself. The policy was “here’s a laptop, do what you want with it.”
Then I moved to a more established company and I have to use Windows. 😞