Slashdot Mirror


Microsoft is Building a Chromium-powered Web Browser That Will Replace Edge on Windows 10: Report (windowscentral.com)

Microsoft is throwing in the towel with Edge and is building a new web browser for Windows 10, this time powered by Chromium, news blog Windows Central reported Monday. From the report: Microsoft's Edge web browser has seen little success since its debut on Windows 10 back in 2015. Built from the ground up with a new rendering engine known as EdgeHTML, Microsoft Edge was designed to be fast, lightweight, and secure, but launched with a plethora of issues which resulted in users rejecting it early on. Edge has since struggled to gain any traction, thanks to its continued instability and lack of mindshare, from users and web developers.

Because of this, I'm told that Microsoft is throwing in the towel with EdgeHTML and is instead building a new web browser powered by Chromium, a rendering engine first popularized by Google's Chrome browser. Codenamed Anaheim, this new web browser for Windows 10 will replace Edge as the default browser on the platform. It's unknown at this time if Anaheim will use the Edge brand or a new brand, or if the user interface between Edge and Anaheim is different. One thing is for sure, however; EdgeHTML in Windows 10's default browser is dead.

377 comments

  1. This is McDonalds breaking down & serving whop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Oh no you DON'T just get to quietly admit defeat, there has to be public shaming! THEM'S THE RULES!

  2. open sourcery FTW by Tyger-ZA · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now if Windows can be turned into an MS branded *nix distro things would be even better

    1. Re:open sourcery FTW by idontusenumbers · · Score: 4, Informative

      At least part of Edge is already open source:
      https://github.com/Microsoft/C...

    2. Re: open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dont you mean gnu distro?

    3. Re:open sourcery FTW by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Chrome comes from khtml, that's a Linux (KDE) project, not *nix.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    4. Re:open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup, now if only MS will replace Windows with OpenBSD and KDE, then a whole lot of problems will be solved - Angels will sing and flowers will drift down from the sky...

    5. Re:open sourcery FTW by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Just run all that legacy Windows stuff on Wine.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    6. Re: open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      KHTML is a fork of webkit, built by apple.

    7. Re: open sourcery FTW by Tough+Love · · Score: 5, Informative

      KHTML is a fork of webkit

      Wrong, it's the other way round.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    8. Re: open sourcery FTW by Mark+Pitman · · Score: 2

      KHTML is a fork of webkit, built by apple.

      Other way around... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    9. Re: open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      the other way around, webkit is a fork of KDE's khtml

    10. Re:open sourcery FTW by MancunianMaskMan · · Score: 2
      actually that would work great if MS contributed all the secret "hidden api" sauce to Wine...

      just guessing here to be honest

    11. Re:open sourcery FTW by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I like Linux and Unix systems and they are my preference when I can use them. However with Windows being turned to a *nix OS like OSX we will no longer have much diversity in Operating Systems, they will all be Unix or Unix Like OS's.
      20 years ago, We had Windows, *Nix, VMS, MacOS...
      A slew of OS's all with their own advantages and disadvantages. Going to one Style OS we are loosing options.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    12. Re:open sourcery FTW by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Informative

      The KDE Project was mainly designed for a UI experience for *nix systems.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    13. Re: open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The RDF strikes again! Apple didn't create Konqueror; they found it.

    14. Re:open sourcery FTW by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      I think Microsoft WINE would run much better. A lot of the problems with WINE is the fact there is a lot of components that are hacked to mimic what windows does.
      If it had full MS support, these wouldn't be hacks but components straight from the specifications.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    15. Re: open sourcery FTW by mccalli · · Score: 1

      Masterful. +1 Troll.

    16. Re: open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      KHTML is a fork of webkit

      Wrong, it's the other way round.

      That's technically true, Apple started out forking KHTML, but there has been so much code flow back and forth between the two it's hard to tell where one ends and the other one begins.

    17. Re:open sourcery FTW by gtall · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Relax, MS will only screw it up so it really won't be nix.

    18. Re: open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      but there has been so much code flow back and forth between the two it's hard to tell where one ends and the other one begins.

      Wrong. KHTML project has long struggled to integrate WebKit patches from Apple. Partially because Apple releases massive patches with little to no documentation, different approaches to coding, and difficulties in code sharing. At this time the code bases have diverged significantly enough that KDE currently supports both KHTML and WebKit using some wrappers, rather than integrating everything into KHTML.

    19. Re:open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Woohoo, they're going full circle. They pushed Xenix in the 80s.

    20. Re:open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No worries; it will be more like Android. Linux on bottom, with all apps written in .NET.

    21. Re:open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Correction...it will be *nix (and do everything that a *nix OS is supposed to do) but the *nix portions exist as their own sandbox OS layer inside Windows. It would have been much better if MS had drunk the *nix koolaid and built their Windows UI and compatibility on top of a *nix kernel (Linux, BSD, etc.), vis a vis what Apple did with OS X/iOS and the BSD kernel. This way, the multitude of kernel drivers would finally be the same (or within degrees of each other) for *nix, Windows and Mac OS. That would be a MUCH nicer world to live in for both consumers and developers, honestly. MS could then move to a subscription model for all the Windows UI and compatibility layer and only worry about kernel interop with this layer.

      Think about it...Apple, Microsoft and all the *nix distro teams working together building the most reliable kernel that they can all use, and then they could all keep their proprietary bits in their own respective layers and charge a subscription for users to select their OS "flavor". It's a bit of a wet dream, I know, but honestly, this couldn't be anything but a win-win situation and it would allow these companies to offer their distinctiveness in areas that really matter to them.

    22. Re:open sourcery FTW by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

      If we trace the path from KHTML to Chrome, we necessarily go through WebKit, which began as a KHTML fork on a Unix-based platform (OS X). As such, Chrome has true *nix roots. The OP never suggested that KHTML was anything other than Linux, but your claim would seem to suggest that Chrome's heritage is exclusively from Linux roots, not *nix roots, which is ignorant of history and utterly incorrect.

    23. Re:open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe it could be called MS Xenix? XPnix would have just too much baggage.

    24. Re:open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > If it had full MS support, these wouldn't be hacks but components straight from the specifications.

      Do you really think that MS has 'specifications' ?

      They use the Samba documentation to understand their networking.

    25. Re: open sourcery FTW by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      You are confused about the difference between a fork and a backport.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    26. Re:open sourcery FTW by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Not really. KDE was designed for Linux then ported to BSD because it was better than any desktop developed on *nix.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    27. Re: open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you describing osx?

    28. Re: open sourcery FTW by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

      Actually KDE is more like CDE which has been the standard DE on UNIX(tm)

    29. Re: open sourcery FTW by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Not really. KDE is more like the Windows DE than it is like CDE. And KDE is much slicker than CDE, in large part because of QT, which also makes it much cleaner inside than roll-yer-own CDE.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    30. Re: open sourcery FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since you insist on being pedantic, with WebKit it is both a fork and contains backports from other forks within it.

  3. Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Spoiler: The rendering engine is not the reason I don't trust your web browser, nor will switching to Chromium get me to actually use it.

    1. Re: Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I guess we still haven't forgiven or forgotten IE6. Any MS web browser should be treated with extreme suspicion.

    2. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The rendering engine is what makes it a pain the ass for web-developers so great win there!

    3. Re:Really? That won't help. by jma05 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They are probably not doing this to gain your trust.

      It is probably either or both of
      1. Rendering engine is not the differentiating feature of browsers anymore (for me it is, plugin ecosystem, security and privacy choices in design).
      2. They understand that they cannot win the browser wars and chose not to spend any further money on the most expensive part of browser development.

      They did this before. Microsoft only invested money in the browser when they intended to win the browser wars, and they did with IE. After that, they downsized their dev team. The web stagnated for years until Firefox emerged.

    4. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And the user interface/controls are what make Edge a pain in the ass for end users.

      Different doesn't have to be unusable - even Vivaldi makes sense after a few minutes. But Edge? Talk about a non-intuitive mess - actually *using* Edge is a painful experience.

      If all MSFT does is slap their existing UI on top of Chromium's rendering engine, it's still a loss for the end users.

    5. Re:Really? That won't help. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Which browser does AC trust?

      Firefox - slyly installs binary plugins without consent, keeps adding new bullshit like Pocket

      Chrome - allegedly spies on you

      Vivaldi - has the same telemetry as Chrome (unique ID, IP address, some system info), malware protection

      Opera - Chinese owned, same spying as Chrome

      Safari - bundles more Apple crapware, UI is janky on Windows, Apple spies on you the same as Google does

      Edge - Microsoft spyware

      Maybe IE6 wasn't so bad...

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Really? That won't help. by BlackOverflow · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's Palemoon for me!

    7. Re:Really? That won't help. by Known+Nutter · · Score: 2

      Safari - bundles more Apple crapware, UI is janky on Windows, Apple spies on you the same as Google does

      Safari for Windows hasn't been available since 2012... just sayin'.

      And I think Apple's spy model is a little different than Google's.

      --
      Beware of the Leopard.
    8. Re:Really? That won't help. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Informative

      I used to like Pale Moon but it has severe performance issues, and one of the updates deleted a lot of user data. I don't have confidence in the developers or that performance will ever get competitive. While it doesn't seem to have spying built in, the fact that it's using an old version of the Firefox codebase with known vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild means you will probably be p0wned by someone far worse than Google anyway.

      My post above was really just mocking the Slashdot posters who always post about how Chrome is spyware, Firefox is total crap, IE is spyware AND total crap... Without being able to point to any real alternative.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:Really? That won't help. by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Brave. It's based on Chromium now.

      https://brave.com/

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    10. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I use it as my default browser on mobile now but some sites are just completely broken in it still. It generally works fine and the built in protections are nice but some stuff just falls apart. Methinks that's a sign that site should be avoided, since Brave is chromium based the only reason it should break is if some blocked spyware is crucial to the site functioning.

    11. Re:Really? That won't help. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Brave has advertising spyware built in. https://brave.com/about-ad-rep...

      They gotta make their money somehow.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    12. Re:Really? That won't help. by DarkRookie2 · · Score: 1

      Waterfox here. CTR FTW

      --
      http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
    13. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Safari - bundles more Apple crapware, UI is janky on Windows, Apple spies on you the same as Google does

      Safari for Windows hasn't been available since 2012... just sayin'. And I think Apple's spy model is a little different than Google's.

      ...and what Apple 'crapware' is bundled with Safari? It can't be the the computers and devices since Safari is bundled with them, not the other way around.

    14. Re:Really? That won't help. by BlackOverflow · · Score: 1

      Palemoon + noscript + adblock plus is pretty secure. Not 100% of course, but probably good enough for most websites.

    15. Re:Really? That won't help. by Junta · · Score: 1

      I presume the call is 'EdgeHTML just makes more expensive work', as in their web development efforts are forced to support Edge, Blink, Webkit, and (maybe) Gecko engines. One of those is a self-inflicted wound so ditch it.

      In addition to the obvious burden of developing their own rendering engine for no obvious benefit. *If* Edge had taken the crown back and been majority browser then maybe they could have returned to proprietary shenanigans and get benefit, but as that didn't pan out the engine is just a liability in every way.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    16. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What a paranoid douche you are.

    17. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uzbl - Essentially a raw rendering engine that doen't even know cookies, let alone bookmarks, very "unix" ("Do ONE thing, and do it right"), extremely scriptable (you CAN add cookie support and people do offer their scripts for you to use), slow releases (build your own), webkit-based.

      lynx - text-based, like it or hate it, I guess

    18. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Firefox - slyly installs binary plugins without consent, keeps adding new bullshit like Pocket

      Chromium got caught doing it. As in the Open Source version of Chrome installed binary blobs on the side. One of the Chrome developers back then even said that the closed source binary plug-in contained core features for the Chrome product (youtube DRM support) so he saw no reason to disable that behaviour. They only added the option not to silently download these plug-ins as damage control.

      Firefox meanwhile asks you if you want to participate in user studies on install. The correct answer is "no", with the only problem being that it isn't obvious what their user studies consist of - most users seem to assume that it is simply usage data collection and not random publicity stunts. I can agree on Pocket, at best it should be provided as plug-in.

    19. Re: Really? That won't help. by DickBreath · · Score: 1

      There must be some way for Microsoft to create a browser equivalent of 'systemd' for Chromium.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    20. Re:Really? That won't help. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Ah okay, shows how long it is since I bothered to look at Safari.

      The spying model is the same as Google. Unique install ID, automatic updates, malware database, optional encrypted sync with Apple cloud.

      Since people object to Google's spying they must also object to Apple doing the same.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    21. Re:Really? That won't help. by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      I think Safari for Windows required iTunes and installed Bonjour, a networking component or something.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    22. Re:Really? That won't help. by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      Safari - bundles more Apple crapware, UI is janky on Windows, Apple spies on you the same as Google does

      I'm not sure Apple spies on you, and they are one of the better browsers in terms of privacy. But the ugly bit about Apple is that they will stop giving you updates to Safari if you aren't upgrading your hardware fast enough. OSX drops support for more older models every release, and Safari drops support for older versions of OSX.

      Your best bet when it comes to browsers is use an iPhone, at least Apple maintains support for a very long time on older hardware and older OSes. Using an iPhone as your main system works assuming you only need to watch content and don't need to create anything yourself. (coding, photoshop, video editing, writing, publishing, composing, etc)

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    23. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ummm, Chromium... hell-o-ooo!

    24. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Safari for Windows hasn't been available since 2012... just sayin'.

      More correctly, Safari for Windows hasn't been updated since 2012; you can download and install it, but it's at your own risk.

    25. Re: Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is slashdot after all. Microsoft is permanently evil and bad in literally everything they do (even when they do things we say they should do) because of their behavior two decades and two CEOs ago.

    26. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you find unusable/non-intuitive from a UI perspective about Edge?

    27. Re:Really? That won't help. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I'm just applying the standards of the average paranoid Slashdot infosec warrior. They say Chrome spies on you, well Chrome by default has:

      - Unique install ID, sent when checking for updates
      - Automatic updates
      - Malware filtering

      Which is the same as Safari. Therefore if Chrome "spies" on you, so does Safari.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    28. Re:Really? That won't help. by mujadaddy · · Score: 2

      I'm on FF, with uMatrix blocking all non-1st-party cookies'n'scripts, and non-whitelisted cookies deleting.

      Similar on mobile. My mileage is billboard-free.

      --
      Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
      "Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
    29. Re: Really? That won't help. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      /Sarcasm Because MS didn't have *any* spyware in Windows 10 and MSVC 2015 ... Oh wait, they did AND that happened under Nadella!

    30. Re: Really? That won't help. by anegg · · Score: 2

      This is slashdot after all. Microsoft is permanently evil and bad in literally everything they do (even when they do things we say they should do) because of their behavior two decades and two CEOs ago.

      Microsoft has a history of playing O/S games that others find distasteful, and it isn't all ancient. Surely Windows 10 contributes to the negative viewpoints about Microsoft. On the other hand, I appreciate MS Office, and was glad that it was an alternative to WordPerfect (back in the day) and is still around today as a de facto standard for basic business documents.

    31. Re:Really? That won't help. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Maybe IE6 wasn't so bad...

      I'll happily hand over a list of all my favourite porn in exchange for a browser that can render a webpage faster than I can make a cup of coffee.

    32. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the only browser one can trust is a browser one compiled oneself, with all sorts of interesting compile options, AFTER reviewing the code and removing the parts one does not like.

      No browser exists that is distributed as binary, that is fit for purpose aka contains the minimum of features.

      One has to remove the user hostile features (90% of all features, dare i say) and protocols manually.

    33. Re: Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why?

    34. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Accept privacy is dead and use what is most secure. This limits you to being spied on by one company rather than anyone on earth who would care to.

    35. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Midori all the way!

    36. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but it has severe performance issues

      For 80+% of my browsing, high performance isn't really necessary. If I need a high-performance browser to view a webpage where it matters (a game, say), I'll just pop open a chromium tab and do it there. But the principal is that most of my browsing happens in a secure, privacy-oriented environment.

    37. Re:Really? That won't help. by Paul+Pierce · · Score: 1

      I've actually switched to Brave recently. Still can't live without Chrome or Firefox, but Brave has been working well.

    38. Re:Really? That won't help. by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

      - Unique install ID, sent when checking for updates

      I agree that unique IDs can be problematic, but the devil is in the details. For example, I worked on some Kindle stuff for Amazon many years ago, and they went from telemetry that could be associated with every user to a unique but anonymous reporting scheme. Metrics are now supposedly logged in a way that research can be done on large population of users, but enough information is redacted in the telemetry to make it difficult to associate information with a particular account. It's not perfect, more of a high level of uncertainty. If you expected perfect privacy, then someone is going to lie to you instead of giving you the impossible.

      PS- I always like that "const int one = 65536" quote. cracks me up every time. :-D

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    39. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have to point and click. This is Microsoft, it should know what I want before I do, and give me what I want, or tell me what I want.

    40. Re:Really? That won't help. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My post above was really just mocking the Slashdot posters who always post about how Chrome is spyware, Firefox is total crap, IE is spyware AND total crap... Without being able to point to any real alternative.

      It's sad that this is mirrored a lot in the world of tech today. You have no real choice for small phone screens, desktop 4:3 screens on respectable resolutions of 20 years ago, actual mobile computers (instead we get vendor-locked appliances that we must distrust, ie, *hack* via root exploits before actually getting the power to even remove the shovelware --let alone install useful services such as a simple shell, VNC...)

    41. Re:Really? That won't help. by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      Performance was always really good until version 27 (the "re-fork"). After updating to 27, I noticed immediately that the garbage collector memory management engine was acting up again. I suspect that version 26 and earlier used some kind of compile-time configuration that helped memory management, but newer versions hog memory like crazy (and freeze/pause), just like old versions of Firefox. I've had no luck tracking down the issue by investigating the easy stuff.

      Security has never been a problem. They don't really make any significant changes to the engine other than removing telemetry and trademarks. I've spent quite a bit of time comparing the sources of PaleMoon and Firefox, and it's remarkable how little is actually different, which makes sense given how massive the codebase of a browser is.

    42. Re:Really? That won't help. by toddestan · · Score: 1

      Well there's IceCat. It's basically the GNU version of Firefox, but without the bullshit and is open source and completely free software.

      Unfortunately for those not using Linux, there's no official binaries so you pretty much have to build it yourself.

    43. Re:Really? That won't help. by vbdasc · · Score: 1

      IMHO, performance shouldn't even be a metric than we compare browsers on. Why do we need the browser to be fast? To run JS code fast? To mine monero fast? To render monstrous bloated crappy ad-ridden websites less slowly? Some of these can bring even the fastest browsers on the fastest machines with lots of memory to their knees. Sorry, but no. Just say no to those kind of websites and use any browser you want. Save yourselves the frustration and stop encouraging crappy web design and advertisers' greed.

    44. Re:Really? That won't help. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Have you tried Pale Moon lately? The UI is very slow, switching tabs is slow, scrolling is laggy and choppy and slow, page loading is slow... It's a very frustrating user experience.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. Time to move fro IE to Edge by louzer · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess now banks and B2B companies will now feel comfortable to use Edge now that Microsoft has stopped supporting it.

    --
    Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
    1. Re:Time to move fro IE to Edge by ArhcAngel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Heh, If that were actually the reason corporations still use IE. Try hundreds of thousands of corporate apps/intranet web sites dependent on ActiveX. Microsoft abandoned their JAVA competitor but aint no CIO that wants to foot the bill to retool all of those corporate web apps to something else as long as IE 11 still works on Windows 10.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    2. Re: Time to move fro IE to Edge by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not to mention SharePoint 2013/2016 still needs to run in IE10 mode on IE11.

    3. Re:Time to move fro IE to Edge by sproketboy · · Score: 1

      We will be on COM and IE forever until we can print to specific printers with margin settings and have no dialog box and have a callback when the printing hits the printer queue.

    4. Re: Time to move fro IE to Edge by Mspangler · · Score: 1

      One of the nicest things about retirement is not having to deal with share point again.

    5. Re:Time to move fro IE to Edge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Huh? Is this really something that's in IE? If so, I'm floored.

    6. Re:Time to move fro IE to Edge by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      but aint no CIO that wants to foot the bill to retool all of those corporate web apps

      False. There's a lot of work that goes on for retooling those web apps. Not because obsolescence mind you, but because MOBILE! Wooot! And ActiveX doesn't run on mobile.

    7. Re:Time to move fro IE to Edge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even though everyone recognizes that IE is and was always a dumpster fire, it always had one huge edge in an business environment.

      It's remotely configurable - Via group policy, local policy, or other method to distribute registry settings. You can tell it what to do, what not to do, lock it down, set defaults, disable features, preconfigure settings.

      Microsoft also had a deployment tool where you could preconfigure most of the above in to a standalone package. (Of course this was back when IE was an install-able piece of software. Pre windows 8)

      And you could do it all in a manner that was unavailable in other browsers that was really not practical in to a few years ago. The other big browsers have caught up now.

      Google now has a "buisness" version of chrome (Installs to program files instead of user profile) that has group policy support with templates (And supports config via a file)

      There's a 3rd party version of firefox that has it's own group policy templates like the above (This may be rolled in to mainline FF now. I'm not sure. I've not looked in to it for a long time)

    8. Re: Time to move fro IE to Edge by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      You lucky lucky barsteward

  5. as the old saying goes by jessepdx · · Score: 5, Funny

    Edge downloads Chrome faster than any other browser

    1. Re:as the old saying goes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only have to use it once, too.

    2. Re:as the old saying goes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ayup - On my web sites, Edge use is less than 1%, even less than Bing Search. Edge is dead Jim, and Netcraft doesn't have to confirm it either.

    3. Re:as the old saying goes by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

      PROTIP: Use a package manager like Chocolatey to avoid needing to open Edge at all! Install it from a flash drive and then easily install/update all the software you need without visiting a dozen websites.

      Scoop (https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop) is pretty good too. Fewer packages but you can install it directly from PowerShell without even a flash drive or browser.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re: as the old saying goes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      You don't need a browser to install Chrome on Windows. Most freeware for Windows installs it automatically if you don't untick a tiny, well-hidden checkbox.

  6. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's probably more about someone finally realizing that, there's a high quality rendering engine available for free for them to use.

    Microsoft will still have their own branded browser... But nobody is making money off of the rendering engine, and it's the hardest part of the browser to build/optimize.

    Might as well leave the non-money making part to others while MS engineers focus on browser shell, money making services etc.

  7. Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Next thing they will be replacing the Windows kernel with the Linux kernel with a Win32 compatibility layer for running Windows apps on Linux, and a driver compatibility layer for existing Windows drivers. I'm not kidding. Mark my words. It will happen. Will also include even moving the Windows GUI over to Microsoft's own Wayland server. The UI look and feel will be maintaining but the underlying architecture replaced with wayland with a compatability layer for Win32 apps.

    Microsoft is a cloud company, the Windows kernel really is just an added expense that it wants to shed so will move Windows over to a Linux kernel, seamlessly, due to the compatibility layer, windows apps and drivers will run fine. They can thus share development costs with other users of Linux.

    This is exactly whats happening with Edge as well. Overall, its a pretty good thing, actually.

    1. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Arzaboa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It seemed like they have wanted to get rid of the kernel since at least the days they were sued from inter-coding IE and windows. Will be interesting to see the timeline.

      --
      The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow -- Bill Gates

    2. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So next is Extinguish then.

    3. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 1, Insightful

      There is more to Windows than being compatible with Win32. Windows is more serious about backward compatibility than Linux possibly ever was

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    4. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And yet that's horseshit.

    5. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by ArhcAngel · · Score: 2

      they will be replacing the Windows kernel with the Linux kernel with a Win32 compatibility layer for running Windows apps on Linux

      If they can get DirectX working the Linux kernel with a minimal performance penalty then I say HELL YES!!!!

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    6. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Fuck that. DirectX should just die. If you want to play "older" DX based games then there is always WINE and the Vulkan implementation of D3D11/D3D10.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    7. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by rwbaskette · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The groundwork for doing this is already there.

      SQL Server 2017 for Linux required the creation of a PAL (platform abstraction layer) that allows essential kernel function for SQL Server to run.

      It's really interesting stuff.

      Add a dash of gdi borrowed from wine and you might have something.

      "SQL Server on Linux: How? Introduction":
      https://cloudblogs.microsoft.c...

    8. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      Or we could just use the real thing rather than the buggy, half-assed, freetarded version.

    9. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by AvitarX · · Score: 2

      Linux backwards compatibility with closed source apps has bitten me twice.

      The 64 bit transition and a glibc update back when bungie was making Linux software.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    10. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IF, and this is a pretty big 'if', that were to happen, they'd do the same as apple and go with a bsd, not linux, kernel. the gpl is not 'microsoft compatible' for use in windows.

    11. Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      At the time of XP it was a joke. At the time of vista it was an amusing idea. At the time of Windows 10 it seems that things look that way. Or, at least, Microsoft is working hard to abandon OS market altogether.

      Frankly, IT market would be much better without Microsoft. At this point it is just an obstacle.

    12. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by ArhcAngel · · Score: 1

      I would love nothing more than to see DirectX DIAF but the truth is no developer is going to rewrite their existing code because there is no $$$ in it. Therefore, if I can get all my Steam games to work on a Linux kernel via a Microsoft derived Linux kernel/DirectX implementation I'm all for it.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    13. Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that its not horseshit

    14. Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Largely it is. Your (unenumerated) pseudo-comparison is as useful as that would ever be.

    15. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No one was claiming that at the time of XP: they were saying Linux would replace Windows, that is, users would switch. This would be Microsoft abandoning their kernel.

      A compatibility layer on top of a Linux kernel? The only reason I have trouble seeing it happening is because the compatibility layer would take more effort than just keeping the Windows kernel around.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    16. Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Non-free

    17. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

      The only reason I have trouble seeing it happening is because the compatibility layer would take more effort than just keeping the Windows kernel around.

      Not at all. The compatibility layer is a temporary thing until all new apps and drivers are compiled on the Linux kernel. Microsoft is becoming Redhat

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    18. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep.

    19. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      doubtful. Not the GPL. More likely BSD like apple did.

    20. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      So.....I sit here and think of all the Microsoft APIs, and all the drivers and all the kernel elements in Windows, and I think of how much effort it would take. Then I think of the effort it would take to get rid of the kernel underneath, and create a compatibility on top of the Linux kernel. And comparing the effort required, to me (as a professional developer who knows about kernels), it seems like the effort required to port everything to Linux would be bigger.

      Maintaining the Windows kernel is not a very big task compared to all the other things built on top of it.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    21. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Well, the may decide on an xBSD kernel instead, due to the licencing. And they may make the GUI simply a window-manager on top of X.org. But essentially, you are right. They spend an extreme amount of money to maintain their island of incompatibility and all the reasons for doing that are vanishing. I also agree that it is a good thing.

      You know, that would be the last step for the UNIX kernel API to take over the world.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    22. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by gweihir · · Score: 1, Interesting

      That is nonsense. Take any old Unix code and you can compile and run it on Linux. You probably are thinking about binary compatibility though. That is a problem on your side.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    23. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by gweihir · · Score: 0

      Binary-only software has not place in the UNIX world. If you want compatibility on binary level, you are doing it wrong.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    24. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Indeed. DirectX was a bad idea right from the start, fueled by a lot of money and not a lot of understanding.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    25. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by SurenEnfiajyan · · Score: 2

      Unlikely. NT kernel works differently, it has many low level features that are missing or work differently in Linux kernel. For example its FS permission system is more complex than *nix "user, other, group". The kernel architecture affects many low level user mode exposed things such as address space layout, system call ABI, Audio/Video subsystem, process/thread stuff, etc. It's impossible to migrate to Linux and preserve 100% binary compatibility. Also what's wrong with NT kernel? As if Linux kernel is free of issues.

    26. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by SurenEnfiajyan · · Score: 2

      Then forget about commercial software on *nix. And never complain about half baked FOSS alternatives.

    27. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It was. Now MS is trying hard to make every windows version more incompatible with software done for previous OS versions. All this is done so they could get their 30% of software sales from MS store. And of course they will abandon their API's every two years to force upgrades for Visual studio.

    28. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by dunkelfalke · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That was a good one.
      In reality, just changing compilers is often enough to break software.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    29. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I want some of what you're smoking.

      Over 70% of Microsoft's revenue comes from Microsoft Office Suite, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox sales and licensing. That doesn't even include their Microsoft Exchange numbers which are lumped into their "cloud computing" segment along with SQL Server, etc.

      As for Win32 apps, they're deprecated. Windows 64 bit runs them in a Windows-on-Windows compatibility layer already, and MS is pushing their new universal windows platform apps hard as replacements for win32 and win64. MS is already deprecating previous driver frameworks as well with the next Windows update in April.

      MS is proud of their kernel and driver architecture. There isn't so much as a hint that they're looking to replace it with Linux. They bolted on an optional Linux subsystem to appease coders and sysadmins, not to transition away from Windows.

      Did you know MS made more money off of XBOX sales and related titles than they did off of Windows licensing last year? They LOVE having a locked-down XBOX with DRM titles and shared code with their desktop OS. Their goal is to push UWP apps to both devices, collect licensing fees from their store, and lock down the desktop as much as they can while mining users for personal data and ad sales. They see Android and iOS devices doing it, and they want their cut. I fully expect them to have another push towards Windows Phone in a few years.

      MS is perfectly happy letting Linux suffer from incompatibility issues and driver hell with Nvidia while it keeps the gaming crown for PC users and control over the XBOX. Why on earth would it help make Linux or SteamOS into viable alternatives by making itself MORE compatible with them?!?!? Remember, the SAME kernel is in the XBOX. There's no way they'll run Linux on the XBOX. They're scared to death of GPL'd software infecting their code! Chromium's core is BSD licensed, which MS has no problems pilfering and incorporating into their own code base.

      Starting over with a Chromium based browser just helps compatibility with Chrome and other chromium-based browsers since that's the majority of what's being used right now. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. If/when they get a decent share of the browser market again, they'll start adding their own APIs and try to lock things down for themselves again... IE style all over again with their latest and greatest activeX - like security holes if they can get away with it.

    30. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by drewsup · · Score: 2

      Bahahahha, oh thats rich!

        Is that why MS has deprecated a host of older processors and hardware? Mint runs all my older hardware ( printers, scanners, motherboards, processors) just fine, really doesnt care how old stuff is, Windows dropped support for my scanner 8 years ago, its a fucking USB scanner! Come on! Ya there are bodge workarounds, but why should I have to do that when Linux will run it natively with no bothers at all....

    31. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Tyger-ZA · · Score: 1

      Then forget about commercial software on *nix. And never complain about half baked FOSS alternatives.

      Yeah, half baked like chromium. The corporations would never use that shit.

    32. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Tyger-ZA · · Score: 3, Informative

      I would love nothing more than to see DirectX DIAF but the truth is no developer is going to rewrite their existing code because there is no $$$ in it. Therefore, if I can get all my Steam games to work on a Linux kernel via a Microsoft derived Linux kernel/DirectX implementation I'm all for it.

      Nobody implied developers should go rewrite their shit to remove DirectX

      You could use the Linux version of Steam with Proton to make the Windows games from your Steam account work on Linux

      And I just played the Windows version of Starcraft 2 on Linux using Lutris to configure the correct Wine version etc.

    33. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Rufty · · Score: 1

      The Windows kernel is quite well engineered. The VMS team did a good job there. It is just the mind-boggling quantities of Win32API+MFC+.NET+VB6+... heaped on top that stink up the system.

      --
      Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
    34. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

      Next thing they will be replacing the Windows kernel with the Linux kernel with a Win32 compatibility layer for running Windows apps on Linux

      Too much trouble.

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    35. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your ignorance is showing, Linux has had ACL's since ages.

      What's wrong with the NT kernel? Microsoft has to pay for all development and maintenance of it, alone.

    36. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Why?

      Competition is good, it was the continued evolution of DirectX that has consistently forced OpenGL to not stagnate which, given OpenGL is almost always behind DirectX in functionality highlights the fact that without DirectX, OpenGL would be holding us back, whilst with DirectX, OpenGL has to continue to be pretty good.

    37. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      As much as I hate Windows, Linux has been shit for backwards compatibility since the early days and it only got worse. Linux itself may not be the problem, but the ecosystems are.

      If you try to run a program from 2000 on Windows today it will probably work. On Linux it's a lot more likely to just flat-out not even install thanks to package managers.

      Linux backwards compatibility is based on having full source code readily available and an active community to maintain it. Lack of either of these will cause it to get cycled out of the repos, which is to the advantage of the distros as they can control the software you use. Arguably even the fully free distros have this to some degree if they're ideologically driven enough to be proud of sabatoging old software because it's a binary (and perceived to automatically be proprietary and, according to them, inherently evil).

      Plus it assumes everyone wants to use the latest version no matter what crackpot lobotomies have been done to it, which is hardly true. Especially today, where UX "specialists" think the only way to make software is to delete any functions that can't be figured out by the dog, and that the feature that all users secretly crave above all is invasive telemetry. This is worsened by key libraries like GTK and Qt basically burning backwards compatibility every few years.

      And if for whatever reason you want to run an old binary, pretty good chance you're just plain screwed. It's hard enough to run binaries from old versions of the same distro.

      While Windows backwards compatibility isn't perfect, often the remedy is to download an old DLL, which is usually not too hard to find and make work. Linux has no equivalent, especially if source code is unavailable for the program or its dependencies, even if the unavailability is just due to age rather than licensing.

      So no, Linux backwards compatibility is horseshit, not the comment pointing it out. There are good reasons containers are becoming so popular, and it isn't just security, it's making sure the thing will WORK. Many who lament the upswell of these containers have only themselves to blame.

    38. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ooooooh! Starcraft 2 (2010). Cutting edge!

    39. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the "Unix world" is so bent on preventing the user from choosing software (probably claiming that it's "for their own good" like some self-appointed nanny) then they have somehow become more authoritarian than Microsoft or Apple.

      Considering there are many reasons for using binaries (including needing software that is free but unmaintained, or has been mutilated by the maintainers), that's quite a feat., to beat out Microsoft in crushing freedom What are you going to do next, have the system self-destruct past a certain date because "you should be using new software obediently, plebian"?

      There are reasons containers are becoming popular and this dictatorial attitude - in a movement that claims to be about preserving choice - is one of them.

      I use Linux, but as the years pass and the ecosystem goes in this direction further, I can't help but wonder if "free software" will, for the supposed "good" of the user, be more authoritarian than Apple, Microsoft, or any other company they are supposed to offer an alternative to.

    40. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If your answer is "just recompile it", then you've lost already.

      I'm a professional software engineer. I know damn well that one of the most difficult parts of any non-trivial software project is getting the build environment set up. Telling a lay person to do that......no. Just no. I was trying to build a FOSS project a couple weeks ago, took me 3 hours to get it set up. No way would I wish that on someone like my uncle or mom. If you can't provide binary compatibility, then it's as good as useless in the consumer space.

    41. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then forget about commercial software on *nix.

      Insofar as "commercial" means "proprietary", that's what we all want.
      Code that is illegal to fix must die.

    42. Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      DirectX was a brilliant idea, fuelled by the classic Microsoft monopoly.

    43. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by technosaurus · · Score: 1

      Windows system call abi is already different on the kernel level between versions... and not just new ones added like in linux - the numbers change too, so you either need runtime detection and multiple tables or just use the MS provided dll whose interface remains the same.

    44. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck that. DirectX should just die. If you want to play "older" DX based games then there is always WINE and the Vulkan implementation of D3D11/D3D10.

      Just let him live in the delusion that computer games are the prime mover of PC computer sales, you're never going to convince him of anything else.

    45. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by gweihir · · Score: 1

      You seem to have no clue about the Unix history. Lots and lots of commercial software in there.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    46. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bahahahha, oh thats rich!

      Is that why MS has deprecated a host of older processors and hardware? Mint runs all my older hardware ( printers, scanners, motherboards, processors) just fine, really doesnt care how old stuff is, Windows dropped support for my scanner 8 years ago, its a fucking USB scanner! Come on! Ya there are bodge workarounds, but why should I have to do that when Linux will run it natively with no bothers at all....

      My own Windows kill list includes uncounted peripherals that were screwed when Vista came out, USB-Serial adapters gone, and not to let W10 feel left out I have an HP laserjet that stopped working after a W10 update. Yup, Microsoft decided that it wasn't going to work, and no W10 drivers exist now.

      All of those things continued to work and still do in Linux. Drivers are available. Just not for Windows. Windows famed backwards compatibility is nought but a pile of flaming bullshit.

    47. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by DarkRookie2 · · Score: 1

      HAHAHAHA.
      It still doesn't work all that great. Last I tried 6 months ago, only about 20% would even load.

      --
      http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
    48. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      The Windows kernel is the only truly great part of Windows. It's always been the "userland" part, which defines where everything is and what tools run where, that sucked. Microsoft switching to a Linux kernel wouldn't help anyone.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    49. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also, look at the performance of AMD's new multi-core chips on Windows vs on Linux for another example of what's wrong with the NT kernel. Multi core / CPU scalability has always been iffy on Windows. It definitely wasn't designed for 32 core NUMA systems and Microsoft doesn't seem too keen on fixing the issue.

    50. Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      DirectX was almost merged with OpenGL in the 90's. The core OpenGL company that was maintaining the project had pretty much ran out of cash, so MS decided to continue to go their own way in a business decision. MS had no reason to completely fund the OpenGL effort when they could simply fund their own API and have complete control over it. They'd only be helping competitors.

      DirectX was incredible and miles ahead of OpenGL in the 90's. Scene management gave it a pretty big edge. The API may not be much better now, but to say that it was a mistake is a gross misconception imo.

    51. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by DaMattster · · Score: 1

      I could see this happening which is basically morphing Windows into a desktop manager for Linux and/or BSD and using Win32/64 binary compatibility layers. This would honestly be the best move Microsoft could make because the NT Kernel is an awful kludge.

    52. Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by DaMattster · · Score: 1

      At the time of XP it was a joke. At the time of vista it was an amusing idea. At the time of Windows 10 it seems that things look that way. Or, at least, Microsoft is working hard to abandon OS market altogether.

      Frankly, IT market would be much better without Microsoft. At this point it is just an obstacle.

      With the proliferation of Linux and BSD, it's better to focus on writing software rather than try to reinvent the OS wheel every few years. By not having to spend obscene amounts of money maintaining and developing Windows desktop and server editions, it can instead focus on really making its administrative tools and software even better. Apple basically recognized the superiority of BSD and wrote a custom GUI and few other things on top of it. Microsoft doesn't even have to go that far. It just has to implement Windows as a desktop environment, brand, and release.

    53. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Professional Software Developer. Ewww.... Keep that windows and java crap away.

    54. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by rl117 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Linux has "POSIX.1e DRAFT" ACLs. They are functional, but limited, and based upon an unratified and abandoned draft standard. Other Unix sytems, like Solaris, IllumOS and FreeBSD, implemented NFSv4 ACLs which are both a ratified published standard and are compatible with both POSIX.1e DRAFT and Windows ACLs. (They are a superset of both.) If you're using NFSv4 ACLs they are modifiable and queryable from the command-line with get/setfacl and they are also modifiable and queryable from the Windows security/permissions property pages in the explorer (if exported via Samba or NFSv4). The whole ACL situation is limited by the fact that Linux hasn't implemented NFSv4 ACLs in the VFS. Yet filesystems like ZFS and NFSv4 use them, but they are hidden and inaccessible on Linux. If Linux implemented them, we would have pretty comprehensive and interoperable ACL support between all the major platforms.

    55. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft has clearly shown that they believe the future is services.

      Their services offerings are top notch. O365, Azure ( The former of which is built on the later) are making a lot of money.

      To get their, the biggest fight Microsoft has fought has not been with Google, rackspace, Amazon, or Apple. But with itself.

      The old model that was designed around bringing everything back to classic windows and office had deep deep deep roots in the Microsoft old guard and it's taken a long time to get rid of that mentality.

      I've seen this even outside of Microsoft. I interviewed with a local government IT department that's existed since Data General mainframes. It was a room full of old men that acted like they've been betrayed by Microsoft. They hated the idea of hosted services, cloud anything, or subscription software.

      And Microsoft has told them that they're going to adopt all three weather they like it or not.

    56. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft doesn't support {Thing}!! Clearly it's because they are evil and proprietary!!!!

      Microsoft does support {Thing}!! Clearly it's because of EEE!!!!

    57. Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Frankly, IT market would be much better without Microsoft. At this point it is just an obstacle.

      Do not wish for this. As horrid as Windows (and MS in general) is the best option is NOT reduced choice. If anything the world would be better of with Windows continuing but having a market share like Apple.

    58. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't want to restrict users; I want to convince developers.
      Releasing software that is illegal to fix is fundamentally immoral.

    59. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      more effort than just keeping the Windows kernel around.

      This is understated. About the only "good" part of Windows left is the kernel. Their driver interfaces break windows every chance they get, their useland / UI is garbage, and their applications bundled with Windows are even worse.

    60. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Fuck that. DirectX should just die.

      Are you speaking as a developer or as a user? As a user DirectX just works.

    61. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      It still doesn't work all that great. Last I tried 6 months ago, only about 20% would even load.

      Umm, the project is a year old. You might as well be commenting on how well Windows works since you tried using Windows 95.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    62. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Joey+Vegetables · · Score: 1

      IIRC, SQL Server originated as a fork of Sybase, which originally was a UNIX product. I doubt that much of the original code remains, nearly 30 years later, but, at least in hindsight, it seems to me that they ought to have abstracted away the OS calls from the very beginning, thus preserving the code's ability to run on either *nix, OS/2 (at the time), Windows, or whatever else might have surfaced.

    63. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      As a user DirectX just works.

      Only for Windows users. On Linux it's unsupported and with WINE it can be temperamental, broken or unsupported based on the version.

      On top of that, DirectX is the primary problem binding developers to only releasing Windows only games.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    64. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Wasn't most commercial unix binary only for most of its history?

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    65. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't get your point. Are you telling me about the no true Scotsman, simply moving the goal posts, or both?

    66. Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      They shouldn't have been surprised, that's what Microsoft does, betray you. Corporations don't deserve loyalty or trust: sometimes they do the right thing, but often they don't.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    67. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lol. Except it breaks driver compatibility often, as well as having various compatibility modes to make older apps work.

      I can still run all the same software and use the same drivers on Linux as I did 15 years ago, and can still run it on 15 year old hardware if I want or something brand new

    68. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by iampiti · · Score: 1
      I don't know how it is these days but if I remember correctly Nvidia propietary driver on Linux used to consist of two parts:
      • A layer that depended on the kernel version
      • A binary blob that run on that layer
      • That way they could run the same blob on many different Linux systems and kernel versions

    69. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually SQL Server has always had SOS which was a platform abstraction layer created/enhanced after the Sybase split. Rick Visick and Mike Habben were the devs I believe. When I joined Microsoft in 1999 SQL Server was still running on Unix internally as a side project and I was asked if I thought we needed to support Unix externally which would require other work to get the non-core stuff working which was written expecting Windows underneath. For the record, I recommended that we strip down a version of Windows and make it a thin layer that got installed on server computers to support SQL Server needs only. That was officially rejected by Paul Flessner who ran SQL Server, but note that Windows Embedded came out subsequently. My view has always been that the main uptime/security advantages of Linux (which I started using in 1992 with Slackware) had mostly to do with reduced surface layer, lack of interactive applications at the time and the half-mainframe conservative way that the servers were often managed that ran Linux which meant less chance to screw up. Most downtime comes from people messing around with something if you review root cause analysis. Windows has gotten a lot better once we got hit by the Slammer virus in terms of security, but it still suffers from the attempt to make it one monolithic OS to do everything for everybody. Strip it down and the difference with Linux goes away from an HA/sec standpoint I believe. Some history :-)

    70. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      I was thinking it would happen by natural attrition, the path of least resistance. There needn't be any special effort to speed it up. If the Windows and Linux kernel become one, You will halve the maintenance issues.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    71. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      So maybe something like, Microsoft decides to make a Linux kernel driver compatibility layer, then a decade later says, "Well, no one's using our traditional driver system now, might as well delete it?" Then one day they wake up and Windows has become the Microsoft version of OSX?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    72. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      Does it sound so implausible? I mean, if that's where the money is, you go for it, right? It really has nothing to do with the tech per se. It's strictly business.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    73. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Another scenario: everyone who knows how to write kernel code at Microsoft leaves. Then the remaining people try to add features, but can't. They tell their managers, "The code is too awful. We need to rewrite it." Again, they are too incompetent to rewrite it, so after messing up for a year, they say, "It's too hard. The only option left is to write it on top of Linux." Which turns out to be even harder (resulting in backwards compatibility bugs everywhere), but the UI looks decent, so they release it. Customers complain so much they finally end up open-sourcing windows 7 and discontinuing all new updates to Windows.

      (That is more or less what happened to FoxPro).

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    74. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know, you are right. I guess that's why Apple didn't do that.

      I'm guessing you don't work for Apple. Companies are better served by hiring employees who execute than say, "sorry, too much work."

    75. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by pak9rabid · · Score: 1

      Next thing they will be replacing the Windows kernel with the Linux kernel with a Win32 compatibility layer for running Windows apps on Linux

      Not if the GPL has anything to say about it.

    76. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Only for Windows users.

      Well since Linux on desktop is a myth I assumed so where the users ;-P

    77. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by tepples · · Score: 1

      Binary-only software has not place in the UNIX world. [Yet] lots of commercial software in there.

      Do you refer to commercial free software, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), or to proprietary software distributed to buyers in source code form? (If "yes", which?) If the latter, how do publishers of said proprietary software protect their work from mass copyright infringement by judgment-proof individuals?

    78. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by tepples · · Score: 1

      Software that depends on undefined behavior is already broken. So is software that depends on implementation-defined or otherwise unspecified behavior without build-time assertions if practical.

    79. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why don't you ask Microsoft, Oracle and IBM?

    80. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you mean UNIX, the closed source proprietary OS that you people copied? lols..

      Is there anything in the F/OSS world that wasn't copied from an existing, successful, proprietary product?

    81. Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      BSD...

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    82. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why?

      Competition is good

      This idea needs to die in a fire.

      Collaboration is good. Competition results in [n] competitors working on [m] implementations of the same shit, in other words, duplication of human effort for [n-1] competitors. And they'll all claim that competition is good while doing all they can to not compete. Let competition run to it's natural conclusion and you'll find 1 winner, along with [n-1] losers.

      Just from this article you can see all of the effort that's been put into a renderer for Edge being wasted effort. If they collaborated with the Chromium team from the start they'd be much further ahead now and the world's web developers would have saved some effort in making sure their shit works for the MS browser

    83. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just let him live in the delusion that computer games are the prime mover of PC computer sales, you're never going to convince him of anything else.

      Those sorts of people love talk about how PC is the biggest platform because they've included *EVERY PC* in the metrics whether its gaming grade or a cheap build for Office drones. The actual target size, especially for AAA gaming, is much smaller. If you start to consider the absolute latest shit like NVidia RTX, the number of capable PCs is even smaller. The Battlefield V devs wasted their time with ray tracing.

    84. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by bn-7bc · · Score: 1

      As mouchbas ai disslike windows and md, the hp laserjet norvworkinh innwindows 10 is probably HPs fault for not releasing a win10 driver for it

    85. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Are you pulling non Unix specifically to describe all *nix?

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    86. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by SurenEnfiajyan · · Score: 1

      Yeah, NT system calls aren't even publicly documented, only some Windows system utilities possibly use them directly. But there is a chance that MS preserves them anyway, there is no much sense in changing already existing syscalls, it won't add that much performance. Microsoft always pathologically cared about backward compatibility to the extent that they preserved many old API bugs/quirks in order to not break apps misusing them (for example. if I remember correctly, Sim City was freeing the same pointer multiple times and this broke this game on newer Windowses, so MS had to add a compatibility layer for it).

    87. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      So by your argument most larger Linux software is broken - just look at the enormous makefiles, inside there is always a huge list for workarounds to compiler quirks before the actual compilation can be started.

      Welcome to the real life.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    88. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by tepples · · Score: 1

      Software that depends on undefined behavior is already broken. So is software that depends on implementation-defined or otherwise unspecified behavior without build-time assertions if practical.

      inside there is always a huge list for workarounds to compiler quirks before the actual compilation can be started

      A lot of these are the "build-time assertions" to which I was referring.

    89. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      Then most software more complex than hello world is broken.
      And now what?

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    90. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by rl117 · · Score: 1

      The answer two posts up was implying that Linux ACLs were comparable with Windows ACLs. I explained that they are rather different than Windows ACLs, being both more limited in their functionality and being non-standard. I also explained that there was a third ACL type, NFSv4 ACLs which were a superset of both and available on several other Unix systems and which interoperate seamlessly with Windows systems as a result. The point being, that Linux here is the odd one out. It lacks a rich ACL model in its VFS layer, and consequently Linux can't support NFSv4 ACLS and is poorly interoperable with other systems using rich ACLs, as well as local filesystems using rich ACLs. I understand this is because the VFS maintainers don't like them, but this is a fairly significant functionality gap at this point.

    91. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too by gweihir · · Score: 1

      You also seem to be ignorant as well to whether copy-protection works. It does not.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  8. Annoucing a layoff soon? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Developers! Developers! Developers!

    You're fired! Join the rest of the Trump Team working the talk show circuit. Money for nothing. Get your chicks for free!

    1. Re:Annoucing a layoff soon? by _merlin · · Score: 1

      That wasn't about developers employed by Microsoft - it was about trying to ensure that Windows is the preferred desktop OS for developers in general.

  9. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Even more likely that the failure of Edge coupled with the complexity of development in-house supporting that flop (and thus cost) just doesn't make sense when the EU is going to be looking to kneecap them for it also.

    If they had gotten away with forcing everyone into their browser and telemetry and it had *worked* there's no question they'd have stuck with that come fire or flood until the last day.

  10. Correct!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I tried to use Edge because I never want to install any superfluous software on my computers. But Edge.. just disappointed at every turn.

    Since then, I use Firefox on all my machines and platforms!

  11. Hope can be bitter by ancientt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Microsoft could really change some minds and win some hearts. They've done a lot of good things, and Satya Nadella has done a lot to win me over. I wanted to love Edge, and I've tried over and over, but never succeeded. If Microsoft is really willing to change their course, this could be a huge step in winning me, and people like me back.

    Unfortunately I can't forget the past. Twenty years of pain and suffering from their decisions has made me reluctant to trust them. I can't help but remember all the things they've done to abuse their customers. I was a Linux at home guy for decades thanks to Microsoft failing to provide a system I could really make do what I wanted or needed. I've been on Windows 10 at home for nearly a year now and thanks to WSL and Chrome, I almost don't miss it. Give me bash and Chrome and they're getting close. An abused dog takes a long time to learn to trust. We've all been the abused dog by Microsoft, we want to love and hope, we want to believe. This time, we hope it will be different, but we don't trust easily.

    --
    B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
    1. Re: Hope can be bitter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Stockholm called and wanted their developers back.

    2. Re:Hope can be bitter by gweihir · · Score: 1

      You think things with Windows are getting _better_? You must be the only one that thinks this.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    3. Re:Hope can be bitter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They've done a lot of good things, and Satya Nadella has done a lot to win me over.

      Please give me an example. Any example will do.

    4. Re: Hope can be bitter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The iPad Pro.

    5. Re:Hope can be bitter by brxndxn · · Score: 1

      He plays good politics so the media says good things about him.

      --
      --- We need more Ron Paul!
    6. Re:Hope can be bitter by ancientt · · Score: 1

      Killing off their phone business. Making Windows 10 a free upgrade. Making it a rolling update system. Requiring people to update it. Moving their business model to focus on business rather than consumer income.

      That's off the top of my head, and of course I said things to win me over, not things to win over the ACs on Slashdot.

      --
      B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
    7. Re:Hope can be bitter by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      I don't trust them. Windows 10, a Nadella initiative, caused a lot of headaches by:

      1. Not actually being an improvement over 8.1 on certain hardware (it's a terrible tablet OS when 8.1 was the best tablet OS at that time)
      2. Being constantly advertised over and over again on Windows 7-8.x users desktops to the point that many people were clicking on it and accidentally installing it.
      3. Going from a relatively stable set of OSes to operating systems that force a reboot roughly once a week, due to incompetence on Microsoft's part.
      4. Incorporating privacy destroying features that simultaneously eat up CPU and cause a terrible user experience for users. Why is it again that I can't do a traditional search, I have to use Cortana?

      Meanwhile, the privacy issues aren't the only problem with what Microsoft are doing, they're also apparently keen on trying to monopolize the browser market again, with attempts to force users to use Edge for everything.

      They've added some nice features to Windows 10 (love the Linux mode), but to make it stable I have to, ironically (and dangerously) disable Windows Update. I don't know what data my Windows PC is sharing with third parties. I'm being encouraged to use insecure software like Edge over better alternatives like Firefox.

      For me to trust Microsoft I need three things:

      1. A commitment to making stable, secure, software. It doesn't matter to me why my computer crashes once a week, I don't want it to do that.
      2. A commitment to privacy that starts with not sharing data it shouldn't in the first place.
      3. A commitment to recognizing that third parties can and do develop software that's more suited to many end user's needs than Microsoft's, and an end to overriding their choices and otherwise trying to force end users to only use Microsoft applications.

      And those commitments need to be backed by their behavior.

      Perhaps they can start by postponing the next major update of Windows for six months, and in it stripping out telemetry, and rebuilding Windows Update so it doesn't force reboots and for the most part doesn't need them.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    8. Re:Hope can be bitter by iampiti · · Score: 1

      A lot of good things? You must not be referring to Windows. Windows 10 is the most user-hostile Windows ever: It spies on you, it has ads, it likes to change default programs to Microsoft ones without consulting the user, it reboots to update whenever it wants to. It doesn't respect the user at all.

    9. Re:Hope can be bitter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's no stranger than people thinking Trump is doing a good job.

  12. I feel bad for Microsoft by jecowa · · Score: 1

    They have been trying very hard to support all the standards. Their browser has been a lot better than it has in the past. It's too bad this new rendering engine didn't work out. I guess with a Chromium base they won't need to worry about keeping it updated.

    --
    my opportunity to freely express myself with the potential persecution and hangings and such
    1. Re:I feel bad for Microsoft by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Informative

      I feel bad for Microsoft. They have been trying very hard to support all the standards.

      Don't because those assholes only implement standard when they have no other choice. Microsoft has a long history of trying to undermine standards with purposely shitty support.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    2. Re:I feel bad for Microsoft by gravewax · · Score: 1

      The rendering engine in Edge now is actually pretty bloody good, especially speed wise. The problem is they took the morons approach of releasing what was a beta version that lacked features first up, people tried it, rightly so hated it and now will never go back. That approach only works in a market that isn't dominated by successful competitors.

    3. Re:I feel bad for Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, because it still doesn't support half of CSS3!

      object-fit
      position: sticky
      clip-path
      mask
      filter effects
      appearance (for form elements)
      shapes level 1
      text-orientation
      font-kerning
      text-stroke and text-fill
      image-set
      resize property
      background-blend-mode :default pseudo-class :matches pseudo-class :placeholder-shown pseudo-class
      case-insensitive attribute selector
      cross-fade function
      css custom variables
      reflection

    4. Re:I feel bad for Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      might be irritating to developers but most of that doesn't mean shit to 99% of websites.

    5. Re:I feel bad for Microsoft by gravewax · · Score: 1

      and yet it ranks above safari and slightly above firefox for html5 support and no browser has everything. Chrome is definitely the leader at this point but even it has many failings.

    6. Re:I feel bad for Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do we lived without it ?
      Except for filter-effects I think 99.99% of the population does not care.

    7. Re:I feel bad for Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean like Google is doing with Chrome?

    8. Re:I feel bad for Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and yet it ranks above safari and slightly above firefox for html5 support and no browser has everything. Chrome is definitely the leader at this point but even it has many failings.

      No it doesn't rank above Firefox. A simple Google search for "top browser compatibility scores" shows this.

    9. Re:I feel bad for Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      go to the html5 test site yourself. The latest results do have edge ahead of firefox.

    10. Re:I feel bad for Microsoft by gravewax · · Score: 1
  13. Just...ugh. by Chas · · Score: 1

    That's just awful.

    Not quite as awful as IE or Edge.

    But still.

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  14. Edge was fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On a new Windows install, Edge was perfectly fine for downloading Chrome & Firefox installers.

    1. Re:Edge was fine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And after install, the pathetic Edge tried to still steal the association for default browser. Instead of trying to make edge useful, the dumbasses added dialogs "Why don't you still give Edge a chance? [yes] [ok]". And then also restore association to Edge on each OS update, just to make sure people remembered, why Edge deserved its hatred.

  15. Open source it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They already open source their JavaScript engine (ChakraCore) which is quite nice. I think they should open source all of Edge and watch as an army of hackers improve the code and make it do interesting things. Personally I don't like the monoculture of rendering engines. I'd rather have multiple browsers to choose from. Honestly, I'd love to have had a port of Edge to Linux (my desktop these days).

    I tried Edge on my Android phone but there it was just a wrapper around WebView and shared all of WebView's behavior. Sometimes I'd like choice and Microsoft throwing in the towel is a bad one. From what I've gathered Edge was quite standards compliant and I'm sad to see it go.

  16. I'm confused... by qzzpjs · · Score: 1

    Did we just time warp to April 1st?

  17. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too -WSL... by anon+mouse-cow-aard · · Score: 2

    Windows subsystem for Linux is the thin edge of the wedge... gradually build more stuff to run on WSL, and then a few years from now, everything flips, and instead of running linux apps in a windows host, the base os will be linux, and the windows apps will be running in wine... and it will still cost >100$ to buy the *license* bute they can fire almost all their OS folks, and their cost will be nil. If they play their cards right, just us nerds will notice.

  18. Embrace extend extinguish by nmonsey · · Score: 1

    I hope this isn't another Embrace Extend Extinguish attempt.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    1. Re:Embrace extend extinguish by stooo · · Score: 1

      Yeah. but who embraces what ?

      --
      aaaaaaa
  19. Bad to have a Chromium monoculture by aberglas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If there ends up being only one main source for all vendors then HTML will be defined by whatever the code does rather than by any standards process. And then it will be very difficult to move on if Chromium goes bad. Which means that there will be no incentive to make Chromium good.

    1. Re:Bad to have a Chromium monoculture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Chromium is open source, so moving on will just mean forking it.

    2. Re:Bad to have a Chromium monoculture by Fatalis · · Score: 1

      Chromium is a hugely complex project; if the people that are currently being paid to work on it stop, it's questionable how much could be done by "the community", meaning unpaid volunteers.

      --
      Deus est fatalis
    3. Re:Bad to have a Chromium monoculture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are also many things which standards don't (or shouldn't) specify which are up to the engine.
      Once there is only one engine, consumer choice on these matters is lost.
      Also, when competition for speed is gone, expect engines to become more sluggish as there'll be less incentive to improve efficiency.

    4. Re:Bad to have a Chromium monoculture by markdavis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >"If there ends up being only one main source for all vendors then HTML will be defined by whatever the code does rather than by any standards process. And then it will be very difficult to move on if Chromium goes bad. Which means that there will be no incentive to make Chromium good."

      I agree. It is one of many reasons I use Firefox. And I suggest you do, too. And recommend it your friends and family.. It is a fine browser and deserves support. A mono culture (or near mono culture) in browsers is VERY VERY bad.... we lived through that nightmare once before.

    5. Re:Bad to have a Chromium monoculture by geoscodin · · Score: 1

      So... Chromium will be the new IE6? It was a pain to move on from that. I would rather never wind up in that situation again. But history repeats itself, and the winners pick the path, and blah blah blah.

      We STILL have to use MS-IE to access MS-Excel from MS-Sharepoint as even MS-Edge won't work. You would think (or maybe you wouldn't) all MS products would play nice together.

    6. Re:Bad to have a Chromium monoculture by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

      You raise some concerns worth consideration, but I think you may be letting fear get the better of you. There are good reasons to fear monocultures, but I don't see how those concerns apply here.

      If there ends up being only one main source for all vendors then HTML will be defined by whatever the code does rather than by any standards process.

      You're letting the tail wag the dog if you think that's a problem. An independent standards process serves no purpose if there aren't different sources for parts that need to work together. In a single-source situation, the primary benefit to having a standard is that new entrants trying to break into the field have something against which they can design their new approach, but the standard wouldn't be going away in your scenario, just the process used to drive its development. Maintaining a separate process in a time when there's no need for it would mean maintaining bureaucracy for its own sake.

      And then it will be very difficult to move on if Chromium goes bad.

      First, how is that situation any different than what we have now? It's hard today to create and maintain a competitor to Chromium. It's always been hard. If you want to build on existing work, you don't have many choices. You can't adopt Microsoft's closed frameworks. Everyone given the opportunity to adopt Firefox's (e.g. Safari, Chrome, and Opera) has decided to go elsewhere, so odds are you would too. You could do what Apple did with WebKit and fork a smaller code base to get your start, but even that's tremendously difficult. And starting a new project from the ground up would be no more nor less difficult in a world where Chromium was all we had than it is today.

      Second, even if it does go bad, anyone can fork it. Monocultures are bad when you're incapable of escaping them, but when there's no lock-in, there's nothing stopping a new entrant from developing the next step in the evolution of the technology by building on what is already there.

      Third, when you have competitors working together on a shared resource, there's a lot of incentives aligned to ensure that the shared resource doesn't "go bad". It may fail to improve as much as it could, but...

      Which means that there will be no incentive to make Chromium good.

      I actually agree with you, but I'm not convinced it's a problem in practice.

      Consider the very similar situation we were in a few years back when Apple and Google were working together on WebKit. One improvement Google realized would yield significant performance and security benefits was a multiprocess architecture, but adding it to WebKit would mean sharing it with their competitor. The incentives weren't aligned for them to improve WebKit, so that's the end of the story, right?

      No! Things played out differently in reality.

      Instead, Google baked their improvements into Chromium (which sits on top of WebKit), giving Chrome a significant competitive advantage over Safari. Apple responded with the creation of WebKit2 (which baked the multiprocess architecture directly into the rendering engine). As development of WebKit and WebKit2 diverged, Google eventually forked WebKit as Blink, which Opera has benefitted from already, and which Microsoft allegedly stands to benefit from as well.

      So, in one sense, WebKit proper has indeed failed to improve as a result of the misaligned incentives, but that's missing the forest for the trees. If we look at the whole picture we see that the end users for all of the involved companies have benefitted, that the state of technology has advanced, and that the lack of improvement to WebKit itself is neither here nor there, since its development continues on under the names of Blink and WebKit2.

    7. Re:Bad to have a Chromium monoculture by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      Alas, unlike IE, Chrome is extremely popular with web developers, since it allows people to do all the latest, fashionable UX nonsense. Everyone designs for Chrome first and makes whatever changes necessary to "make it work" on everything else. "Standards compliance" isn't a talking point anymore, because Chrome gives designers all the fun toys they want.

      This time, it's our own fault (as developers) that Chrome took over the web and put Google in charge of dictating standards. As long as Google keeps catering to the ad companies and "artists", I don't see Chrome getting the same bitter hatred IE did, and we'll be stuck with it for a long time.

    8. Re:Bad to have a Chromium monoculture by toddestan · · Score: 1

      Actually, it's just history repeating itself. IE5 was popular with developers back in the day because it was the first browser to have CSS support that wasn't terrible, support fun toys like favicons, and also basically invented Ajax (though it wasn't called that until later). Microsoft also pushed some other stuff like ActiveX which was perhaps a bit too propriety to take over the world, but still managed to gain some traction.

      In many ways, Chrome is the new IE6.

  20. having a single dominant product is bad... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    whether open source or not. It is going to be interesting to see how we address open source monopolies.

    1. Re:having a single dominant product is bad... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The same way we always have: forks. Does nobody remember libc6? Xfree86? eudev? Devuan? Mate? ffmpeg vs libav?

    2. Re:having a single dominant product is bad... by DaMattster · · Score: 1

      whether open source or not. It is going to be interesting to see how we address open source monopolies.

      Open source and monopoly don't belong in the same sentence. Open source means that if you hate parts of the product but like its core functionality, you can fork it and make it your own by stripping out what you hate.

    3. Re:having a single dominant product is bad... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fork all you want. The monopoly isn't broken until a significant number of followers choose the fork over the main and they diverge enough to truly be different products. A family of nearly identical products would still be a monoculture / monopoly with all of the dangers that the lack of diversity brings.

  21. Ambivalence by TimMD909 · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure if Microsoft is preparing to do evil, or finally found the much sought after vaccination/cure for NIH syndrome. Either way, this development is interesting. Both could be possible too... Hmmm...

    1. Re:Ambivalence by fido_dogstoyevsky · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure if Microsoft is preparing to do evil, or finally found the much sought after vaccination/cure...

      It's microsoft. Of COURSE they're going to do evil. The scorpion is more likely to stop stinging.

      --
      It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
  22. It was not available on Windows 7 and 8 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft used to bridge between OS versions, e.g. IE6 and .NET were available for Win 9x, IE7 and IE8 were available for XP.
    No such work was to run Edge on previous versions, so a billion people were not able to run Edge and had to run other browsers for years. Millions people using Windows 10 for the first time in 2017, 2018 or 2019 thus have little reason to run Edge.

    I think this is a reason for Windows 8 (RT) store and apps failures as well, back then people may have had been curious about tablet-like ipad-like applications on their desktop (this was still relatively new in 2012, smartphones not universal yet, blackberry still around). They didn't backport it to Windows 7 so they left out hundreds millions users.

    I'm dumbfounded by this news still. A very bad news it means Google Chrome dictating the web. Does the oligarchy divide the cake (entire globalized world) between themselves? Microsoft keeps the desktop OS and legacy Office, Google gets the web, Amazon gets retail, Facebook is the ultimate real identity verifier and anonymity killer, Atlantic Council pilots the censorship, European Union writes the laws, Finance e.g. Goldman Sachs and central banks blackmail the governments.

    1. Re:It was not available on Windows 7 and 8 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      so a billion people were not able to run Edge and had to run other browsers for years.

      And not a fuck was given.

    2. Re:It was not available on Windows 7 and 8 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does the oligarchy divide the cake (entire globalized world) between themselves? Microsoft keeps the desktop OS and legacy Office, Google gets the web, Amazon gets retail, Facebook is the ultimate real identity verifier and anonymity killer, Atlantic Council pilots the censorship, European Union writes the laws, Finance e.g. Goldman Sachs and central banks blackmail the governments.

      And if you're not satisfied in this state of the death of democracy, there is a line of AIs ready to decompose and redistribute you job responsibilities among them.

    3. Re:It was not available on Windows 7 and 8 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I like when people think that every new feature has to be backported for free for forever

    4. Re:It was not available on Windows 7 and 8 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm dumbfounded by this news still. A very bad news it means Google Chrome dictating the web.

      It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Google, although it could. Blink is developed by several companies. It's OSS. Microsoft can easily make their own browser with Blink rendering and have no relation to Google. In fact, they could very well use it to improve gmail.com functionality and link that to Skype, MS online storage, or even some kind of Silverlight widgets or MS Store apps. That would be a classic MS move.

    5. Re:It was not available on Windows 7 and 8 by Beat+The+Odds · · Score: 1

      I'm dumbfounded by this news still. A very bad news it means Google Chrome dictating the web.

      You seem to be confusing Chrome with Chromium.

    6. Re:It was not available on Windows 7 and 8 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They didn't backport to Win7 because their strategy was to try and force people off that operating system. Windows 7 was too good, and most people didn't feel that had a reason to upgrade. Microsoft was trying to make up reasons.

  23. Typical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No matter what Microsoft does, in 3-5 years they throw it away and do something else.

  24. A cold day... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Quick, somebody tell me where can I get some cheap fur coats and how can I get those to hell, it must be freezing in there.

  25. So everyone except Firefox is based on WebKit then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Speaking of mono culture: chromiums rendering engine is based on WebKit which was built by Apple for Safari. Although reluctantly Apple has steadily contributed their code to WebKit.
    WebKit was the basis of the HTML5 standardization of the rendering process. Many browsers are built on WebKit, from KHTML (kde) over Chrome to even Opera nowadays.
    Remember the chart Steve Jobs showed with 90% of the web being powered by Safari? If you count WebKit as being Safari, thatâ(TM)s almost true already.

  26. I feel bad for Chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some sites do work better under Chromium. Maybe with MS a lot of the bugs can be fixed. For example Chromium and HTTPS. DNS lookup failing unless a VPN is used. Sign-ins breaking as well.

  27. That work, too, has already been done by raymorris · · Score: 2

    Several such compatiblilty layers already exist. Without Microsoft's help, or patents and copyrights. Microsoft could buy Codeweavers (Crossover) for less than Microsoft spends on toilet paper.

    Projects like Wine have to develop a shim for each part without even seeing the code they are working with, much less being able to change anything. Microsoft would have the luxury of being able to adapt their systems to make compatibility easier. That makes the task easier than what Crossover and others are already doing.

    Wine, Crossover, etc have to analyze each new update from Microsoft and try to catch up. Each update makes their job harder. If Microsoft owned the compatibility layer, each update would make the job *easier*. For example, whenever they dump their old browser they'd make the new one be Linux-friendly without any extra layer. Perhaps by starting with Chromium.

    1. Re: That work, too, has already been done by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Crossover is cool and I highly recommend it but it's missing a lot of functionality. It's not that a compatibility layer is impossible, just that maintaining a kernel isn't that hard in comparison to maintaining the stuff on top of it.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:That work, too, has already been done by Junta · · Score: 1

      Wine does an admirable job and does a solid job of supporting third-party software built originally for Windows.

      When it comes to trying to support Microsoft software built for Windows, it falls over hard more often than not.

      Microsoft would have better luck doing it, but I think the argument that porting the Windows architecture to the linux kernel is more expensive than status quo is strong, and Microsoft would gain nothing except to enable a small portion of the population to reduce their use of microsoft software.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  28. Vacillatism by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Is this MS's new new browser, or their new new new browser?

  29. Sorry Microsoft, it won't help much by SurenEnfiajyan · · Score: 2

    It won't help much, there are many Chromium forks and none of them is mainstream.

  30. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The telemetry is the reason I never used Edge. I wonder what proportion of potential users were turned off Edge for a similar reason.

  31. I'd rather they used Servo by melted · · Score: 1

    It's faster, and it's not Google. It just needs a little bit of UX polish to really shine, including such bare necessities as global scale factor that Firefox flat out refuses to implement.

  32. Re: So everyone except Firefox is based on WebKit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You got it backwards. Seriously. Get informed.

  33. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by cyber-vandal · · Score: 5, Funny

    Luckily Chrome doesn't spy on you

  34. Port Wine to Windows :) by stooo · · Score: 1

    MS will soon port Wine to Windows in 2020

    --
    aaaaaaa
  35. Re:So everyone except Firefox is based on WebKit t by jaklode · · Score: 1

    WebKit was built on KHTML, not the other way around. LGPLed KHTML was the reason they had to publish WebKit it in the first place.

  36. Don't feel bad for Microsoft by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 1

    They have been trying very hard to support all the standards

    Then why do I have the feeling I'm back in the browser war? As a web developer, I recall that you first made your site standards compliant, and then made it work in IE as well. Then came Firefox (it was a great browser in those days), and finally Microsoft started adhering to some standards as well. Nowadays, I have the feeling we are back in the browser war again. I wouldn't know who Microsoft is fighting this time, but again I have to make my sites standards compliant first, and then "fix" them for Internet Explorer and Edge.

    So if this new browser has the standards compliance of chromium, it cannot come soon enough.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
  37. Firefox? by Qbertino · · Score: 1

    I have been thinking lately that IMHO Firefox would be an ideal candidate for a co-op with MS. They could do a little more good, regain some of that long lost karma, FF quantum would get the attention it deserves and MS would still be giving Google and Apple the finger. That works be a win win win Situation for both MS and Mozilla IMHO.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
  38. Open Source It! by found404 · · Score: 1

    Let's see how much Microsoft Loves Linux and Open Source... In fact, they could have done it long before throwing in the towel - in the hopes of generating some kind of momentum. The fact that they didn't probably means that the source code will expose too much embedded spyware. It'll take months to clean that dirt away before they even consider making the source viewable.

  39. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Luckily, in the blurb it says they are going to base their replacement on Chromium. Don't worry though, I'm sure they'll retrofit all the spying you can eat into it.

  40. weird by SuperDre · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've got more instabilities with Chrome than actually with Edge. Both have their plusses. Biggest problem with chrome was that it was doing exactly what people bitcht at with IE6, but a lot of webdevs didn't mind this time, as it was their prefered browser.. a lot of times they don't even check their sites with Edge, which is even more HTML5 compliant than Chrome.. Ahwel, I don't care (like a lot of people), as long as I can browse..

    1. Re:weird by bananaquackmoo · · Score: 1

      You know how I know that you're not a web developer? You think Edge is more standards compliant than Chrome. I laugh in your general direction.

    2. Re:weird by SuperDre · · Score: 1

      I guess you need to actually read up on the standards instead of reading the chrome dev pages on the topics..

  41. First came the Navigator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    then the Explorer, and in the end came the Konqueror!

  42. Funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So, a small player, KDE, decides to build a new web render engine, which is forked by a (at that time) smallish player, Apple, and turned into webkit, which then is forked by Google who quickly needed an engine because they were tired of Microsoft IE6 vs. Firefox dormancy in the early 2000s which now comes back to the people, Microsoft, who had 95% market dominance in the late 90s with IE5/6. Funny.

  43. Sure it was ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft Edge was designed to be fast, lightweight, and secure

    And nobody but Microsoft ever believed that.

    See, Microsoft has yet to demonstrate they can do any of those things with a browser, so as usual, a Microsoft browser is most useful to download a browser which is actually fast, lightweight, and secure.

  44. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    For me it's not the telemetry, but working with Bono that turns me off.

  45. Tried Edge, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Edge performed adequately on my PCs, but Microsoft.
    Chrome also performed well, but Google(remember "Don't be evil?")
    I'll stick wif Mo' zilla.

  46. 2 for 1! Google AND Msoft can spy on you together by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    at the same time. Nothing like being efficient!

  47. Wine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I suspect it is *highly* unlikely that a "Win32 compatibility layer" ontop of the Linux kernel would ever be "compatible" enough to run the millions of Windows apps out there. Including all those hacky ones that rely on undocumented Win32 behaviour.

    Just look at Wine. Its a magnificent effort, but at the end of the day still struggles to run the majority of Windows apps.

    1. Re:Wine by rl117 · · Score: 1

      100% is likely an unattainable goal. But Wine has been painstakingly reverse engineered. They had to identify all the compatibility workarounds and play a never ending game of catch-up. If Microsoft were to make their own equivalent, they would be able to have much better coverage, with the original sources.

  48. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It will when Microsoft's done with it.

  49. Instability? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What instability?

  50. Why does M$ bother? by BlackOverflow · · Score: 1

    Ie is currently at 2.8% and edge at 2.15% of market share. Why are they bothering to make another browser? They have clearly lost and are wasting their time and money on this.

  51. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  52. Re:So everyone except Firefox is based on WebKit t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, sort-of. You really mean KHTML.

    KHTML's descendents are running 90% of the worlds browsers now. I guess Konqueror truly was the Konqueror!

    I say descendents as KHTML is now seen as basically Webkit today since they've kind of always just had to work together, and Blink is only a recent fork. I guess the real question is whether Blink will eventually take over anyway due to market share.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  53. Ditching Chromium soon by kiehlster · · Score: 2

    because I'm tired of it eating up all my RAM. I'm pretty tired of these browsers forcing me to upgrade hardware to handle the performance and data footprint that they sell as "fast" and "feature rich". What is it worth if my perfectly stable old machine can't handle it?

    1. Re:Ditching Chromium soon by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Firefox is just as bad in RAM usage if not worse.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    2. Re:Ditching Chromium soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not the browser per see. It's the shitting coding of "web developers" and their nesting of dozens of "frameworks" to make the simplest of web pages. I'm sure these shitty web devs could even manage to find a way to make Lynx eat a gig of ram to render a page.

    3. Re:Ditching Chromium soon by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Chromium isn't eating your RAM, the modern internet is. The only browsers which use significantly different (reads less) amount of RAM are those that lack the full capabilities as defined in the standards.

      People endlessly say that upgrade cycles haven't been defined by software for a while, it seems strange that you would claim the opposite.

    4. Re:Ditching Chromium soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ditto, Chrome is just awful.

    5. Re:Ditching Chromium soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because Chrome trades off battery life, CPU and RAM for performance.

      That's why it's fast - it uses high resolution system timers, for example. Edge doesn't, so edge won't draing your battery so fast -- but the browser itself can be slow.

    6. Re:Ditching Chromium soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Firefox is A LOT better now when you're using lots of tabs. Firefox takes the RAM upfront, and if you use only a tab or two, you can decrease the number of content processes in the options.

      Firefox since Quantum is a much better browser (especially now that the essential extensions work), and it keeps getting faster every update, even thought they haven't yet finished the webrender stuff (that renders the content using the GPU as if it was a videogame).

    7. Re:Ditching Chromium soon by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      All modern applications try to cache the hell out of everything, and they don't often release memory when they do.

      I don't use Chrome, but I have multiple other browsers installed, each one for different purposes. I've have plenty of experience where I close every window/tab except for the last, and point that last window to "about:blank". The result is that the browser still holds on to at least a GB of memory, and sometimes uses CPU time as well. You can't blame bloated web pages for idiotic resource usage when no web pages are running. Firefox is the worst at this in my experience, as even when you use the "minimize memory usage" feature in "about:memory", it basically does nothing.

      Browsers are are slow and bloated because they are trying too hard to be fast, gobbling up more resources than they need or can manage. That's why, even with the introduction of separate processes, I still have to restart my browsers regularly. Individual web pages don't cripple my machine, but over time the browser just craps itself.

    8. Re:Ditching Chromium soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      bullshit!!

      firefox uses much less resources than any other blink browser.

    9. Re:Ditching Chromium soon by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The result is that the browser still holds on to at least a GB of memory, and sometimes uses CPU time as well.

      Broken plugin / user profile alert. Seriously man I've been using Chrome and Firefox all day without closing either (different purposes, one has my personal account linked the other I use for work on this machine), Chrome currently has 8 tabs open and is using 400MB of RAM, Firefox has 2 tabs open and is using 350MB.

      Also I didn't say web pages. I said web standards. Browsers are complex "operating systems" of our modern time. You don't need to do much in a web page for them to need to consume memory. That said ... you're right, your problem isn't standards or the browsers, it's your local install.

      Browsers are are slow and bloated because they are trying too hard to be fast, gobbling up more resources than they need or can manage.

      Oh? Now there's a new theory. Are you expecting an Application to understand the available resource pool? I know I just quipped that the browser is a modern OS, but that was just a joke man. No Applications should gobble up any resources they need, it's up to the OS to decide if they can manage it, and please be consistent, a slow browser is one that does NOT load things in RAM and instead attempts to load resources from disk when required.

  54. Who uses browsers anymore? by richman555 · · Score: 1

    Microsoft never really wanted to be in the browser business anyway. They have always preferred more application 'lock in" via web services. I guess the browser wars are officially over?

  55. Won the war failed the objectives. by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Back in the late 1990's Microsoft won the browser war against Netscape. However they had failed to reach the objective of such war.
    Microsoft never really liked the World Wide Web. With Windows 95 it came with rather limited IE browser (in essence a tool to download Netscape) but at the time they really didn't care much, because they were pushing MSN service to compete against AOL. These services at the time were less an ISP but a large multi-node BBS with graphics. That was the direction they wanted to go. The internet and WWW was just for academic and those looser who had those Unix based servers.

    However the Web Grew in popularity, and Netscape was getting big, and showing a future of an OS independent system, where the browser was king. This future was a threat to Microsoft, however it seemed inevitable. So Microsoft started the browser war by beefing up IE to compete with Netscape (Which was a bold move at the time, as most applications that come with the OS were just small tools that just barely get the job done, eg. notepad, wordpad, calc, paint ). Now Microsoft is on its EEE strategy. Embrace the Web, Extend it with its own custom html commands and http protocol changes, then being able to kill it, because what everyone is using is so far from the normal web, there isn't any point to it anymore.

    With Windows 98 and the embedded full feature browser. It fully Embraced the web, and basically killed Netscape. Then they were in the process of Extending, with some ideas that are still common such as CSS, and others that are just a bad idea such as Active X, and Sliverlight. However Microsoft got stuck on IE 6 for way too long, and the Active X became a security nightmare. Microsoft extensions made people to not trust Microsoft, as their systems were getting hacked, often working around firewalls and all the other best practices at the time, because a trusted sight may had a less then trustful advertiser which would run applications on your PC.

    This security problem brought in a new lightweight browser called Firefox. Which supported the standards much better then IE, was faster and didn't use the stuff that allowed people to break into the computer. Then Firefox grew where it started to be too big, that is where Google Chrome came in (at around the same time Safari came in for Apple also based on WebKit)

    Now the growth of the WebKit based browsers, now meant for browsing the Web, it really doesn't matter if you are using Linux, Windows, MacOS or even some of the lesser known OS's such as the BSD's. And Netscapes vision of nearly all your applications being web based is nearly true today. Now Microsoft is having to fight to keep its market share, and having to deal with mobile devices with Apple and Google based OS's. Microsoft is still going strong, but they had to change their business model a lot.

    So they had won the browser war but failed the objective. Now with them trying to put effort into a rendering engine is just wasting resources. Going to a WebKit chromium browser will probably just let them focus more on what they really want to focus on and less on trying to get a better HTML5 support score.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by Rockoon · · Score: 5, Informative

      Back in the late 1990's Microsoft won the browser war against Netscape

      Microsoft didnt win. Netscape lost. It was a do-it-yourself mugging.

      Netscape committed suicide.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    2. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by wooferhound · · Score: 2

      Microsoft wanted to Win the Internet so they could change the standards to their liking

      --
      We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
    3. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 5, Informative

      Then Firefox grew where it started to be too big, that is where Google Chrome came in (at around the same time Safari came in for Apple also based on WebKit)

      I don't know which parallel Universe you come from, but Safari pre-dates Chrome by more than five years. Also, Google used WebKit, Apple's fork of KHTML, until Chrome version 27. Starting with Chrome 28, it used Blink as its rendering engine which is Google's fork of WebKit.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      January 7, 2003, at Macworld San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed its own web browser, called Safari. It was based on Apple's internal fork of the KHTML rendering engine, called WebKit.[9] The company released the first beta version, available only for Mac OS X, later

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      The browser was first publicly released on September 2, 2008 for Windows XP and later, with 43 supported languages, officially a beta version,[33] and as a stable public release on December 11, 2008.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    4. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The company released the first beta version, available only for Mac OS X, later that day."

    5. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by Junta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While it may have been ill-advised, realistically netscape was screwed by the gigantic disadvantage of having to be downloaded in a time when 57 kbit was the typical internet bandwidth.

      So they suffered from two things:
      -Microsoft bundling it into the OS meant that *everyone* had a serviceable browser
      -Netscape did not manage to overcome this through getting the OEMs to bundle their alternative (Hardware vendors wouldn't do this without getting paid to do so, and MS stood there with always deeper incentives for OEMs to *not* bundle Netscape).

      There's no amount of doing the technology part of the browser better that could have saved them.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    6. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by darkain · · Score: 1

      Its not so much that Microsoft got stuck on IE6, its more that IE release cycles were tied directly to Windows OS release cycles and Windows Vista took too long.

      IE3 - Windows 95
      IE4 - Windows 98
      IE5 - Windows 2000
      IE6 - Windows XP
      IE7 - Windows Vista
      IE8 - Windows 7

      And it wasn't until after this point that IE decoupled itself from Windows release cycles.

    7. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by Pfhorrest · · Score: 4, Informative

      This security problem brought in a new lightweight browser called Firefox. Which supported the standards much better then IE, was faster and didn't use the stuff that allowed people to break into the computer. Then Firefox grew where it started to be too big, that is where Google Chrome came in (at around the same time Safari came in for Apple also based on WebKit)

      A couple important missing bits to note in your history here:

      - Firefox is powered by Mozilla which was also the core of Netscape Navigator, so Firefox was basically the revenge of Netscape.

      - WebKit was created by Apple (as a fork of the KHTML renderer from KDE) specifically to power Safari (all of the OSX/OpenStep/NeXTSTEP libraries are named something-Kit), and then Google adopted that for Chrome, so Safari isn't really just a side note, Safari is essentially the ancestor of Chrome.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
    8. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 2

      iOS was the death knell for a lot of proprietary IE crap pervading the web and in the enterprise. As soon as CEOs started showing up with their shiny new toys to find the corporate web site and intranet looked like crap or would not render, heads rolled and a whole new set of web developers were hired on to replace the IE6 mess they had been maintaining for a decade.

      --
      the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
    9. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Now Microsoft is on its EEE strategy. Embrace the Web, Extend it with its own custom html commands and http protocol changes, then being able to kill it, because what everyone is using is so far from the normal web, there isn't any point to it anymore.

      Note this is what Google is doing now, too. While they don't seem to be actively malicious about it, it would be nice to have some browser diversity to prevent them from making poor design decisions.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    10. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You missed a third thing:

      Netscape sucked. A lot. Everybody talks about 'standards' but Netscape was as guilty of being non-standards based as IE at the time. In fact a lot of the DHTML stuff that IE pioneered ended up forming the basis of quite a few technologies.

      Also I'm just going to point out that CSS Box mode from IE is making a large resurgence because it was always arguably the more sane model.

      IE vs Firefox or Opera was a completely different landscape than IE vs Netscape. IE vs Netscape was two incredibly proprietary non-standard browsers competing in the wild west. I switched to IE not because it was bundled but because I was so fed up with Netscape's poor technology.

      Once it died and was resurrected as firefox while Microsoft abandoned IE development, Firefox started offering compelling technological advantages to switch but at the time Netscape was bad. That's what I think most people forget. They remember the Firefox vs IE days and just back project their memories of Firefox onto Netscape when that was far from the case.

    11. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by fwarren · · Score: 3, Informative

      The big problem with Active X security is if you ever downloaded a control and checked off "Trust Microsoft".

      At that point any website could force a different version of an Microsoft signed active-x control to download.

      So if there was a serious exploit was found in version 1.2 of a control, does not matter it is 5 years later and the user has version 1.8. When they visit your site you can force the download of version 1.2 and then execute your exploit.

      There was just no way round this. If you had to do business with a trusted site that had active-x controls, if they ever got hacked AND you had ever clicked "Trust Microsoft" there was no way to defend against that.

      --
      vi + /etc over regedit any day of the week.
    12. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Both were pushing different approaches to such problems. I never was trying to say Netscape was the superior browser, but the problem with two sides pushing their non-standards the side that is chosen would have the better rendering browser. Early DHTML and CSS that Microsoft did pioneer was not really implemented in its own development tools. And during the browser war period, site designers were resistant to use Javascript. I avoided it until Google started releasing the Google Suggestions feature and Google Maps (after the browser wars) mostly because we couldn't trust enough people would be able to support the Javascript, so I had it limited to basic data validation.
      However if Netscape won, I expect we would be using more layers and special tags vs javascripts and css. But I expect the sites would look and work closely as they are now.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    13. Re: Won the war failed the objectives. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Netscapeâ(TM)s codebase was shit. DHTML from Netscape was a pathetic attempt to make it to the next round. When Microsoft write a rendering engine from the ground up that presented a dynamic object model that could be manipulated in real time from javascript and/or html and also offered solutions to communicate without iFrames directly from Javascript, Netscape was simply unable to respond.

      For years, Netscape dumped all their R&D budget into litigation instead. They simply forfeited the game and we at Opera and Microsoft worked to make better browsers. I know we spent years responding to the dynamic web. Making a new layout engine supporting reflow was rough. But we made a model that progressively received data and intelligently rerendered pages as needed. Netscape simply didnâ(TM)t. It wasnâ(TM)t until they gave up and Mozilla began that there was hope for them. And Mozilla has about zero lines of code in common with Netscape 4.7... weâ(TM)ll except maybe the NPAPI, though the ridiculous dependence on Motif was a problem for some time.

      No... we at Opera kept programming. Microsoft kept programming. Netscape just sued and died.

      Now, Chromium is the only web engine that makes sense because sometimes the best standard for something is an optimized piece of code that is easily portable. It also reduces the dependence on stupid shit like standards committees that are a bunch of old ladies knitting ugly ass sweaters.

      Iâ(TM)m just sad that this means that Firefox will almost certainly be dead soon. Some of my closest friends work on Firefox and others worked on Edge. Of course quite a few are at Vivaldi or Google working on Chromium today.

    14. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People also forget how fucking awesome IE6 was. It was wayyyy better then Netscape. Sure improvements were non-standard and proprietary, but that doesn't change the fact that IE 6 was better.

      The reason some (not all), developers were doing "IE Only" websites, was the same as why there are so many "Chrome only" services. It was just better then competition, _and_ had a big market share, no reason to target other browsers.

      That's how IE won. By being better, and being on everyone's computer.

    15. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      At the time, the PC wasn't dominant except in homes. The corporate world was still using a lot of workstations, especially in technical areas which was where the web was more popular originally. When workstations started being replaced by lower powered PCs a lot of technical users still stuck to Netscape (and it's honory child, Mozilla). Many corporations had policies against using Internet Explorer, but other corporations had IT support groups that just did whatever Micrososft asked and they'd go and create services that required ActiveX. So it really was the migration to the PC in the workplace that killed Netscape the most. Still, IE was just barely in the "serviceable browser" category.

    16. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This security problem brought in a new lightweight browser called Firefox. Which supported the standards much better then IE, was faster and didn't use the stuff that allowed people to break into the computer. Then Firefox grew where it started to be too big, that is where Google Chrome came in (at around the same time Safari came in for Apple also based on WebKit)

      Your history is a little broken there.

      The initial release of Firefox was in September 2002. Less than six months later, in January 2003, Safari was released as a separate download for OSX 10.2, being bundled with 10.3 later that year. Over five years after the initial release of Safari, Chrome was released.

      January 2003 and September 2008 are hardly "around the same time".

    17. Re: Won the war failed the objectives. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...we at Opera...

      heh The Little Browser That Didn't(R).

    18. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by AaronW · · Score: 1

      And KHTML predates Safari by years as well. Safari basically took KDE's KHTML and forked it to remove the dependency on QT. KHTML was fairly standards compliant and the code was quite clean. I used to use Konqueror quite a bit back in the day since it didn't suffer many of the issues that Firefox did (i.e. single threaded Javascript and horrendous memory leaks).

      --
      This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
    19. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh come now. Safari doesn't deserve ALL of the high ground. Where is the love for KDE?

      Actually, KDE and Google deserve most of the credit here.

      And Opera.

      And Mozilla.

      Apple and Safari very little in my opinion. There was a small time when Safari ran on Windows. Wasn't it coupled to iTunes or something weird like that?

      Internet Explorer even ran on Mac OS X. I was very disappointed to hear this news, and honestly was hoping to hear something more like Edge running being announced for Ubuntu or something like that.

      Visual Studio Code is now running on Linux, and bash is running Windows.

      What gives Microsoft? I was just starting to root for you!

    20. Re: Won the war failed the objectives. by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

      People have to remember the crazy amount of CDs magazines gave away and the ISPs loving customized stuff. MS gave them a platform which you can even acquire new subscribers,a readily installable full browser suite with all plugins minus nagging.
      Firefox just reached the IE manageability level by recent ESRs.

    21. Re: Won the war failed the objectives. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Firing people for doing their jobs well (making work for most customers) is pretty dumb.

    22. Re:Won the war failed the objectives. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're exactly right. I was there too and IE (5.5?) was just plain and simple a better browser.

  56. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by cyber-vandal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know but the world's most popular browser is Chrome so privacy is not why people are avoiding Edge.

  57. Edge works fine for me by maxrate · · Score: 1

    I never understood why Edge is a bad browser at all. I surf your standard sites (Youtube, Amazon, eBay, etc) and it works fine. I have not had any difficulties with it. What trouble has everyone else found? (I'm not a web developer, so I'm sure there are features/things Edge doesn't do that make developers upset). Sure, I use Chrome too. Why? I'm not sure why I bounce between both browsers. I guess I like having a safety net in case a browser goes sideways on me. That hasn't happened to me in years however.

  58. So another Chrome by DarkRookie2 · · Score: 1

    Not that there isn't a few of them already.
    Vivaldi and Opera are the biggest I know of.
    Still won't use them. There display is stuck with the same as Chrome and you cannot change it..

    --
    http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
  59. Perhaps. Ever seen the NT kernel source? by raymorris · · Score: 1

    You may be right, for "a kernel". You may even be right for the Windows kernel. On the other hand, at the time they wrote their kernel Microsoft wasn't exactly known for high quality, robust software. Their kernel source may well be an unmaintainable mess. A shit show even.

    In the last couple years they've thrown away their browser and started fresh TWICE. They certainly could start fresh with a new kernel, one that has already been written for them.

    1. Re:Perhaps. Ever seen the NT kernel source? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Indeed, it is possible that Microsoft will make a choice that results in more work for them. That seems to be their habit.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Perhaps. Ever seen the NT kernel source? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Or alternately, they might figure out a way to do it that takes less effort than I expect. You never know, it could happen.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  60. Never understood Edge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    First I never understood why they need Edge anyway, IE works fine for what it is. The government and commercial corporations have widely used it for a long time. For the average user Chrome and IE didn't have significant speed differences or rendering differences so what was the problem.

    What really failed Edge is the lack of a control panel/settings that were easily accessible. A browser in a large organization needs to be able to control the connection settings (SSL, TLS etc) and Edge made it difficult if not impossible to control this. At work when they went to Windows 10 and we lost access to the corporate sites, IE just said use IE.

    This whole Settings thing where they try and hide or remove the Control Panel and app Options is making using Windows 10 a big problem. Microsoft designed Edge to fail and it failed. They should just go back to IE and try and fix the bugs and update the product to support standards, without trying to damage the product.

  61. Come on guys, shape up. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    172 comments and still no "embrace, extend, extinguish" ?

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Come on guys, shape up. by Tyger-ZA · · Score: 1

      172 comments and still no "embrace, extend, extinguish" ?

      We've already passed all that, this is about Edge getting extinguished

  62. Microsoft still has to support IE. by xack · · Score: 1

    They're really in a rock and hard place with IE.Enterprises with legacy apps will be using IE indefinitely. Even the latest LTSC ships with IE11 by default. And then there is the transition period where Microsoft is supporting hree different engines, not helped by the fact that hardware drivers stop some devices upgrading to the latest build of Windows 10. What a mess, Microsoft should just include a Firefox download link on Windows 10 atnd let Mozilla handle it.

  63. On the topic of browsers.. by GrBear · · Score: 1

    I'm always surprised that there's no browser aimed directly at corporate environments.

    As head of IT, and our companies reliance on cloud based SaaS, the browser is a crucial tool in our company. The existing batch of browsers off little to zero support when things go sideways when shit breaks.

    Why no company has made a hardened corporate browser. It seems logical that there would be a market for a licensed browser specifically to meet corporate needs. To me it would give more incentive to SaaS providers to make damn sure their platform works on a specific browser.

    My staff are always complaining that they need to use two, sometimes three, different browsers to do their jobs because companies like Google and Mozilla are always trying to one up each other, and users be dammed when they break shit along the way. They're not held accountable.

    1. Re:On the topic of browsers.. by Gilgaron · · Score: 2

      Somebody could make one, but few would want to pay for it at first, and once you got traction, the major players would just add 'corporate mode' and eat your lunch after stealing your best ideas in whatever way was least likely to lose them a case in patent court.

  64. Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We all know that it is the plan.
    Microsoft is going back to its roots.

    1. Re: Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmm lets see. Canâ(TM)t run educational websites. Canâ(TM)t see half of friends and family newsletter webpages. Canâ(TM)t turn off java and JavaScript even on sites that have zero Java or JavaScript. Canâ(TM)t click on cross site links even with no Ajax - canâ(TM)t submit forms unless field ids are set to some gibberish. Heck I couldnâ(TM)t even load the freakin Sesame Street web page. Is this just my config? Is anyone else having this problem?

  65. So, Microsoft can't write a web browser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but an advertising company can?

  66. What does this mean for Chakracore? by mark-t · · Score: 1

    If I'm not mistaken, Chromium's javascript uses v8, while Edge's uses Chakracore. My experience with both is that the latter is vastly technically superior, as well as easier to embed into an extensible system with less boilerplate code. While v8's templated approach to its API does arguably make it easier to use javascript types directly from C++ than Chakracore, it also makes v8's API far more complicated. It is less work to write a C++ wrapper around Chakracore's simple C api than it is to understand v8.

  67. About time, but will it help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I felt from the start that Microsoft should have moved on past Trident completely and adopted Chromium. That was you gain access to extensions right away and now web apps as well. Yes, Edge does web apps too, but extensions have been really slow to materialize. The question remains given that other Chrome clone's are not very popular and ending up bottom feeders in market share. Whether Microsoft will have any better luck.

  68. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For me it's not the telemetry, but working with Bono that turns me off.

    Cher thought the same thing...

  69. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Joce640k · · Score: 2

    I avoid it because it's just a way to try to make me use Bing/Cortana.

    --
    No sig today...
  70. Firefox was never lightweight by HannethCom · · Score: 2

    This was the thing I never understood about Firefox. I have been using SeaMonkey for a very long time now. When Firefox came out they removed a whole bunch of stuff, but from day 1 it was a larger download, took more RAM and started slower.
    Now it still is larger, takes up more RAM, starts slower, has more bloat and is removing old standards.

    --
    Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
    1. Re:Firefox was never lightweight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What computer are you running Firefox on that it loads slower? The only time I see a slow startup is when it is updating itself. I don't care about the RAM it uses as memory leaks from left open tabs are a thing of the past. As for removing old standards, almost all browsers are doing this and its actually a good thing. SSL 3.0 needs to die. It is still a challenge to properly secure RDS and IIS because enforcing TLS 1.2 results in older clients being left out in the cold. It will be even worse when we start rolling out TLS 1.3 to remain PCI compliant.

  71. Are you sure you don't want to try Edge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The marketing and and trying to force Edge on users, is what killed it for me. When I clearly don't want to use Edge as I am specifically searching for a different one, but get begged and pleaded with to try Edge... does MS think they are going to annoy me into using their browser?

  72. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Theres often ton if debate here about whether Microsoft is evil and open source is good.

    Yesterday I was pondering this and the basic argument that supports it is open source contributes to the community (for the betterment of everybody). Microsoft accepts that, then releases proprietary extensions. This is anticompetitive. But moreover, since the FOSS people are not being aggressive it's like picking a fight with ghandi.

    The thing that interests me about today's article is google (like redhat) has some experience using FOSS principles against their intent: consider Android.

    So this latest move with Microsoft using Chromium is a new page in the book: Microsoft may think they're pulling a fast one and taking advantage of the free work, but google has tricks it can employ to make Microsoft pay. Like integrating a play store, or differentiating their interval version of chrome with features that don't work in chromium, or simply by but supporting it any longer.

    This may not work out the way Microsoft expects. Certainly not how their one sided use of FOSS has in the past.

  73. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Until it does due to Microsoft ;)

  74. Package Manager by ElizabethGreene · · Score: 1

    NiNite has similar functionality. It's the first thing I run on a new PC.

  75. Can they now find a File Explorer replacement ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One that doesn't have a DECADES-OLD problem with long file paths, for example ?

    One that actually USES the flag MICROSOFT added last year to allow apps to handle long file paths compatibly ?

    An app that doesn't crash on files that it CREATED ITSELF ?!

    One can but dream.

  76. Nothing to be ashamed of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Chromium was a fork of WebKit anyways.. hopefully the new MS browser will be as energy efficient as Edge.

  77. Suggested name for the MS Edge Browser . . . by hduff · · Score: 1

    How about Zune?

    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
    1. Re:Suggested name for the MS Edge Browser . . . by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Zune Chan?

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  78. Not a fan here by Millennium · · Score: 1

    Losing Presto was bad enough, and losing EdgeHTML is even worse. We need more major good engines; this is how open standards stay open. Chromium and Gecko are frankly not enough by themselves, and Servo won't increase the number of good engines because it'll just take the spot currently occupied by Gecko.

  79. Microsoft: No one is managing well? by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2

    "Microsoft is a cloud company, ..."

    Cloudy thinking?

    Microsoft seems to me to be extremely badly managed. Some of the many, many stories:

    Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (Aug. 4, 2015)

    Microsoft's Intolerable Windows 10 Aggression (May 27, 2016)

    Microsoft is infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads (March 17, 2017)

    Microsoft, stop sabotaging Windows 10. (March 21, 2017)

    There is no way to justify Microsoft managers operating the company like that. If Microsoft had paid $100,000,000 for negative advertising, it wouldn't have gotten such extremely bad results, in my opinion.

  80. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am still confused since Edge does everything I need to do on the Web, with privacy and security still intact. I suppose they can achieve the same thing with the Chromium engine.

  81. m$ does NOT struggle! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    being m$ it's just about money.
    everything is tweaked and geared towards making money. if there's a decision about spending money on new code or taking money out, then it's the latter.
    everything m$ does HAS TO evolve around this.
    this is the reason there's a m$.
    everything m$ does and was/is perceived as furthering or improving computing was only a side effect of the above and NOT the main goal!
    just remember this and you should be fine.

  82. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The real news is how slow MS is to realize this and make a move.

    With Edge they wrote a rendering engine that sought to emulate the behavior of WebKit by design... and they didn't just go ahead and use WebKit itself. What a waste of resources.

  83. Chromium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Strips out all the bullshit

  84. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Microsoft will still have their own branded browser...

    DeadpoolAsksWhy.gif

    THIS IS THE PROBLEM. Chrome is synonymous with the internet for most people. What MS should do is just install Chromnium and educate users that it's Chrome just in a blue-shade (logo). If they don't, even with Chromnium already on their drives, people will install Chrome thinking it's not there already.

    Stop trying to make their own branded browser outside of enterprise. Nobody cares.

  85. Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too -WSL... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Windows subsystem for Linux is the thin edge of the wedge... gradually build more stuff to run on WSL

    But that is getting Linux programs to run on the Windows kernel - it's not helping you get Windows programs to run on the Linux kernel.

  86. I've got one better than activex... by gosand · · Score: 1

    Silverlight.
    Company I work for has a platform that only runs in IE11 because a large portion of the UI was written in Silverlight.
    It's large and the platform is complex, and estimates were that it would take 1.5 years to rewrite it with current staff. So management decided to .... do nothing. We aren't exactly sure what will happen when Silverlight officially dies, it could very well be that nothing will change. If we have a bundled version of it, our application should still work. However, if IE11 stops supporting it, or if IE11 is no longer supported, then we will have a major crisis on our hands. Our platform is installed at client sites, but only supporting IE11 is a huge liability. It's also a great reminder about why being locked into proprietary technology is a baaaad idea.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  87. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    I don't understand not gaining "mindshare" from developers. Does this matter still? Are developers still reluctant to make browser independent pages? It's one thing to worry that users don't like it but it should be irrelevant if web developers like it or not. The days of coding only for IE should be relegated to ancient history.

  88. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i know you are saying that with an /s

    What i was appalled at, was that i told chrome the other day to: settings > savanced > clear browsing data

    and then i saw chrome retained my data, as in full name, lots of info a tracker ID reference all within history / preferences files. WTF.

    It's been months and multiple clear browsing data selections since i last used a google login.

    insane.

  89. What will the next Edge be called? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "dredge" seems most appropriate for the filth of the web.

  90. Re:This is McDonalds breaking down & serving w by smithmc · · Score: 1

    More like McD's buying their bulk ground beef from a generic wholesaler, then spicing and packaging it along the lines of their brand. Which is probably a smart business move.

    --
    Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
  91. Missing option by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    Raw HTTP GET behind 6 proxies FTW.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  92. McDonalds sales Drop. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With USA set to pass the new spending bill and invite 600,000 new low wage workers from India to replace USA Computer staffers... do not expect the sale of beef or burgers to go up.

    USA universities can drop CompSci - Wwhy study for a job just to be undercut and unemployed while corporations import cheap foreign labor ?

  93. If Chromium goes bad you just fork it by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    that's what open source is for. In the business world it's like neutral ground.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  94. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by serviscope_minor · · Score: 0

    I avoid it because it's just a way to try to make me use Bing/Cortana.

    it's still a good thing to have around, and this could very well be the deaht knell of firefox. With edge gone, the web is going to become more chrome centric .

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  95. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this could very well be the deaht knell of firefox

    And nothing of value will have been lost.

  96. There Can Be More Than One(TM) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The world used to be IE-centric as well. That too passed.

  97. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by reanjr · · Score: 1

    Any decent web developer never makes browser specific pages. That's just dumb.

  98. Edge is awesome. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You people really are nuts.

  99. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by slazzy · · Score: 1

    Agreed. Amazing they found out about chromium so quickly, only took 10 years?

    --
    Website Just Down For Me? Find out
  100. Predection: Active Directory retired as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Predict that Active Directory and the Azure version of it will be retired.
    That will be a significant simplification of the Windows platform and make using a BSD/MIT licensed linux kernel much easier with a Winodws UI on top.

  101. Re:This is McDonalds breaking down & serving w by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 1

    McDonald's DID have a burger meant to mimic the Whopper. It was called the McDLT.
    https://www.seriouseats.com/20...

    Like Edge, that copycat went basically nowhere.

  102. When one part of you doesn't change by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

    Edge could triple the rendering engine competition and alternatives if they started it open source and open to multi platform. They tried to act like open (JavaScript) while being old MS, pre Nadella.

  103. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Early deathblow was that edge doesn't work right with SharePoint.

    I can't even use Microsoft's browser to use Microsoft's software. Fail.

  104. Easy: None of them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If your multiple choice doesn’t have a "none of the above" option, you’re deliberately limiting the selection, your question is invalid, and you're disqualified.

    And as somebody who had to program for the nightmare of a living hell that was IE6, fuck you for even daring to think you could suggest IE6 wasn't bad. You're deliberately mixing two kinds of problems: IE was hated because it intentionally ignored standards, missed a large load of important functionality, and wasn't even deterministically reliable in how it rendered web pages, ... while being the most "popular" with the morons out there, resulting in "works best in IE", and hence a circular reasoning/feedback loop. Which was a deliberate, systematic and intentional monopolism move by Microsoft! (If yow were too young: They lost lawsuits because of this. "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" was, and is, extremely real, no matter how much MS might have made you believe it isn't.)
    It was not hated for its lack of security/privacy. "Ain't nobody got time for that", with it being as utterly broken down to its very core, in all aspects.

    Also, Chrome doesn't "allegedly" spy on you. It provably spies on you. You just need to fire up your Wireshark, wait (e.g. a day), and filter out the legitimate packets. Just try it right now.

    And Opera, Vivaldi, (and now Edge, I guess) are merely advanced skins for Chromium.

    But since when can telemetry in Chromium-based browsers not normally be turned off with an easy click in the settings. Because the last time I checked (with a packet content inspecting and filtering invisible proxy, no less) that was the case.

    The USA, unlike e.g. Europe, again keep hogging Chrome, just like they kept hogging IE. Because they are a bunch of morons.
    Over here, it's Firefox or GTFO. Not because it is that good. But because we actually give a shit about not trusting corporations whose only purpose of existence is "profit, profit, over everything", even literally over dead bodies. While you love to suck big corporate dick like anything else would be "anti-American", ya fuckin' nationalists.

  105. Go lynx! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I avoid all thT nonsense and stick with Lynx. If I really need the images, I fire up Mosaic.

  106. Re:The bell tolls of pending watershed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Plus, next we'll find out the Microsoft high priests are all pederasts.

  107. Bad choice by YoungManKlaus · · Score: 1

    Honestly. They should rather take the money, buy Opera's old engine, and bring that up to modern web standards. I would so much use that. Best browser we had.

  108. Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving by TuringTest · · Score: 1

    You weren't around during IE6's dominance of the web, were you?

    --
    Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.