It's (usually) already installed

Browsers are bloat.
-- average Arch user

As an arch user, I'm confused... Doesn't everyone use curl as their browser?
- I recently switched to netcat, this lets me control the TCP stream more directly.
- Not related to Arch, but behold Richard Stallmann describing how he uses the internet: https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html (see section "How I use the internet" and the other section below that with the same title).
- Unironically Lynx and Elinks.
- As an Arch user, why do people care what the default packages are?
- 😭
Imagine not enjoying the internet via curl
- Imaging not enjoying the internet via raw sockets having fun decrypting manually.
BTW, I use lynx.

OS ships with a browser.

Boo!

OS ships with a browser.

Yay!

It's not "shipping with a browser" that was ever the problem.
your OS ships with a browser.

Boo!

my OS ships with a browser.

Yay!
- My OS doesn’t but my DE does
One of those is a good browser.
The latter can be deleted and replaced with no issue

But edge is chrome.

As a former edge user. I now use Firefox.

Edge = Chrome + popup ads for Microsoft services
- Edge actually has a few nice features that chrome and Firefox miss.
  
  Like native horizontal tabs and tab groups (chrome might have groups)
  
  I still refuse to use it over Firefox though.
- Edge = Chrome but less ram usage
Yes. Firefox full time, and Edge for anything that requires Chrome.

You install something that at the core is the same as you but with a better interface.

It's funny how Microsoft just gave up on creating a new web browser and instead just rebranded someone else's homework.

It's what they do best, but it usually involves buying a company.
Edge integrates into M365 far better than Chrome integrates into Google Workspaces. I still use Firefox at work. But its cool for my illiterate users.
Edge uses less RAM than Chrome

why do windows users install chrome?

i don't get it, edge comes preinstalled on windows and it's chromium-based.

If you're gonna go though the trouble of installing a browser, why switch Microsoft for Google? They're both evil and Edge actually performs significantly better than Chrome somehow (they're basically the same I don't get it).

Install freaking Firefox.
- I agree yeah, I'd say in a lot of ways that Edge is much better than Chrome, due to its performance and also very good security, plus some tracking protection (though not a lot) vs. Chrome's none, etc. Between the 2, I'd probably always pick Edge.
  
  But yeah just never use either tbh, Firefox ftw.
- If you’re gonna go though the trouble of installing a browser, why switch Microsoft for Google?
  
  Exactly I don't get it, the only explanation I can think of is that they have Chrome on their phone and want to sync it or something?
- Conversely, if they're both evil, why use Microsoft over Google?
  
  People have their browser set up the way they want it, and downloading and installing Chrome to have everything sync back and work exactly the way they want things to work takes all of two minutes.
  
  Why use Edge and spend time and effort to import bookmarks, import passwords, change settings, install extensions etc. only to have the exact same end result that downloading Chrome would have given them in the first place, but with the added annoyance of Microsoft leveraging Edge to nudge them into the Microsoft ecosystem?
Force of habit? Plus, if I used Windows, I wouldn't use Edge out of spite. Fuck their shady ways of pushing users to use it.
- it's not even shady anymore. it's just clingy and pathetic like an ex who can't move on.
I used to get it why people install chrome. It had a specific look and feel. It's no more, all browsers (except some startups making up the rules) look the same. Its a full page window with tabs on the top. Vanilla FF looks the same.
The same reason people are reluctant to leave the Apple ecosystem, you'd have to set everything up again.
I think lots of people also don't know how easy it is to migrate all user data between browsers. Also, the added work of changing your phone app is probably too much for the average, comfortable consumer.
Honestly i dont think most people do. We're all in a bubble of atleast somewhat technically minded people, not just on lemmy but im sure most of our friends irl are similar. Ive been in a few officey type areas and out of the vast majority of monitors ive seen, theyve been using edge, sometimes i even see multiple browsers open lmao. Just checked statcounter and edge is the third most used which is fucking nuts when you consider how many options there are.
Because most people these days still don't know Edge is chromium based instead of Garbage based

I'm amaze by how many people still use chrome based browser. They really want to get their face eat by a leopard. Well we told you people, there's no reason left not to use firefox.

Chromium isn't chrome, and there are reasons to use browsers not based on firefox, I like Vivaldi more than firefox way better customization and more features, but since Manifest V3 exists I am using firefox so I am already used to it if Google makes the other browsers shit
- I'm curious what customization and features Vivaldi has that Firefox doesn't.

winget install Google.Chrome

Windows has a package manager like a big boy OS these days

WinGet is an AppGet rip-off without even a mention of the original creator. I'm still salty about that.
- Microsoft offers to buy out AppGet and had its developer join them, but then ghost him once they realized the dev is also Sonarr dev.
- Are you the original creator?
Yeah, but it's mid at best. Many apps open a GUI installer even with winget. Also updates for many apps don't work (if the app doesn't save its version properly in the registry).
- I mean its still Windows, they dont package anything thats the job of the apps.
Who packages chrome?
- I wonder how its packaged too, is winget firing off an MSI in the background with a silent flag?
- Either the community on GitHub, or someone inside Microsoft.
  
  You can find their repository here (I think most people here are not interested in it tho lol)
  
  I have packaged some software for winget back when I was still using Windows, and yes it runs msi ( or exe ) silently under the hood. Installation processes that are usually done on GUI are automated just like how Homebrew does.

Not anymore. Just open PowerShell

winget install whateveryouwant

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser # Optional: Needed to run a remote script the first time

irm get.scoop.sh | iex

Microsoft doesn't need to even be involved

At least in win11.

Not sure about win10, which didn't have it installed by default orginally, but could be now? None of my win 10 machines are recent enough fresh installs to confirm, and have winget (and choco) installed because I installed it so I can install stuff easily.
- On Windows 10 it was automatically installed as an update using - wait for it - the Microsoft Store.
  
  Yes, the system-wide package manager was distributed as a package in the desktop store. 🤌
- No idea about 10 either

not even that

winget install Mozilla.Firefox

Fuck Winget. It's a GUI-only person's idea of what a CLI package manager should be. The only positive value I can think of is that it's better than not having one at all.

I manage about 500 Windows machines in a university. When teachers started complaining that they are unfamiliar with the paid version of an IDE, and we'd have to install the free community edition, I was delighted to learn that it was available through Winget. But privilege escalation on Windows is a fucking joke, so trying to install it remotely through Ansible/WinRM just popped the UAC anyway. I had to VNC into every single machine to click the fucking button. As an additional middle finger, winget.exe was not even in PATH when I tried WinRMing as the local admin.

Winget is the absolute nadir of package managers, and it should be doused in acid, burned, chucked in the dumpster where it belongs, and forgotten. Choco and Scoop all the way.
Choco > winget imo
- I’d argue that it’s not really an opinion, but objective fact.
- Scoop is way better than both of those as it bypasses installing apps completely
Use scoop

unpopular opinion preinstalling any browser is wrong

Found the Arch user.
i think it is very beneficial for the average user to have one of each common software category preinstalled

as long as you can uninstall everything
I think you mistyped "popular"
- That’s the lemmy echo chamber. Poll a hundred people on how to get a program onto a computer without a browser and I’d be surprised if five people answered something other than a disk or that it’s impossible
- Where the fuck would that be a popular opinion?
  
  Quick! You need to install a program, but you can't remember the exact name of it. You have no browser installed nor a GUI package manager. What do you do?
Mhm this reminds me of the time when we had in the EU a choice dialog after first boot where you had a selection of browsers to install from.
- I'm kinda hoping they bring this back, then I can move to the EU and be done.
I think it's fine if you give the option to uninstall it, many users wouldn't know where to look to install the browser right away and they need access to the internet to find out (because they're not familiar with the command line), they probably have a phone to look stuff up, but that's bad user experience.
Otherwise a first run welcome screen that asks the user which browser they want to install out of a selection (including none) can be a good solution
If a Distro preinstalls the Torbrowser it is based. Or maybe a Firefox that is actually debloated and hardened, not just having fancy bookmarks and a custom start page (looking at you Fedora)
That's a pretty bad take, people into tech seem to mostly use firefox, people who aren't probably don't care, and for the people who know baout it and prefer another, can well, just uninstall it, so why not just have firefox so its simpler for everyone?? Like, on Manjaro and Garuda I could do well with that, but what if I use Ubuntu? The browser I like the most is Vivaldi, witch isn't on the package manager, meaning that I need to download a browser to download another one instead of just using the one already in it to get it

"It's already installed... as a Snap package."

This meme makes no sense. Why would Windows want that?

Surprisingly I dont get weird popups when installing Firefox

It doesn't have to make sense as long as it bashes Windows.

I recently heard that manjaro cinnamon comes with Vivaldi pre-installed

Is vivaldi FOSS now? In tests by mike kuketz it had nonexistent Fingerprint protection and bad privacy settings OOTB
- I think Manjaro devs accept, uh, sponsorship.
- Is vivaldi FOSS now?
  
  No

Not on arch it isn't.

Not on linux from scratch
- Not on TempleOS. /s

But then you use Debian and what's preinstalled is Firefox ESR, so you have to install Firefox anyway.

What is wrong with Firefox "extended support release" ESR ?
- Not op, but nothing significant IMO unless you're a web developer (in which case it's worth considering using the dev edition instead) or just want the latest features.
  
  The ESR on Debian gets updated reasonably frequently with backported security patches and bug fixes
- Not all security issues get CVEs. Thats only the security parts. Its old as balls, and Firefox never had any breaking bugs for me, thats the "old as balls" part
- I get better performance from the release version than from ESR. The ESR version in Debian has always been slower than the release version for me. Especially on YouTube.
  
  EDIT: For those that doubt: https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/z6655k/how_to_make_firefox_esr_work_with_youtube/

Someone should make a distro that is just all the annoying stuff in windows.

Actually like the Chromium Edge; way better than Chrome. But Firefox.

Meanwhile I have to install links manually

Why are you guys doing default installs? Setup you preseeds and get what you want.

My work stuff wont work in firefox, yeah that's a new fun enterprise thing. In any case I use edge on osx for those few sites, firefox for everything else.

Will it work if you change the user agent to chrome or edge?
- Maybe, but it's my job and that's the kind of stuff that gets you in trouble.
- Hijacking your comment to say if people are having issues on firefox with YouTube being unresponsive change your user agent to a chrome one
Report the sites to webcompat!

Might not do anything, but on the other hand it might!

Yeah but sometimes it's the ESR version which is super slow to get feature updates. Though I suppose that's fair for distros intended for server or other enterprise applications.

Just install scoop and install packages in the terminal if you're bothering with Windows

Edge, especially for work, is fantastic.

Eh. Something makes DevOps sites load slowly when opening from outlook. Like, opening a handful of links takes a minute or so
- Devops sites? What does that even mean lol?
  
  I've never once had links take any sort of noticeable time to open outside of the scanner link/redirect. Which doesn't have to do with edge or outlook. You probably are conflating two issues.

Which is why I remove it and install Vivaldi instead... and ungoogled Chromium sometimes.

Any benefits in Vivaldi over Firefox?
- Customization wise, a lot. Speed wise, none at all (it's slower any way you slice it). Compatibility wise (with websites), the same as Chrome, everything works.