Earlier this month, Microsoft released new preview updates with changes to make its operating systems compliant with European Union regulations. Those changes include the ability to uninstall Edge, decouple the OS from Bing, turn on third-party news feeds in Widgets, and more. Sadly, only EU citizens can enjoy those changes without messing with their PCs’ software intestines. Other people must tweak Windows Registry to spoof their location, which can lead to unnecessary complications.
Luckily, there is a much simpler method that does not require editing the registry or faking your location. As it turned out (via Deskmodder), Windows manages new region policies using a JSON file inside the system32 folder. Modifying that file allows force-enabling specific features in unsupported regions.
What follows is a 19 step process involving taking ownership of protected system files, dowloading additional tools, editing the registry, a few reboots, and more. A very simple process.
So anyway if you want to remove Firefox from Fedora or Ubuntu or whatever, just run sudo dnf remove firefox or sudo apt remove firefox respectively, because as we all know, Linux is very hard to use and just not ready for desktop use. Good for servers, though.
The tech world is a clown show.
Some of us have jobs that require a Windows workstation and proprietary software that run on it so the comparison with Linux is moot. I do have an old PC at home, plugged in the tv. It runs the latest Ubuntu (where Firefox is a snap) and I find Gnome beautiful and really pleasing to use. I wish it could be my daily driver.
I agree with Thom. It should be a simple package manager command in windows.. oh wait what is this?!?!?!?
“Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Remove-AppxPackage”
And yes that does work for all useless crud, but NOT on edge since edge is not an UWP app…
The problem is that UWP has proven to be a failiure and developers still prefer win32/64 api for serious stuff to the point that Microsoft themselves have given up on making the browser a UWP one.
I DO get the appeal of uwp if you think that windows on ARM can ever be viable, but i doubt it at this point. WoA is so far behind linux and macos that it would take a genious to recover the lost 40% of marketshare that windows has lost. (as of recent only 63% of computers run windows in the gaming pc world, with macs (how the hell did that happen) and steamos crushing down on the hegemony. Apple macOS runs on 36% of all new computers sold in the US, and steamos is not considered a mobile os. ChromeOS also ads insult to injury to a market what was 98% microsoft just a few years ago.
To be fair, windows has a better support for new games so far, no doubt.
Linux supports WAY more windows titles than windows 11 does, and if you want to count the titles that run well on windows on arm, i bet your list is pretty short.
Wine and vulkan has been so successful that you can now play almost any dx12 game on windows 7 without problems (negating the lies from microsoft about obsolecense)
Rant over… the whole point is that gaming is what is keeping the true diehards to windows, but even that is eroding fast as proton shows the power of vulkan and how much more you can get out of your system with less crap and bloat.
Uninstalling edge from the uninstall apps menu would be a bad idea from a support point, but that should not be there in the first place, the old “add and remove programs” applet is good in windows and it has always been and much more suited to remove system components. You would be turning it inoperable or even able to get firefox for a newbie if that was the case.
Good lord i wish windows was just still windows 2000 with vulkan and modern drivers and support for 64bit.
I never understood this obsession with removing Edge. Just delete the shortcut, change the default browser, and ignore it.
I can get worked up over the upsells and the ads and the nag screens when you try to switch the default browser away from Edge, you know, the usual NuMicrosoft annoyances from Windows 10 onwards, but I can’t get worked up over the fact the OS comes with a browser that can’t be removed. Modern OSes have lots of stuff that can’t be removed. As long as I can make those things invisible and they aren’t doing anything nefarious, it’s a tiny bit wasteful but I honestly can’t get worked up over it.
I know is “cool” to bitch against Windows and praise Linux, but come on. Edge is difficult to uninstall because MS was afraid of the web and made it “integral part” of the OS. 90% of the apps you just go to Add/Remove and click two buttons and they are gone.