Windows 11 update breaks localhost, prompting mass uninstall workaround Microsoft's October Windows 11 update has managed the impressive feat of breaking localhost, leaving developers unable to access web applications running on their own machines. The problem first surfaced on Microsoft's own support forums and quickly spread to Stack Overflow and Server Fault after the October 2025 cumulative …
Naah, because painting by numbers implies the creation of something which doesn't look polished but is at least generally recognisable as the intended thing, contains a variety of contrasting colours, and is usually considered to be a fun activity to be a part of. The latest few iterations of the Windows UI, not so much to any of those points...
All modern UI design is paint by numbers...see JS frameworks, bootstrap, tailwind etc.
Back in the 90s, when I built my first website (it was 1995, I was 11), the UI was the component that took the longest to put together because it required tons of testing (repeated FTP uploads and refreshing, which on dial up was incredibly slow) and crucially, there were no frameworks so you had to design everything by hand. Some people still do UI design by hand, not many though. Most people use pre-built templates with some mild customisation (changing the colours essentially).
Weirdly though, UI is still one of the highest paid roles in software development. You pay Savoy Grill prices for Weetabix with blueberries sprinkled on. My advice to anyone getting something built is to have an external third party look at the site for you and determine whether a framework was used with a template. If it was, demand a lower bill...even if the UI meets expectations...if we want good UI back, we need to stop paying a premium for recycling framewoks and templates...because a lot of genuinely talented UI folks barely get a shout in these days.
There's nothing wrong with using frameworks and templates, but it is cheap because it saves a huge amount of time. By overpaying for it, using templates is basically encouraged. Off the shelf templates cost $50 or less...sometimes they're even free. Customising them takes a day at most (depending on how far the customisation goes, it could be as little as an hour) and adding components to a page is usually as simple as:
$button
->label="submit"
->type="submit"
->action="/login.php"
Stop paying tons of money for it. Not least because it takes budget away from your backend development (which is fucking crucial if you want your site to scale properly) but also because you really are not getting what you pay for. I see so many projects and startups spend tens of thousands on what is essentially customisation of a template and barely anything on backend and it comes back to bite them in the ass in terms of hosting bills, shit scaleability and unfinished features.
A fairly decent front end built with React+Tailwind takes a couple of days at most these days...less if you use AI to help out (which it does pretty well to be fair, React is one of the frameworks that AI seems to do very well with, as well as some others...the exception being Svelte for some reason). Do not pay for more than a couple of days work unless they have clearly put in some work to make the framework do something it doesn't do out of the box. For the love of Christ, don't hire frontend guys to work on your backend code. A dev that can do both is usually no good at either. Backend guys are usually awful at frontend, they live in a land of database queries, IOPS, security and functionality, they're pragmatists. Frontend guys live in a whimsical land full of colours, fonts, glitter and pixels. Gok Wan probably knows a huge amount about aesthetics, colours and fabrics...but I bet he knows fuck all about building the factories that make the garments he drapes over people.
Efficient, logical, effective, and practical
Using all resources to the best of our ability
Changing, designing, adapting our mentalities
Improving our abilities for a better way of life...
...said the Speak'n'Spell - not to be confused with any valid Microsoft Ethos!
With a nod to OMD....
No. it was outsourced to Nadella's cousins because they are cheaper. With a mandate to ensure users can't break "telemetry" with some clever settings. So probably there is code that needs to ensure something can always collect and send data. And if the attempts to ensure that breaks basic funcionalities, that's allowable for a while, vice versa is not.
Yet how many people at Sony went to prison for those rootkit audio CDs? How much more did they make in profit than they paid out in the class-action suit? Megacorps don't care because there's no real accountability. Those anti-hacking/virus laws are for us plebs.
About a decade ago, when I was working as a Contract Software Tester, an agent arranged an interview for me at MS. I was offered the contract and refused.
Why?
MS would only offer me a rate that was nearly 30% less than I was already earning!
The agent was surprised that I would reject the "mighty Microsoft" that would look so good on my CV. (By that time I had several other "Blue Chips" on my CV so that didn't really matter.)
I suppose the moral here is MS pays peanuts and gets monkeys.
That's why I've never been an early adopter of MS products - eg I only moved to Windows 11 and Office 2024 a couple of months ago!
It says a lot about Linux that Microsoft can be this bad and still not lose users.
Linux isn’t improving in the ways average users need it to. Quite the opposite. Look how popular OSX is getting with their “my way or the highway” attitude, Linux doesn’t stand a chance with 4000 text editors to choose from.
I don't think it's Linux's fault directly, I think it's one of marketing. There are operating systems like PopOS!_ and Zorin that I'd feel comfortable sticking on my mom's laptop with the assurance she's not going to call me any more frequently than she does currently. The problem is if her laptop catches fire and she goes down to Walmart to get a new one, she doesn't have a real choice in operating system. It's not that Linux is hard or unsightly or non functional, it's that the average layman doesn't realize they have alternatives, and Microsoft, retailers, and manufacturers aren't going to give up their win-win-win OEM deals anytime soon.
I don't think it's Linux's fault directly, I think it's one of marketing.… The problem is if her laptop catches fire and she goes down to Walmart to get a new one, she doesn't have a real choice in operating system.
That's not marketing, that's literally vendor lock-in. Defaults are powerful economic tools, and Microsoft has spent decades ensuring that the default remains Windows.
Like, for real. Americans used to jail railroad operators who pulled this kind of preferencing shit with their third parties. Robert Bork has a lot to answer for.
TVM for the cultural reference - interesting to learn the origins of the term "borked" (I had always assumed it was a some sort of manglement of f***ed and b*****ed [or similar] and had never bothered to look it up).
Every day a learning day on El Reg.
No, that's not the etymology for it, in the sense in which we use it. The most likely etymology for its technically literate usage is a (deliberate?) misspelling of "broken" as "borken" and backformation of a verb from that.
The proposed usage from the failed political bid had very limited reach, even within the USA (and basically wasn't even heard of outside it).
Much of it is branding/marketing. Microsoft and Apple, even ChromeOS have the advantage there. Another issue is support. Most of us here can look up whatever answers we need, the average user would have serious problems with that. And that's just the start of the support headaches. Before I got the Mac, I had to call AT&T support, and when I said I was on Linux, they flat-out told me to somehow conjure a Windows box out of thin air.
And then there's a problem of $APPLICATION not running on Linux. I got the Mac because of the Photoshop Problem. WINE is often *not* good enough for something you just need to work without a fuss. Gaming is at least largely viable using Steam, it's productivity software that's the problem these days. Most sysadmins I know use Macbooks for work because they're still UNIX and it appeases the higher-ups who expect people to use M$ Orifice for everything, even though they run Linux at home. And it was in Valve's self-interest to make Linux a viable gaming platform; I don't see any companies finding a need to do the same thing for other software.
All of that said, those aren't flaws of Linux itself. I wouldn't say that Linux isn't ready, it's the support infrastructure and software support that's the problem, and that ties back into marketing and Linux being practically invisible. And I really don't know what it'd take to solve what's largely a chicken and egg problem at this point.
Bingo!
I’ve had this conversation with bosses and company owners who complain about Windows, I tell them that they ‘could’ replace all of the workstations with (insert preferred version here) Linux. At first they are interested, ‘so it’s free you say - no licencing costs’, well yes technically it could be, but then the inevitable ‘so if we have a problem with a machine, who can we ultimately call for immediate assistance, who is responsible because the legal department needs to know’. Explain that there are paid-for versions of Linux with support and it’s met by ‘so it's not free then, well might as well stick with Microsoft’; end of discussion.
And there’s the problem, corporate need the fig-leaf of ‘responsibility’ ‘who can we sue’. Go Windows and they believe they could, in-extremis, sue Microsoft, similarly MacOS and Apple. Linux is just too out there.
There are other reasons why one might want to migrate to Linux, but yes, "it's free" when one has to have someone to call in emergency, and a qualified internal support self isn't one of them, since generally speaking, one wants a vendor to be able to deal with/blame when things go completely sideways. The offices in my workplace are all Mac, and from what I know, support costs are minimal. But I don't know how much that really counts if one is ditching one big company for another. I suppose fewer glaring security problems helps, but I'm not sure how often those things get patched.
It says a lot about Linux that Microsoft can be this bad and still not lose users.
It's adorable that the assumption that people won't leave Windows is because Linux isn't good enough. It's lock-in, same as it always has been.
We all know that Microsoft paid off the American government to not be ruled a monopolist.
I have used Mint and Ubuntu for desktop quite a lot.
It also has bugs, and I frankly prefer the windows UI..
Most commercial software that I use is made for windows, some have versions for Apple, and only games can be played in Linux.. with caveats and tinkering.
I don't want to tinker, not anymore, I just want it to work.
And windows is making it less convenient as time passes by, it is at this point almost spyware, yet we still use it.
"I don't want to tinker, not anymore, I just want it to work."
Yesterday evening was out local Civic Soc's monthly talk. Our speaker who was having some vision problems, had his presentation on a memory stick (PP has it's good uses) and I got dragged into helping find it on our president's W11 laptop and was reminded again of the mess that is the Windows UI. It was almost impossible to keep track of the cursor as the equivalent of Dolphin seemed to throw up a directory listing of everything the cursor was dragged over.
If I'd have known I'd have brought along a laptop of my own as well as the mics & spare presentation remote. It wouldn't have had PP but no promblem - Impress would have done the job. In fact the laptop we were using was on LO so Impress was what was being used.
I've used Mint for a few years now and I've yet to come across any bugs in it. Admittedly I only use it for day to day computer use -- mail, browsing, word processing, image editing, some media and a spot of printing -- but its always "just worked". I can't really say the same about a W10 system; its been subject to the Tuesday Lottery for years, you never know quite what this week will bring, and I expect W11 would be the same.
Like you I am a computer 'expert' -- that is, I can pop the hood (US terminology) and rummage around the internals if I have to and even pull the sources and built a custom kernel if necessary. But I'm not an enthusiast, day to day I just want the things to work.
(One domino fell this week. My brother, a hardened Windows user from the year dot, felt he had to upgrade his system. He's got a micro and its running Linux. He can't believe how well it works. His only issue so far is caused by his habit of composing mail in a word processor and then pasting the text into a gmail web client with consequent font problems. I'm prodding him towards Thunderbird -- use a proper mail client, stop messing with Webmail unless traveling.)
microsoft is losing used at an increasing pace and there are more people using GNU than ever before - although there are many people who will take any abuse dished out and come back for more.
The kernel, Linux doesn't even provide an editor.
Many such cases of; https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-users-never-heard-of-gnu.html
I don't think the serfdom is the reason why people use OSX.
GNU only provides 3 editors to choose from; GNU nano (Emacs lite), GNU Emacs and GNU ed.
The freedom of choice is never a bad thing - after all, the user can choose any of the free text editors available for GNU and they'll get an editor.
I am not claiming that the GNU folk don't provide editors and that's because that's not what the OP wrote either.
Maybe that's what they had in mind when they wrote that sentence. I hope so anyway.
But since this article is about OSs rather than editors, I am really unsure why they felt they had to bring up editors. I mean, we already got a proper flame war going on MS right now, do we really need to drag in the Vim vs Emacs holy warriors? ;-)
speaking of holy wars: I just google Vim to check if it was "Vim" or "VIM" (never mind my ignorance). Somebody somewhere is having a laugh cuz the top line from Google, kid you not, was:
> Did you mean: Emacs?
I didn't even Google bombs were still a thing. Anyone remember what "Miserable failure" redirected to? ;-)
Editors are a important component of an OS, as how else do you edit files?
The "Linux folk" don't even provide editors (at most Linus has a fork of microemacs - but of course it's proprietary software! Disgusting!).
>I didn't even Google bombs were still a thing.
That joke has been manually added by google.
If someone was to go and search "emacs", vi vim vi, the editor of the devil will be mentioned with; Did you mean: Vim?
I suspect that point wasn't that the kernel doesn't include an editor, but that that Linux itself *is*, strictly speaking, just the kernel and that the editors mentioned are actually separate and a part of the GNU project.
The problem is that Linux distributions generally don't restrict themselves solely to Linux plus GNU userland tools, so it's still not entirely clear what point OP thinks they're making.
Given that their name is "GNU Enjoyer", and going by their posting history- which, now that I look at it, rings a bell- they appear to have a bee in their bonnet, a particular point of view and an agenda in promoting that point of view by implication. (They consider Linux to be "proprietary" apparently due to its tolerance of binary blobs in certain areas).
They can clarify any of that here if they like.
>The problem is that Linux distributions generally don't restrict themselves solely to Linux
If a distribution is distributes more than Linux, it clearly is not a distribution of Linux.
My favorite Linux distribution is; https://gnu.org/software/linux-libre
Tools are only some GNU packages - there are far more GNU packages that are not tools; https://gnu.org/software
Most GNU/Linux distributions (it is pointed out that other software is included in the GNU system) distribute GNU harder than Linux - for example the Gentoo GNU stage3 has a clear base of GNU, but it doesn't have Linux in it.
>they appear to have a bee in their bonnet
I have a GNU in my bonnet - it's a GNU/Bonnet after all.
>They consider Linux to be "proprietary" apparently due to its tolerance of binary blobs in certain areas
Linux is proprietary software because it contains proprietary software and supports and develops a massive collection of proprietary derivative works without source code that are clearly part of Linux (most of them are merely tracked in another git repository (although that collection does also contain a few free programs released under GPLv2-compatible terms with source code)).
> "Most GNU/Linux distributions (it is pointed out that other software is included in the GNU system)"
Well, at least you acknowledge that contradiction... but you still call it "GNU/Linux" without giving credit to the other, non-GNU, components?
Naming 2 components does give the implication that there could be more (but name only 1 and there's probably only one) and there is no attempt made to hide the existence of non-GNU software or dismiss their importance (by referring to software that is far more than tools as mere tools for example).
At the core, the systems are basically the GNU system with Linux added, although different distributions of the system add differing amounts of different software.
If you want to more strongly give credit where it is due, you might feel that some secondary contributors also deserve credit in the systems name.
If you feel that X11 deserves credit in the system's name, and you want to call the system GNU/X11/Linux, please do.
But that can only go so far - since a system name as long as GNU/X11/Apache/Linux/TeX/Perl/Python/FreeCiv becomes absurd and at some point the names of many other secondary contributions need to be excluded.
I personally call the system GNU or GNU/Linux and name the other software when relevant (i.e. edit the config file of nginx with GNU nano), rather than referring to every single program on the system as "Linux".
> Naming 2 components does give the implication that there could be more (but name only 1 and there's probably only one)
Does it? With respect, this smacks of rationalisation to me.
*You* know there are more components than Linux and GNU's in a typical distro, and so do I, but that's the point- we both already knew that, whether or not it was called "Linux" or "GNU/Linux". Anyone relying on the name is equally likely to assume that- since you're going down the route of naming contributions beyond the Linux kernel- GNU was the only one worth mentioning.
I doubt anyone is referring to a full distro as "Linux" in order to hide the existence of GNU software or to dismiss its importance. They're doing so purely for convenience.
> At the core, the systems are basically the GNU system with Linux added, although different distributions of the system add differing amounts of different software.
Really? You don't consider the likes of (e.g.) X.Org or Wayland, which are a significant part of most distributions- but neither a part of Linux nor the GNU project itself- sufficiently worthy of credit?
> If you feel that X11 deserves credit in the system's name, and you want to call the system GNU/X11/Linux, please do.
I don't. You were the one who wanted to acknowledge contributions beyond the core Linux kernel and...
> GNU/X11/Apache/Linux/TeX/Perl/Python/FreeCiv becomes absurd
...this is what happens if one applies that principle fairly.
I've always sympathised with the basic *principle* of the "GNU/Linux" argument- that GNU and other contributors get lumped together with "Linux" itself, which as a result probably gets too much credit for support tools et al, credit that should probably be directed elsewhere.
But I've also always had a problem with calling it "GNU/Linux" for the reasons I gave above.
Basically GNU and its supporters- like yourself- making the fair point that they're not being given sufficient credit for their contribution, yet drawing the line where it suits them and not caring about seeing that principle extended equally fairly to others.
> I personally call the system GNU or GNU/Linux and name the other software when relevant (i.e. edit the config file of nginx with GNU nano), rather than referring to every single program on the system as "Linux".
Sounds like you're picking and choosing where to give credit- and calling it "GNU" on its own is as misleading and accurate as calling it just "Linux", probably moreso.
>Does it? With respect, this smacks of rationalisation to me.
Yes, people do assume that it's "just Linux", as nobody else tells them otherwise.
>I doubt anyone is referring to a full distro as "Linux" in order to hide the existence of GNU software or to dismiss its importance. They're doing so purely for convenience.
If it's purely about convenience, people would refer to the distro as just "GNU", as well it's shorter to write and say.
There is many such cases - people go remove the GNU from Debian GNU/Linux to make "Debian Linux", specifically to hide the existence of GNU software and/or dismiss its importance (if convenience was a concern, they would write "Debian", or "Debian GNU", as those are shorter to write).
I've seen countless cases of people going and removing GNU and replacing it with "Linux" for those exact reasons, even when Linux is completely irrelevant (for example, the software doesn't contain a byte of Linux as in Cygwin and MSYS2 and "Windows Subsystem Linux[sic] v1"), but it has GNU.
>You don't consider the likes of (e.g.) X.Org or Wayland, which are a significant part of most distributions- but neither a part of Linux nor the GNU project itself- sufficiently worthy of credit
I like things to work, thus I don't use wayland on any of my computers.
It is a totally false claim that X.Org is "a part of Linux" - the The X Window System long predates Linux (like GNU, it was initially released in 1984) and the X.Org Foundation (founded 2004) doesn't develop X.Org Server just for LiGNUx - there is similar support for the BSDs and Solaris.
I don't use X.Org on all of my computers and X.Org is not really a core part of the OS - although I will refer to X.Org when it is relevant to the topic.
>I don't. You were the one who wanted to acknowledge contributions beyond the core Linux kernel and...
Linux certainly isn't the core - you can replace it with another kernel like Hurd, or even the kernel of windows and not notice a functional difference when running the church of Emacs for example.
It's amazing the complexity and confusion cased by the pushing of the falsehood that Linux is much more than a kernel - people can't even write Linux to mean Linux - they need to write "Linux kernel" to mean Linux!
>I've always sympathised with the basic *principle* of the "GNU/Linux" argument- that GNU and other contributors get lumped together with "Linux" itself, which as a result probably gets too much credit for support tools et al, credit that should probably be directed elsewhere.
Linux in fact supplies only a kernel and some support tools (util-linux) and that's pretty much it - but it's amazing what they get credited for.
>Basically GNU and its supporters- like yourself- making the fair point that they're not being given sufficient credit for their contribution, yet drawing the line where it suits them and not caring about seeing that principle extended equally fairly to others.
GNU and GNU Enjoyers do in fact give credit to contributions when credit is due - the relevant software is always named when at all feasible - very much unlike "Linux pushers" who go around calling things "the Linux shell", or "a Linux bootloader" (and many other cases when it's not GNU software, although I can't recall such cases right now), rather than naming the software by it's name.
When it comes to fairness, it can't be fair to give all the credit to one secondary contribution (Linux), while omitting the principal contribution (GNU).
>Sounds like you're picking and choosing where to give credit- and calling it "GNU" on its own is as misleading and accurate as calling it just "Linux", probably moreso.
When it is the GNU system, it is accurate and it is not misleading, as if people get confused, they can enter "gnu" into a search engine and get an accurate idea (with only slight confusion possible if they browse certain results like the persistently vandalized GNU article on wikipedia), while if you enter "linux", almost every result is false and misleading.
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> "Yes, people do assume that it's "just Linux", as nobody else tells them otherwise."
Yes, I'm well aware that people think that. The "rationalisation" I was talking about was the other point- that by adding "GNU" to the name- but nothing else- those same ignorant people would suddenly, magically understand that you implied credit to everything else too.
> "If it's purely about convenience, people would refer to the distro as just "GNU", as well it's shorter to write and say."
GNU isn't the core though, which is likely why most distros are called "Linux", rightly or wrongly.
Of course you could replace the core with (e.g.) GNU Hurd. You could replace it with a parsnip too, but most people don't, so it's not a parsnip(!)
> "It is a totally false claim that X.Org is "a part of Linux"
WTF? I never said they were, the whole point was they weren't...!
Did you even bother to read what I actually wrote, and which you even quoted?!
I said "You don't consider the likes of (e.g.) X.Org or Wayland, which are a significant part of most distributions- but neither a part of Linux nor the GNU project itself- sufficiently worthy of credit?"
Whether or not you use Wayland is academic. It's a part of many distros and should (by your logic) be credited where that's the case.
You seem weirdly paranoid that there's a conspiracy to deprive GNU of credit when, rightly or wrongly, it's just a matter of convenience and laziness.
You're also a partisan hypocrite, happy to longwindedly rationalise why your favoured project deserves credit too, but no-one else does.
I've nothing against the GNU project or the idea it deserves credit, but I've no time for that selective double standard.
>that by adding "GNU" to the name- but nothing else- those same ignorant people would suddenly, magically understand that you implied credit to everything else too.
There is no magic - GNU Enjoyers don't hesitate to give credit by naming the software, rather than calling everything "Linux Linux Linux".
>GNU isn't the core though, which is likely why most distros are called "Linux", rightly or wrongly.
Linux isn't the core - if you delete all of GNU and leave Linux and non-GNU on a GNU/Linux distro, everything will stop working.
You can delete all of proprietary Linux and most non-GNU packages and put more GNU in (GNU Linux-libre or Hurd) and it'll still work fine.
Linux has really bloated up over the years, but it is still is a smaller fraction of the system than GNU.
Let me guess, on my GNUbooted ThinkPads, where GNUboot and then the GNU GRUB payload executes first, before loading GNU Linux-libre (or Hurd), Linux is still the core?
>Of course you could replace the core with (e.g.) GNU Hurd.
You wouldn't really notice any difference on launching the church of Emacs.
>You could replace it with a parsnip too, but most people don't, so it's not a parsnip(!)
A parsnip wouldn't execute.
>WTF? I never said they were
Yes, I misread that one single part.
>Whether or not you use Wayland is academic. It's a part of many distros and should (by your logic) be credited where that's the case.
Many distros include it as they just love breakage - it mostly breaks accessibility features and it does not run at all unless you have fully working 3D acceleration - which may not be the cause on some computers that aren't running proprietary software and therefore it should be removed to get things working.
I'm not going to commend wayland for the breakage it causes and its possible requirement of proprietary software.
If you don't use wayland, you shouldn't say that you use it.
I don't really like adding the "/Linux", as Linux is proprietary software and proprietary software should not be commended - but I do give credit where credit is due.
If you run Android without GNU installed, you shouldn't say you run GNU/Linux.
>You seem weirdly paranoid that there's a conspiracy to deprive GNU of credit when, rightly or wrongly, it's just a matter of convenience and laziness.
It's not paranoia if you're correct - there is a relentless drive to remove any and all mentions of GNU, although there is no conspiracy - as it doesn't take a conspiracy to delete "GNU" and the f word (freedom).
If you actually care above convenience above all else and are lazy, you would just write "GNU" - after all "Linux" takes a few characters longer to type and results in confusion that is a pain in the ass to deal with after all (but it seems people are happy for major inconvenience and confusion that takes a lot of work to handle, just as long as people don't learn that freedom even exists).
>You're also a partisan hypocrite, happy longwindedly rationalise why your favoured project deserves credit too, but no-one else does.
I give credit to Linux as well by writing; GNU/Linux and I give credit to any and all programs when feasible by calling them their names (not "Linux") - but damn you have typed out a long-winded rationalization as to why only Linux deserves credit but no-one else does and I'm the hypocrite.
WTF is wrong with you guys, wasting so much time trying to put a wedge into open source, deepen the cut, standing on your "firm belief"... 8 days now... Do something more productive instead of proving in public who is the worst hard-head of you.....
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Many (myself included) have dabbled occasionally and given up, remembering the last attempt. I deployed a Pi with emulation software because I could get an image, but only because of that.
Before it, my previous memory was a disastrous attempt to deploy a box that would simply load and repeat a video. I had to pull packages by command line to roll my own. Atop the "4,000 text editors" type conundrums, to get a simple video playing on a bare-metal fresh install required 21 packages, a moment seared in to my memory, all of which as a newcomer I had to find and choose whilst navigating a new command structure and methodologies.
How to guides (better nowadays) were either missing important caveats or kept touching on smug holier-than-thou condescension. By the time you'd figured it was missing something, you were 2/3 through with no way to u-turn, noting no other guides seemed to follow the same route. The next guide would smugly chastise anyone who chose the XXXX that the first guide had you install, and idiots that thought the right way was the order the first guide had used.
After a day or two of wrangling, I finally got my video playing...to realise there was no sound. A cursory glance showed a similar process would be needed to build my own sound card support. I binned the box and abandoned the project.
Linux maintains an issue with infighting, and whilst it may be better now, my past experiences sour any desire to try again. If I do get "it" built and deployed, I'm facing either: updating it which often seems insurmountably complex (finding a way to strip back layers and redeploy); or the likelihood of a project being abandoned and having to rebuild with a new approach of supporting projects around the new component and go through the whole mess again.
I raise these issues and someone says "it's not like that now" or "did you know you can use SqueakyTrimCheeseSwitch variant that does all this" which is *another* fork in the vein of XKCD 927 by one person who will stop updating in 9mths.
Reality is, I (and many others) just want stuff to "work" within reason. I don't want to compile my own drivers in an enterprise environment in the same way I don't want to build a kiln to forge my own blades for my hedge trimmer so I can cut my hedge, although it would be useful so I can also build a pottery wheel to throw and fire a cat-bowl to feed my cats. I'd rather not learn cartography so I can plan my drive to my next business meeting and understand the intricacies of road construction and tyre compounds in order to get there. Some people do, I'm happy for them. But in the modern world I don't have time to "keep an up to date comprehension of the botanist impact of the rainfall and soil composition, and the home life of those who pick the beans and their continued battle against marmosets, in the Sumatra along with the geopolitical impact on the trade routes and the financial management of a global FMCG organisation in order to have a morning coffee" for every task I undertake.
Until Linux can reliably and predictably match the ongoing stability and relatively straightforward deployment of Apple or Microsoft, it's going to always be "iTs tHE tImE TO sWAp To LinUX" shouted loudest by people who have time and interest, or those who refer to everyone else as "sheeple"
" a disastrous attempt to deploy a box that would simply load and repeat a video"
If you installed any of the usual desktop distros it would have had VLC available assuming it wasn't included in the basic install.
Any of the desktop distros will automatically pull in any dependencies. In Debian, for instance apt install vlc is the only command you need to give to do that if you're using the command line.
Click the loop button on VLC - 2nd from right and your video will loop.
"A cursory glance showed a similar process would be needed to build my own sound card support."
Again, unless you built the box with some unusual sound card any modern desktop distro will have the support there.
I guess from your description this was a very long time ago and/or or you were using something like Gentoo or Linux from scratch. Your account does not match what happens with today's desktop distros but will undoubtedly be repeated endlessly as an example of why Linux is unusable by those who have never touched it.
Meanwhile, does Windows still have DLL Hell if you ry to install a few applications outside of the Microsoft store?
> Meanwhile, does Windows still have DLL Hell if you ry to install a few applications outside of the Microsoft store?
That is practically solved since Vista. Meanwhile you should have learned library hell and how newer compiler versions got more picky for security reasons. Can prevent compiling so you may have to dance with the source, 'cause not everything you need may me prepared by someone.
While the DLL issues with 16-bit windows have been mostly fixed, DLL hell hasn't been fixed.
The "solution" since vista has been to either static link absolutely everything into the .exe, or statically link with dynamic linking by putting every .dll in the same folder as the .exe.
Last time I tried linux, the live boot worked fine, but the move to actually installing it resulted in a black screen on boot. No UI, no mouse pointer, nothing.
The fix? Edit the startup options in grub to add "nomodeset" somewhere. Which means you need to know how to get into that.
To anyone non-technical, this might as well be a brick wall.
This was about a year ago, using the current Ubuntu, on an HP desktop with an Intel CPU and onboard graphics. Not a rare distro or unusual hardware. This kind of thing has to just work, or people will bounce off, and for good reason.
Recently ran into the black screen issue (first time ever in 10 years using Linux) installing Linux Mint on an HP Laptop that has prior run W10 and the LM Live USB worked fine on. Used 'nomodeset' and it worked fine afterwards. Not hard to do, really. The slight learning curve for Linux is worth it considering what Micro$oft puts us through.
This post has had (at time of writing) three downvotes. Why? For anyone who did downvote it, what was your reason?
On the face if it, the poster was simply stating that they had experienced the black screen issue, had worked around it and believed that the fix wasn’t too problematic, acknowledged that there is aa slight learning curve if and when you migrate to Linux, but didn't. think it was too bad.
Fine, no, sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Yet it gets downvoted, again why?
Of course it might be down to all the (obviously) many proxy accounts from MS-payed shills, instructed to downvote any criticism MS, in which case they are doing a really bad job!
Or could it have been from Linux enthusiasts who went no further than the first line and immediately knee-jerk downvoted because no criticism of Linux can be tolerated! The ‘black screen’ issue doesn’t ever happen, anyone who claims it did to them are simply lying and are paid by MS to make false claims.
Treating Linux adoption as similar to a religion, no apostasy is tolerated, no questioning it, really is not going to help to your cause.
>Last time I tried linux
>Edit the startup options in grub to add "nomodeset"
Thankfully the GNU GRUB OS saved you from a driver bug in Linux.
>To anyone non-technical, this might as well be a brick wall.
What is a non-technical person that isn't willing to learn technical things doing using a computer?
Those should not be forced to used computers (as those are technical machines).
>using the current Ubuntu, on an HP desktop with an Intel CPU and onboard graphics.
While Intel Integrated usually works, Intel keeps breaking support for old integrated graphics in their i915 driver and if that happens, the only available workarounds is nomodeset or to to use an old versions of Linux with a working i915 version.
The way to fix such is to work out which patch to i915 broke support for that card via the process of elimination and then make a bug report to i915 and hopefully a developer will fix it (often you'll have to fix it yourself if you want it fixed, which can be trivial or extremely difficult depending on what changes were made).
You are right, it was around 2009. Things have undoubtedly improved and it sounds like to a much more usable point. At the time it was a generic few-years-old box and a fight just to get it off the ground. Times I've had to come in to contact since haven't improved the opinion but it's been a long time since I've tried properly from scratch.
I still feel there's a battle to be overcome in terms of accessibility and a confidence barrier (yes it's "safe" today, but will that sub-package be safe/maintained in 18mths). There's also the continued challenge in the community, but I recognise there are a lot of "formal" resources that make this better than it used to be rather than relying on chunks of the web that are fighting each other.
I'm also highly aware that intrinsically having deep knowledge of Windows (back through 3.1, and DOS prior) adds a comfort level I need to address if I want to switch. Maybe it's time I set some time aside and tried again.
Download the Debian installer which includes the proprietary drivers and try that. The only problem is likely to be really new H/W whose drivers haven't made it onto the distro yet*. OTOH is still supports my ancient (Win 7 days) net-top with an Intel CPU that won't recognise more than 3 of the 4Gb or memory it has. It even runs the ancient Informix system I installed on it years ago. I don't know Debian is seen as "difficult" and Ubuntu "easier".
* The only problems I've personally experienced along those lines was before there was a proprietary-included installer when it would quibble about Wi-Fi. The solution was to use the wired connection to download the extras. For some reason more recent installers still quibble but it can now be ignored - I think the file of allowed channels per country is missing from the installer's boot image.
Unfortunately, the only available Debian installer contains proprietary software now, as convenience was deemed more important than not attacking the user with proprietary software.
>supports my ancient (Win 7 days) net-top
Intel hardware from that era tends to just work, as it doesn't require proprietary software to be loaded up - all that's usually needed is Intel CPU drivers, i915 and a ACPI driver (most ACPI implementations were and still are broken garbage - with the worst offenders being the cheapest computers BIOS's and the most expensive server BIOS's (with the middle being usually fine), but Linux's ACPI driver now contains enough workarounds to get things working 99.95% of the time).
Intel unfortunately breaks i915 at random for old integrated cards, but generally on those computers old, non-bloated GNU/Linux distros are used (which you seem to be doing), which have an old working i915 driver.
>with an Intel CPU that won't recognise more than 3 of the 4Gb or memory it has.
Old intel chipsets were defective - for example, the 945GM did not support remapping of PCIE/APIC memory ranges; https://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/309219.pdf (section 9.2) and therefore it was only possible to map <3.5G of memory (wow there's a lot of things "not supported" in that datasheet).
>For some reason more recent installers still quibble
>I think the file of allowed channels per country is missing from the installer's boot image.
regulatory.db, which lists the allowed channels per country is included by default and Linux's Wi-Fi drivers default to worldwide band compliance if the country is not set.
I suspect the reason why the installer still advises to use wired LAN is because the Wi-Fi may not work yet (i.e. the target wired network is on channel 13 and the country hasn't been set yet), and/or because the first version of the proprietary software for Wi-Fi cards tends to be flaming garbage that won't connect to Wi-Fi network's and have many other issues (usually only one update is provided that fixes the most glaring issues and then then it's time to buy the next model card and hope that it isn't flaming garbage - but it always is).
But if you use a ath5k or ath9k Wi-Fi card, everything works great without proprietary software and Trisquel's installer doesn't quibble.
Quite different to my experience.
I installed Linux and it immediately recognized :
Gfx card
Sound card
USB AUDIO DAC.
Roland Keyboard
Gamepad
Analogue joystick
And what blew me away was it recognized
Epson B500D network printer circa 2008
And
2 x 8000U 8” USB-Mini (not even micro) displays from the same year.
Which not even Windows or MacOS recognizes without proprietary drivers.
These last two devices were the final reason I was holding on to a Windows 11 install.
I guess you were trying to build an Arch install or Gentoo or something.
Which is fine, so long as you acknowledge that other people genuinely do have very different experiences when trying Windows—especially if they are installing Windows from scratch. I mean, how many people actually do that?
Somehow, I suspect, they are likely to have an easier time installing Linux, than Windows, but then the vast majority of users would have no idea how to do either, and would not even attempt it. They do know where the 'On/Off' switch is, and that if you click this picture in this part of the screen this will happen, etc. And that, my friends, is the beginning and end of the IT knowledge of a vast swathe if the computer using public, and why "Just install Linux/Windows/any OS" might as well be spoken in Klingon for all that it means to them.
As for everyone who does have half a clue, and continues to actually pay for the rubbish that MS churns out? Well, every choice has a price—of some kind.
I don't disagree with this, but I think a lot of the linux evangelism, for want of a better word, is based around the idea that the key thing is to get people to try linux, and that if they do, they will inevitably like it, have no problems with it, and never look back.
And sometimes that happens, but sometimes it does not.
Windows certainly has its issues - I'm firmly in the "all operating systems suck" camp. But on a practical level I can get along with Windows a lot better and more easily than I can with linux.
"Somehow, I suspect, they are likely to have an easier time installing Linux, than Windows, but then the vast majority of users would have no idea how to do either, and would not even attempt it."
When we build current Dell laptops with Win11 via InTune, sometimes, during early stages of the build we get a blank white screen. Pressing Alt-Tab beings up the "thumbnail" task switcher, so we can get to the command shell, run Windows Update and then do a reboot, and then the screen works normally. But only sometimes. Building the exact same image on identical Dell laptops, which have all the latest firmware updates as provided by Dell via Windows Update. If that happens to an average user either doing a clean install or a "Factory Reset", they will be in exactly the same position as a Linux user if the hardware is not properly supported "out of the box". It may be more rare with Windows, but a), ir DOES happen and b), most users will have no idea how to fix it. Similar with a current model of HP laptop. There are drivers that we have to install manually after the install to get the sound working properly because they are not in the default build. (I think they've now been injected into it, but they ain't in even the latest Win11 build)
>I had to pull packages by command line to roll my own.
Is `sudo apt install <package>` in GNU bash really that complicated?
It's certainly far easier than having to hunt for an .exe online and avoid the malware version (spoiler; often all versions of the program are malware).
>to get a simple video playing on a bare-metal fresh install required 21 packages
Video players have a lot of dependencies - looking at VLC there's the dvd support, bluray support, H.264+H.265+AV1+VP8+VP9+opus+vorbis+aac+xvid+theora+video format container support, srt and ass (Advanced SubStation Alpha) subtitle support and then GtK etc.
For VLC there are over 100 direct dependencies - although many of them are optional.
Someone compiled and packaged it all up for you and it installed in only minutes and yet you complain?
If you are looking of a video player with minimal dependencies, I recommend ffplay (built into ffmpeg).
The windows version on VLC has all of such dependencies, plus more - someone just spent a ludicrous amount of time compiling it (it is 20x harder to get things to compile and work for windows that it is to get things to compile and work for GNU).
>I finally got my video playing...to realise there was no sound.
If that was the raspberry Pi, proprietary broadcom software likely was handling the video playback and likely the sound too, or it was pulseaudio and well that is the expected result.
With ALSA, sound tends to just work unless the audio card is flaming garbage (for example, I've seen an intel sound chipset that doesn't work unless proprietary software is loaded up and as expected, you get no sound even with the proprietary program loaded).
>Reality is, I (and many others) just want stuff to "work" within reason.
If you want things to always just work, hardware that requires proprietary software to be loaded up cannot be used.
On standard PC hardware that doesn't require the OS to load up proprietary software, everything tends to work.
>I don't want to compile my own drivers in an enterprise environment in the same way I don't want to build a kiln to forge my own blades for my hedge trimmer so I can cut my hedge,
This paragraph seems to be a description of what is required to use windows.
If you want support for a decent filesystem like ext4 on windows, you need to compile kernel drivers and install them (chances are the NT kernel decides to bluescreen rather than ext4 working too).
Meanwhile, on GNU/Linux and GNU GRUB, ext4, ntfs, exfat, fat32 and more works fine without the user needing to compile their own drivers.
>ongoing stability and relatively straightforward deployment of Apple or Microsoft
Peak comedy.
Neither of those things are the slightest bit stable or straightforward to deploy - the windows installer is far harder to use than Trisquel's installer for example.
If anything doesn't work on apple or microsoft (which regularly happens), if rebooting doesn't work, it is extremely difficult to diagnose or fix it, while on GNU, it is possible to diagnose any and all issues and if it's not proprietary software related, the issue can be fixed.
well we moved to a hybrid OS system. We still use Microsoft A1 education, sharepoint, onedrive as primary storage but this is all free. we do pay for entra P1 and use extra for our 365 logons, but predominantly use Linux desktops managed with fleetdm, plus a bunch of ipads using intune education. papercut sorts printing.
Dropped all our onsite windows servers and desktops *there are 3 desktops running bespoke inventry terminals, a BMS machine plus a print server, all cloud storage apart from a local qnap NAS for local backups. licensing is soooo much lower now. so it can be done.
took 2 years to move a 15Tb 1250 user 400 machine site.
Notepad++ currently depends heavily on the windows GUI toolkit and windows API - to port it to GNU would require porting it to GtK or Qt and the other proprietary dependencies replaced too.
A native clone exists; notepadqq (but I haven't checked if GPLv3-only is in fact the license).
You can also get Notepad++ running natively on GNU with WINE (as WINE is not an emulator and passes the CPU instructions raw and only translates windows API calls to POSIX ones), but I would not recommend doing so without confirming that it doesn't contain proprietary software.
I have to agree. The Linux experience on customer hardware is one of endless little things that semi-work. Case in point a laptop where Linux is officially supported (not pre-installed) on at least 2 distros but...
- the trackpad sensibility is off. Now try figuring out how to tune its multiple parameters. Oh, and what do you use? Synaptics or whatever else is the flavor of the week?
- the hibernation mode doesn't quite work and consequently the thing really doesn't last long unplugged, unless you turn it off. Sample user defending the machine and/or Linux: "well, you know, in my day to day my (laptop) is always plugged in, so what do I care if hibernate doesn't work? You're holding it wrong!". Is it a kernel issue, a driver issue, a hardware issue? Read 3 posts by knowledgeable Linux geeks and you'll have 4 opinions - 2 of which seem to concern mechanisms that are either not available yet or long deprecated. If you haven't been following this wankfest all along, no way to know who has a clue.
But, yeah, the big drama isn't in making those things work, for Joe User. It is the Wayland vs X, filesystem Y vs filesystem Z and what wonders Gnome or its like has come up with from release to release. Oh, that transparency capability on my rounded buttons! Look at that 3d wallpaper! And let's not forget Herr Poettering's ever-spreading miasma.
If you abstract out all the drivers, GUI and hardware consideration, say working on a VM in terminal, yes, Linux is an absolute joy to use, from personal experience. I bet it is as well on people working with solidly configured servers.
I used to say, "try Linux...it doesn't suck any worse than Windows".
But now, I'm beginning to think the balance of suckage may be shifting. Seems a new major boo-boo on the part of the Windows coders pops up quite frequently now. I know networking is a fairly recent ('95?) addition to Windows, but of all the things to get wrong, when your corporate strategy is to drive users to the (subscribed) cloud...
That's all very well if you're reasonably I.T. savvy (I am, I've worked in I.T. since 1990), but from my experiences training Windows users and years of dealing with Helpdesk calls, most bog standard users aren't that clued-up and as soon as you point them down the 'just run your app in Wine' route, or ask them to do some command line work they just can't be bothered, or find it too difficult. And that's AFTER they've wondered what the hell are 'distros' and why there are so many of them and .... which one is suitable for their individual needs? And what happens if it all goes horribly wrong after I’ve overwritten the Windows OS with <distro>? Can I go back? And did anyone advise me to backup my data before I did that …… but hold on, all my data is in my Personal OneDrive, will I be able to get at it in Linux?
I’ve tried Linux, specifically Ubuntu, three times. On each occasion I’ve abandoned it within a few days of installing it because I wanted to just USE IT, not spend time struggling to get things to work.
There is too much cruft built into the NT kernel like scrollbars and large amounts of the windows API.
Even the slightest change or bugfix to parts of the API leads to breakages in windows software - WINE for example needs to maintain bug-for-bug compatibility in windows API functions or a lot of windows software doesn't work.
Although Linux is proprietary software, I don't think it's sufficiently proprietary for their wants, but if for some reason they decided to port to that kernel instead, the result would be an OS that is technically inferior to GNU/Linux with WINE that can run a similar amount of proprietary windows software.
As for BSD kernels, well those aren't of sufficient quality even to microsoft's "standards".
You were misinformed. BSD is of the highest quality and among most stable OSes available. Every BSD device I've used runs error free for years. There are good reasons BSD is the base OS of choice for TrueNAS Core, PFSense, Macintosh OS, Netflix network streaming ops, etc... It is because of stability and high quality. There are several flavors of Linux which approach BSD's stability and simplicity.
>BSD is of the highest quality and among most stable OSes available.
They simply don't support much and therefore it you can only do extremely limited things and sure those seem stable while they do almost nothing.
All of the BSDs are proprietary software, therefore those lack the most important quality.
GNU has been tested to have the lowest error rate out of all Unix-likes - although such test was rather dated - maybe it's time to test again.
GNU/Linux-libre is the most stable OS available - I haven't ever had GNU/Linux-libre kernel panic on a server for me - all kernel panic's I've ever seen appear to be the fault of hardware problems (I've only once seen a partial failure of asterisk and odd behavior on a crappy computer running GNU/Linux, but that was probably RAM bitflip related, as no ECC - or maybe it was the proprietary software).
I reckon GNU/Linux-libre would be more stable than the BSDs if you limited yourself as to what can be done on the BSDs.
>There are good reasons BSD is the base OS of choice for TrueNAS Core, PFSense, Macintosh OS, Netflix network streaming ops, etc... It is because of stability and high quality.
The real reason is because the GNU/Freedom is hated and the only other choice is the BSDs (and the drawbacks are tolerated).
BSD software certainly isn't of higher quality - BSD coreutils doesn't respect the users freedom to `rm -rf --no-preserve-root /` for example - instead it outputs "removing / is not allowed".
>There are several flavors of Linux which approach BSD's stability and simplicity.
There are very few versions of the kernel, Linux with minor differences - the version with the most differences in GNU Linux-libre.
Most GNU/Linux distros are the same - as the same core GNU libraries are packages are used - the biggest differences are systemd or not, the package manager and the default desktop environment.
Remember MS claimed they couldn't go back from W8 to W7 UI, directly after launching W8, because the source code had been modified and they had deleted the W7 UI code...
So expect MS to have deleted any documentation that was produced and thus labelled as being for a previous version of Windows. Thus things like NTFS.SYS which have existed since the mid 1990's will now be undocumented...
I have a vague idea that before W7 some party half inched the entire source tree to Windows which was available for short period on some (hacked?) web site.
Wondering if some chap who retained a copy just to peruse for amusement on a slow day, could help MS out ?
I think something similar happened with Apple IOS.
Not regularly archiving your production code is really a complete clown show. How much does LTO tape cost ?
>Not regularly archiving your production code is really a complete clown show. How much does LTO tape cost ?
It probably is nicely stored on LTO tape. Its just a little difficult to restore from a collection of tapes in their offsite storage facility to Azure,,,
But it's all useless, as they don't follow their own formats, standards or document changes - as if they can't implement their own formats correctly, it's figured that nobody else can.
Reportablely, bing isn't even able to index their documentation website.
Now that microsoft is ordering employees to use LLMs to copy-paste random code into windows, existing documentation is becoming even more useless.
Citation needed. MS have had their own source code control product for decades and NT had a nightly build regime from very early on. (NTFS was dog-fooded from its earliest days, so it either worked or the responsible party got bricked.)
It seems very unlikely to me that there are components in Win11 with no source code.
Although moving to macos is not possible, it is in fact easier to manage a huge number of devices with GNU installed than windows.
Yes, handcuff-in as intended will make it difficult to escape to GNU, but there will be massive cost and time savings once the handcuffs are broken.
If you have a huge fleet of stuff that the vendor regularly breaks with their own supposed-to-be-certified patches, then you don't have a huge fleet of stuff, you have a millstone round your neck.
Diversifying the composition of stuff that you have so that one vendor cannot cripple you would seem a sane move and hang the extra support costs. Alternatively work out which vendor has the best record for not breaking stuff (hint: not Microsoft) and go with them.
If you have huge fleet of devices and applications and you're running them on S/W whose vendor regularly breaks them with updates and tells you you must install those updates to stay "secure" and forces you to replace it all every few years you deserve some sympathy. Not a lot because you've decided to keep making the continual investment that instability demands.
"If you have huge fleet of devices and applications, moving to Mac or Linux is not an option."
Why? It's not uncommon for a new version of Windows to break compatibility with existing workflows, existing s/w and when the GUI changes dramatically, has it has done a number of times. Many, many hours of productivity is lost while the users re-learn how the new system operates or you run training courses for your users. Depending on what s/w your business runs on, switching to an entirely different OS might not be as wrenching as you seem to think. On the other hand, is you run custom apps, or are wedded to local customisation, such as complex Word templates, azure integrations etc, then it could well be a nightmare.
The name resolution of localhost to the loopback interface? Then just use mouse-potato.com.
The 127.0.0.1 loopback interface (::1 in IPV6)? That's breaking key parts of the network stack. Enquiring minds may want to know what they are doing mucking around in there.
Interestingly enough, the daily virus definition for Microsoft Defender KB2267602 now delivers the fix for this (because... yes...?).
Uninstalling both patches did work for all cases I've encountered. An acquaintance confirmed on a VM that the Defender update fixes the issues introduced with the offending updates.
Guess we can't trust a 4GB feature update masquerading as a security update. :(
One of the most fundamental aspects of the TCP/IP stack?
It's not just that they broke it - how the hell did the breakage get out in the wild?
Someone (by which I mean someone's in government agencies) should start an investigation into their testing procedures. And obvious lack thereof.
It's not enough we've got zero-days - now they're attacking their own software. Saves the bad guys the trouble I suppose.
unfortunately "localhost" is just a hostname that by convention maps to 127.0.0.1 - if you happen to edit /etc/hosts and put a different value for localhost in there, you'll get strange behaviour on your system. Especially if there is no server at the target.
It's be interesting to know if they broke 127.0.0.1 or just (I use the word loosely) localhost.
I rather liked Clippy, or rather, the cat which you could install as an alternative. It slept, washed itself, scratched the sides of the windows, and chased the mouse every so often. Cute. It was no use for anything productive, but at least it didn’t walk across the keyboard or shred the paper as it came out of the printer.
The fix for the localhost HttpListener issue is to force the latest Windows Defender definition updates (or probably just get latest now, version 1.439.216.0 or higher) , I tested it using a snapshot of Windows before and after the updates. You may not have to actually rollback, which is the fix most people are suggesting.
Maybe that's why my m$ laptop is showing very, very weird behaviour right now accessing web content. Most (though not all) sites are complaining that they are not secure and I get a generic network error after an update was applied last night. For some strange reason, it doesn't seem to be affecting The Register. But sites like my email site, ebay, news sites - they all fail. Whatever happened, it's screwed both Edge and Firefox.
Luckily for me I do happen to have a Linux laptop, so I've been able to do some stuff there instead.
I'm the OP. So as far as my particular problem, I eventually managed to get Firefox working - but it took an uninstall/install. This is where it gets stupid...
Because Internet access was screwed, I couldn't download Firefox from their website - the only option I had was to download it from the app store. Annoying, but I got there in the end. However, when it came to Edge it won't LET me uninstall it - I only have an option to re-install it. If I try and use that option, the first thing it tries to do is go to a website - which fails. So Edge is still broken for me (not that I care much).
Most of my time was wasted trying to track down a problem that only had a generic failure code. Nothing I found up until the point of uninstall/install of Firefox worked. Trying to troubleshoot the problem from Windows often tried to direct me to websites - which was no good as that was the bit that was broken. Having the Linux laptop nearby aided me whilst trying to diagnose the problem. I even started migrating across to it. The only thing stopping me there is that the Linux laptop is older and not a great spec, and I literally just purchased memory to upgrade the Windoze laptop (the memory arrived the day after everything started failing - comedic timing if nothing else).
So in my house, Windows gets a stay of execution for a little longer. It's only here because there are things out there I need to use that only work on Windoze. Thankfully that list is getting smaller, so maybe one day soon I can finally kick it to the kerb.
But anyway, I hope this helps someone out there if they are seeing the same problem and just happen to be Reg readers. Uninstall your affected browser, then install it. A 're-install' option might not delete everything, so if that fails go for the complete uninstall and install from scratch.
I'd always been a windows user, by choice but also expediency, that's stopped now, all my daily machines are Mint as of last weekend, of the two I cannot migrate to Mint (they run legacy software to control things like EPROM programmers) one is XP, the other is 7.
Screw MS, even more if they're breaking such fundamental things as localhost
It's unreal.
They way they've dropped in quality over the last decade is staggering. Coupled with the way they're taking away user choices while having their OS and other products serve as ad platforms, their only redeemable "quality" is their quasi-monopoly in desktop operating systems.
God I hate them.
Let me guess, next Microsoft will say
Access to localhost has been denied for security reasons. For anyone that still needs to access localhost, we'll be adding a special developer mode to Windows 11 Developer Edition (coming out soon) for an upgrade price of $119 (discounted for the first 6 months)
Dev@MS: Boss, when can our team install 26100.666? That new Code-by-LLM&Powerpoint feature looks very useful!
Mgr@MS: As you well know, we are far enough behind already. To avoid risks we have a strict policy not use new builds on our workstations until our victims customers have found all the bugs. It's been out for 2 weeks, just wait another 6 weeks.
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