8 ms·

The title here doesn't match the article title - to fully configure the Edge browser, you need to be joined to an Active Directory domain or enrolled with Intun

by amanzi 5y ago

The title here doesn't match the article title - to fully configure the Edge browser, you need to be joined to an Active Directory domain or enrolled with Intune MDM. For those of us with experience managing Windows environments, we know that for a long time, Microsoft have offered much more customisations for Windows and the apps to organisations. And in this case, to fully customise the Edge browser, you need to have your Windows computers joined to an AD domain, or enrolled in Intune which Microsoft is pushing as the future replacement for traditionally managed networks. It sucks that home users can no longer customise this setting. My advice - stop using Edge. Windows 11 and Edge are incredibly hostile towards its users. I use Windows 11 daily, and it's incredibly frustrating how a generally nice OS is ruined by stupidly hostile moves by Microsoft. For example, they've gone to the effort of including a widget sidebar, but you can't fully customise it - you're forced to include a news feed of crappy articles from Microsoft-chosen publishers. Very frustrating.

prirun 5y ago
My sister has to use Windows 10 for her business software. I never could get past all those flashing animated icons on the Start menu. Totally distracting when I'm trying to figure out how to get something to work. I'm already frustrated and they have little pictures spinning and bouncing all over the place. It's annoying as F.
- thefunnyman 5y ago
  Luckily those tiles can be removed from the start bar in Windows 10 via the right click menu, but I agree it is an annoying default behavior.
ultimoo 5y ago
I don't have any Windows computers these days but if I may offer a workaround for the news feed -- I'd recommend looking to running your own ad blocking DNS with pi-hole. You can get a Raspberry Pi for $30 and get the whole thing up and running in an hour.
- serf 5y ago
  > You can get a Raspberry Pi for $30 where? they're all either sold out entirely or hugely marked up near me.
  - usui 5y ago
    yea, OP is going off of pricing that was in the before-times. Also I wouldn't recommend buying anything less than Raspberry Pi 3. Would recommend Raspberry Pi 4 in almost all cases simply due to its better compatibility+power. The lowest end models (2GB) right now are all extremely marked up from the original $40 to current $80.
    - lewispollard 5y ago
      Pihole is not very resource intensive at all, you can run it on a pi 0 without any issues.
      - theandrewbailey 5y ago
        You don't even need a Pi, either. I run it on my home server running Ubuntu.
        BizarroLand 5y ago
        I run it in a container on my NAS PC. It uses almost no resources and takes up only a few gigs of space that I wasn't already using for something else.
        lewispollard 5y ago
        Yup that's true, you can even technically run it on a cloud VM like EC2, though obviously you get higher latency.
      - usui 5y ago
        I find that the reason I love Raspberry Pis is due to its flexibility and my ability to tinker with it. I might want to use it for a Pihole today, something else tomorrow.
jareklupinski 5y ago
when I learned the magic letters LTSB, I was finally able to see the decent OS hiding under all the bloat Win10 has foisted on top of it hope there will be a similar version for Win11
- dend 5y ago
  Challenge with that is you lose access to a bunch of “nice-to-haves” that enable you to use Visual Studio or play games due to missing dependencies. LTSB/C is great for isolated environments that are somewhat frozen in time, but for consumer scenarios those can be full of gaps.
  - jareklupinski 5y ago
    that's interesting, my primary (and only, really) use-case for windows is gaming. i only get games through Steam and they're mostly post-2010 titles, hoping thats the reason i havent run into dep issues yet my motivation wasn't blocking telemetry or whatever, I just needed to squeeze every single frame out of my aging rig, and dove down the rabbit hole of optimizing win10 starting with LTSB i had to jump back to win10 pro after a failed migration to LTSC, but i'm constantly looking for an excuse and will probably go to win11 only if there's a similar route (and then maybe even gladly :) )
    - tehbeard 5y ago
      Have you given proton/Steam on linux a try?
      - DoctorDabadedoo 5y ago
        Not OP, but last time I tried (1-2y ago or so) it "worked" but had severe performance issues, animation lag, input lag, etc. I played a bit with it using Grim Dawn (a diablo like action rpg). Don't know if there were significant improvements since then.
        5y ago
dend 5y ago
Author here. Yes and no - the title here reflects the problem. Basic functionality is locked behind an arbitrary requirement for MDM. I’m not asking to define custom restrictions - I just want a blank new page. Functionality that has existed in most browsers for a long time (IE included). This is like locking Start menu customization behind MDM. Sure, you can do this, but it’s weird stance to take.
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  Can't you just insert a GPO registry entry to simulate a corporate policy to set the new tab page as blank? In fact if that works, a small tool to build/set fake GPOs for Edge would be quite useful.
  - anakaine 5y ago
    This approach from Microsoft encourages the build of crapware tweaking tools that go on to hurt those using home computers. Instead of having a proper place in Windows to change something that is configurable users would be expected to download and install a tweaking utility - a practice that has for the longest time been accompanied by a higher than usual amount of bundled crap and malicious actors.
    - BizarroLand 5y ago
      I'm almost at the point where I will either abandon Windows (since I don't really use proprietary software) or where if windows offered a paid subscription to be a super user and have the functionality of windows 7 alongside the security of 11 then I would fork over $20/month for that.
      - dandotway 5y ago
        For Win 10 the Pro version allows disabling more telemetry than Home does and I pay extra to get computers that have Pro. I haven't yet researched Win 11 Home vs. Pro though and I will put off "upgrading" to Win 11 as long as I can as all I need Windows to do is run a web browser and the few programs I actually need without the hassles of reading the Arch wiki to fix desktop Linux issues or the hassles of Apple's non-upgradeable non-repairable computers that regularly break old software. "Oh, you spent all that time learning OpenGL did you? We're deprecating it pending future removal. Oh, you were using bash for 20+ years? Sorry, you're using zsh now."
wly_cdgr 5y ago
You've reminded me of how they've gone and ruined the perfectly fine and useful Whiteboard app by requiring you to be online and logged in to your Microsoft account to use it. Huge turnoff and so irritating. There is no legitimate reason for that to be the case

by amanzi 5y ago

prirun 5y ago

My sister has to use Windows 10 for her business software. I never could get past all those flashing animated icons on the Start menu. Totally distracting when I'm trying to figure out how to get something to work. I'm already frustrated and they have little pictures spinning and bouncing all over the place. It's annoying as F.

thefunnyman 5y ago
Luckily those tiles can be removed from the start bar in Windows 10 via the right click menu, but I agree it is an annoying default behavior.

ultimoo 5y ago

I don't have any Windows computers these days but if I may offer a workaround for the news feed -- I'd recommend looking to running your own ad blocking DNS with pi-hole. You can get a Raspberry Pi for $30 and get the whole thing up and running in an hour.

serf 5y ago
> You can get a Raspberry Pi for $30 where? they're all either sold out entirely or hugely marked up near me.
- usui 5y ago
  yea, OP is going off of pricing that was in the before-times. Also I wouldn't recommend buying anything less than Raspberry Pi 3. Would recommend Raspberry Pi 4 in almost all cases simply due to its better compatibility+power. The lowest end models (2GB) right now are all extremely marked up from the original $40 to current $80.
  - lewispollard 5y ago
    Pihole is not very resource intensive at all, you can run it on a pi 0 without any issues.
    - theandrewbailey 5y ago
      You don't even need a Pi, either. I run it on my home server running Ubuntu.
      - BizarroLand 5y ago
        I run it in a container on my NAS PC. It uses almost no resources and takes up only a few gigs of space that I wasn't already using for something else.
      - lewispollard 5y ago
        Yup that's true, you can even technically run it on a cloud VM like EC2, though obviously you get higher latency.
    - usui 5y ago
      I find that the reason I love Raspberry Pis is due to its flexibility and my ability to tinker with it. I might want to use it for a Pihole today, something else tomorrow.

jareklupinski 5y ago

when I learned the magic letters LTSB, I was finally able to see the decent OS hiding under all the bloat Win10 has foisted on top of it hope there will be a similar version for Win11

dend 5y ago
Challenge with that is you lose access to a bunch of “nice-to-haves” that enable you to use Visual Studio or play games due to missing dependencies. LTSB/C is great for isolated environments that are somewhat frozen in time, but for consumer scenarios those can be full of gaps.
- jareklupinski 5y ago
  that's interesting, my primary (and only, really) use-case for windows is gaming. i only get games through Steam and they're mostly post-2010 titles, hoping thats the reason i havent run into dep issues yet my motivation wasn't blocking telemetry or whatever, I just needed to squeeze every single frame out of my aging rig, and dove down the rabbit hole of optimizing win10 starting with LTSB i had to jump back to win10 pro after a failed migration to LTSC, but i'm constantly looking for an excuse and will probably go to win11 only if there's a similar route (and then maybe even gladly :) )
  - tehbeard 5y ago
    Have you given proton/Steam on linux a try?
    - DoctorDabadedoo 5y ago
      Not OP, but last time I tried (1-2y ago or so) it "worked" but had severe performance issues, animation lag, input lag, etc. I played a bit with it using Grim Dawn (a diablo like action rpg). Don't know if there were significant improvements since then.
      - 5y ago

dend 5y ago

Author here. Yes and no - the title here reflects the problem. Basic functionality is locked behind an arbitrary requirement for MDM. I’m not asking to define custom restrictions - I just want a blank new page. Functionality that has existed in most browsers for a long time (IE included). This is like locking Start menu customization behind MDM. Sure, you can do this, but it’s weird stance to take.

mattowen_uk 5y ago
Can't you just insert a GPO registry entry to simulate a corporate policy to set the new tab page as blank? In fact if that works, a small tool to build/set fake GPOs for Edge would be quite useful.
- anakaine 5y ago
  This approach from Microsoft encourages the build of crapware tweaking tools that go on to hurt those using home computers. Instead of having a proper place in Windows to change something that is configurable users would be expected to download and install a tweaking utility - a practice that has for the longest time been accompanied by a higher than usual amount of bundled crap and malicious actors.
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    I'm almost at the point where I will either abandon Windows (since I don't really use proprietary software) or where if windows offered a paid subscription to be a super user and have the functionality of windows 7 alongside the security of 11 then I would fork over $20/month for that.
    - dandotway 5y ago
      For Win 10 the Pro version allows disabling more telemetry than Home does and I pay extra to get computers that have Pro. I haven't yet researched Win 11 Home vs. Pro though and I will put off "upgrading" to Win 11 as long as I can as all I need Windows to do is run a web browser and the few programs I actually need without the hassles of reading the Arch wiki to fix desktop Linux issues or the hassles of Apple's non-upgradeable non-repairable computers that regularly break old software. "Oh, you spent all that time learning OpenGL did you? We're deprecating it pending future removal. Oh, you were using bash for 20+ years? Sorry, you're using zsh now."

wly_cdgr 5y ago

You've reminded me of how they've gone and ruined the perfectly fine and useful Whiteboard app by requiring you to be online and logged in to your Microsoft account to use it. Huge turnoff and so irritating. There is no legitimate reason for that to be the case