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This is a very strange comment. Personally... I absolutely understand exactly how they ended up in this situation. There are actually several good reasons to

This is a very strange comment. Personally... I absolutely understand exactly how they ended up in this situation. There are actually several good reasons to embed the browser into the OS, the top two easily understood ones are... --- 1. They've put a lot of work into the browser, and they've shared many components of it with other tooling. EX: Internet EXPLORER and EXPLORER the file system browser don't share their name by mistake. They're so similar I can load the same COM addin in both. 2. From a pure usability perspective, it makes a boat load of sense to prevent a user from accidentally uninstalling the last browser on the machine. When dealing with edge cases and possible support calls, making sure that the user has at least one application that can download files from the web is pretty damn reasonable. Safari is also not removable... for similar reasons. --- Further - I think it's actually a fairly good credit to MSFT that they're bothering with shims at all, and are maintaining a good chunk of compatibility for applications that were written literally decades ago. Both Google and Apples's approach to this would literally be: "We're so sorry, that's no longer supported and you're f*#$ed. Go upgrade, get your vendors to upgrade, or eat shit." MSFT isn't writing shims because they still need them... they're writing shims because they have enterprise customers who want them, and they actually give a fuck about that.

wizzwizz4 4y ago
> making sure that the user has at least one application that can download files from the web is pretty damn reasonable. And, indeed, you can't remove Windows Update. Nor (in more recent versions) the Add or Remove Features component in Control Panel— er, sorry, the Settings app. So long as you can still re-install Internet Explorer without a web browser (which I think you have always been able to, ever since the days IE came in a box), there's no reason to stop you removing it. Microsoft did have legitimate reasons to integrate the browser engine in Windows 95, what with the whole Active Desktop, HTML Application, the-web-is-the-future schtick they were going for. But that isn't one of them.
shadowgovt 4y ago
> Google and Apples's ... and Linux (well, Ubuntu specifically). I'm staring down the need to upgrade from Ubuntu LTS 20.04 to Ubuntu LTS 22.04 because some software I maintain now relies on GLIBC v2.32, which is an absolute bear to back-port. The party line is "So just upgrade," but there's no guarantee my hardware is compatible with Ubuntu LTS 22.04 because the vendor doesn't support that config and I'm not really interested in dealing with all the joys of figuring out every fiddly-widget little config on a laptop to make it work myself. Microsoft is nearly unique in caring that much about backwards compatibility. It's the value-add they bring to the market these days relative to the competition.
- amenod 4y ago
  > ...but there's no guarantee my hardware is compatible with Ubuntu LTS 22.04 because the vendor doesn't support that config... So it's your vendor who doesn't care about backwards compatibility - Linux does. Whatever hardware you have, once it was supported, it will stay this way until it is really ancient, and even then you will have special builds that will support it. That's the beauty of open source (or even source available) licenses. No corporate interests that would render your solution obsolete. [0] [0] assuming your hardware doesn't need some binary blobs (khm nvidia khm) to work
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    (a) Of course it needs binary blobs. This is the real world where medium- to high-performance machines need binary blobs. The GNU dream never materialized. (b) If Ubuntu (and I'm going to say "the Linux ecosystem in general") cared about backwards compatibility in the same sense Windows does, a minor-version bump to glibc wouldn't introduce API breakages that mean I can't build a codebase that's doing nothing new and special on my machine right now purely because a 31-subver bumped to a 32. They aren't doing anything new in the code; their JNI dependency just bumped up and so they bumped up the whole codebase's requirements. That's fine, but it's not The Windows Way. The Linux Way doesn't think about compatibility issues like that in anything like the same way. It's a source-code-and-patch-it-yourself world. The approaches are completely alien to each other.
    - caf 4y ago
      glibc goes to great lengths to ensure binary backwards-compatibility. If a binary interface has to change it uses symbol versioning to keep around the old interface - for example if you have a program compiled against glibc2.2 on x86-64 that calls timer_create(), it will call through the function __timer_create_old() that provides the old interface when run on a system with a newer libc. The reverse scenario that seems to be what you have - where you compile against a newer library version then run it on an older one - is forwards-compatibility which is a different kettle of fish. Even on Windows it's not like you can compile against the latest DirectX and run it on an older Windows?
rbanffy 4y ago
> several good reasons to embed the browser into the OS It was actually a great feature (memory may be failing at this point), and it seemed like the filesystem viewer was IE presenting a filesystem view. If you typed an http or https URL, the window would turn into an HTML renderer window. This made it possible to build their mail and newsgroup reader apps as filesystem views. Mail was nothing but a folder full of email message files. News was, surprise, a folder full of newsgroups. Those viewers were responsible with synchronizing the folder with remote services. I would love if Gnome would allow pluggable views in Files: a mail reader for maildir folders, a music player for folders full of audio files, and so on.
- cld8483 4y ago
  > I would love if Gnome would allow pluggable views in Files This is essentially what Gvfs is for except basically nobody uses it, at least in the ways you describe, because forcing non-FS things into the shape of a FS usually doesn't work very well. So instead Gvfs gets used for relatively simple things that naturally map onto the FS concept well, like mounting archive files, browsing FTP, etc.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    Gvfs would allow a folder of messages to show the continents of, say, an IMAP server as a set of files, but what I would like is the reverse - to have a different presentation for a folder full of emails.
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  Yes sounds right - I remember in the deep dark past somehow getting Steam to show the contents of C:\Program Files\ in the Store window. This was obviously back when Steam was Windows only and before it used embedded Chrome.
asdff 4y ago
Microsoft only cares about legacy support if it means the vast majority of customers. I will give you an example: go to a top tier research institution for biology, and sort your cells with the fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS). You might have to now burn that data onto a cd rom, because the software running the six figure instrument was written in 2002 for windows XP, and for reasons only known to microsoft, this software is no longer able to run on modern windows. So now IT has to airgap the desktop sitting by the machine, and the only way they let you get data off according to policy is through CD rom, not usb because that breaches the gap. The vendor for the instrument has no incentive to update that software either; they'd rather you dish out another half million dollars for a new sorter. There are hundreds of instruments like this in any given research institute, all because Microsoft decided unilaterally that software that ran fine 20 years ago is clearly useless and doesn't need to run anymore on modern hardware that receives security updates.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Would you expect a 20-year-old MacOS to run on a modern MacBook? Why not? Would you expect a 20-year-old Linux to install just fine on a modern PC? I remind you that this was the era of RHEL 3! I had trouble getting RHEL 6 running in a virtual machine just recently. Meanwhile XP will run on most modern PCs, it’s just not supported. That means no security patches. The mistake here is not Microsoft’s. The mistake is your organisation’s for buying a half-million-dollar device with no support plan from the vendor for its control OS.
  - asdff 4y ago
    I would expect a bash script I wrote 20 years ago to run on a new linux machine I buy today, yes. I'm not asking for windows XP to be installed, I am asking for these modern machines to let me run the code the machine I was sold 15 years ago let me run. This whole march to reduce compatibility is kind of stupid imo. Let me buy a mac that can run 32 bit software still!
    - whizzter 4y ago
      Windows does run most stuff that you throw at it still unless the software made some boneheaded assumptions that violated basic API rules. Software using a lib I wrote in 1998 doesn't work anymore but it's because I took a bad shortcut that made DOS-era assumptions, fixing/recompiling it would be the right course of action but I haven't had the time (also not sure where all the sources are). On a contrary note, my first USB-Wacom pads STILL work after 20 years, it's not just software but a vendor that cared about it's software long enough to make 64bit drivers that still works. As you said, the vendor isn't interested in upgrading the software and there is where the blame is, MS tries to keep backwards compatibility but some things has had to go for performance and/or security reasons over the years and those usually broke rules (or were tied to HW, Linux has dropped 386 and 486 after all).
i386 4y ago
A weird comment that deserves more upvotes.
Lapsa 4y ago
that's one thing I genuinely admire Microsoft for - the effort they put into maintenance
- brk 4y ago
  I somewhat agree, but even that is only for capitalistic reasons. If they didn't have the massive backwards compatibility, corporate users would essentially be free to choose a new OS platform every few years. By maintaining deep legacy software support, they make it easy for their customers to stay addicted to Windows. MS is not doing this for your benefit, or out of some kind of dedication, it's pure capitalism.
  - baronswindle 4y ago
    Sure, but I think this is an example of markets working well. Customers don’t want to have to adapt to a new platform every year and are willing to pay for that service. Microsoft recognizes that desire and provides backward compatibility. Microsoft charges a price above what it costs to provide the service but below what their customers are willing to pay. Both parties win. Seems like a good thing.
    - brk 4y ago
      Rarely have I seen "both parties win" used in describing dealing with Microsoft. There is tons of documented history of their anti-competitive behavior and deceptive practices. It is not very often that a CEO of a company in a market that is "working well" is called to testify in front of Congress.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        You seem to have changed the topic. As the previous poster was saying, them doing this particular thing for money is not bad. It's good. The fact that you're for some reason pulling in unrelated things that Microsoft has done presumably means you agree, but it's a mystery as to why you don't want to say so.
  - 4y ago
brk 4y ago
The era in which Microsoft forced IE into the OS was purely about anti-competitiveness and their own fear of being caught off guard on this whole internet fad. The only reason we need IE shims at all is because MS botched their overall internet strategy. Had they made a truly competitive browser and supported common standards, and the user's ability to choose their browser, none of this would be needed.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Notepad.exe is forced into the OS. Is that anti-competitive too? If it's okay to have an app be a frontend for an OS provided text edit control why not the same with a webview control?
Clubber 4y ago
christ can you imagine the raw hubris in 1995 to roll this out and inexplicably make it not only uninstallable by the user, but a core and critical functionality of your entire OS such that any attempt to sidestep or evade it would be met with ruination? >This is a very strange comment. In around 2001 when MS was being tried for antitrust, they claimed that IE couldn't be decoupled from the OS because it would break the os. I believe that is what the OP is alluding to. I believe an unassociated professor managed to decouple it later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

wizzwizz4 4y ago

> making sure that the user has at least one application that can download files from the web is pretty damn reasonable. And, indeed, you can't remove Windows Update. Nor (in more recent versions) the Add or Remove Features component in Control Panel— er, sorry, the Settings app. So long as you can still re-install Internet Explorer without a web browser (which I think you have always been able to, ever since the days IE came in a box), there's no reason to stop you removing it. Microsoft did have legitimate reasons to integrate the browser engine in Windows 95, what with the whole Active Desktop, HTML Application, the-web-is-the-future schtick they were going for. But that isn't one of them.

shadowgovt 4y ago

> Google and Apples's ... and Linux (well, Ubuntu specifically). I'm staring down the need to upgrade from Ubuntu LTS 20.04 to Ubuntu LTS 22.04 because some software I maintain now relies on GLIBC v2.32, which is an absolute bear to back-port. The party line is "So just upgrade," but there's no guarantee my hardware is compatible with Ubuntu LTS 22.04 because the vendor doesn't support that config and I'm not really interested in dealing with all the joys of figuring out every fiddly-widget little config on a laptop to make it work myself. Microsoft is nearly unique in caring that much about backwards compatibility. It's the value-add they bring to the market these days relative to the competition.

amenod 4y ago
> ...but there's no guarantee my hardware is compatible with Ubuntu LTS 22.04 because the vendor doesn't support that config... So it's your vendor who doesn't care about backwards compatibility - Linux does. Whatever hardware you have, once it was supported, it will stay this way until it is really ancient, and even then you will have special builds that will support it. That's the beauty of open source (or even source available) licenses. No corporate interests that would render your solution obsolete. [0] [0] assuming your hardware doesn't need some binary blobs (khm nvidia khm) to work
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  (a) Of course it needs binary blobs. This is the real world where medium- to high-performance machines need binary blobs. The GNU dream never materialized. (b) If Ubuntu (and I'm going to say "the Linux ecosystem in general") cared about backwards compatibility in the same sense Windows does, a minor-version bump to glibc wouldn't introduce API breakages that mean I can't build a codebase that's doing nothing new and special on my machine right now purely because a 31-subver bumped to a 32. They aren't doing anything new in the code; their JNI dependency just bumped up and so they bumped up the whole codebase's requirements. That's fine, but it's not The Windows Way. The Linux Way doesn't think about compatibility issues like that in anything like the same way. It's a source-code-and-patch-it-yourself world. The approaches are completely alien to each other.
  - caf 4y ago
    glibc goes to great lengths to ensure binary backwards-compatibility. If a binary interface has to change it uses symbol versioning to keep around the old interface - for example if you have a program compiled against glibc2.2 on x86-64 that calls timer_create(), it will call through the function __timer_create_old() that provides the old interface when run on a system with a newer libc. The reverse scenario that seems to be what you have - where you compile against a newer library version then run it on an older one - is forwards-compatibility which is a different kettle of fish. Even on Windows it's not like you can compile against the latest DirectX and run it on an older Windows?

rbanffy 4y ago

> several good reasons to embed the browser into the OS It was actually a great feature (memory may be failing at this point), and it seemed like the filesystem viewer was IE presenting a filesystem view. If you typed an http or https URL, the window would turn into an HTML renderer window. This made it possible to build their mail and newsgroup reader apps as filesystem views. Mail was nothing but a folder full of email message files. News was, surprise, a folder full of newsgroups. Those viewers were responsible with synchronizing the folder with remote services. I would love if Gnome would allow pluggable views in Files: a mail reader for maildir folders, a music player for folders full of audio files, and so on.

cld8483 4y ago
> I would love if Gnome would allow pluggable views in Files This is essentially what Gvfs is for except basically nobody uses it, at least in the ways you describe, because forcing non-FS things into the shape of a FS usually doesn't work very well. So instead Gvfs gets used for relatively simple things that naturally map onto the FS concept well, like mounting archive files, browsing FTP, etc.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  Gvfs would allow a folder of messages to show the continents of, say, an IMAP server as a set of files, but what I would like is the reverse - to have a different presentation for a folder full of emails.
jamesfinlayson 4y ago
Yes sounds right - I remember in the deep dark past somehow getting Steam to show the contents of C:\Program Files\ in the Store window. This was obviously back when Steam was Windows only and before it used embedded Chrome.

asdff 4y ago

Microsoft only cares about legacy support if it means the vast majority of customers. I will give you an example: go to a top tier research institution for biology, and sort your cells with the fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS). You might have to now burn that data onto a cd rom, because the software running the six figure instrument was written in 2002 for windows XP, and for reasons only known to microsoft, this software is no longer able to run on modern windows. So now IT has to airgap the desktop sitting by the machine, and the only way they let you get data off according to policy is through CD rom, not usb because that breaches the gap. The vendor for the instrument has no incentive to update that software either; they'd rather you dish out another half million dollars for a new sorter. There are hundreds of instruments like this in any given research institute, all because Microsoft decided unilaterally that software that ran fine 20 years ago is clearly useless and doesn't need to run anymore on modern hardware that receives security updates.

jiggawatts 4y ago
Would you expect a 20-year-old MacOS to run on a modern MacBook? Why not? Would you expect a 20-year-old Linux to install just fine on a modern PC? I remind you that this was the era of RHEL 3! I had trouble getting RHEL 6 running in a virtual machine just recently. Meanwhile XP will run on most modern PCs, it’s just not supported. That means no security patches. The mistake here is not Microsoft’s. The mistake is your organisation’s for buying a half-million-dollar device with no support plan from the vendor for its control OS.
- asdff 4y ago
  I would expect a bash script I wrote 20 years ago to run on a new linux machine I buy today, yes. I'm not asking for windows XP to be installed, I am asking for these modern machines to let me run the code the machine I was sold 15 years ago let me run. This whole march to reduce compatibility is kind of stupid imo. Let me buy a mac that can run 32 bit software still!
  - whizzter 4y ago
    Windows does run most stuff that you throw at it still unless the software made some boneheaded assumptions that violated basic API rules. Software using a lib I wrote in 1998 doesn't work anymore but it's because I took a bad shortcut that made DOS-era assumptions, fixing/recompiling it would be the right course of action but I haven't had the time (also not sure where all the sources are). On a contrary note, my first USB-Wacom pads STILL work after 20 years, it's not just software but a vendor that cared about it's software long enough to make 64bit drivers that still works. As you said, the vendor isn't interested in upgrading the software and there is where the blame is, MS tries to keep backwards compatibility but some things has had to go for performance and/or security reasons over the years and those usually broke rules (or were tied to HW, Linux has dropped 386 and 486 after all).

i386 4y ago

A weird comment that deserves more upvotes.

Lapsa 4y ago

that's one thing I genuinely admire Microsoft for - the effort they put into maintenance

brk 4y ago
I somewhat agree, but even that is only for capitalistic reasons. If they didn't have the massive backwards compatibility, corporate users would essentially be free to choose a new OS platform every few years. By maintaining deep legacy software support, they make it easy for their customers to stay addicted to Windows. MS is not doing this for your benefit, or out of some kind of dedication, it's pure capitalism.
- baronswindle 4y ago
  Sure, but I think this is an example of markets working well. Customers don’t want to have to adapt to a new platform every year and are willing to pay for that service. Microsoft recognizes that desire and provides backward compatibility. Microsoft charges a price above what it costs to provide the service but below what their customers are willing to pay. Both parties win. Seems like a good thing.
  - brk 4y ago
    Rarely have I seen "both parties win" used in describing dealing with Microsoft. There is tons of documented history of their anti-competitive behavior and deceptive practices. It is not very often that a CEO of a company in a market that is "working well" is called to testify in front of Congress.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      You seem to have changed the topic. As the previous poster was saying, them doing this particular thing for money is not bad. It's good. The fact that you're for some reason pulling in unrelated things that Microsoft has done presumably means you agree, but it's a mystery as to why you don't want to say so.
- 4y ago

brk 4y ago

The era in which Microsoft forced IE into the OS was purely about anti-competitiveness and their own fear of being caught off guard on this whole internet fad. The only reason we need IE shims at all is because MS botched their overall internet strategy. Had they made a truly competitive browser and supported common standards, and the user's ability to choose their browser, none of this would be needed.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Notepad.exe is forced into the OS. Is that anti-competitive too? If it's okay to have an app be a frontend for an OS provided text edit control why not the same with a webview control?

Clubber 4y ago

christ can you imagine the raw hubris in 1995 to roll this out and inexplicably make it not only uninstallable by the user, but a core and critical functionality of your entire OS such that any attempt to sidestep or evade it would be met with ruination? >This is a very strange comment. In around 2001 when MS was being tried for antitrust, they claimed that IE couldn't be decoupled from the OS because it would break the os. I believe that is what the OP is alluding to. I believe an unassociated professor managed to decouple it later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....