Gotta LOVE the EU, they're working at a glacial pace but sooner or later (most likely later) it changes the landscape for the better.
If only enshittification would happen slow enough for the EU to catch up to.
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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I reeeeally wish they would just embrace and find open source software as a public good and get it over with. The equally glacial pace of adoption of OSS to avoid vendor lock in with MS is not exactly giving the OSS world the boost it deserves.
Yeah, well the DMA wasn't going to cost most EU politicians much of their good ol' corporate lobbying monies. But switching the EU off of Micro$oft would definitely not only lose those funds, but also introduce way more vigorous counter-lobbying.
One pro of the EU's glacial pace is that they frog-boil the shareholders, meaning most counter-lobbying activities are relatively tame.
But damn, do I wish they would just give the finger to all those ~~american~~ corporations and start a 4-year transition to OSS.
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The EU is pumping a lot of money into FLOSS, often not even for administrative use (like, say, lemmy gets EU funding), but at far as adoption rate in administration is concerned well the Commission is one of the worst offenders. As in municipalities realising they can't fully switch to LibreOffice because they need to apply for EU funds and the commission only accepts .docx. Parliament happily spending money on something and the executive getting around to getting its shit together are two different things.
OTOH it's not all about Microsoft and the like, a lot of administrative software is special-purpose, written by private companies according to specs, paid for by public money. Making that kind of thing open source is a no-brainer. It's also a way better use of money to improve and customise some open source ERP than to go to SAP and get a customised solution there.
And a lot of that has to do with lacking competency in administration -- outside of police, specifically IT forensics, it's usually quite dire. States have no issues figuring out whether a blueprint makes sense when they're issuing building permits, road and railroad engineering, of course they can do that, but IT? Nope. Bring in the private consultants and private consultants are basically the marketing arm of big software companies.
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I agree it feels very slow, but identifying the correct action and then building consensus around that action takes time. Once consensus is built it is very stable though. That is supposed to be the biggest benefit of democracy; stability built through coalition.
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Since this sublemmy doesn't have any requirement for the title to be the same as the source, can we actually have a correct title: "Microsoft abides to laws in EU and does <...>", or even better "Microsoft is forced under EU law to <...>".
The title makes it appear as if it's out of charity and goodness of their corporate heart. (Fabrication)
Seriously. Correct title is “EU gives EU users more control”
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To get pedantic for a second. The title of this post is "Microsoft gives..." as if this was an altruistic act that Microsoft decided to do for some people, when the article states they did it to comply with a law.
A much better title would have been "EU Forces Microsoft to Give Users More Control:" It returns the credit to the people who deserve the credit and clarifies that it wasn't something Microsoft did willingly.
Not pedantic. The specificity, imo, is extremely important here, and the poor phrasing really bothered me, too.
In other words: Users of proprietary OS like Windows have so little control over their own devices that it's newsworthy when the vendor allows you to uninstall 2-3 bundled things out of many more. But only in some countries! It's pathetic.
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Funny what happens when you have a government that actually gives a shit.
Thats what happens when you get unionised.
(because the EU is a type of Union)
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But I thought Edge was so crucial for the system to function it can't be removed? That's what MS told me at least, and I definitely trust them
No that's internet explorer. They "removed" it, but really it's just hidden in a way so you can't run it directly.
Windows 11 does not allow Edge to be removed. There may be some roundabout ways to do it, but the system actively puts up a LOT of roadblocks. It’s extremely trashy.
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Please let them also remove all the XBox nonsense. The other day my laptop from work that runs Windows 11 Pro gave a big ass prompt if I didn't want to try XBox Game Pass with the new Doom game. It's basically an ad for games on a Pro machine, ridiculous.
You know what is truly ridiculous? It's when I installed Windows N (the version without all that bullshit), but each time I launched a game, it complained that some Xbox app was missing. When I finally said, 'Fuck it, let's install that crap,' I learned that it isn't even possible to install on that Windows edition. Yet they would still show me the error about the missing app nonetheless. Every. Single. Time.
You can already do that:
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxApp" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxIdentityProvider" | Remove-AppxPackage -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxSpeechToTextOverlay" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxGameOverlay" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay" | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-AppxPackage "Microsoft.Xbox.TCUI" | Remove-AppxPackage
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\GameBar" -Name "AutoGameModeEnabled" -Type DWord -Value 0
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\System\GameConfigStore" -Name "GameDVR_Enabled" -Type DWord -Value 0
If (!(Test-Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GameDVR")) {
New-Item -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GameDVR" | Out-Null
}
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GameDVR" -Name "AllowGameDVR" -Type DWord -Value 0
You're welcome
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Europeans have the Freedom to Uninstall SPYWARE? LoL COMMIES here in America we have TRUE FREEDOM of being FORCE FED SPYWARE with NO Other options!
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Oh look, with the threat of a big enough fine, you can uninstall those things.
Or at least hide the front ends for them.
And local (offline) accounts when?
Still using it that way.
Hoops to jump through on fresh install but still possible afaik.
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The best control: uninstall Windows.
The home of the brave, and the land of the free.
🇪🇺the🇪🇺land🇪🇺of🇪🇺the🇪🇺free🇪🇺
This is why when u pirate windows u always pirate the European version. Not that I condone pirating windows that would be immoral and wrong.
uses Linux to pirate Windows
deletes the iso because it sucks
just because I could!
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Pirating windows and adobe is never wrong.
Pirating Windows is wrong, but the lesser evil compared to buying Windows. Ideally, you shouldn't do either
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Microsoft is grudgingly forced to give...*
Microsoft: "Suck it, Americans"
Imagine living somewhere where those in charge have even there smallest bit of spine.
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I'm morbidly eager to see how they'll handle the Win 10 EoL (yeah, yeah, it ain't dyin', just not getting updated, same thing to me tbh) in October. I bet it'll be a shitshow.
No more security patches. That should be dead to you if you don't want to host thousands of parasitic bots & malwares
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So being able to uninstall apps on your computer is news?
And again; repeat after me: install Linux already. Just get it over with, demand Linux work stations at work,use Linux for yourself and for the first time ever experience freedom on your computer
I feel like this is one of those calls that get so repeatedly people get numbed.
Something along the lines of climate change, economic crisis, etc.
They are all true, but people are passivated.
For real though; GET THE DAMN LINUX. SPIN IT UP IN A VM. TRY THE LIVE VERSION. DUAL BOOT IT WITH WINDOWS. YOU LOSE NOTHING, WINDOWS IS STILL THERE. JUST TRY IT FOR ONCE.
It is painful to see people struggle with things that are easily solved.
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Perhaps sometime in the future, more people will try Linux and see how good it is. My recommendation based on my own experience:
Want stable, just working. Robust workhorse: Try Debian
Want newest, nicest, good for gaming (need a tiny bit of tinkering if you run Nvidia): Try Fedora
Want easy to install, but a bit older and slower, but requires no tinkering: Try PopOS
Don't like settings, tweaks and fuzz: choose Gnome desktop 😊
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For those curious, if you can get a European Windows product key, you can install the "N" version of Windows. Be warned, it only works with certain product keys....
The standard Windows installer should give the option of "Windows 10" or "Windows 10 N" (or similar). The N version is basically bloatware free out of the box....
The regular version has a bunch of promos pre-installed, like candy crush, and other things that most people couldn't give a shit about....
Recently I've been playing a "fun" game with my work laptop where I'll remove copilot, and a few days later it will appear again. Weeee. In that case, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a policy in place to enable copilot on my works systems.... I'm sure someone who works here, probably higher up the food chain than me, wants it enabled, and the ham fisted policy maker can't create a policy just for those who want it, so everyone gets it because the bosses son Shane decided that he wants to see how much of his work can get done by AI so he can do even less while on the clock.
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Too little too late? Some European businesses have already made the change to open source. Shit should be free to anyone doing business with it anyway.
So.. they’re doing exactly what apple was forced to do.
Windows users are a revenue stream, not customers. M$ views it's users as a sort of raw material that can be processed with dark patterns for ads and subscriptions. And like everything else, Americans are treated with the most disrespect and coercion.
IF YOU'RE NOT IN THE EU, you can use O&O ShutUp to help you turn off the more intrusive aspects of Windows with ease.
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