Microsoft has published a new blog post which details how Windows 11 will be made compliant with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the European Economic Area (EEA.)
To be compliant, Microsoft has made several changes to the OS, which now allows users to choose between providers and uninstall most in-box apps.
The company describes these changes as specific to Windows 11 PCs in the EEA, so it’s unclear if users outside this area will be able to utilize these functions.
These changes will rollout in preview on Windows 11 in the Insider Beta Channel in the coming weeks, and will become generally available early next year.
The EEA is an economic and political union that spans 27 countries in the European and surrounding area.
In the case of Microsoft, this means not forcing users to use Edge or Bing, and ensuring the OS is interoperable with other services where necessary.
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That’s the first thing I thought of too. How awesome would that be to be able to uninstall all that garbage?
That being said, there has to be registry values that are set to flag it in the OS. Friends in the EU need to make a backup of the registry before updating and then check afterwards to see what changed.
Pretty sure you can just change your regional settings, I always install selecting English UK and I’ve never seen most of the shit people post on Lemmy.
Windows 12 Euro Trash Edition and Windows 12 Red Blooded God Anointed American Edition. If either crosses the EU boarder the computer will explode killing everyone in a 10 meter radius.
It’ll be one version, they’ll just force certain “features” on you based on the region you’re in as determined by your system time, GPS location, or IP address
I do understand - but as a society we’re working to remove unnecessary gendered terms from our language. I believe in doing similar with religious terms.
Language is important. If we’re thanking a deity for the work of government it’s both minimalising the work of elected representatives and exclusionary to other cultures.
Get ready for that sweet € symbol everywhere. I live in Brexitland so I can sort of get by with Ireland as a region, but it’s not great if you’re wishing to see your own decimal separators etc.
I wonder if this also applies to allow uninstalling Safari browser on MacOS, and allow other browser engines into iOS devices instead of WebKit Safari clones.
I would be so happy if they just let browser extensions work on 3rd party browsers. They already force them to use WebKit. Why are the extensions not working?
Today when I updated Windows11, I got copilot and we were discussing how it’s unacceptable to not let me uninstall Microsoft Edge, well I was, Copilot was just chilling it, but it did agree eventually
But this is only happening in Europe, which means Microsoft didn’t suddenly turn pure hearted, it’s just the law forcing them into it …
Yup, but then you’ll still have the same frustration we have now, running the script every time there’s a feature update and the bloat gets reinstalled. If it wasn’t for games and work I’d be using nothing but macOS and Linux.
I used to be super anti-apple but now buy MacBooks for the longevity. Less ewaste. Over time actually more cost effective. My daily driver is a nearly 9 year old MacBook that I replaced the battery on 2 years ago. Still getting official updates too. My father laid out twice the price of it for a high end XPS machine in 2019 and it died inside 5 years. Apple actually fix manufacturing issues without a huge amount of fuckery like HP/dell. I can’t speak to iPads and iPhones but Macs just last longer so end up being cheaper in the long run.
The problem is that showing enough politicians money effectively makes you become the government. There’s minimal chance of a law being introduced unless a rich person or corporation backs it, and EU laws would interfere with their shady business practices.
Not big enough to force companies to make large changes. The US is, China and India are. But what about Australia or New Zealand? Or any of the individual south american countries? Too many changes, microsoft or one of the other big players will just pull out of the market, or threaten to pull out.
will just pull out of the market, or threaten to pull out.
That would be wonderful. They would no longer be able to enforce their patents in countries they don’t trade in; GNU/Linux users worldwide will have (patent infringing) access to the Australian/NZ version of whatever
It would suck for the games I play that need windows, but it would also give more incentive to those to port them to Linux
No thanks. I don’t need more apps bloating up my browser and slowing it down even more. Plus what if they don’t support my choice of browser? Now we’re back to square one. Just port the programs over to run on the OS. Much less headache that way
That’s more finger printing to get tracked by, no thanks. I like to keep my browser apps slim and generic as possible to blend in with other privacy concerned people.
At th same time, I 100% understand why you would find it appealing, and recognize it may very well be a good thing overall.
Lots of things already have Linux alternatives; I’ve heard people mostly stay on Linux for the anticheat-enabled games that are usually only one developer setting away from Linux compatibility.
Wrappers can be used to do it locally.
Some Android apps are basically nothing more than a web agent.
Give me the basics of the web end with a pretty html5 rendered front end locally and done. No need for web apps for which you are required to be online at all times.
Valve only started doing 2-hour refunds after Australia twisted their arm about it. They brought it to the world, and it became an incredible selling point. Perhaps this will be the same thing.
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