Category: Microsoft

one reason i stay away from windows

whbeebe

I have a license to run Parallels Desktop. I started using the application three years ago because I needed to have instances of several Linux distributions conveniently available while I was working on my 2019 MBP. Later I installed an instance of Windows 10 as a virtual machine in order to support C# development within Visual Studio Community. The version of VS available for macOS at that time was a poor cousin to the same versions running on Windows, and to add insult to injury Microsoft wouldn’t provide a community version for macOS. Thus the least expensive route was to pay for a yearly license of Parallels Desktop and install an instance of Windows 10 Pro provided by Parallels.

That worked well until January of 2023 when my last license expired and my local copy of Parallels stopped working. Late last year I finally decided I needed to purchase a new license, so when Black Friday rolled around Parallels had a less-than-half-price sale on a yearly license ($56) and I sprung for it.

When I powered up all my virtual machines to check them out and update them, that included the Windows 10 VM. Except, Parallels automagically updated my Windows 10 installation to Windows 11. Not much of an issue, except when I decided to uninstall Microsoft Edge. So when I went into Settings and then Apps (applications), and went hunting for Microsoft Edge, the dropdown showed only Modify was active, not Uninstall.

There is no reason why I should be blocked from removing Microsoft software, especially the browser. This gives me flashbacks to the late 1990s when Microsoft was being sued for its placement of Internet Explorer among many other monopolistic behaviors. Right now I work entirely within Vivaldi on Windows 11, but it would be nice to get rid of Edge because it’s my VM on my personal computer, and as the saying goes, my computer, my rules.

By the way, on the Windows 10 Pro installation on my other computers (the computers that can’t upgrade to Windows 11), I have removed all Microsoft browsers and installed Vivaldi everywhere. There is no reason to reverse browser removal policy on Windows 11, except that Microsoft is just an absolutely shit company.

Update

This article from The Verge is interesting. Basically, Microsoft has until March to provide the European Economic Area the ability to uninstall Edge and disable Bing search, among other things. If EU Windows users are allowed to do this, then why the hell not US Windows users?

The EU will finally free Windows users from Bing — https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23963579/microsoft-windows-11-eu-digital-markets-act-feature-changes

report #1 on using ubuntu 23.10 with a raspberry pi 5

whbeebe

It has been a while since I posted anything on the blog, and a great while when it was something technically meaty. This is a report on one aspect of using Ubuntu 23.10 on a Raspberry Pi 5/8GB SBC. I will be writing about developing with Microsoft’s C# using Microsoft released tooling within Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code and plugins. I want to acknowledge right up front how we’ve come a tremendous distance with regards to using the Raspberry Pi. Using Visual Studio Code as but one example, I’ve gone from struggling to build VSC on a Raspberry Pi under Raspbian to simply installing VSC from a Microsoft maintained (yes, Microsoft) repo. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

Visual Studio Code debugging a simple C# program using .net 8 tooling

Let me note up front that I have my Raspberry Pi 5 plugged into an LG 27GL850-B monitor with a native resolution of 2560×1440 (purchased last Christmas during an incredible sale from Amazon), no overscan or special screen manipulation needed. That gives me a rather wide screen, which in turn allows me to open up an editor such as VSC that allows me to set up a vertical three-panel layout (see above) with plenty of space in all three panels.

After following Microsoft’s directions for installing .NET 8 on Ubuntu I was able to follow their basic tutorials on how to compile and debug C# on Linux. Let me again emphasize that this is Linux on a Raspberry Pi 5, which is AArch64/ARM, not x86-64. And it works. I find all of this amazing considering how I started with the original Raspberry Pi 2 ten years ago and struggled to get Python running.

In my not-so-humble opinion the best distribution to run on the Raspberry Pi 5, bar none, is Ubuntu 23.10 for the Raspberry Pi. Everything works with one notable exception: manipulating the GPIO and through that, physical computing. But I have found an easy solution for that (which I will document later), and it all seems to work without a hitch as well as it would under Raspberry Pi OS for the Raspberry Pi.

As they say, more to come.

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