Old news I came across by accident: Microsoft installs Firefox extension (2009)

[Rubbereon]

https://robertnyman.com/2009/01/26/microsoft-force-installs-firefox-extension/
https://lwn.net/Articles/335388/

Wouldn't you knwo it, MS was shady back then too, but I'm not a programmer so that flew completely under my radar.

One thing Ill add is that not having a registry on Linux is a huge benefit, yeah if you wanna be pedantic it still does something similar to Windows with the config files and stuff, but you won't guess how much am I glad it's not to the same degree as Windows because of stuff like this.

[Dan Q]

There used to be all kinds of shady s**t like this (I mean: there's still some, but there used to be lots). Any piece of slightly-dubious freeware you installed would try to install its own browser plugin, toolbar, or reconfigure your home page or default search provider. Usually there'd be a well-hidden checkbox to un-check to opt-out of the unwanted behaviour during installation, but not always! You had to keep your wits about you if you didn't want all kinds of adware and spyware on your system.

More-modular systems, better security architecture, and least-privilege principles have helped a lot over the last decade or so.

[Rubbereon]

It's still like that, just don't go downloading off softpedia, the only difference is it's significantly harder to mess with browsers now, so it will often be a pup like McAfee or Norton being installed on the side.

What makes this one particularly bad is the source of it, the fact it comes from microsoft.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Weren't Windows installers from SourceForge also bundled with adware by default for quite a long time? (Apparently, they got overtaken and the new owners stopped this).
I also remember getting unwanted software from installing JDEs. And hardware drivers. Especially Chrome had the ability to just manifest on Windows Systems for some time.

I'm not sure if it wouldn't be possible to create a system that works like the registry of Windows that works alright, it might be possible that the concept itself is not flawed, but only the implementation is. But having administered software repositories with shared libraries is a clear advantage of Linux - however, a advantage that, through the rise of "immutable distros" and things like Docker and Flathub might be, at risk.