Comment by SloganLessons@lemmy.world on Windows VS Linux

This sub is delusional

Installing any operating system is often a hassle. This comes in part from my own experience trying to understand the unguided partition recommendations of a Bazzite (basically Fedora on low level) install. I got through it, but it was certainly no easier than Windows.

This isn’t true. Try Linux Mint or Ubuntu, their installers are much better. Those installers used by Fedora, RedHat, and even SUSE can be a bit weird.

They specifically say unbloated Windows as well which while it’s not as difficult as they make out is still somewhat annoying.

I’ve recently had a Windows installer fail to see my NVMe drives until I changed some random UEFI setting because it was missing a driver. Linux could see it just fine, as could Hirens boot.

Not to make a “Gotcha”, but Linux Mint was the other distro I tried, as I’ve complained about before. The first release I tried, which was less than a year old (on a 2+ year old computer) didn’t even run the wifi, audio, or bluetooth drivers correctly.

And, I had that same type of UEFI setting on Linux; Mint wanted to install on a GPT drive record, when my old drives (on Windows) used an MBT. It’s a conversion process both OSes will help with, but Mint gave some errors with it, and it was honestly easier to use Windows’ tools to get it done. Not even sure why Mint was insistent on it. Oh, and a mostly distro-agnostic annoyance: While attempting that conversion and making extra space for the GPT format, I ended up wiping more of the drives than needed during conversion because the partition manager used on several distributions uses bad messaging, and incorrectly refers to an individual partition under /dev/nvmesda0# as a “device”.

UEFI won’t boot from MBR drives unless it’s in BIOS compatibility mode. What format the drive is in isn’t determined by a firmware setting, though it can affect the boot process. I don’t think you actually understand what you are talking about here. The easiest way to install OSes both Windows and Linux is by wiping the drive, which would have solved this issue. Dual boot on single drive configurations normally have issues and will always be more complicated. It’s better to use two drives where possible in most cases. I suggest you read up on BIOS vs UEFI and how partition tables work if you want to do a complex setup like that.

Mint is known for having older kernels and therefore not supporting the latest hardware. They have a different edition for newer computers called Linux Mint Edge edition. Something Arch derived like CachyOS or another distro using recent kernels will always have the best support for bleeding edge hardware. The CachyOS installer is also pretty friendly, though maybe not as much as Mint.

Note that my post said “old drives” - plural. Mint was being installed on a secondary, formatted drive, and refused because that drive was not GPT-formatted (that record exists outside of the filesystem formatting). At the time, the BIOS was not set to force UEFI, so this was Mint’s decision, not the BIOS’s, and I don’t understand it. I left Windows alone on a different drive.

Believe me, I did plenty of reading up on BIOS UEFI settings just to resolve the issue. I still don’t claim to be a master, but I at least know enough to express how annoying the reconfiguration can be - independent of which OS you’re choosing.

Do you mean using your existing Windows install, or installing it from scratch?

I’m not sure what you mean by an existing Windows install. If you mean going through launch screens on a new device that’s configured the OEM setup, then no, I have experience (granted, now in the past) with doing Windows installs from blank drives.

That answers my question, I meant the latter.

Ubuntu install takes 20 mins, including download and burning the USB. Make it 30, maybe?

My only windows 11 install took 7 hours, multiple days, BIOS visits, searching for documentation and hair pulling, all with the same machine.

Yeah, there is a difference

How the fuck. I seriously want to know. My W11 IoT installed under half an hour.

Did you also get most of the extra software installed at the same time or did you need to spend extra time getting all your non-OS software installed to make your computer actually useful?

Windows itself was installed during that time. Additional software installation took a few minutes. I installed stuff when I needed it thorough the day.

Oh so you’re bad at using computers. Got it. I can have windows 11 without telemetry in 10 minutes and with a local user profile instead of a Microsoft account. This argument about what you were able to do and how long it took you doesn’t make you look cool or smart. It makes you look like you have no idea what you’re doing.

He may have been trying to install it on a potato or on something atypical. I struggled to get a clean Windows 10 install on a system with an old ASUS motherboard using its RAID controller and AHCI. Support didn’t seem to understand the problem, but they were a good sounding board while I figured it out over 3 evenings. By contrast, Windows 11 took all of 10 minutes to install with Rufus on a modern system. Sometimes you just end up with a system configuration that isn’t quite supported out of the box by a given OS, and it takes some third party drivers and some intermediary configurations to get things to load before you can get things working properly.

This actually happened to me before recently and all it took is one firmware setting. So frustrating.

Yeah I was writing software since before you were born.

I’ve written multiple times in excruciating detail what horrors it was to install windows 11, and how fucking easy it was with Linux. Not going to repeat that, check my post history. But to be clear, I know what I’m doing and any normal person ehmoyldnt even have been able to do this windows install.

It doesn’t make me look bad it makes Microsoft look like shit because that’s what it is

Cool story bro. You must be so good at computer yet you can’t install windows. Also very cool that you think you know how old I am or what my experience is. I can do either blindfolded and have been doing so for decades. It’s really not that impressive. This is low level IT shit. Let’s all stand and applaud this guy who can’t install windows. Lol

I believe your anecdote, but my Linux Mint install also took multiple days, BIOS visits, and lots of documentation searching. It’s a factor of how much the OS makers anticipated the specific hardware configuration and how out of date the partitions are configured.

My main point is that both can be frustrating, and there’s nothing consistent.

Pretty sure mine took 20 minutes to burn to USB. Maybe I need better jump drives.

Just to add another anecdatum, I had the exact same experience installing Windows 11 this year. I have never had this much trouble installing an OS in the 20 years I’ve been screwing with computers.

Damn, which part did you get stuck?

The clicking “next” part?

The unplugging of internet to get a local account?

Or the running of a debloating script?

Wow, you’re a jerk.

Yeah it’s not always that simple. You haven’t been around long enough to see the stuff that can go wrong with installing Windows. For example I recently had Windows refuse to see both SSDs in a machine. All because of something called Intel VMD. Took me a handful of attempts before I found the problem.

When Windows installs work they are fairly simple if long, but when they don’t work oh boy.

The unplugging of internet to get a local account?

Also they disabled that for Windows Home.

Some Lemmy users are actually just wankers. I would like it if you all stopped. It’s especially great when I have people like you who probably aren’t even experienced in tech.

And how many hours more to get all the drivers working properly?

If it takes multiple hours to install Windows for you, better to stick to OSes you do know.

9 out of 10 times?

Nothing, it all works out the box

Like every linux community. Living in a bubble that doesn’t exist.

debian should be a bit higher on that list, but it’s still easier than installing windows.

Why? I use Mac mostly, but recently built a PC. I installed two Linux distros on it without even worrying about what drivers I needed, and I even have an NVidia GPU.

I also created a Windows partition and neither WiFi nor Bluetooth worked out of the box. Linux was objectively easier.

Man, I spent like six hours getting my network drivers sorted out on my last debian install, and I could never get them working on mint. Clearly, my experience shows that linux must be fucking impossible to install. /s

Yes, mint is a huge leap forward. No longer will my mother be calling me up at four in the morning in tears, asking why tar -xv isn’t working to extract her crochet pattern archive. Nor will I have to have friends drive over to my house with a USB drive so I can give them a properly formatted bootable, or have to help my nephew build out a custom ubuntu server image for the r810 he wants to runs his minecraft server on. Now, we have one powerful solution! Anyone can run it, it’s got a nice UI! There’s uniform tools to manage deployment and user accounts across your entire IT infrastructure! Plug it in and it just… Works…
Wait.
Wait shit that’s just windows.

I use linux every day, and mint really truly is a very good choice of OS for the average consumer. But the reasons it is a good choice for the average consumer (ease of maintenance, ease of install, compatibility, community) are all the same reasons windows is a good choice for the average consumer (ignoring privacy and FOSS philosophy, because holy shit does the average consumer not give a shit). Windows can be a pain in the ass, yes. “DLL hell” is a term for a reason. But linux can be equally awful to deal with when it breaks, especially for an inexperienced or non-tech-savvy user.

This sub can get really up it’s own ass about how easy linux is to work with. And, from our perspective, sitting here with our Tux tramp stamps, having used linux for twenty years, it is that easy. But we forget that nothing about computing is intuitive to the average person. This kind of Linux Supremacy bullshit just further entrenches the idea that linux users are all sweaty basement nerds and turns the people that could actually benefit from ditching M$ Home for Mint away from all of us sweaty, arrogant losers.

This community (we’re not that other site) has just delved into “windows bad” to the point of nauseating.

Probably going to filter this now especially after that idiotic chart that showed windows 8 being better than 10 with Linux having absolutely no problems whatsoever

Hint: :q!

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