Comment by humble peat digger@lemm.ee on Windows VS Linux

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.

Actually no. It’s not Mint’s decision whether to start the install USB with UEFI or BIOS. It actually depends on what the firmware chose to start and how the install medium is formatted. Some install media is only setup for BIOS booting, some for only UEFI, and some can do both. If the firmware detects the medium as supporting both then it should choose UEFI first but this depends on what settings you have in the firmware, and if you choose an option at a boot menu as boot menus allow you to override the default. When it comes to actually installing the OS most sane installation software will look at how it booted and install that way. So if it detects it was starting with UEFI it will configure the install to be UEFI, same if it was started with BIOS it will install as BIOS. How does it know? UEFI variables are one way. They can normally only be accessed if the system was started with UEFI.

If you truly wipe a drive you wipe the partition table as well. You say the table is outside the file system formatting, and this is sort of true, but they are both just data on the disk. Disk don’t care where the partition table ends and the file system begins. In fact you don’t even need a partition table at all. Unlike some other systems Linux will let you put a file system straight on the disk, the whole disk, with no partition table in sight. It’s not recommended mind you, because it will freak Windows out if it sees it. Windows will see it as a blank disk and not so helpfully offer to format the thing. When I say format a disk, I mean the whole thing, partition table and all. It’s also not possible to make a partition tableless disk bootable in UEFI. In BIOS it’s possible though as BIOS doesn’t read partition tables. It just needs a boot sector and that’s it.

Also if you’re trying to change a disk from MBR to GPT, and you don’t care about data, you shouldn’t be converting it. You should be formatting/wiping the whole thing and making a new partition table. Which is normally what it offers to do if you tell it to erase everything and install it.

Edit: Getting down voted for actually knowing how computers work and bothering to explain it. Shock horror.

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.

So nothing to really make Windows actually useful on reboot. In nearly the same amount of time with a Linux distro, you get a system that may well not need anything extra to be productive with on 1rst reboot.

(And yes, I have installed both OS systems from scratch dating back to dos).

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.

Yep and somehow people who don’t know better are up voting him. Not surprising for this platform.

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.

They disabled the local account for offline devices on all versions including IOT. The solution is to hit shift + f10 for CMD and then running OOBE\BYPASSNRO which enables that feature. But 90% of people setting up windows for the first time just create an account or use one they already have. Not that it’s better to do it that way. Just that it isn’t that difficult.

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

Hint: :q!

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