I’ve never “debloated” Windows so idk about the top half.
The bottom half is accurate. Debian, Fedora, and Mint are easier to install than Windows 10 or 11. Not that Windows is difficult, it’s just a bit clunky and idiosyncratic.
I assume Microsoft doesn’t care much about the installer since it’s generally only used by OEMs, whereas for Linux distros it’s a first impression so it has to be polished.
No excuse though. Try the “install as oem” of Linux Mint. You get an install with temporary oem account, you can update the system, install additional programs, then click “Prepare for shipping to end user” and on next boot you’re greeted with a setup screen.
That sounds pretty nice. More installers should have something like that
Well, if you want accuracy, then no the meme isn’t really that accurate.
On an updated Win11 system the Shift+ F10 command prompt “OOBE\BYPASSNRO” trick still works to setup a new system without Internet (and by extension, without a MS account) so that’s like most of the battle right there
The rest is taken care of with your choice of debloat scripts that are out there
compared to clicking “next” on Fedora, Debian, or Mint
I’d say using a simple straightforward GUI is much easier than an arcane combination of commands and keypresses
Well, I didn’t say it should be ranked towards the bottom lol, if we want to make this graph accurate it would be below arch but above “Windows the normal way”
I think i misunderstood you my bad
If you install arch with the archinstall script you basically get a setup wizard
And installing a Microsoft-account-free Windows install is only the first step of de-bloating the system. So I’d say debloated Windows in somewhere between Arch and Gentoo
Wait, did we just reach a point where a command line input is needed for Windows and Linux just needs to press a few buttons??
Windows 11 without a Microsoft-Account = terminal required. Linux Mint = terminal not required.
would love to see some actual market research on this. sit down a sample of users, have them install then use some OSs. interview them on their experience. rather than yknow making up data
well people dont actually install OSs
Not data, It’s a meme
the only thing cooler than a meme with fake data is a meme with real data
So, a chart?
like this
Uuh yeah that can’t be right. The US isn’t even 20% of the world population, how can their prisons have even more people than that?Edit: never mind, I didn’t read properly
no, you read that correctly, theres currently 2 billion people in the US prisons :p
This sub is delusional
Like every linux community. Living in a bubble that doesn’t exist.
Why?
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.
Do you mean using your existing Windows install, or installing it from scratch?
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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
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?
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.
Wow, you’re a jerk.
Yep and somehow people who don’t know better are up voting him. Not surprising for this platform.
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
Biased as fuck lol. Installing windows is not difficult. I did it first time at the age of 8 witn WIndows 98 and their newer installers are made so the general public can do it. And the bloat and spyware? Thats windows dude. Its not meant to be your OS, its meant to spy on your ass at the benefit of being familiar and (relative) easy to use. Anything you do to it post clean install is your own tinkering. Linux distros are great yall, but install difficulty is not a metric I would use to attack windows. Comparing between distros makes sense.
As someone who has tried to install Windows from Linux, and Linux from Windows… The meme is accurate. Even getting the official Windows ISO on a USB from Linux or MacOS is a multi-hour journey. Want to only install Windows on part of your hard drive? There goes another 15 minutes. Maybe 30 minutes because it wiped your GRUB partition. Honestly, try to do anything but the default options in the Windows install and you’ll lose 2 hours.
Installing Linux? I’ve installed Arch Linux in under 10 minutes. Manjaro is literally flash ISO to USB using any program (Windows, Linux or Mac) and watch an installer spin for 20 minutes. Windows? You’ll be spending 20 minutes on your first “update”.
brother, 99% of users will never even consider installing their own os. the issue isn’t that Linux is hard to install, the issue is that pretty much anyone brave enough to even mess with their operating system is either already on Linux, a boomer, or trapped by professional software that isn’t available on Linux (that’s me, a videographer)
the only way Linux is breaking out of extreme obscurity is if it starts coming pre-installed on commercially available and desirable hardware. the steam deck did more for Linux in a single product launch than the entire decade of combined efforts before that. before the deck i would have said it was simply never going to happen, but who knows. maybe it’ll be up to eccentric billionaires that never went public with their companies to push the Linux future we all want.
The Steak Deck motivated me to finally make the jump to Linux. Until people can buy a Linux PC at the local electronics store, Linux will always be in a niche. And that’s not happening any time soon because of anti-competitive practices by Microsoft.
Install windows, run debloat powershell script. Done.
Microsoft give no shortage of things to complain about without needing to exaggerate.
That’s literally only the first step.
I love Debian, but it’s installer is shit.
It really is, I can use it, but it’s clunky compared to even Arch’s TUI. Gentoo is harder, but Gentoo isn’t trying to do what Debian is.
Another bad one is Fedora’s. I’m used to it, of course, but the placement of the buttons to exit screens is all over the fuck, and you better know what you’re doing in order to even set the hostname and make a user during install.
Why do all my homies use Linux Mint while I use Ubuntu?
I’m going to switch to Mint from Ubuntu because I don’t trust Canonical, I would rather have the community controlling the distribution.
Interesting. I will Google “what is canonical”
If you are good with a slightly more complicated install process and don’t need access to Windows tools (like Outlook, Teams, Word, PowerPoint, etc), you can run Linux on bare metal to access the full potential of your hardware without any overhead from virtualization or emulation.
you guys have to read the instructions for Arch?
I mean I touch on them sometimes to see what has been replaced or changed because linux moves pretty fast but the steps are not complicated or hard to remember.
I just type
archinstalland it does it all for me
Um… My grandma installed Windows 11 on her computer and then ran a simple script I gave her after. You guys are delusional.
Was it a script to install your own crypto miner?
oh damn that sucks, thats why you dont click suspicious links
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Windows requires pressing next 12 times, what are you people smoking and can I haz?
See, Ubuntu only requires pressing next 6 times, and Fedora is only 8.
That’s essentially what it boils down to nowadays.
Unless you want tpm backed full disk encryption in which case… Good luck
One click for Mac and windows, a lifetime of fun for Linux (except arch w/sysdboot which works pretty good)
I’m happy with regular password FDE, i think i’m more likely to encounter hardware failure (and then need to read the drive from another machine) than theft of the drive.
It’s a good point though, I’m sure many people do need this feature. Ubuntu is “working on it” but so far i guess it’s mostly not working except for VMs
I have a media center that serves over the internet via VPN, I don’t want to leave it unencrypted but I also don’t want to have to go home and type in a pass every time California has a power outage, which is monthly during the dry fire season and >monthly during the “storm” season. I wouldn’t care as much for my personal laptop or anything, but for servers it seems like an absolute must have and…what is Linux for if not servers?
I think the traditional way to do that is via dm-crypt, which you can set up with an ssh server.
You can also use a network-shared file rather than a password for LUKS but it’s not as straightforward to set up as a password. If you are doing something like tailscale then it’d be unlocked as long as you are on the VPN
Typing in a password in-person at a data center would be a huge hassle, agreed
But…it’s literally what the tpm chip is for. Like there may be other options, but the tpm chip’s purpose in life is to do this thing. And it’s been doing that for a decade. Seems pretty traditional to me. But Linux folks in some venues treat it like a plague that needs to be eradicated.
Looking at RHEL docs it seems to also work there. The same instructions probably work in Fedora but idk I’ve never done it myself
With a MS account. Which spies on everything and sells your info.
What is the very first thing you do after installing the super private and much sekure Linux? You download Steam and give Valve your data. This is bullshit.
So is Microsoft
Yes, that’s my point. You will eventually log into something when using the computer. So while it’s weird that MS made it mandatory to sign into Windows 11, who cares.
They can also get your data without an account if they wanted.
On Linux, you can install Steam inside a sandbox for better security. Easy to do with either Flatpak or Bubblejail. This makes it so that Steam does not have full file system access.
Not something most people are gonna do. If you need privacy and security on the level where even Steam worries you, Windows can be made private too. It’s not even that hard. You just install a different ISO that allows local accounts and do all the necessary tweaks to harden it.
Flatpak is installed on basically every Linux distribution. Literally all I do to install Steam is go to the Software Center and search “steam” and click install. It takes 2 clicks.
Installing regular Windows 10/11 is definitely more than twice as painful than installing Debian 12.
Once, I was trying to install Windows 10 and wasted an entire day! The installation would systematically fail at the beginning of the installation with a BS error message that doesn’t give any hint about what’s going wrong. In the end it just didn’t like USB3 as an installation media! I reflashed it to a USB2 and it worked, but OMG was it super slow ! It took literally hours to install !!!
Debian, even as a noobie, you’ll go from flashing your ISO to a booted system within an hour. If you’ve done it once before, you will get it done in 20 minutes.
What the hell. I’ve never seen such an issue. Microsoft is so considerate; they provide us with cool little surprises like that from time to time. ♥️
I’ve seen it a lot (I do PC builds/repairs as a side gig). I just assume it will cause me grief from the start and keep both USB2 and USB3 sticks handy.
To be fair I’ve had the issue with Unraid too, but only on one brand’s B450 motherboards in my testing. I didn’t have a whole bunch to try of course but MSI and Asus was fine, Gigabyte not. X570 didn’t have this problem in my experience.
