If the argument is that windows sucks because you have to do a bunch of bullshit to get it semi functional, then the same could be said for something like arch Linux with its setup process and the constant tweaking.
Arch is made for tweaking, bad example.
That’s a feature of Arch Linux though. If you don’t want that, there are bunch of distros you don’t need tweaking.
I’m aware, and just like how those other distros exist, these extra windows steps are for power users. Normie’s can just go through the normal windows installation process that doesn’t involve hassle.
Well, normies don’t usually care about privacy either, so those align. However some non tech-savvy people care about privacy, maybe these steps would be better for them in the short span before they are committed to Linux.
Sure but that’s an active choice to go with a fiddly distro. Thats like putting hot sauce on your own food and telling the chef it’s too spicy.
Installed CachyOS half a year ago, the setup was short, involved, but no constant tweaking, my previous laptop was a Mint, same story, the installation process was made very simple and seamless a long while ago, unless you’re purposely trying something complex, that is.
I’ve switched from windows to mint 3 seperate times and Debian once. I don’t have any problems with the system itself but every time people always talk about how easy it is to game, they are almost exclusively referring to steam.
I pirate certain games like old call of duty games because you can’t play zombies offline on steam but modded/pirated versions you can. I can never for the life of me figure them out on Linux. Another simple game is wizard101, its not on steam and whenever I play it, its just laggy as hell.
I’ll never hate on Linux because it is amazing, but I just struggle with it more than most it seems.
Lutris seems to be the solution for your problem. Also, for older games, often than not, you gotta try few different proton versions.
Using Windows for me is a cumulation of annoying little things that becomes too big to ignore. Another thing you can add on that list is fiddling with keyboard layouts if you don’t use the default US one. And be sure to delete them all except the one you want to use, even the sub layouts, because accidentally hitting a key combo could switch it back to the default US one.
It’s a specific pet peeve that I have against Windows. I’ve had so many calls (I do tech support) from people that had their computer suddenly not making the characters they wanted, sometimes only in specific programs, just to discover that they reverted to the default layout by hitting Win + spacebar at some point.
And “install” is literally optional
I recently had to install Windows 11 from a USB for a friend building a PC. The last time I did that was Windows 7, and oh boy, has that process been enshittified to hell since then.
Honestly, I think I will refuse to install Windows when helping with future PC builds, just because it was such a pain-in-the-ass. The amount of adware you had to actively refuse, through a maze of dark-pattern designs was borderline dystopian.
Ran into this shit yesterday trying to set up a laptop for someone where I had no internet access.
Imagine having everything ready to go on a USB drive and you can’t get past the second screen unless you find WiFi.
At least this command still works, but damn.
If someone asked me to install Windows for them I’d very politely tell them to get bent.
I use this when I have to install windows.
https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/Fully automated the install
Network installers
NixOs is in shambles
Every time i see a comment about NixOS it makes me even more wary about trying it.
Everyone jokes about Arch being the ‘from the ground up’ OS, but Nix feels like it embodies those memes.
Yeah it was my pipeline. But be wary, this is a hard path to take. The os is great. The package manager is great. The nix config language? Hahaha welcome to hell! It takes at least 6 months to get comfortable with it. And still, sometimes you can still come across a config file that will be totally alien to you. And when you need something not in the repos… time to learn how to package stuff!
It’s not to discourage you, but be warned. It takes time. I had 5 attempts at it before it became my daily driver.
Keep a working distro on the side. And when you start your computer, think about what you want to do. If you think you can do everything you want today in NixOs, boot it. If you have a lot missing/do not feel like configuring it, boot the other distro. Just start small. Do some little challenges like turning your config into a flake, create a nix os module, split your configuration in smaller more maintainable files, create a systemd service, wrangle with that damn home manager that keeps making everything so confusing.
And arch is actually the one from scratch. NixOs is intimately linked to systemd. Nix also requires some base dependencies like git and curl, so it’s not from scratch. However you could argue that NixOs is a “make a distro from the kitchen utensils and a recipe”.
Yeah nixos is a lot of learning and a lot of writing and tweaking .nix files.
That being said, once you have a setup you like that works it means installing on a new machine is mostly just running a couple of install commands and all your apps/settings/environment secrets/anything you’ve declared in your nix config (like dotfiles for apps unsupported by home-manager) come with you and are version controlled on the system and in code.
But it doesn’t work like a normal Linux system, there is no /bin/bash among thousands of other things, so it’s for a niche audience where it’s either a server with infra as code or a desktop that requires a lot of work to maintain but has some incredible advantages (like generations)
Video games have gone this way too. Pop in disc or cartridge, go to play, forced to download updates that fix what was shipped in a broken state.
And then they have the gall to point to sales of physical media being down.
Like, if you make your physical media shit on purpose, you can’t use that to support your argument for digital-only distrubition. It’s actually infuriating.
For the record, the majority of games ship on disc. If you had auto updates off or no internet, the game will play after installing.
If you use Rufus you can create the USB that automatically bypasses the Internet requirements. Still annoying af though.
I work in IT and half the time spent deploying a new device is getting around Windows’ bullshit.
You can’t be serious, or you must not support Windows much.
I don’t think much of my workplace’s Windows desktop “engineer” but even they’ve put together (and keep updated) an image that can get from blank drive to fully installed, updated, baseline programs for our company installed, all settings tweaked to get rid of 90% of the dumb Windows bloat (have to leave the shit the execs like in place) in 30 minutes unattended.
The server builds my team oversees are 10 minutes setups, if that.
Like, I’ve been desktop support, and installing and configuring the department specific programs could be such annoying shit that you’d end up saving more time reimaging when something fucked up than to try and fix it, but the initial OS install was rarely the issue. Maybe for the first few days with entirely new hardware while we figured out the right drivers, but that was it.
Linux is leagues better than Windows, but some of this shit I keep seeing in these Linux communities is batshit. You personally not being familiar with Windows isn’t a reason it sucks, any more than people saying Linux is complicated is a reason for them to hate Linux.
It could also be a pre-prepared disk image.
I am not unfamiliar with Windows in any sense thank you. Windows is objectively bad, there is no good reason that one must maintain their own custom image to install an operating system to a usable capacity because the vendor image is so disgustingly bloated that getting any real-world use is a chore.
And it’s not even recent Windows enshittification that is the problem, it is the foundational architecture of the NT system. With a Linux operating system, you install, and you’re done, on Windows, you install, then you need to go out and do 15+ updates that for some reason aren’t done during install, then you need to go out and get all your drivers for your hardware. It’s poorly designed, slow, clunky, and, especially considering that Windows doesn’t have a package manager and a curated software repository (Winget + MS Store does NOT count), unbelievably insecure.
My organization has pretty much decided that Windows is on the way out, it’s just going to be a very long time for us to transfer to Linux-based operating systems. Even after getting Windows to a just-about acceptable standard, it’s still far heavier than any Linux-based OS would be, which for our thin clients is genuinely proving a problem as many of our staff have high memory usage workflows and are frequently seeing programs crash due to memory limitations.
Unless you are severely, clinically deluded, there is no way you can genuinely state that what you hear in Linux communities is “batshit”; everyone knows Windows is dying, even Microsoft…
He’s talking about corporate environments that have the resources to have done the work to make Windows work, they’re not starting from zero - they’ve either got an SCCM environment with a PE that has all their configs and drivers preloaded or they’ve worked hard to make intune autopilot work (which still requires either the OEM or a curated image for the hardware configs).
He’s not talking about setups that are doing installs 1:1
windows didn’t have the drivers for my mobo, so i could use neither ethernet nor wifi.
imagine having to have a usb to ethernet dongle ready to set up windows.
what a fucking shitshow…
Yup. I have a whole bunch of devices to bypass random shit to setup client devices on site.
Next time during setup do this: 1.don’t connect to a network
- Either shift+f10 or Ctrl+shift+f10 to bring up a command prompt.
3.Type: start ms-cxh:localonly
-
Hit enter and the create user box will pop up.
-
You can now create a local user account.
Back in the early 2000’s I started playing with Linux on old machines and have used Linux on an off since. Now I only have one Windows laptop that I need for a few very specific things and it’s Linux for any backend stuff. I’ve got pi’s, nucs and a NAS, all Linux now.
I am so grateful for all the hard work people have put in over the last two decades making sure we can step away from Windows without having to go to the Apple or Chrome walled gardens. I’ve made a career working in the Microsoft stack and I’m so done with them.
Now if I could just figure out how to turn my windows laptop into a VM on my ProxMox machine.
Out of curiosity, what happens if you image the laptop drive and boot it under VirtualBox (keeping the Linux host offline, so the Windows guest can’t phone home)? Potentially useful: https://superuser.com/questions/614400/how-can-i-clone-a-hard-drive-directly-to-a-vdi-image
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll have to dig into this. I have no qualms about pulling my HD from the laptop and cloning it, so I should be able to try a bunch of different methods until it works.
For the stuff I need to do on my laptop, RDP is all I need so it can sit on a server in the basement waiting for me to start it up when I need it.
You can also boot a live Linux on the laptop and either create the image to an external drive or tunnel it via ssh or even just netcat it to your Linux device. No need to open up the laptop just to create a 1:1 image with dd that you then turn into an image for use in a VM.
:) Yeah I realized that after I hit send. I have been using clonezilla for years. It’s my favorite way to do full backups.
Sometimes when seeing Linux Memes like this, I think whether this one user with their 1-man-linux-hating-community simply blocked all these communities or reads them as some sort of rage-fuel.
He’s actually somewhat knowledgeable about Linux and he’s putting a lot of effort into finding hairs in the soup. I think the guy just enjoys being an asshole and if it wasn’t Linux he’d pick something else.
I’m convinced he’s a fed running a propaganda campaign because there’s no way someone’s expending that much time and effort and not getting paid for it.
I assume that he has a severe mental health problem. I had a neighbor who’s kid had schizophrenia and would spend all day writing about how we were hacking his dreams and other nonsense. The sheer volume of letters he wrote to us about it was staggering. A ream of paper or more landed in our mailbox every week. It’s amazing how much someone can do when they only can focus on a single thing and have way too much energy.
I felt sorry for the kid, when he was on his meds he was perfectly nice, if kinda odd.
there’s no way someone’s expending that much time and effort and not getting paid for it
…you say on Lemmy, of all places. 😜
Are they? I have not checked their posts in depth. The ones I have seen in my feed were along the lines of “lol, Linux users do not shower / don’t get women” or “if Linux good, why not used in Business” (what is a wild thing to say, considering… Well Servers), so that’s the baseline I’ve had in my mind
Nah he often jumps into my post comments to make some remark
I just wish I could run Linux without CLI
I just don’t plug in the Ethernet cable or connect to a wifi network. There will be a skip option if you aren’t connected but it will pester you about how great it is to receive ads. Then once you actually get to the finished install you will have 30 days to setup an account and register otherwise you will get the little note in the bottom of the desktop that says you’re using an unregistered version and get pop ups to remind you to register.
You don’t have to connect it to the internet and register, it just annoys you until you do.
They removed the option. Even if you boot with WiFi off. So now you have to open CMD and run the command OOBE\BYPASSNRO reboot and it’ll give you the option to skip. Had to look that one up cause yeah it used to be just boot w/o Ethernet plugged in
Ok, must be recent. My USB stick of Win11 is less than a year old. Guess I won’t be making a new one anytime soon
As someone pointed out below, Rufus does have a feature now that lets you check a box to do this automatically.
True, but from my distro-hopping I learned there are quite a few Linux distros that throw tantrums when you try to install w/o wifi, and some ISOs that flat out don’t allow it. I’m not technically sharp enough to find the link, but this and most of my other problems with Linux went away when I stopped using distros built with systemd.
CachyOS is fast, sure. But have you tried Void? MX? Artix? PCLinuxOS? All very fast, and way fewer tantrums/stability issues. Systemd acts like a bureaucrat that checked out long ago, but keeps the job because of the benefits and does it as spitefully as possible. It’s about what I’d expect from a corp like Red Hat, and one day it’ll ask for your government ID to install.
The Linux community should get serious about systemd and how it talks to newcomers about it. It’s annoying now, and it’ll be a liability later.
You can install them all without WiFi easily by plugging in an ethernet cable. Easy.
I meant to say internet. Tysm for correcting me. I’m truly grateful and humbly request that you take an unchaperoned bath with my teenage daughters.
then quit using it. take off your leash.
Who says you have to install Linux? Just run it directly on a USB drive to be extra flexible!
I mean you don’t even have to install, just boot the iso and click try now
Worry not, Canonical will have you holding its beer in no time.
You can, though. When it prompts you to make a Microsoft Account, select Other Options, Domain Account, and create a local account. You don’t actually have to join the PC to a domain :)
I think only business/pro SKUs allow this though?
Very possible, I am dealing with business/pro SKUs most often. I think it works on all editions, but not sure.
That’s still a ridiculous dark pattern, in my opinion no better than tabbing over to the command line. Nice to know that you can though, next time I need windows 11 for anything.
I agree it it dumb that it’s hidden away in a GUI menu, but it does exist. But why let something as silly as facts get in the way of a good WindowsBad! circlejerk?
