Windows 11 without a Microsoft-Account = terminal required. Linux Mint = terminal not required.
Isn’t debloated windows just a regular windows install after running https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater ? Is there more to it?
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.
There is no way Gentoo is that low.
Um… My grandma installed Windows 11 on her computer and then ran a simple script I gave her after. You guys are delusional.
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
This sub is delusional
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
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?
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.
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
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.
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?
Pretty sure mine took 20 minutes to burn to USB. Maybe I need better jump drives.
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.
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.
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.
Install windows, run debloat powershell script. Done.
Microsoft give no shortage of things to complain about without needing to exaggerate.
The first thing that has actually been useful here. Thanks!
Or just run Tiny11.
What does debloating entail exactly?
Disabling unnecessary background services, disabling telemetry, removing preinstalled adware. Easy to do with WinUtil by Chris Titus Tech.
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.
It can be quite difficult for puzzling reasons. I bought my laptop with no OS because it was cheaper to buy a Windows license separately. I downloaded the ISO and put it on a USB drive and … It wouldn’t boot. It took me half a day and I had to follow guides with various black magic which I can’t even recall what was about to finally get the thing to boot from USB. After spending over a day on that, I installed Ubuntu and set up dual booting in about 30 minutes.
I kind of miss the Win98 install process. I did it so many times… Tried making a Win98 virtual machine, but it just wasn’t the same without all the real floppies. The boot disk, the drivers. The JazzJ Jackrabbit shareware. Good times.
This doesn’t say it’s difficult, just says there are others which are less difficult. Even if you accept everything at default, windows installs take much longer.
I’m not sure why you even think this is an attack on windows really. You keep saying windows is for those who want easy to use, so why not include the whole process?
Longer != difficult. Windows installs are easy as fuck and id say its as simple as linux mint.
The debloating is a choice and id say thats the same amount of work as installing stuff in linux because what it comes with is very limited.
Im a linux mint user btwIt’s easier than even mint. Because I’ve installed windows dozens of times and it has always worked out of the box. Always.
Friend gave me their old laptop that was sluggish and asked me to reinstall windows. I proposed Linux and promised them it’d work even better, they reluctantly agreed. I install mint. Sound not coming through headphones. I update everything that’s there to update, tried a bunch of shit and waste like an hour before I finally find a thread that suggested manually updating to a newer kernel version. That fixes it.
Now I know something extra for next time but if it were someone less stubborn, they’d have given up and went back to windows. Most people don’t know and don’t care about debloating, trackers and whatnot.
Tldr; Windows is the easiest OS to install because it works right out of the box. Many Linux distros are even easier to install, but don’t always work out of the box.
I believe you, but my experience is the opposite. Generally wifi doesnt work ootb on Windows for systems i’ve set up, and newer games are crashy until you install the latest chipset drivers. The drivers Windows installs seem to be many versions back and have been unstable IME
on Ubuntu or Fedora i’ve not had a single issue in over a decade. Not one time has a component not worked for me on the first boot. It’s been truly flawless. Games work at full performance right away.
My only possible explanation is that we must be working with pretty different hardware
Exactly. Linux mint was fine on my laptop, but only later i had to upgrade kernel for the amd drivers, but overall its the closest to a spotless experience ive had. But what you said is 1000% correct!
Linux has made leaps and bounds with usability and ease of installation but it’s no better than any other modern OS - which is a good thing. Installing Windows from a USB stick is not difficult - the simple path is literally, pick a language, select your wifi, choose who is logging in, click install and go grab a coffee. About the only difficulty if you can call it one is that some installs will ask for a serial number because it’s a commercial product.
Also, the number of questions & buttons during installation is one thing but the certainty of a functioning system is another. Linux is better at supporting old hardware, Windows is better at supporting new hardware. Choose accordingly if that matters.
Linux installs like Ubuntu take about 20 minutes.
The last time I installed windows 11 (thank God only once) it took me a total of 7 hours divided over 3 days. It was hell, requiring multiple iso downloads, multiple tries to burn a USB with a variety of tools, loads of searching and reading documentation, multiple BIOS settings and a BIOS update, multiple install attempts, searching, downloading and installing drivers, then finally on the winning install it still took like an hour with god knows how many “fuck off and do your job” clicks.
Mind you, this was on the same machine where right before I installed Linux on a separate M2 device
Windows installations are a horror show.
I don’t even know what this graph is even supposed to mean. Bitch about Windows all you like but the installation process is typically very simple.
There is no X axis so I’m going to assume it means potatoes per guinea pig
I guess it means that no one here knows what Windows Debloated is and didn’t read far down enough to see regular windows marked as very easy to install.
Boot off usb, create partitions, wait, spend five screens clicking ‘no’ on all of the options, unplug ethernet so it allows you to make a local account, wait, login, spend 15 minutes uninstalling all of the preinstalled nonsense, disable all of the advertising on the task bar and desktop, pretend the rest of the telemetry doesn’t exist, download and install the latest drivers from each manufacturers website. Very simple.
Man. Last time I just wanted to check if my new laptop was working properly, so I booted up it’s preinstalled Windows. I literally had to look up how to get Windows to get me into Explorer without creating an account or connecting it to my network.
It took me about 25 minutes and Windows was already installed on the damn thing.
It took 15 minutes from booting a prepared Fedora stick to logging in.
I honestly believe that, by now, Linux is no more difficult than Windows. People are just not used to the differences.
You got a point up until you login.
Afterwards, just run a powershell script that automatically uninstalls the bloat and disables all the stuff you don’t want. Takes 30 seconds at most.
Drivers are automatically installed via Windows update for everything except Nvidia.
It has gotten more difficult. I remember windows 7 being just clicking Next until it was done. Win10 requires a signup, clicking no on several telemetry pages with dark patterns, a whole bunch of BS “features”.
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.
It works over USB 3.0, it sounds like you just have a broken or corrupt drive.
It normal does work with USB3, yes. And no, this pendrive works perfectly fine and I’ve used it to install many other OSes since.
Edit: and I might add that I finally found the solution online so I was definitely not the only one confronted to this problem
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
There’s also a number of things you have to click “no” on, like a free trial office or Onedrive.
It took me around an hour to set up my new Win 11 laptop, most of which was downloading and installing updates. I expected far worse.
The updates often do take many times the install time which can be a bit frustrating, though it is an area being worked on: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/introducing-windows-11-checkpoint-cumulative-updates/4182552
It’s honestly not that bad, it’s not like you’re required to actually do anything while this is happening.
Oh please, we spend an hour fucking around in a new Linux install to get things the way we like them too.
A new Linux installation is usually usable and you spend an hour tailoring it to your specific needs. While in a new Windows installation I spend the first hour remembering things that’ll start popping up/executing in the background and disabling them just to get it to a usable state.
Man, people are really liberal with the word “usable” around here. As if a plain windows install is somehow this thing that can’t be understood or used. Come on, it makes it hard to take these convos seriously. Millions of people use just plain, out of the box, Windows.
Just learn how to install windows the way you want it to be just like you learn the best way to install a distro. Debloated windows takes minutes to install and takes so little actual effort if you know what you’re doing.
I probably cannot get Windows to be the way I like it. They make every change I want to make a pain, and the ways to circumvent their shenanigans are always changing. Setting up a local account, changing your default browser, stopping onedrive from wasting your time, all of these should be quick and simple changes, but they just wouldn’t let you choose for yourself, they have to shove their products and settings down your throat with every new installation, update, and misclick. I spent more than an hour setting up a new installation and I still find new ways Edge can start itself, I cannot imagine the time it would take for me to make this as usable as a simple Linux installation with some changes to the DE.
All of these changes you list can be achieved in a couple of clicks.
Don’t know what you are smoking my dude.
At some point changing the default browser required setting each file type’s default app one by one. Using a local account once was a normal option then it became hidden and required setting up some questions then you had to disconnect from Wi-Fi and now it’s not a visible option and you have to get around it with some command. This may take you some clicks when you’ve already installed Windows before, but it’s heading towards simply not being an option, and setting up a usable Linux installation is already much easier today.
No, see: some of us spend countless hours setting up their NixOS config repo, which is totally worth it because you save half an hour when moving to a new machine
I would argue it takes even longer to get a windows install how I like it. Even using Chris Titus Tech’s tool, it probably takes 2 hours for me to install things like winget, steam, librewolf, libreoffice, blender and configure the task bar and lock screen. Not to mention how last time I checked, I could not rebind the windows key to trigger the app overview how I like it.
That’s not windows tho, that’s setting up your entire fucking digital life to your satisfaction. The meme is about like, going to the task bar and telling Microsoft “no this isnt just a shitty gnome, please use my entire monitor”
For everything else just use winget-ui and install everything you want
How often are you installing windows? I deploy probably 7-8 a week. I can have an image usable without telemetry in 10 minutes.
I seldom install windows, so I also have to relearn some things during the debloat. At 10 minutes, you are basically speedrunning the windows installation process lol.
How I want a windows install is “working, with no BS”.
It comes out the box working, all I needed to do was disable Onedrive on boot. I haven’t even bothered to change the background, and probably won’t.
Thaaaaank you for being the fucking voice of reason
Getting Mint the way I like it takes about 20 minutes, including the install itself.
Of course, I usually spend four or five hours trying other distros first, before eventually deciding on Mint.
And downloading updates is a good thing. Means that the fresh installation isn’t vulnerable to something that was fixed between when the USB / DVD was pressed and the time the person installed it.
Yeah, and you can wander off and do something else in the meantime.
But then you have to wait 45 minutes for Windows update to spin, and potentially hang in the middle
Is it difficult for you to wait?
No, that’s fair. Annoying but not difficult.
With a MS account. Which spies on everything and sells your info.
Use Rufus, skip online account and automatically opt out of telemetry.
Oobe\bypassnro
Thank me later
Or just use software that you don’t need to mod to do what you want. That’s easier.
Literally not a mod
Do I think needing to do this is fucking stupid? Yes
Do I still put up with Microsoft’s bullshit because Linux is actively worse (as a parallel Linux user)? also fucking yes
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.
You know that Steam is run on Arch right?
I’ve been asking for several years for anything remotely resembling proof of this.
Will you be the first person to actually provide it? (I swear to fucking god if you link me to the terms of use…)
How do you think they advertise to you in the search bar?
They don’t? Very first thing I turn off is that shit show of a function.
However, let’s imagine you’re someone who leaves that on even though it objectively sucks…the answer is cookies. Your spyware example is cookies.
It would be awesome if someone created an OS that didn’t exploit such a resource for financial gain…
Unless you install Linux mint with multiple displays. Holy 1 sec flickering sideways displays Batman. I don’t remember what I did exactly to fix but probably single display until drivers are all installed.
I want to buy a Framework laptop soon. I have the option to choose which Linux distro is best for me and load that on.
Any suggestions?
Installing debloated windows is not difficult at all.
And how difficult is it to keep it debloated? MS seems to be hellbent on pushing their crap into everyone’s face.
Every Windows apologist: “I will keep current on the hacks to fix it forever, easy.”
I’m glad I invested the time learning Linux before I had kids and now have no time for anything.
I hope you don’t think I’m being a Windows apologist. I’m not defending Windows itself, I’m just saying that it isn’t that hard to debloat it.
Understood, sorry to imply that you were.
It’s been fine for me so far.
I would say it is, it’s extra installation steps. Fedora I just click a handful of buttons and the OS is installed with no Spyware
Its called Installing linux.
