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.
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. ♥️
Why is Debian more difficult than Fedora? I could understand older versions, but these days they fixed pretty much all the small annoyances. No need to use the “nonfree” iso, because that’s integrated into the installer. And post install sudo works as expected out of the box. I’d say they should be equal.
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.
Its called Installing linux.
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
Install windows, run debloat powershell script. Done.
Microsoft give no shortage of things to complain about with needing to exaggerate.
What does debloating entail exactly?
Disabling unnecessary background services, disabling telemetry, removing preinstalled adware. Easy to do with WinUtil by Chris Titus Tech.
Hey! You missed nixos!
First time install for smb. Double the windows Bar.
Second time (if you backed up your config file)
No bar!
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.
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.
There is no X axis so I’m going to assume it means potatoes per guinea pig
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.
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.
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.
Arch is probably easier to install than Debian nowadays.
No.
Debian takes a few clicks and you have a working desktop.
Debian is not easy
Have you installed it recently? They fixed the common annoyances like missing nonfree drivers.
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.
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.
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.
I call bullshit. It only took me 3 hours to compile and install gentoo on my latest build and get proper desktop environment working. Granted I’m still tweaking the config files 4 years later, but it’s perfect!
Windows requires pressing next 12 times, what are you people smoking and can I haz?
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.
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.
Oh please, we spend an hour fucking around in a new Linux install to get things the way we like them too.
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
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.
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.
Thaaaaank you for being the fucking voice of reason
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
As much as I wish this were true, this is in a bubble where Windows isn’t already preinstalled on everything.
Unfortunatly, that’s the reality of how computers are sold. If customers could try out both windows and Ubuntu at the store before buying and then got the variant with that OS preinstalled, I bet more people might use Linux, especially if they saved money by not paying for a windows license.
It said “(Debloated)” you still have to debloat it even if it’s already installed and has enough storage for your liking.
If you actually read the whole graph, you’ll see windows has 2 entries.
Why do all my homies use Linux Mint while I use Ubuntu?
Snap is hot garbage, and Mint is Ubuntu without Snap, so much better.
Cinnamon is nice. But then I meet KDE…
Honestly, if you’re happy with Ubuntu, don’t worry about what other people think. A lot of the (valid) complains of Ubuntu require research to understand why to be outraged.
I personally only use immutable now (bazite, aurora and steam OS) and I wouldn’t have it any other way now.
Because you’re wrong?
Personally I don’t like snaps, is the main thing.
I don’t like Snaps either, but it isn’t a that big of a deal. Ubuntu is still vastly more private than Windows. I do prefer Fedora much more because it actually sandboxes system services with SELinux polices. Snap creates a better sandbox for applications than Flatpak, but it is slower to launch applications, depends on AppArmor (which is less secure than SELinux), and uses hard coded package repo (centralized design).
They might simply like Mint’s Cinnamon over Ubuntu’s GNOME. That’s a valid choice.
Cinnamon with Wayland is still in testing. X11/X.Org is unmaintained software and is less secure than Wayland. GNOME is the only desktop at the moment that actually protects the screen from arbitrary recording by applications. Just food for thought.
Plasma supports wayland as well. On distros where it doesn’t ship by default all you have to do is install a package.
I love Debian, but it’s installer is shit.
It’s one of the only installers that seems to take the longest compatatively and (afaik) doesn’t really let you leave it unaftended. Most other distros let you just set everything first then go, but Debian does that and then asks you what DE and other questions mid install…
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.
I’ve probably used it more than a hundred times now, but I still get confused about the current step sometimes.
