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.
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
I used AtlasOS on my windows partition. Had to cause for some reason steam streaming was borked and would only black screen. And now I’m too lazy to swap back over to cachyos. Lmao. Waiting to see that bug is fixed.
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??
Only if you don’t count installing drivers
I can’t find it now, but there was a meme about that here. How 20 years ago vs present the two are flipped.
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
It’s very user friendly. I switched last year and haven’t looked back. I game on it constantly.
I had to install Windows 11 on something a few weeks ago so I decided to do it without an account, it was nowhere near as difficult to do it as this sub would lead you to believe. Pressed a key combination to load up the command prompt then typed in a relatively short command. The GUI restarted and that was it.
Yeh, it’s there.
But Linux installers would straight up ask you. So you don’t even need to hit the CLI
Lol it’s not that hard. It’s just a matter of what you are used to.
Yes, please stay away from Windows if you have such difficulties installing it.
What about Ubuntu?
It takes too long to listen to Lemmy users tell you why not to.
Isn’t mint a downstream product of Ubuntu? I haven’t paid attention to them since they were distributing images from a compromised WordPress site years ago 😂
Maybe I’ve been DDing Ubuntu for so long that I just couldn’t be bothered to try another distro based on it. I want to try a rolling release distro, but I’m too old to distro hop. All I care about is a functional system anymore.
Windows 10 is easy to install… If everything goes well. And 2 out of 3 times in my experience, it doesn’t.
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.
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.
Yes, but Plasma doesnt protect against screen recording. The Devs expressed interest in protecting against arbitrary screen capture, still work in progress. See this issue: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/xdg-desktop-portal-kde/-/issues/7
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).
Having installed both recently, Manjaro is slightly easier than Fedora (KDE spin), never tried to install Mint so I don’t know if it’s above or below that
I‘d place archinstall lower than mint 🤭
The windows one seems exaggerated until you try to set it up with a regular local account.
Setting up a scratch install VM is such a pain.
Yeah, setup win 10 install on qemu may need to jump some hoop, especually when you want to enable features like gpu pass through.
Although qemu may not be as easy as virtualbox/vmware, the performance is worth it.
Setting up a local user account only is easy. Shift+f10 to open command prompt and then run OOBE\BYPASSNRO and then you can run the setup with zero network requirements and zero account requirements.
That no longer works.
Tried it on my girlfriend’s new gaming laptop about 4 months ago and it did nothing, so just went back to using my custom Rufus install.
With Rufus it doesn’t even ask for a MS account, indeed.
I do it every day for work. You must be doing something wrong.
It’s a simple command, kinda hard to mess up repeatedly.
It’s probably something to do with which Windows edition is used. This was just a consumer grade laptop after all
So by linux, you mean not every open OS? Can we add freebsd? Not the easiest but lots of users willing to help on a forum post.
This sub is delusional
debian should be a bit higher on that list, but it’s still easier than installing windows.
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.
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
Pretty sure mine took 20 minutes to burn to USB. Maybe I need better jump drives.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 took me 3 Fucking Days to install bloated Windows on a friend’s Computer… This os is absolute SHIT…
Damn, maybe your friend should have installed it themselves.
Would have taken less time.
How TF did that take three days?
User error(s)
Probably incompetence on my side… And it was 2h days and we talked about shit so…
Almost everyone using Linux installed it. Almost no one using Windows installed it.
The latter usually have someone to install it for them.
You don’t think that many people build their own Windows PCs? Linux gaming isn’t that old in the grand scheme of things, and there’s plenty of people who dual boot for various reasons.
I’d almost be willing to bet that there are more people who’ve installed Windows on their PC than there are people who’ve installed Linux from a pure numbers standpoint.
I build my own systems. And I dont know what y’all are smoking but a typical windows installation has the complexity of opening a jar of pickles. Next next yes and away we go.
Linux on the other hand…
Now, if you want to debloat and install without a ms account then yes. But then… Really… Who does that? (i mean of the typical windows users
Installing endeavourOS was easier than Windows because of all the ads you need to bypass and the telemetry options on Windows. The partitioning options on endeavourOS were easier too plus if necessary one can use a browser. The only difficulty there was on EndeavourOS which the Windows installer didn’t have was picking a wm.
That was the most complicated installer I’ve seen for a Linux distro beside arch32 which doesn’t even come with archinstall.
Avoiding MS account and many manual parts of the installation (opting out of shit) is like two clicks in Rufus before installation. Everyone should do it.
That’s what I’m saying. Windows installation is idiot-proof. And I’m sure there’s enough people who maintain their own systems or at the very least have had to install Windows for one reason or another that to say that “almost no one” who runs Windows installed it themselves is just the “Linux Master Race” talking.
Most gaming PCs are pre built. Boutiques have been a business for decades. And every major PC OEM has a gaming division.pc building is niche.
PC building is niche, yes, but do you think “almost no one” builds PCs, like OP said? And that’s not even including the people who’ve had to install Windows on a pre-built system for one reason or another.
My point is that OP sounds like a smug Linux user shitting on people who use Windows. Even 5% of Windows users is too big a group of people to be described as “almost no one” simply because of how big the userbase is. That would be like saying, “Almost no one installs Linux” because Linux only makes up a small portion of the worldwide PC userbase.
