This image was created by /u/kuebic@discuss.tchncs.de for this comment here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/21735989. I had encouraged them to post it somewhere, but as far as I can tell, they never did.
Panel 1: “Installing Windows 20 years ago” screenshot of install wizard with just a couple buttons
Panel 2: “Installing Linux 20 years ago” screenshot of a busy command line
Panel 3: “Installing Windows today” screenshot of a busy command line
Panel 4: “Installing Linux today” screenshot of install wizard with just a couple buttons
deleted by creator
Such a shame that Wayland did away with accessibility APIs which makes switching a hard stop for those of us with disabilities that rely on software that works with these APIs.
They work with X11, which had consistent APIs, but Wayland leaves it up to each distro to implement their own APIs, if they do at all, fragmenting the ecosystem.
Hell, even mouse acceleration curves are skuffed now, it really sucks.
@douglasg14b @SatyrSack distros do not implement APIs. I’m unsure what “consistent API” means in this context, but X11 is anything but consistent. And you can still just… Use X.org Server. What “X11 APIs” are you missing in specific?
X11 still works fine, despite the FUD.
Xfce4 is one option, several others exist.
I wasnt aware of this. Do they plan on adding some sort of API implementation like they are with other features or do you know?
Linux mint is my distro for now and a good while! I cannot complain (except for a few very minor things).
Printers are a pain in the ass. But who still uses printers?
Quite a lot of us
I use them daily at work. But at home? Never
I work from home. Checkmate!
My HP printer was plug and play for printing over the network, quite delightful really.
Ah yes, liji printer best for cups!
I do… Kids in school occasionally need stuff printed. I have a network attached laser printer, it was super easy, barely an inconvenience to set up in Linux. It was fairly easy to setup in windows too, but every so often it stops working randomly for a few minutes, then as soon as I start trying to figure out why, it randomly starts working again… No such trouble from Linux.
I don’t think I ever messed with the Windows 3.1 OS on my family’s 486, but from Windows 95 and onwards I’ve done multiple installs of all the consumer versions of windows and was an avid user of win2k at the time. And for Windows 11 I have only ever installed it in a VM on a Linux machine to test Windows tools that are part of our builds at work.
I’ve also installed the last couple versions of Linux Mint a few times on some newer and older PCs. And some other distros in VMs for various reasons.
ALL of my recent Linux installs have gone far more smoothly and quickly than ANY Windows installs I remember.
Old windows? Better.
New Linux? Best!
Did you install linux at all in the same time in the 90s? SLS? Slackware? Debian? Caldera? RedHat? SuSe? Etc? to have a counterpart reference for that era?.. Contrary to the depiction in the OP image, GNU+Linux was fine and easy to install with a gui installer since 20 years years ago and far longer.
Nope I don’t have experience installing older distros. I used some Unix systems in the late 90s (Sun Solaris) and really liked them even though I wasn’t yet the Linux/FOSS enthusiast I am now.
Your comment does not surprise me at all, though. For any rough edges Linux has had over the years, at least the motivations of the developers creating it have been in the right place all along. That is, making software for themselves and users, as opposed to the innumerable forces of enshittification within tech giants like Microsoft.
not very accurate, you can still install Windows graphically, and you could install Linux either on a console or with a GUI both in 2005 and now
Yes windows can be installed easily, but it’ll require a Microsoft login to do it- this meme is made for people who don’t want that.
I think Linux has progressed a lot since 2005. It’s mostly idiot proof these days - it asks about language/keyboard/timezone/wifi and unless you ask for an advanced install (to partition a hard drive or whatever) it just installs.
I don’t think installing Windows is any harder but it may stop to ask for a registration key. Windows also prefers to connect to wifi during installation to fetch patches whereas Linux tends to do it after the fact.
Seemed idiot proof already a couple years before 2005 in my experience. I hear for years prior already too. Rumours of Linux’s difficulty have been grossly exaggerated, like in the OP image.
… And reading the EULA for Windows may be non-idiot preventative. But who ever reads what that says. … I did, when I had read the GNU GPL. The difference… it’s worth the read… to experience that vivid constrast awareness, with one offering freedom, the other with it’s deal with the devil clause, that they can change the agreement after they make it, and do all manner of nasty to you. GPL’s easier to read only a few thousand words, compared to the proprietary license etc that are probably something like thousands of pages in their entirety. The BSD licenses are an even easier read. The WTFPL even shorter yet. Freedom’s brevity not trying to hide something nasty in either the license nor the software… unlike the scary stuff one can find hidden in proprietary software. ~ Anyhoo, I’ll stop rambling on your comment. It just sprang to mind.
I’m not installing win 11 anyways, but if I did, there’s no way in hell I wouldn’t install it without spending half a day fucking with regedit and powershell.
Just FYI, ReviOS is a playbook (set of system changes) that strips all the crap out of Windows 11 while still being almost entirely functional (I believe it disables automatic driver downloads, but it still gets Windows security updates.) I use it in my VM.
It’s super easy—install Windows 11, run the ReviOS playbook, then a Ninite to install all the essentials (including Classic Shell I think? Although I prefer one called something like Start Back.)
Unless windows hates your computer then it’s powershell and regedit for you!
My first Linux distro was Ubuntu in 2006, with a graphical installer from the boot CD. It was revolutionary in my eyes, because WinXP was still installed using a curses-like text interface at the time. As I remember, installing Ubuntu was significantly easier than installing WinXP (and then wireless Internet support was basically shit in either OS at the time).
When Ubuntu came along, I could not understand the fuss about it being easy to install… It seemed no easier than other distros years prior. Yes, 2004 04 (iirc~ or was it 10?), ubuntu’s easy to install… so are half a dozen others at the time, for years. Twas just marketing. If only we could have got the word out already before then… or even now… still people seem to think it was hard back then. It wasnt. A monkey pushing the button could install it. Did not have to install Arch, Gentoo, or LFS, the hard way. Could install debian, slackware [Edit: oh wait, slackware woulda been curses tui], redhat, suse, or whatever even easier respins (ubuntu wasnt the first debian respin). Some people still think it’s hard now. It’s not. It has not been difficult all this millennium so far. Oh to let other people have that awakening moment, have it be revolutionary in their eyes, still today, dispelling their notions of how life has to be, into how life can be. :)
It’s a meme, Karen.
Don’t forget to remove the french language pack
Pourquoi? C’est très utile!
No :<
Non !
For real!
My favorite conspiracy of the moment is that Microsoft intentionally does this New Coke thing and then they will roll out actually good Windows and make all of DA MONY AND KEEL DA LEENOOCKS DIZIZZ. But it’s Microsoft, so the long game will go on forever and there will be no pay off. Also - Mint is soooo gooooood to use compared to Win11
People forgot already…
EVERY SECOND WINDOWS IS GOOD Win XP good, Vista bad, 7 good, 8 bad, 10 good, 11 bad, 12 good?
Only this time around Linux got to the point where everyday users can switch and only run into debiliating problems twice a year, so MS is losing customers.
All windows after 7 was just a downward spiral of shittiness.
You say so yet 10 is fast, convienient and easy to use. Wouldn’t call it better than 7, but it was good.
Nah, 10 is the primordial ooze from which all the current vile evil coming out of microsoft was formed.
7 was faster, more convenient, less in your way, and just overall a superior product. No microsoft OS has even equaled what 7 was, much less be superior to it.
Straight up said I wouldn’t call 10 better than 7. So what’s your point? 10 is, overall, good OS. Not best, not great, good.
Straight up said I wouldn’t call 10 better than 7. So what’s your point?
10 is the primordial ooze from which all the current vile evil coming out of microsoft was formed.
Agree to disagree. 10 is fast, reliable and convienient. I agree it served as a sandbox for all the shit they crammed into 12, but it doesn’t change anything.
Still would prefer 7. Kinda loved 7.
fast, convenient and easy to use
I wonder how it feels compared to AntiX Linux.
[Or VoidLinux with any Window Manager. ~ for different strokes a little further into the FOSS adventure.]
I feel like the very moment we go for any linux aimed at being lightweight, windows loses due to cramming cramming as much compatibility and tools as is possible inside.
…
…and also you got me intrested in AntiX. I have old laptop that struggles even with Debian…wonder if that would work on it.
AntiX is a great choice for lightweight and easy.
However, I find even the most fully-loaded out-of-the-box distros crammed with everything including the kitchen sink are still lighter to run than windows.
But if even modern AntiX is too much for some ancientware, there are weirder niches of tiny & fast, like tinycore, slitaz, puppy (or forks of puppy), deli and damnsmalllinux (old versions especially), and others for old computers
Even debian (or (better yet) devuan) could work well on wimpy hardware with a clever choice of a lightweight DE/WM, like LXDE or IceWM… (but if you opt for IceWM, you may as well stick with AntiX, where it has IceWM already well configured). Don’t have to stick with the old heavy bloaters like XFCE (not as light as promoted), GNOME, KDE, etc.
All after win 2000 was complete shit.
Even 2000, it was the roller coaster starting its decent, worsening after NT. Barely indistinguishable, but there were clues, the trajectory had started to tip down.
I think it was Windows 2000 I had to install on a laptop for someone…
This was 20+ years ago, so I dont remember the details…but i think there was like 11-13 floppies for the install that I had at the time? All of them OEM floppies… I think from microsoft, but maybe from the laptop OEM?.. and every time I ran the installer another disk would fail, and i’d have to go online and find that disk image and burn it to a replacement floppy. It was the worst OS install experience of my entire life, lol. I think by the time I was done I had replaced all but the first oem disk.
EVERY SECOND WINDOWS IS GOOD
Is that what microsoft put in the microsoft windows subliminal messaging subsystem?
(or whatever its called now)
Only this time around Linux got to the point where everyday users can switch and only run into debiliating problems twice a year, so MS is losing customers.
It’s been better than that for around quarter a century. From 2003, I had my first distro run solid for 4 years, before choosing to switch, ran that one for near 4 years too (with more meddling for fun), before switching to what it was based on (and in a sense, been with various installs of mostly that since… call that 2nd or 3rd time lucky). One does not have to go with a distro that does a 6 month fixed release cycle. Long term support can go 5 years (and eased seamless transitions are possible anyway, so that’s near meaningless). Rolling can go forever. There’s still Arch if you want debilitating problems (more than) twice a year. ;D (Now watch me be beat to death with baseball bats that say “Arch BTW” for saying that. lol)
debiliating problems?
The fuck? XP was awful. I left because of it. What are you on about?
Maybe you had a specific experience with It, but XP was and is considered universally a good windows version, compared to its predecessors and the posterior Vista. Only losing to windows 7 when it launched.
Security was awful, multi user wasn’t, windows started the Microsoft id program with it, they lied about removing programs with an apllication that only hid them, they tied music downloads to explorer only, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
It was a nasty looking mess, got hacked in 10 minutes if you put it on the internet until service pack 3, and in person it wouldn’t last 3 minutes.
That’s leaving out the crazy licensing programs they introduced.
It was really, really bad. But since a lot of people knew nothing before it, they look back at it with rose colored glasses. It was truly garbage.
Yes it had very bad flaws, which didn’t discourage its wide range of use. One can say it’s not objectively good, but it’s subjectively not bad.
As I answered below, it was part of the “good guys” versions of windows, not receive popular backlash like windows ME, 8 and 11
It was so bad I had to leave. It was bad. Like really bad. People mayhave liked it, but it was objectively awful.
So if you’re correct with that, that NewNewAugustEast and I find it intolerably bad means we must exist outside the universe?
Is this what happens… to the perception of those who remained with windows, those who escaped to FOSS, apparently just ceased to exist?
Nothing of the sort, just said it based on the general usage, for all the flaws it had, It was, undeniably a very popular and used piece of software.
At the time of its peak, it was not universally bashed against like Windows ME, 8 or Vista. It was well received like windows 95, 7 and10
Oh, sorry. I must have had a dyslexic moment and misread:
considered universally
as
“universally considered”
Np, have a good one
Me too!
XP was what sent me running looking for an alternative. Nearly landed on IRIX, until I found the GNU GPL to read.
Is there any coke alternative that’s almost as good and in some regard better, but for free?
I bought Pepsi after a long time of drinking almost no sodas, and none of big-brand ones (and I prefer Pepsi to Coke generally). It was somewhat of a shock as to how loaded it was with caffeine and sugar. Next time I’ll rather get store-brand soda that’s five times cheaper and has barely any sugar and no caffeine, even if it’s blander in taste.
Amusingly, Ubuntu Cola is pretty good.
Lots of smaller, independent brands make nice cola, like Fritz-Kola in Germany or Breizh Cola in France. Don’t expect to find them at your local hole in the wall though.
Fritz is the best
No but RC cola is pretty good if you want something that tastes similar to coke. My hick is showing ain’t it?
And here I like RC cola because it tastes to completely different than coke. I find it to be the most distant from coke flavour of all the colas I’ve had
nope, but i have no idea how else to describe their counterproductive logic
They’ve cared about the shareholders over the customers for way too long. Enshittyfication isnt a strategy, it’s a symptom of promising infinitive growth.
and it’s a pity
Getting help with Linux 15-20 years ago: some forum full with slurs telling you to google it
Getting help with Windows 15-20 years ago: “Do this and this, if that fails look up data backup methods before the reinstall.”
Getting help with Linux now: various Wikis and blogs. The hazard of finding an AI hallucinated blog post is significant, but can be blocked.
Getting help with Windows now: support forums owned by Microsoft filled with users telling they have the same issue, and AI agents hallucinating solutions.
Getting help with Windows now: support forums owned by Microsoft filled with users telling they have the same issue, and AI agents hallucinating solutions.
I feel this to my core.
My work PC uses Windows, and sometimes I have to Google something that is acting up, which takes me to these sorts of threads. It’s always:
OP: I’m having trouble with this app, it doesn’t recognize my default audio device. I’ve tried X, Y, and Z, which did not work.
Jimothy, Certified Windows Expert: Greetings, OP! My name is Jimothy, a Certified Windows Expert and fellow Windows enthusiast! I am sorry to hear about the issues you’ve been having. But don’t worry, I am here to assist. 3 paragraphs later You should try going to the user settings and make sure that “Use default audio device” is checked on. Did this fix your issue?
OP: I don’t see any setting labeled “Use default audio device.”
15 posts follow from other users who are experiencing the same issue, also confirming there is no such setting.
Jimothy, Certified Windows Expert: Greetings again, OP! I am sorry to hear that did not answer your question. According to the app specifications, use of the default audio device is not a supported feature at this time. If you would like to make a suggestion to include this feature in a future release, you may submit a request through the Microsoft Feedback Portal. I will now close this topic to further replies. Thank you!
to be fair, some linux forums still have toxic members, and some others while probably not toxic, are still a bit harsh with people
Getting help with Linux 15-20 years ago: some forum full with slurs telling you to google it
No it wasn’t, where we you going for help lol?
On the forums asking for help.
What forums? In 2005 every forum I went to was really helpful, friendly, and nothing like what you describe.
Certainly there was a little bit of internet snarkiness I would imagine, but I remember everyone being pretty nice to each other.
I decided to go back and look using the way back machine and went through a few threads, everyone is being really nice and helpful to each other.
Same experience.
Huge part of what kept me in the community of the Free Software philosophy.
It’s in the 4 freedoms. Free to use, study, share and change, the software. That’s the enabled and protected spirit of helping each other.
Assertions of contrary, has me wonder what those offering those other assertions were doing to get that kind of reception and impression.
Asking for Linux help online is still just as toxic and useless as 20 years ago.
All the support forums I went to (redhat, gentoo, debian) in 2005 were friendly helpful and well moderated. What is this fud?
Being told “RFTM! noob”, isn’t as common as it was 20 years ago. At least with Fedora where good help can be found. Still, there are a good number of questions that just don’t get answered either.
Try Reddit or Stackoverflow for a contrasting experience.
Being told to read the manual did me good.
We should bring back RTFM, and cease allowing it to be smeared as something bad. Burnout is no fun. RTFM spares developers from burnout, allowing them to continue developing good software (and have it be well documented… if only users would read the flippin manual!) ;D
Now both sides meet in the middle: GUI for setup, terminal for fixing the one thing that breaks.
3 out of 4 panels should be a picture where the operating system cant find the proper drivers
Real lmao
For anyone who’s coming from. Windows world desktop environment DE is just look and feel of is you can change it or i install multiple of those. Most famous are GNOME KDE, etc. Distro is something that someone packaged together DE and a tool (pakage? Managet) to gether there are essentially 3****** distros Debian :, rhel., and arch Ubuntu, Linux mint, popOS all Re derived from Debian while fedoro centos were all derived from RHEL bit f*cl Redhat and canonical. And msnjaro arach are all forks of arch and there are freebsd and susu which corpos like becausr of not licensing
If you arrnew and using old hardware then choose Debian or a year alternatives if you’re using bleeding edge hardware (newes than 1 year( then choose Fedora
Also, Green on Black is subjectively better than White on Blue.
spoiler
No puns here.
Keep it out of the gutter.i installed mandrake in 2004. It came with a nice graphical installer.
Same with Opensuse
My favourite part of the Linux installation process is when it automatically places itself before windows in the grub menu boot order
Inb4 don’t dual boot: I occasionally need to for work
Better than Windows just straight up overwriting your Linux boot partition on an update.
Just boot partition?
I once installed Linux Mint by shrinking Windows 10 partition in Linux against the recommendations. On first Windows boot it seemed fine, except that C: was still showing the old size.
On next Windows reboot it got annihilated with “Repairing drive C:”.I wouldn’t blame Windows for this one. In this case, this is likely because the Windows partition table wasn’t updated when you changed your C: partition, so Windows legitimately thought there was filesystem corruption because the size didn’t match its partition table.
You should always used the currently installed OS to free up space first, so it’s aware of the change. Then run the installer and install to the free space you made.
Or better yet, use separate physical drives for different OSes.
There’s no such thing as ‘Windows partition table’, unless MS came up with some new nefarious bullshit. The partition table is global for everyone, and any partition manager program modifies that.
Problem is, Linux Mint installer says nothing about that as far as I recall, and just offers a convenient slider to allocate space between Windows and Linux.
And that was my first computer. Yeah, I am relatively new to computers.
But hey, I only lasted with Windows for 2 days. In Windows 10 I couldn’t even wrap my head around when to use Control Panel and when settings, because look, mature OS, we have Settings 1 and Settings 2.
In comparison, Linux Mint 20 MATE was far simpler, so having really used neither, I went with the easier one. However, that doesn’t mean I had any idea what I was doing. I didn’t even understand the concept of partitions.
Just imagine a total newbie.
“Where is the file stored?”
“On… the computer…?”Fair enough, though Linux Mint also didn’t really know for sure what that partition was (other than assuming Windows because it was probably NTFS).
Disk partitioning is always a risk if you don’t know what you’re doing (and sometimes even when you do) which is why it’s always good to have backups!
One of the many reasons I stopped dual booting decades ago.
Does windows still do this shit? Lol
That really only happens if you use the same drive for both installs, though
“It only really happens if you have a common setup”
You say that as if it’s an excuse. No program should ever overwrite an existing filesystem without explicit consent from the user.
What is this con-cent you speak of? Some kind of… negative currency? A bad smell?
- Microsoft, allegedly
it’s the part AI is doing for you now
but they’ve been ignoring it long before AI showed up.
Overwrite existing filesystem?
- Yes
- Later
During my distro hopping phase of 2011, I tried out a distro called IP Fire. It wiped out my whole drive on boot.
I still have that laptop, hoping one day I’ll retrieve that data.
That is a shitty design and for an outfit a big as Microsoft, I feel that it is intentional
Ipfire is a linux firewall software lol?
Apparently performs as router and firewall distro. I have no idea what possessed me to install that at the time over 10 years ago. But in any case, bad on me for blindly trusting an unknown source and bad on them for a dick shit design.
But I know one thing is for sure, that name is pretty accurate. A lot of my own “IP” was torched.
If you work for yourself I get it. If you work for someone else, get them to have a desktop for you there and remote in.
I put windows in a docker on my server, and keep an instance on Azure that only comes alive when I need it. I remote into either one if I have to. No more dual boot.
Just giving you some options. Also it lets me travel while knowing if I need windows even on the road I have one.
Linux: Signature look of superiority
Dual booting is perfectly fine. Just try to not use the windows boot partition for both OS or Windows will occasionally “lose” the Linux entry… “Oops” I guess.
If Linux is on its own drive, or at least has it’s own uefi partition, it’s just fine and dandy. Just chain load windows from it and there’s basically nothing that can break.
Afaik having two uefi partitions isn’t recommended for some reason. Linux Mint writes Grub into the same partition that Windows is using.
Thankfully, I’m not planning to let Windows update anything anymore, but ymmv for others.
That’s only because L comes before W alphabetically tho.
Ugh. That reminds me of the Microsoft admin fanboys where I worked, dissing Linux because its all command lines, while saying that MS inventing PowerShell was a stroke of genius making their lives easier.
I had a coworker, about 30 years old… Who taught computer science at a college prior to us working together… Who said to me “Command line? That stuffs ancient, man.”
Just in case you were thinking about spending money on college tuition to learn computer science…
Tell him a wrist brace helps with mouse-induced RSI when it flares up.
CAN CONFIRM LMAOOOO
Don’t pay back your loans, it’s all a scam hahaha
If an ancedote has someone questioning if they should go to college for computer science, they should definitely not be going to college for any degree.
No, they definitely should.
Meanwhile in Finland my first exposure to a Unix shell was in an introductory IT course in uni, and that inspired me to switch to Linux four years ago. Without all of that I would have never got my current internship where 90% of my work is in the terminal.
