Linux is easier to install than Windows? When did that happen?

[ESB77]

I finally got around to building myself a desktop PC, and while I was at it I thought I'd also get around to having a dual boot machine again.  Last time I did that was around 2004-ish with Windows XP as an OEM install, and I did a partition and installed SUSE 9.x.   It was a long time ago and I didn't  keep up on Linux system administration, but I vaguely remember headaches involving paths, environment variables, and things with too many % signs in them to be easy to remember without taking notes.  It worked, it even had a passable GUI, but is was a bit of a pain in the butt to set up.  It did also get me onto the track of using Free software (FSF "free speech free, not free beer free") for almost all of my productivity applications.   After that computer I moved to another one that had BIOS issues with partitioning a GUID drive, so I just skipped a dual boot setup and lived with slightly out of date Windows ports of all the Free software I was used to using.

 

So with a brand new computer (yeah, I'm slow to upgrade hardware) even though 15 years is an eternity in tech, I was a bit shocked at how much easier Linux installs have become.

 

Download OS.

Download program to mount ISO image on flash drive (I used balenaEtcher)

Install on flash drive.

Set UEFI/BIOS to boot from flash drive

Click the obvious "click here" dialog boxes in the GUI until you arrive at a functioning desktop screen.

 

Identical to a Windows 10 install, except that their download automates the step that I used balenaEtcher for.

 

Wait, if Windows had one less step, how is the Linux install easier?

 

I don't feel like an install is really finished, that is the computer is ready to use, until a minimally acceptable level of user configuration had been done.   Wifi password entered, login credentials/user accounts sorted, etc.  If you care about user privacy and security at all, this is where Linux beats the stuffing out of Windows.  On a Linux distro, privacy is likely to be the default option, so basically once you have your username, password, and wifi setup you're done.

 

On Windows though:

• privacy requires activating a multitude of not easy to find opt outs
• assuming they haven't deleted the opt out for a feature in the control panel
• in which case you might be able to partially opt out
• if you do a bunch research and open terminal to do some registry editing, provided you aren't scared about dire warnings about what can happen if you mess with the registry
• and there's almost certainly something you should have opted out of that you forgot about or couldn't find

 Not to mention the terms and conditions that spend many pages telling you about a privacy policy that I can boil down to one sentence:

We (Microsoft) see you (customer) as a sheep to be fleeced as thoroughly as possible.

 

I do tend to at least partially read terms and conditions before clicking "I Agree" and with the Windows 10 terms when it comes to personal information it's hard to tell if Microsoft is offering you a really bad contract or if they're trying to deliver their official declaration of information warfare against you.

 

 There used to be fairly significant barriers to a "typical" computer user jumping ship from Windows, but after doing this install, I'm not sure that's the case any more.

It feels SO weird to write this but . . .

Linux might be the better OS for the average user?

 

Yes, you'd give up new AAA games, Adobe well not software so much as subscriptions these days, and some other sorts of niche software.

 

All told though, for me at least, if I lost access to FOSS productivity software it would be a disaster.  If I lost Windows and everything that depends on it then it would be at worst a minor nuisance.  Not the case for everyone I know, but if your income doesn't depend on software that's locked into a Windows environment I'm not sure I see what the selling points of Windows are anymore.  Fifteen years ago I could list a lot of them pretty easily, now, not so much.

 

Of course, I'm avoiding the choice entirely by going dual boot, but if I had to choose at this point I don't think I'd go with Windows anymore, where even 5 years ago I probably would have.

 

Oh, as Linux distros do vary, I suppose that I should mention that the version that blew me away with how easy it was to install and set up was openSUSE LEAP 15.1 with the configuration all done with YaST (If you're a Windows only person YaST is roughly equivalent to Settings + Control Panel for a lot of setup tasks).

[LogicalDrm]

In short, ever since Ubuntu made decision to bring Linux to masses. It's not the best distro out there, but it has driven whole community from hidden and requiring some knowledge to point where anyone willing to learn new will be able to install and use Linux.

[Ralphred]

3 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

point where anyone willing to learn new will be able to install and use Linux.

It's also driven a whole swathe of previous linux users to add ubuntuforums.org to their google search excluded sites list.

To be fair it was an equivalent install back in the days when FC was released, it was just as easy/hard to use the RH text installer as the NT one.

[LogicalDrm]

1 hour ago, Ralphred said:

It's also driven a whole swathe of previous linux users to add ubuntuforums.org to their google search excluded sites list.

To be fair it was an equivalent install back in the days when FC was released, it was just as easy/hard to use the RH text installer as the NT one.

Haters gonna hate. Personally I always find it odd that cult of Linux users is so hostile towards newbies while boasting it to be the best OS out there.

[Mark Kaine]

On 12/23/2019 at 10:09 AM, ESB77 said:

 

Download OS.

Download program to mount ISO image on flash drive (I used balenaEtcher)

Install on flash drive.

Set UEFI/BIOS to boot from flash drive

Click the obvious "click here" dialog boxes in the GUI until you arrive at a functioning desktop screen

No,  I'm sorry I don't need to do anything like that to install Windows 10.

 

Download and save windows media creation tool on USB > insert in computer > start (iirc bios will find the boot file automatically)

 

 

And then the whole process of setting up privacy etc takes 1 minute tops! 

 

 

And it's kinda disingenuous to say "ready to go"  I know for sure you need to install GPU drivers (from who knows where!)  on Linux too.

 

It's not "ready to go" upon first installation at all... 

 

 

Also nice try but Linux is way too convoluted and clunky,  it will never happen for the average user,  it's a completely outdated concept. 

 

 

You should rather hope someone writes a functional modern OS in Unix or FreeBSD with a nice,  fully customizable UI that's at least as easy to use as Windows - let's face it, Windows can be annoying but at least it can be used with pretty much no prior knowledge,  it's pretty intuitive in fact.  

*click*  *click*  *click*

 

 

It's not going to get any better with current tech and typing obscure input commands for basic stuff is just a thing of the past that belongs in a museum (windows has this issue too,  but much less apparent than "Linux")

 

 

 

On 12/23/2019 at 7:34 PM, LogicalDrm said:

Haters gonna hate. Personally I always find it odd that cult of Linux users is so hostile towards newbies while boasting it to be the best OS out there.

Seriously,  my dream OS is *fully customizable* UI,  with full user control and everything works through a graphical interface,  you would never need to type a single command , preferably voice controlled, maybe augmented with something like eye tracking or a "magic wand"  ala Xbox Kinect, also VR/AR would make sense as an option!

 

 

I'm actually 100% sure that is inevitable,  but we may not live long enough to experience it,  also it won't be the current OS vendors like Microsoft doing this,  they're way too much concerned about keeping up the status quo that makes their life so easy lol.

[Lithium_Niobate]

On 12/28/2019 at 2:10 AM, Mark Kaine said:

And it's kinda disingenuous to say "ready to go"  I know for sure you need to install GPU drivers (from who knows where!)  on Linux too.

 

This isn't true for AMD cards, and not always true for nvidia cards.

 

On 12/28/2019 at 2:10 AM, Mark Kaine said:

Also nice try but Linux is way too convoluted and clunky,  it will never happen for the average user,  it's a completely outdated concept. 

This doesn't make much sense sorry please rephrase.

 

On 12/28/2019 at 2:10 AM, Mark Kaine said:

You should rather hope someone writes a functional modern OS in Unix or FreeBSD with a nice,  fully customizable UI that's at least as easy to use as Windows - let's face it, Windows can be annoying but at least it can be used with pretty much no prior knowledge,  it's pretty intuitive in fact.  

This is a myth, windows is intuitive because you've grown up with it.

 

On 12/28/2019 at 2:10 AM, Mark Kaine said:

 

It's not going to get any better with current tech and typing obscure input commands for basic stuff is just a thing of the past that belongs in a museum (windows has this issue too,  but much less apparent than "Linux")

This is not required or recommended for most linux distros.

 

On 12/28/2019 at 2:10 AM, Mark Kaine said:

Seriously,  my dream OS is *fully customizable* UI,  with full user control and everything works through a graphical interface,  you would never need to type a single command , preferably voice controlled, maybe augmented with something like eye tracking or a "magic wand"  ala Xbox Kinect, also VR/AR would make sense as an option!

Sounds like you don't do much work on a PC and you'd be better with a console.

[RebelKhaotic]

On 12/27/2019 at 9:10 PM, Mark Kaine said:

Seriously,  my dream OS is *fully customizable* UI,  with full user control and everything works through a graphical interface,  you would never need to type a single command , preferably voice controlled, maybe augmented with something like eye tracking or a "magic wand"  ala Xbox Kinect, also VR/AR would make sense as an option!

fully customizable UI...
linux has that...

Do everything via GUI
yeah, you can do that with Windows/Mac/Linux...

CLI is just quicker and easier once you learn the basics. Also, if I'm giving instructions to someone it's much much easier and mistake proof to say "here, copy and paste this into the terminal" vs "yeah, click this button, then look through that window to find the button labeled "xxxxx" then check the box next to "XXXXX"..." way too much room for error there.

 

augmented by voice control? 
Pretty sure this can be done in windows/mac/linux...

how well this works? well that depends on how much setup you want to do, with all voice assistants really...

"magic wand" control?

guessing you mean like minority report with just your hands? there WAS a way to make the kinect work with windows but I believe that project never really took off...

If you really want magic wand style control try an airmouse? 
https://www.newegg.com/p/0DF-00KJ-00002?item=9SIA19P53W5806&source=region&nm_mc=knc-googlemkp-pc&cm_mmc=knc-googlemkp-pc-_-pla-isave-_-keyboards-_-9SIA19P53W5806&gclid=CjwKCAiA3abwBRBqEiwAKwICA5Qy6AxizYSbxgJGjVWR6VZ4cMRK7wcFdEwToRmgxXCYa636tX3hHBoCglkQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

this should work in windows/mac/linux as well...

so I'm pretty sure I just checked all your boxes, one of them only being checked natively by linux... You can make windows fully customizable but that requires hunting down third party apps, many of which are bloatware bordering on malware... 
it really doesn't sound like you've ever tried linux, and if you have, it was 10 years ago... 
Maybe you did try recently, but there was just that ONE AAA game title that didn't work super duper easy using Lutris... More and more game developers support linux and more and more games get ported, "never gonna happen" really doesn't apply to that scenario. Sorry you had a bad experience with linux, maybe, assuming you actually did try it and aren't just regurgitating anecdotes you've read.
One bad experience isn't a reason to post such misinformed opinions as fact is it?
 

[Ralphred]

1 hour ago, RebelKhaotic said:

CLI is just quicker and easier once you learn the basics. Also, if I'm giving instructions to someone it's much much easier and mistake proof to say "here, copy and paste this into the terminal" vs "yeah, click this button, then look through that window to find the button labeled "xxxxx" then check the box next to "XXXXX"..." way too much room for error there.

Totally underrated argument, providing remote tech support to mobile engineers is SO much easier on a CLI, especially when 3rd party software devs often change GUI layouts/options with version bumps.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

On 12/23/2019 at 11:34 AM, LogicalDrm said:

Haters gonna hate. Personally I always find it odd that cult of Linux users is so hostile towards newbies while boasting it to be the best OS out there.

Go to Ezee Linux Forums. The guys there have been very helpful to me. Just don't go in there with a chip on your shoulder, bad mouthing Linux. Joe Collins, the owner of the forum, has many excellent videos on how to install and use Linux.

[YellowJersey]

I've always found Mint easy to install and pretty much good right out of the box. I wouldn't say that Windows (for me at least) requires any less configuration post-install. Given how long it can sometimes take for Windows to update after a fresh install, I can definitely get Mint installed and up and running way faster than Windows.

[LogicalDrm]

8 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Go to Ezee Linux Forums. The guys there have been very helpful to me. Just don't go in there with a chip on your shoulder, bad mouthing Linux. Joe Collins, the owner of the forum, has many excellent videos on how to install and use Linux.

I mean in general, what I've seen here or heard/read otherwise. I can google and interpret google very well, and have basic knowledge about using terminal as I was around back in DOS days. That comment is more about people who are angry for people going to easy route. Like many newbies posting here without searching anywhere or even reading manuals.

 

When the community is based on DIY guys so deep into their craft, they seem to lack patience towards Apple-eating general public. Which makes Linux/open-source community look very hostile for newcomers.

[xAcid9]

On 12/30/2019 at 10:51 PM, Lithium_Niobate said:

This is a myth, windows is intuitive because you've grown up with it.

+9001 

[WereCatf]

On 12/31/2019 at 12:01 PM, LogicalDrm said:

When the community is based on DIY guys so deep into their craft, they seem to lack patience towards Apple-eating general public. Which makes Linux/open-source community look very hostile for newcomers.

In my experience, they're very, VERY often hostile even to experienced users, just because asking for any sort of help or clarification is a sign of weakness and that you don't belong in the cult.

 

I've used Linux since the 90's and I've come to really despise the community in many ways over the years.

[Bramimond]

Yeah, they're not exactly very friendly, but at least they're not as horrible as the people you encounter when asking questions on Stackoverflow.

 

Linux has been fine to use since at least 2006. It's around the time I've converted the computers of my parents to Linux and it just works.