Windows doesn't "just work"

[jrockwar@feddit.uk]

Over the past 5 years, I've installed ubuntu about 30 times on different computers. Not once has an install on an SSD taken me more than an hour, with it typically taking me 30 minutes or less except for rare occasions where I've messed something up.

[mvirts@lemmy.world]

I think it highly depends on what kind of hardware you are attempting to install Linux on. You can make it work on almost anything, but the graphical installers are best used with hardware that was widely used when the distribution was released.

Also the older and more obscure distros may not have installers that pass secure boot checks, which is very frustrating if you don't know what is happening.

[xavier666@lemm.ee]

To your conscious brain, it might seem like 4 steps. But we are doing a lot more in reality because install process is second nature to us (Because of several years of usage).

If you tell someone who has never used a Windows PC to install a software and my list is more accurate.

[Guest]

What do you need as proof? All I have to do, is getting a random laptop, doesn't matter which one and I will make a video for you. Is that enough?

[Guest]

It's not about the speed of the installation.... It's about the installation not working. Crashes. Hard to see error logs. Drivers missing for the most generic hardware, ever. No, I'm not talking about an unmaintained fringe distribution. I'm talking about Ubuntu, Lubuntu & Debian. Plain old stable and simple.

[xavier666@lemm.ee]

Most of the time, the package is available on the standard package manager which makes the process extremely simple. Hardest part is knowing the package name. If you know apt search, you don't even have to search on the browser to find the package name. But certain packages are only available as tar.gz or as source. But those are usually not encountered by newbies.

If someone is using Nix, they generally don't have trouble finding packages. Also, Nix has more packages compared to AUR.

[Guest]

If you never want to update and wouldn't do it or would do it too rarely (Windows only rarely asks, so the chance is high, you would update way too seldom...), then you are part of those "other people".

[Guest]

What PCs? Certified by some Linux supporting company? If you buy a random laptop or pre-made PC, chances are high, that it won't work. And I'm not even a "beginner", who does "beginner" mistakes. No, I'm actually a Linux pro. I work with Linux literally every single day, even in my free time.

[wolflink@sh.itjust.works]

What Linux distro are you using share Bluetooth and audio “just works”?

[Guest]

apt search is very inefficient. It outputs way too many results and at least 8/10 times, I search for a keyword related to the package, which is not in the package name or description itself, so the package does not show up for me.

Searching online is better, but still crap. I work a lot with Container Images, Alpine etc. professionally and in my free time. Searching for the right Alpine package is always a huge pain in the ass.

Less is more. Nix has lots of packages, but they are barely maintained. For fun, I set up a Kubernetes cluster on NixOS a couple of years back. Had it "running" until last month. Long story short: Kubernetes is broken on NixOS. There are several open GitHub issues since years and nobody fixes them, because not enough people care to fix Kubernetes for NixOS.

[osrsneedsf2p@lemmy.ml]

Probably the DE, for me Bluetooth has "just worked" under KDE

[easily3667@lemmus.org]

But did you try (the distro I personally prefer)? I've tried 500 distros and that one is the one that actually worked for me.

[easily3667@lemmus.org]

Only if you refuse to put forth the same effort into fixing windows as you do with Linux. Not wanting to learn doesn't mean it's not learnable.

[easily3667@lemmus.org]

Oh I just did that

[easily3667@lemmus.org]

If you're willing to put up with the low security options provided by default and don't have a weird laptop, maybe.

[easily3667@lemmus.org]

Lol "the main computer market is iffy"

[knexcar@lemmy.world]

You don’t have to get rid of all the stuff, it doesn’t break the system like missing sounds or whatnot. Some of its even helpful like weather and news. Plus it isn’t that hard to make a Microsoft account, don’t you need one anyway for Minecraft? And since when do you need drivers for an SSD, don’t those usually work out of the box?

[shy_mia@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

Nah just stuff I built myself or random laptops.

• Some old Lenovo laptop with an Intel iGPU and an AMD GPU I can't remember, worked out of the box but was a bit finicky for some things. I don't remember what it was, it broke years ago.

• ASUS TUF FX504GM (1060 maxq), zero issues on X11

• Lenovo Legion 5 (3070 + AMD iGPU), zero issues, daily driver

• Custom Desktop (1070 + Intel iGPU though I didn't really use it), some issues but i was testing Wayland years ago. Good on X11.

• Custom Desktop (7900xtx + 3080), zero issues, daily driver. It used to just have a 3080, it's fairly solid on Wayland as well but not perfect.

• A few other random laptops and desktop some friends owned over the years, fairly smooth on pretty much all of them.

I've found in general that anything that doesn't have an Nvidia card as the display output works fine. Wayland is getting quite usable on Nvidia as well, but there are still growing pains. Still, no black screens anywhere.

Sure I've tinkered a bit during the years, but I almost never had a black screen on install. I did brick my display drivers a few times (just Nvidia being a pain, mostly) but it was mostly my fault.

It may be you've just been really unlucky. There are definitely hardware combinations out there that cause problems, but I haven't really found any particularly problematic ones up until now.

[knexcar@lemmy.world]

Or, you DO find it, but it’s glitchy/outdated (I think there was an issue with Steam). Or you search for the program, find the website, download a .tar.gz, wonder what the hell is this double extension abomination, double click it, doesn’t work, look it up, apparently it’s a type of container like a zip and not a basic program like an exe and instead of using the GUI like a normal person you have to type “tar -xcv” or something that might as well be black magic (I can’t even remember the correct letters), then to actually install you have to find the magic “make” “sudo make install” command, and it still fails.

Much easier to double click the .exe, accept the license agreement, and hit continue a few times.

[Guest]

I've tried many many laptops. Don't remember which ones, but they there the most sock common, you can probably imagine. For example, the last one is a budget acer with a Radeon discreet card or something. No NVIDIA. Installed Lubuntu on it. Absolutely standard installation.
Worked for some while. Then it stopped working. Whenever I booted up the laptop, the screen went black after a second on login screen. Researching for hours and hours did not help to find a solution.

Funnily enough, I only installed Lubuntu in the first place, because I tried Debian Stable before that and that one didn't boot at all. It did not work even once. So, I had switched to Lubuntu...

This is one representative example for how those great Linux installations always go in my cases.
Again, this did not happen once or twice. This happens almost every single time I try to install Linux on any normal stock hardware, whatsoever.

The only time I had no trouble installing Linux is on my current laptop (tablet, but like a laptop) device. But do you know why? Because I reserched for hours for a device, which fits my needs and is very compatible with Linux. That's why. I had to research tons of hours to find a device, which is actually Linux compatible.

That said, not even this device works fine. Actually, the opposite. It is dangerous to your health. Yeah, I'm not joking, I literally mean it.

One time, I started Firefox on it and the screen started flickering really hard. Couldn't control or fix it.
If my friend would've been there, he would've gotten a seizure 100%, since he has photosensitive epilepsy. Linux is literally dangerous to your health.

Windows might be annoying and all... But it doesn't give anyone literal seizures.