[Rant] I swear to fucking god. Windows is harder to use than Linux. Have any of you ever USED Windows lately? Holy fuck.

I’m helping a family member build a pc. He wanted to use Windows because “Linux can’t play games” despite me having a perfectly good gaming laptop running Linux that runs all my games, even graphically intensive ones.

2 days later, no game has been played yet. We can’t even get steam to start. I even installed Arch on a sata ssd I donated just to verify the pc parts actually work (took less than an hour). It took 1 and a half days to even get the Windows 11 installer to get past like the 3rd screen.

Fucking fuck. Dealing with all this fucking bullshit is far worse than not being able to play a few trashy anticheat pay 2 win games. The anti Linux circlejerk is real.

ErrantRoleplayer ,

This is basically why I went to linux around the time of Vista. The amount of hurdles windows puts in your way is silly.

However, it's odd for the OS to work and Steam then not to work. I wonder if the windows store protections have been disabled?

fau57 Bot ,
@fau57@leminal.space avatar

I straight up think they did it because they want everyone on co-pilot.

MangoPenguin ,
@MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

That sucks that it's been such a pain.

I can't say I've ever experienced the same though, windows install is a breeze and very fast, and on W10/11 these days everything just basically works perfectly out of the box for gaming.

espresso_con_panna ,

I recently just reinstalled windows on my gaming pc and arch on my laptop, and I completely agree with you. especially the fact that now windows 11 force you to sign in. I know it can be skipped, and average users probably wont care, but FUCK YOU MICROSOFT!

archinstall is such a breeze, and in general for linux, I can control precisely what to install and configure it to be exactly how I like it, as opposed to windows I had to find some sketchy debloater scripts to remove all the craps, disable the telemetries, and hoping it doesn't break anything.

And if I break anything, linux always have detailed documentations, where as windows...its always some indian guy on youtube teaching you how to run windows troubleshooter and hand you more sketchy scripts

Epzillon ,

As someone who helped friends/family build PC gaming rigs multiple times last year (2023) I understand what you're coming from W11 installer is pure dogshit.

Tbh tho, my dad always hated new Windows versions because he didn't want to learn a new UI/UX, which I fine, but the windows experience isnt that hard to learn, even if it is different. Same thing with Linux, if you use GNOME/KDE/i3/hyprland/sway/<insert any DE/WM here> for the first time it won't be easy to find all of the settings either.

But the W11 installer in particular sucks ass. There is so many restrictions that try to prevent you from even installing it. The one rescue for me was downloading the Rufus USB ISO tool and letting it download the W11 installer itself and apply patches which removed all the ridiculous restrictions.

I mean, you can even rub that shit in Virtual box if you want. My GF is literally running it on "unsupported hardware" according to Microsoft but windows updates and everything post-install is completely functional.

Only reason Mictorsoft Philips wants the restrictions is to have a tighter grip on the ecosystem and limit end consumers from installing it themselves and pushing that part to other companies or retailers which they can buy finished products (laptops etc) from instead of licenses.

Magister ,
@Magister@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve been using both daily, for 25+ years. Windows is not hard to use, but harder to configure now, having multiple paths/ways to configure the same thing like settings, old control panel, command line, regedit, group policy, is sometimes shitty. Everything else works fine in win10 or 11.

RichardButt89 ,

This is absolute nonsense. Getting windows up and running is stupid easy.

Aphroditusss ,

This thread has to be a bait

Stuka ,

Sounds like the problem was between the keyboard and chair.

captsneeze ,

Exactly. Layer 8 problem.

Puffymumpkins ,

Ooh, gonna add that to my phrasebook

What’s a Layer 8

captsneeze ,

You’ll sometimes hear IT people use “Layer 8 problem” which is a reference to the OSI networking model. The model has 7 layers. It starts at layer-1, the physical layer (the literal wires that the signals flow through), and ends with layer-7, the application later (things like http, ftp, etc.).

“Layer-8” isn’t technically part of the OSI model, but unofficially it refers to the human layer, or the user. When IT people are troubleshooting an issue, trying to identify where in the model the issue is happening, “layer-8” is a tongue-in-cheek way of saying “there isn’t an actual problem… the person is the problem”.

Another good one is the “ID10T” error (read as “I-D-ten-T”), which looks a lot like “IDIOT” when written down. It means the same thing.

zygo_histo_morpheus ,

I’d say that stuff like this happens less often on windows, but it’s also worse when it does because you have fewer resources to fix problems when you do run into them

ThePac ,

How the fuck does anybody have trouble running Windows these days?

mwguy ,

Some OEM’s really fuck up Windows, leaving it in a practically unusable state almost out of the box with the amount of shitware that’s on there.

Additionally, for Windows, some hardware vendors do a poor job of ensuring working drivers get installed by default. Sometimes the wrong, but similar driver gets installed by Windows on a fresh install and it can really bork things up. The same can happen on Linux, but it’s easier to ignore a faulty driver at boot time with Grub and make sure the right one gets loaded. And truthfully I haven’t had to do that since like 2005.

MrSilkworm ,
@MrSilkworm@lemmy.world avatar

AtlasOS is your solution

mwguy ,

Well, no. A fresh Linux install is my solution.

RichardButt89 ,

OP said this was a home build. Should be dead simple with a clean install.

mwguy ,

Should be, but in the past I’ve seen Windows update, misidentify hardware and try to install the incorrect driver for it (last time I saw it was with a graphics card too). That could certainly cause some issues.

terry_tibbs ,

Windows 10 LTSC is the way to go if you absolutely have to use Windows, I’d love to use Linux on my gaming rig but Assetto Corsa + my simracing hardware doesn’t play nice at all.

Pringles ,

I’m upvoting this because it’s hilarious, but on a serious note, installing windows is so easy my granny could do it.

The only thing, and I assume that’s where you struggled, is sometimes the formatting of the hd doesn’t want to work. In that case, a quick google will help you out, but also just format it quickly with diskpart and continue the installation.

zipzoopaboop ,

It’s weird seeing niche comment areas with sensible real experience comments

Redex68 ,

This person is either cursed or idk what they were trying to do. Installing Windows literally couldn’t be easier, you don’t even need to think about partitions, you can just let it create them itself.

I reinstall Windows every cca. 6 months to clear all the bloat i pick up, it’s really not that hard.

szczuroarturo ,

I honestly found instaling Linux to be way easier than Windows, also suprisingly nvidia graphic card was easier to set up on Linux rather than Windows, beacuse pop os(And other sensible distros) Just bundle them with the os so it worked out of the box .

Caitlynn ,
@Caitlynn@feddit.de avatar

Couldn’t agree more

gortbrown ,

Yeah, I’ve had issues with it too! I installed the latest Windows 10 on my mom’s laptop after replacing the hard drive with an ssd, and it took me way longer than it should have to do something as simple as move files from the old hard drive to the new one! And a week later, she calls me with issues related to the auto backup OneDrive thing, and I had to troubleshoot that from 2.5 hours away. If she didn’t need Photoshop and Lightroom, I would have installed some sort of Windows-similar Linux distro for her. I also have had so many issues with Windows 11 for school that I just stopped using it on bare metal and just have a VM for the one program I need for my CS classes.

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