I thought I’d chuck windows on my gaming laptop an Acer nitro 5 from last year, to see how it’s going do some bits I can’t on Linux VR, certain multiplayer games etc.
What a disaster! I’ve spent the whole day brute forcing drivers and generally dicking about trying to get my setup sorted.
Upon installation, Wi-Fi drivers don’t exist, so you cannot use the internet while installing if you’re on Wi-Fi. Mint’s had this since what 2006? But that’s cool, Cortana is here to chat away and not understand any requests. Once finally in the OS after 20 questions that could be considered harassment if it was a person, nothing was ready to go. Every single driver needed sourcing and installing.
People have the cheek to complain about Linux’s Nvidia install, literally two clicks on most distros if it isn’t already baked in. Go to website find driver, download click click click agree click wait more software click click wait.
Plug in my sound card OK it’s a bit old now UA-25 but nothing happens…hmm find obscure video partially install a driver from Vista then cancel the installation program so you can side load a driver from 8,1 but wait there’s more disable core isolation to allow the driver to work reboot into a now slightly more compromised OS.
OK plug in wheel again not new stuff G25 oh it works cool. Oh, no H-shifter OK download driver. “Can’t find device, ensure it’s plugged in”. Windows decided it knew better, downloaded its own driver that blocks the official one and loads a steering wheel as a gamepad…GG cool cool.
I do not understand why we still have this image that Windows is noob friendly, it’s such a convoluted obfuscated process to do anything. It does worse than nothing, it thinks it’s smart enough to carry out tasks on the user behalf and just bork it.
All of these issues are because I don’t have the new shiny things, but it really highlighted why I love Linux now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to install a distro and play on my 20-year-old peripherals
Never trust a rant from a person that can’t install Windows.
Does installing XP count? I might tolerate that.
Can’t bring myself to install the latest few and select “no, do not spy on me” 7 thousand times. They will spy somehow as it’s proprietary - god knows what it’s actually doing.
Ever tried Ameliorated Project? You might be in for a surprise, if you wanted a usable, debloated and despywared Windows 10/11 on the side. Windows is useful, no matter if you use Linux as main.
Lol right? Windows is beyond simple these days.
14 days ago I tested Ubuntu. I couldn’t access my Wifi. The network was visible, but it refused to accept the password. (Yes, I quintuple-checked that I entered it right.) When I tried Linux Mint, it worked on the first try.
Moral of the story: Drivers are hit-and-miss on Linux, too.
That reminds me of an issue I had when I was installing Mint. I tried out a live boot first and everything seemed to work except there was no internet connection. Turns out my WiFi card needs a proprietary driver, but no big deal it installed easily enough just from the boot disk. Internet’s working, all looks good, so I go ahead and install Mint proper, remove the live boot usb, start the system, and savour that new Minty smell. But hang on, there’s no WiFi, I forgot to install the driver! Should be an easy enough fix though, it wasn’t hard last time.
So I go to install the driver and the first thing it says is that it needs the boot disk to get the driver. That makes total sense, can’t install something you don’t have! I plug in the usb again and now it should all be plain sailing, after all it’s just installing a driver that worked 20 minutes ago, right? Sadly no, that would be too easy; for some reason now it’s missing dependencies! Or something along those lines anyway, I forget exactly. But can’t it just install those from the boot disk? Well apparently not, it instead tries to connect to the internet to download them. This obviously fails since I don’t have a WiFi connection, which is why I’m installing the driver in the first place. All I get is a popup saying it can’t install some stuff because there’s no internet connection, fix that to get your internet connection. This is the point where face meets palm. I’m sure there’s some fiddly “proper” way to work around that but the thing is I’m incredibly lazy so I’ll just take the quick option instead. I plug in my phone and use a tethered connection. I run the install again and it finally goes through, at last the system is ready to use! It’s been mostly smooth sailing since then (though I did get annoyed enough at NTFS a couple of months ago that I just reformatted a data drive and wiped a ton of data I probably didn’t need).
Tl;dr: I had to tether to my phone for a minute. Traumatising!
Only moral I got from this was to never use Ubuntu lmao
all hail latest kernel modules, and akmod/dkms
Yes. There are no reasons to use Ubuntu nowadays. If you are on that track, skip to mint or mx linux.
casually puts on Fedora hat
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Hrm, but shouldn’t Linux Mint, being based on Ubuntu, have basically the same drivers?
That’s the point he is making really. Linux has issues that Linux enthusiasts refuse to acknowledge
Wi-Fi drivers don’t exist
They absolutely exist, but perhaps isn’t part of the installer.
Every single driver needed sourcing and installing.
Windows Update solves 95% of that automatically these days, as long as you have internet it will sort it out for you.
Plug in my sound card OK it’s a bit old now UA-25 but nothing happens.
This an external USB sound card from 2004, Roland has drivers for it working on Windows 98/ME/XP/2000/Vista/7/8/8.1 it is a 20 year old card, it awesome that it works on Linux, but you can’t blame Roland or Microsoft for not supporting a 20 year old device on the latest versions of the OS.
OK plug in wheel again not new stuff G25 oh it works cool. Oh, no H-shifter OK download driver. “Can’t find device, ensure it’s plugged in”. Windows decided it knew better, downloaded its own driver that blocks the official one and loads the steering wheel as a gamepad…GG cool cool.
You are whining about a modern OS not being compatible with a 18 year old steering wheel? You can’t expect indefinite hardware support for every random little device you happen to find, this like the sound card above is on you, not Microsoft.
I do not understand why we still have this image that Windows is noob friendly.
None of the above quoted examples are noob issues, this is like you are talking to a person in old english from the mideval times and being mad that a random guy in the middle of Londing in 2024 can’t understand you.
A noob would realize that their devices were too old and buy new devices.
Windows is noob friendly in that most software have a Windows version, most people use it, it is a known variable.
Like it or not, Windows is the defacto standard, and that means that is it safe in the perspective of a noob user.
I am saying all of this as an IT guy who has worked professionally with both Linux and Windows, I ran Linux as my main OS for a year or two, I LIKE Linux, but this is not fair critisism of Windows.
It’s concerning that you think “just buy new stuff” is reasonable and that Windows should only work on new hardware out of the box.
This is the reality of the computer industry, you don’t have to like it, but you have to expect it and work within the reality of the industry.
If OP had complained about how their 10 or 5 year old devices didn’t work, then they might have had a point, but 20 years old? That is unresonable.
You forget that he’s an “IT guy that has worked with Linux and Windows professionally”. Trust him, bro!
I am NOT going to post my business card or link my LinkedIn to win an internet argument, I have shown that OPs complaints are unresonable expectations, that was my goal.
You’re sure allowed to think you did, and sure as hell I don’t care about your alleged IT professional background. Just like you say that Windows is noob friendly, I say Windows is NOT friendly, period. The OP makes a great case on yet another reason why Windows is complete and utter crap, and I’m an IT guy that has worked with Linux and Windows professionally. I HATE Windows. I’m not sending my business card either, and I know better than to have a LinkedIn profile. That’s hould be enough to tell us apart.
I have been in IT since the mid 90s and in my experience every OS can be a PITA to install. Both Windows and Linux will install smoothly if the drivers for your network, raid controller and mobo components are all supported. If not it is going to suck regardless of OS.
Windows reputation for noob friendliness, and linux’s unfriendliness, is mostly down to familiarity and that most users will never have to install their own OS and deal with problems mentioned in the post. Most will never even think about it because they dont even know what an OS is or that it can be replaced. If Windows gets fucked up they take it to a pro to fix or buy a replacement.
You have, so far, made the most logical address on this subject, out of any of the others, including myself. I am very biased against Windows, for reasons that may be irrelevant, and I’m also very vocal about it, so if I offended anyone, know that is not my intention, although I regularly come across as if it is. Having said that, I’m removing myself from this thread moving forward, just because I dont want to be part of any discord with myself or anyone else. Everyone should use what works best for them, which is why I’ll try to stay away from further “what is is best?” and similar discussions in the future, and will just keep to discussions that bring something positive or beneficial to the table. God bless you all guys, Jesus lives all of us, without exception. Enjoy.
Windows is still fucking ass though and it’s so bad that I can not respect the opinion of someone that claims they are an IT professional and don’t main Linux. Like what? And what does that even mean, that’s ridiculously broad, what do you do? I’m a network engineer and sysadmin.
Linux is objectively superior to Windows in almost every way. It has vastly superior workflows. It’s more customizable. It’s insanely more efficient. It’s more secure. I feel like I’m wading through 3ft of shit anytime I boot into Windows. Not to mention the ability to actually have ownership of your computer. And that’s just talking about the ways Linux is better. That’s not getting into why Windows is ass like… telemetry data and ads in the OS and configs reverting from updates and the dumbass way software is installed on it and how shit docker runs in it and I can go on and on. The workflows of Windows are actual dog ass and literally every single popular Linux DE has better workflows and customization.
If you in IT and use Windows for anything other than a gaming machine or something like Photoshop, then I don’t want you anywhere near my tech.
lol.
I’m going to have to place you under arrest, you just fucking murdered that guy. Down to the slammer with you.
you can’t blame Roland or Microsoft for not supporting a 20 year old device on the latest versions of the OS.
Why not?
You can’t expect indefinite hardware support for every random little device you happen to find, this like the sound card above is on you, not Microsoft.
Why not? Linux development is mostly volunteer, and these things are easily compatible with Linux. It seems like you can absolutely expect support for every device, it’s just that Microsoft isn’t willing to provide it.
None of the above quoted examples are noob issues, this is like you are talking to a person in old english from the mideval times and being mad that a random guy in the middle of Londing in 2024 can’t understand you.
Notice that you had to exaggerate a 20 year timespan into a 500 year timespan to make this analogy work?
Why not?
Because it is a paid OS and it’s developers are writing code for financial gain, if they are not being paid to write the code, it doesn’t get written.
Voulenteers write the code because they want or need to, if there are no drivers for a device in on Linux, you need to write it yourself.
Notice that you had to exaggarate a 20 year timespan into a 500 year timespan to make thisnanalogy work?
Yes, that was deliberate. Have you ever noticed how much faster technology develops compared to languages? That is why the analogy works.
The analogy doesn’t even work if we ignore the massive difference in time scale. Languages develop organically, they are not managed. Comparing a managed and developed system and a twenty year timespan to an organic language system over a five hundred year timespan is just ridiculous.
Because it is a paid OS and it’s developers are writing code for financial gain, if they are not being paid to write the code, it doesn’t get written.
They are being paid to write the code. Microsoft is just choosing which code they should write, and it doesn’t include any old devices because they want you to buy new devices.
It’s perfectly reasonable to expect compatibility, and lay blame when there isn’t any. Microsoft simply doesn’t provide it.
I disagree with you, but don’t have the energy to keep arguing, this argument has been going on for days, and I made my point back on day one.
Because it is a paid OS and it’s developers are writing code for financial gain,
No shit. But that only explains why Windows is bad. It doesn’t mean that Windows isn’t bad. We shouldn’t give Windows pity points just because poor Billy Gates is addicted to money.
Ridicolous. You act like this is the first person to realise Windows is jank. How many USB steering wheels have you bought during your lifetime?
None, I was gifted a Sidewinder Forcefeedback steering wheel by my dad when I was 8-9 something, but it used the old gameport.
I don’t see how this is relevant though…
Happy to see lemmy linux community not blindly hating windows and providing facts. Also you can use a package manager like choco to install apps from terminal so you dont have deal with clicking next.
Treating Windows unfairly in these kinds of comparisons is a disservice to Linux as it implies that Linux can’t win in a fair comparison.
Windows/Linux/MacOS are all best at different things and for different persons, let the best OS for the task and person win on a fair test
Treating Windows unfairly? Blindly hating Windows? Microsoft is a corporation designed to MAKE DOLLAZ SON. They aren’t your unfairly treated friend who wants to make sure you have an amazing gaming experience. They are part of a corporate duopoly. Meaning…dun dun dun - One of two shite options. I don’t include Linux in this because it is the exact opposite of this market dominance. It is a free market of choice - which you can choose to better by contributing code, monetarily, or promotional support.
Windows is actively user hostile, actively contributing to planned obsolecence, and overall an ad infested spyware pile of bloated inefficient garbage.
As an IT Professional you should have first hand experience of the waste that comes from technological churn.
Linux standing alone on it own merits… Yeah right. Linux standing up against hundreds of millions of dollars spent in PR, Advertising, and the business practice of embrace, extend, and extinguish. You want better shit? Be a part of a community instead of brainlessly buying a solution.
OP - I salute you and your 20 year old peripherals. At least you are creatively making something you have work rather than buying shit that causes more problems.
I will happily shill for the Linux project and any other open source project - for volunteers trying to make something they want to use.
I stopped reading when you become condescending and called him son.
Get over yourself.
Thanks for the post, interesting.
I do not understand why we still have this image that Windows is noob friendly, it’s such a convoluted obfuscated process to do anything.
Microsoft has been
blackmailingpushing computer hardware companies for a long time to have Windows bundled with computers. Your story has now enlightened me why they did so all these years :)Windows and MacOS are “noob-friendly” for those who use them for simple purposes and out-of-the-box. As soon as you want to do something more advanced, you’re back to googling and installing software from a variety of sources.
Many linux distros are like that too (others are just not noob-friendly at all), but centralized package management and documentation are nice.
I’m really glad to be away from registry editing, 50 app icons in the tray, and navigating my way through settings to control panel so I can actually fix my audio devices or network options.
I’m on Arch now, so I still have plenty of configuration and software, but I know the systems and choose explicitly which ones I use. If something isn’t working or is annoying, it’s my fault.
Drivers for desktops are pretty much a non-issue on Windows, in fact, most will be installed via the internet before you even boot the desktop for the first time.
Drivers for gaming laptops are a nightmare on Windows, and you’ll probably have to chase weird slow pages in the manufacturer’s website to perhaps find 4 packages that might contain the driver you want.
Or upu just download the ryzen or Intel softwsre/chipset drivers and it’s all sorted. Though for gaming laptops chasing down means going to the manufacturer support site for that specific model…
Windows and Linux have opposite problems for starters with newer hardware better supported on Windows and old hardware supported on Linux. As Linux gets more popular, it will start to shine because if newer hardware becomes better supported, the experience will truly be that Linux just works and Windows needs drivers for done stuff.
The other big factor is that Windows is already installed. So, you don’t have to do anything or, at most, one or two things. Even if that one thing is hard, you are more likely to blame that one thing than Windows.
Finally, we have to acknowledge that your experience sounds atypical for Windows installs. Most of my hardware is easier to put Linux on than Windows but I doubt any of them would be that hard.
We also have to admit that Linux does not have drivers for everything while Windows basically does ( somewhere ). So, Linux can be the bigger bummer overall. Of course, this is in the x86-64 universe only. Linux has vastly better hardware support when you consider other platforms.
I often get shattered by windows users how hard it is to install Nvidia drivers or get it to work.
Like. Idk why they are like this or how I should tell them otherwise. But they will give me a response of their experience as proof of how hard it is.
I mean. Its even pteinstalled on some distros so wtf.
Actually, both Ubuntu and Mint didn’t have wifi drivers for my late-2014 Mac Mini (Intel based). I had to plugin ethernet so I could actually download the drivers. Also, the version of Windows you might have installed might have been older than your PC, so no drivers would naturally be in it (e.g. Win11 is already 2-3 years old).
Actually, both Ubuntu and Mint didn’t have wifi drivers for my late-2014 Mac Mini (Intel based).
It’s a Mac… the shittiest hardware in existence to try and install anything else but OSX. Until asahi linux, there was no concerted and funded effort to make linux run on the mac.
No, it’s not the shittiest hardware in existence. The wifi in question was just Broadcomm, not Apple. The Apple-based Macs are just PCs, with a modified UEFI firmware, nothing else. Only the Silicon-based ones are more Apple-based.
No, it’s not the shittiest hardware in existence.
Here’s there full quote for you
the shittiest hardware in existence to try and install anything else but OSX
Also claiming macs are “just PCs with modified UEFI firmware” is hilarious. If that were the case, installing other operating systems would be a breeze like on other laptops. We both know it’s not.
Installing an operating system is a process that’s full of potential to be very painful no matter what the operating system is. All 3 major operating systems do their best to make it as painless as possible, but if you stray from the happy path, it requires technical knowledge to fix that most people don’t have. So the bottom line is that the OS which can make deals with manufacturers to pre install their OS with confirmed working drivers will seem more user friendly than the OS you have to install yourself. If you gift a noob a System 76 laptop and ask them to install Windows on it, they’re gonna balk at you the same ways as they would if it’s the reverse.
Well said
Don’t get your Linux packages from random websites. That’s bad practice at best
If you’re having issues with VR on Linux, I might be able to help you with that, as I’m using Linux to play VR. Took some time to figure everything out but it’s working great for me now. Only important thing is what VR headset you have.
Huh? I’m all for d***riding on Linux but this is a weird case. I’ve not had a single issue with windows on gaming laptops even across multiple reinstalls. They’re all automatically installed soon after you boot. Just need to wait through a few updates.
Upon installation, Wi-Fi drivers don’t exist, so you cannot use the internet while installing if you’re on Wi-Fi.
This is a good thing with modern Windows. You don’t want it online while it’s installing, you want to install, lock things down a bit and then connect.
Unless you’re using one of the more recent Win11 builds, where you won’t be able to finish OOBE without an internet connection unless you had the foresight to patch the installer beforehand.
Yeah I mean I downgrade new computers to Windows 10 Enterprise and
patchauthenticate with MAS. I tried using Windows 11, but the taskbar pissed me off too much - I want separate tabs starting from the left, not combined, and everything always showing in the notification area. I was going to put up with the tab thing but having to manually set every single notification icon to not hide itself away was just a dealbreaker. I want to know what’s running, so I know to kill it.
Every single driver needed sourcing and installing.
Windows update on W11 will pull basically everything automatically, with the exception of some older proprietary hardware (a lot of gaming and sound devices have really screwed up drivers for example).
Drivers are extremely hit or miss on Linux too especially for anything new, and manually installing some driver is incredibly frustrating since you can’t just run an exe and be done.
People have the cheek to complain about Linux’s Nvidia install, literally two clicks on most distros if it isn’t already baked in. Go to website find driver, download click click click agree click wait more software click click wait.
It’s the same on windows, go to nvidia website and download the driver and install.
The last part you mention is not a comparison how it is better but rather to put the idea away that its hard to install nvidia drivers on Linux
