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
Linux mint is my distro for now and a good while! I cannot complain (except for a few very minor things).
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!
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
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).
Unless windows hates your computer then it’s powershell and regedit for you!
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.)
It’s a meme, Karen.
Now both sides meet in the middle: GUI for setup, terminal for fixing the one thing that breaks.
Don’t forget to remove the french language pack
For real!
No :<
Non !
heyyy i’m the 900th upvote
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.
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.
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.
All after win 2000 was complete shit.
Is there any coke alternative that’s almost as good and in some regard better, but for free?
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.
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 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.
to be fair, some linux forums still have toxic members, and some others while probably not toxic, are still a bit harsh with people
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.
3 out of 4 panels should be a picture where the operating system cant find the proper drivers
Real lmao
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
Lots of remarks here on Linux GUI, but Windows installations of XP and 2000 all started in DOS with a blue background and yellow progress bar…
The installing Windows 20 years ago panel is missing the bit where you have to push F6 and have a floppy disk handy with the drivers for your storage device. Yes, an actual floppy disk. Ditto for all the other drivers (video, sound, network, etc.) that you usually had to install once you were booted into the OS.
May I remind you that 20 years ago was actually 2005? What you are referring to was more like 30 years ago.
30 years ago, Windows 95/98 (not sure about things like NT4) would just fall back to going through the BIOS to access the disk. It was slow, but it worked, and you could install Windows and then install your storage drivers later. Needing to push F6 and install your storage drivers during the install was a Windows 2000/XP thing.
I think with cheaper consumer desktops using IDE hard drives, that worked out of the box, but some more exotic storage configurations (SCSI, anything to do with RAID) were a little bit harder to get going.
20 years ago you needed to search the web and download all the drivers AFTER the windows install then install all of those.
Isn’t that a bit more than 20 years ago?
A realistic memory (set to music) of Windows technologies
Now do adding program to startup directory on atleast 5 windows modern version from xp to today to same with 5 different distros.
Also show the screen after attaching external HDD and trying to use it in ANY 5 softwares in windows xp and any 5 softwares on different Linux distros . Pathetically hard is word that comes wit mind.
Installing windows for most of that time hasn’t been a thing people do. They bought a computer and it had the internets (the picture with the blue e) and the word (the picture with the paper and a W) and that was pretty much them sorted. We’re weird for knowing the difference and that’s not a bad thing to be.
Installing windows for most of that time hasn’t been a thing people do
I remember reinstalling win95 almost daily because how it could break with just a power loss(which happened regularly to me then).
But then I remembered 20 years ago is when winxp was already 4 years old.
