From personal experience, it can be overwhelming even for a seasoned Linux user.
Knowing the difference of Debian, Fedora and Arch based distros. Should I go for Linux Mint, Bazzite or Endeavor? Should I go for a immutable system or not? What package manager is used? What’s a flatpak?
One real example I encountered was that I was trying to install Pop OS on my new PC. Turns out after some trial and error that Pop OS uses an old Linux kernel that doesn’t support my new AMD graphics card. I ended up installing Endeavor instead, despite my not so good experience with using Arch before. Luckily Endeavor has been a great experience so far.
With Windows there’s really only one choice for the typical home consumer.
Windows Home, Windows Pro, Windows Pro for workstations, Windows Education, Windows Pro Education, Windows Enterprise, Windows Enterprise LTSC, Windows S mode, Windows IoT
And there are some other variations for different regions and support levels.
Do you know which one does what? Because I only vaguely do.
Windows isn’t a single thing either. It just comes preinstalled. Most people have never installed an OS, not windows nor linux.
I was curious, so I checked the laptop offers in our local shop aggregator (arukereso.hu)
Operating system Number
Windows 10 Home 8
Windows 11 Home 677
Windows 10 Pro 23
Windows 11 Pro 1661
Windows 11 S 21
Linux 74
macOS 141
Chrome OS 5
FreeDOS 506
Without OS 679
No one who doesn’t know anything about installing windows is gonna buy a laptop without os or with freedos, so you can deduct those too.
The real choice for probably 99% of consumers is between windows and mac.
The point was that end users extremely rarely need to worry about what windows flavour they need. The laptop already comes pre-installed with the correct flavour OS for that laptop.
I agree, if not by mistake the cheaper FreeDOS, buyers will select the windows preinstall I presume. I was checking if all machines come with windows. Clearly not.
With what frequency they choose what offering, is a harder question to answer and would give a different distribution. MacOS would be higher, and without os and FreeDOS close to zero.
Aren’t all these versions just the same product with different features locked behind payment options? It’s very different from Linux, where every layer has multiple alternatives written by different authors that can behave very differently.
From personal experience, it can be overwhelming even for a seasoned Linux user.
Knowing the difference of Debian, Fedora and Arch based distros. Should I go for Linux Mint, Bazzite or Endeavor? Should I go for a immutable system or not? What package manager is used? What’s a flatpak?
One real example I encountered was that I was trying to install Pop OS on my new PC. Turns out after some trial and error that Pop OS uses an old Linux kernel that doesn’t support my new AMD graphics card. I ended up installing Endeavor instead, despite my not so good experience with using Arch before. Luckily Endeavor has been a great experience so far.
With Windows there’s really only one choice for the typical home consumer.
Windows Home, Windows Pro, Windows Pro for workstations, Windows Education, Windows Pro Education, Windows Enterprise, Windows Enterprise LTSC, Windows S mode, Windows IoT
And there are some other variations for different regions and support levels.
Do you know which one does what? Because I only vaguely do.
Windows isn’t a single thing either. It just comes preinstalled. Most people have never installed an OS, not windows nor linux.
All machines come with windows pre-installed, no one ever needs to worry about different flavours unless you work in IT and manage windows devices.
I haven’t had to worry about which windows to get since windows 98.
Fyi, I’m on Linux mint now.
Isn’t that what I’m saying? Windows isn’t prevalent because there is one edition of it, but because it’s the default.
Apparently this is downvote worthy information?
I was curious, so I checked the laptop offers in our local shop aggregator (arukereso.hu)
2390 / 3795 = 62% windows
No one who doesn’t know anything about installing windows is gonna buy a laptop without os or with freedos, so you can deduct those too.
The real choice for probably 99% of consumers is between windows and mac.
The point was that end users extremely rarely need to worry about what windows flavour they need. The laptop already comes pre-installed with the correct flavour OS for that laptop.
I agree, if not by mistake the cheaper FreeDOS, buyers will select the windows preinstall I presume. I was checking if all machines come with windows. Clearly not.
With what frequency they choose what offering, is a harder question to answer and would give a different distribution. MacOS would be higher, and without os and FreeDOS close to zero.
Are you a home user? Choose the home edition. Easy.
“What do you mean home user? I’m a computer user.”
You’re right, it doesn’t matter.
Choose the home edition. Easy.
Aren’t all these versions just the same product with different features locked behind payment options? It’s very different from Linux, where every layer has multiple alternatives written by different authors that can behave very differently.