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
Never used cli to install windows in the 25 years I have been dealing with it. I have used dism to remove as much unnecessary crap as I can before installing it though. It only half works anyway since the next feature release reinstalls most of what you remove anyway. These days I just use Rufus to make a bookable USB since it will remove all the requirements and other things by just checking them off as options. GUI is fine after that.
Some of the many ways to bypass making a Microsoft account required hitting the shell in the installer for a moment, but the example screenshot looks more like someone removing shit post-install.
The short guide to not performing CBT with Windows is:
- Grab install media for Pro or LTSC (Pro is better if you aren’t a turbo-nerd willing to troubleshoot more)
- Strip out the versions you aren’t installing from the install media (forget the tool for this, probably dism)
- Install updates to the install media so you aren’t stuck with it updating for a day post-install (forget the tool for this part too, sorry)
- Strip out bloat and unneeded shit (such as onedrive) using DISM
- Install using whatever the current workaround is to not have to make a Microsoft account
- Keep the damn thing offline, adjust settings, configure GPO, use powershell to remove anything more you want out, etc to your desires
- Notably: Disable “reccomendations” in the various spots, those are ads. Set updates to be delayed considerably and to not force restart until a week after first notification (you can no longer disable this entirely). Disable web search from the start menu/search bar.
- Maybe move a few “cleaning/configuring” tools over via USB and run them
- Use MASgrave to spoof a license you horrible degenerate
- Keep detailed notes of every step you do, as sometimes games amd shit will have dumbass dependencies on system parts that they don’t expect you to remove
First read that as “Windows 20”
heyyy i’m the 900th upvote
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.
too many variables. what are you hoping to show? what’s pathetically hard?
För first part, its pathetically hard to find the directory and more over out a program shortcut so that it can immediately start at computer start in Linux because the directory is not existent and there is no exe shortcut equivalent in Linux to out in that directory
Secondly if you connect an HDD , it’s instantly available to copy and to read FROM any and all apps in windows.this is very very hard in Linux , I connected externe HDD but I had do “mounting” to use it in media manager to even say save media here.
Apart from being trivial to these things in windows, there is some firing telling how to do it on their own distro usi g Terminal. I mean come on, who want to use terminal in 2026 as a regular user and for regular use.
Admit it Linux bros; Linux sux. Most celebrated- 4% market share for Linux os - is hardly any measure of usefulness and I doubt it will go beyond measly 5-7%. Until Linux stops , fix problems by Terminal, and be actually usefull.
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
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.
Yes windows can be installed easily, but it’ll require a Microsoft login to do it- this meme is made for people who don’t want that.
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).
When Ubuntu came along, I could not understand the fuss about it being easy to install… It seemed no easier than other distros years prior. Yes, 2004 04 (iirc~ or was it 10?), ubuntu’s easy to install… so are half a dozen others at the time, for years. Twas just marketing. If only we could have got the word out already before then… or even now… still people seem to think it was hard back then. It wasnt. A monkey pushing the button could install it. Did not have to install Arch, Gentoo, or LFS, the hard way. Could install debian, slackware [Edit: oh wait, slackware woulda been curses tui], redhat, suse, or whatever even easier respins (ubuntu wasnt the first debian respin). Some people still think it’s hard now. It’s not. It has not been difficult all this millennium so far. Oh to let other people have that awakening moment, have it be revolutionary in their eyes, still today, dispelling their notions of how life has to be, into how life can be. :)
I think Linux has progressed a lot since 2005. It’s mostly idiot proof these days - it asks about language/keyboard/timezone/wifi and unless you ask for an advanced install (to partition a hard drive or whatever) it just installs.
I don’t think installing Windows is any harder but it may stop to ask for a registration key. Windows also prefers to connect to wifi during installation to fetch patches whereas Linux tends to do it after the fact.
Seemed idiot proof already a couple years before 2005 in my experience. I hear for years prior already too. Rumours of Linux’s difficulty have been grossly exaggerated, like in the OP image.
… And reading the EULA for Windows may be non-idiot preventative. But who ever reads what that says. … I did, when I had read the GNU GPL. The difference… it’s worth the read… to experience that vivid constrast awareness, with one offering freedom, the other with it’s deal with the devil clause, that they can change the agreement after they make it, and do all manner of nasty to you. GPL’s easier to read only a few thousand words, compared to the proprietary license etc that are probably something like thousands of pages in their entirety. The BSD licenses are an even easier read. The WTFPL even shorter yet. Freedom’s brevity not trying to hide something nasty in either the license nor the software… unlike the scary stuff one can find hidden in proprietary software. ~ Anyhoo, I’ll stop rambling on your comment. It just sprang to mind.
It’s a meme, Karen.
Unless windows hates your computer then it’s powershell and regedit for you!
Ugh. That reminds me of the Microsoft admin fanboys where I worked, dissing Linux because its all command lines, while saying that MS inventing PowerShell was a stroke of genius making their lives easier.
I had a coworker, about 30 years old… Who taught computer science at a college prior to us working together… Who said to me “Command line? That stuffs ancient, man.”
Just in case you were thinking about spending money on college tuition to learn computer science…
If an ancedote has someone questioning if they should go to college for computer science, they should definitely not be going to college for any degree.
Meanwhile in Finland my first exposure to a Unix shell was in an introductory IT course in uni, and that inspired me to switch to Linux four years ago. Without all of that I would have never got my current internship where 90% of my work is in the terminal.
CAN CONFIRM LMAOOOO
Don’t pay back your loans, it’s all a scam hahaha
Tell him a wrist brace helps with mouse-induced RSI when it flares up.
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.
All windows after 7 was just a downward spiral of shittiness.
All after win 2000 was complete shit.
Even 2000, it was the roller coaster starting its decent, worsening after NT. Barely indistinguishable, but there were clues, the trajectory had started to tip down.
I think it was Windows 2000 I had to install on a laptop for someone…
This was 20+ years ago, so I dont remember the details…but i think there was like 11-13 floppies for the install that I had at the time? All of them OEM floppies… I think from microsoft, but maybe from the laptop OEM?.. and every time I ran the installer another disk would fail, and i’d have to go online and find that disk image and burn it to a replacement floppy. It was the worst OS install experience of my entire life, lol. I think by the time I was done I had replaced all but the first oem disk.
You say so yet 10 is fast, convienient and easy to use. Wouldn’t call it better than 7, but it was good.
Nah, 10 is the primordial ooze from which all the current vile evil coming out of microsoft was formed.
7 was faster, more convenient, less in your way, and just overall a superior product. No microsoft OS has even equaled what 7 was, much less be superior to it.
Straight up said I wouldn’t call 10 better than 7. So what’s your point? 10 is, overall, good OS. Not best, not great, good.
Straight up said I wouldn’t call 10 better than 7. So what’s your point?
10 is the primordial ooze from which all the current vile evil coming out of microsoft was formed.
Agree to disagree. 10 is fast, reliable and convienient. I agree it served as a sandbox for all the shit they crammed into 12, but it doesn’t change anything.
Still would prefer 7. Kinda loved 7.
fast, convenient and easy to use
I wonder how it feels compared to AntiX Linux.
[Or VoidLinux with any Window Manager. ~ for different strokes a little further into the FOSS adventure.]
I feel like the very moment we go for any linux aimed at being lightweight, windows loses due to cramming cramming as much compatibility and tools as is possible inside.
…
…and also you got me intrested in AntiX. I have old laptop that struggles even with Debian…wonder if that would work on it.
AntiX is a great choice for lightweight and easy.
However, I find even the most fully-loaded out-of-the-box distros crammed with everything including the kitchen sink are still lighter to run than windows.
But if even modern AntiX is too much for some ancientware, there are weirder niches of tiny & fast, like tinycore, slitaz, puppy (or forks of puppy), deli and damnsmalllinux (old versions especially), and others for old computers
Even debian (or (better yet) devuan) could work well on wimpy hardware with a clever choice of a lightweight DE/WM, like LXDE or IceWM… (but if you opt for IceWM, you may as well stick with AntiX, where it has IceWM already well configured). Don’t have to stick with the old heavy bloaters like XFCE (not as light as promoted), GNOME, KDE, etc.
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.
So if you’re correct with that, that NewNewAugustEast and I find it intolerably bad means we must exist outside the universe?
Is this what happens… to the perception of those who remained with windows, those who escaped to FOSS, apparently just ceased to exist?
Nothing of the sort, just said it based on the general usage, for all the flaws it had, It was, undeniably a very popular and used piece of software.
At the time of its peak, it was not universally bashed against like Windows ME, 8 or Vista. It was well received like windows 95, 7 and10
Oh, sorry. I must have had a dyslexic moment and misread:
considered universally
as
“universally considered”
Np, have a good one
Security was awful, multi user wasn’t, windows started the Microsoft id program with it, they lied about removing programs with an apllication that only hid them, they tied music downloads to explorer only, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
It was a nasty looking mess, got hacked in 10 minutes if you put it on the internet until service pack 3, and in person it wouldn’t last 3 minutes.
That’s leaving out the crazy licensing programs they introduced.
It was really, really bad. But since a lot of people knew nothing before it, they look back at it with rose colored glasses. It was truly garbage.
Yes it had very bad flaws, which didn’t discourage its wide range of use. One can say it’s not objectively good, but it’s subjectively not bad.
As I answered below, it was part of the “good guys” versions of windows, not receive popular backlash like windows ME, 8 and 11
Me too!
XP was what sent me running looking for an alternative. Nearly landed on IRIX, until I found the GNU GPL to read.
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?
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.
Look.
I get your point, but I still haven’t gotten over the trauma from the time I installed openSUSE on my desktop as a teenager because Windows Vista had gotten too slow for me and I’d seen some people talking about Linux online.
Somehow, the bug I ended up encountering on this distro was the worst thing imaginable: the inability to download anything, ever again. So even when I found solutions for it on obscure forums… I was unable to download any tools to actually use to rectify this problem.
My computer was a brick for 3 years.
This was a long time ago, and I’ve graduated with a degree in CompSci since then. However, I’ll never forget the one Linux/Unix course I took, where the final was to blindly install a Linux OS onto the machine.
I had issues with 5/6 of them.
I remember briefly asking the professor for guidance, worried I was gonna fail… and he confessed to me that he’d never actually done it before, so he didn’t really understand why they weren’t working.
The professor of the university level course.
So yeah, my days of tinkering with Linux are over. I’m happy for you, and Imma let you finish, but Linux is the most nightmarish OS for a layman user of all time lol
So you couldn’t find anyone to download those tools for you? Sounds like Linux wasn’t the problem in this scenario
Hell, just go to the library. Or since they were a student in cs, download it from the school computer.
on obscure forums like youtube?
seriously, I can’t imagine how could that happen. it sounds like you could log in to the desktop, probably the browser was working too.
Yeah I can’t imagine what he’s talking about, also why he couldn’t just boot from the Windows disc and reinstall Windows
Uhhh. No.
Is this like the time that travel journalist was in Hungary, saw 1 cow, that happened to be white, then wrote “all the cows in Hungary are white”?
Over 20 years ago, I installed linux with a gui (suse, as easy as ubuntu to install, before ubuntu), and still could. At the same time, could also install Gentoo, and still do. Free to choose how to install linux, any of many ways, gui or not, then as now.
… Was this made by a windows user, and windows only gives you one way, and they thought that’s what it was like with Free Software too?
Think you’re taking this too seriously.
To the average Joe, yeah, Windows is easier to install than ever. But to anyone with a passing interest in the OS has needed to do more and more work just to keep the OS recognizably sane vs the mess it has become.
Contrast that to Linux, which has stayed recognizably sane or even getting better.
Think you’re taking this too seriously.
Welcome to Linux. You’ll hate it here.
Hell, I looked at installing Slackware again a few months back. I think I’ve said enough.
Coincidentally, I actually did install Slackware as one of my first distros some 20 years ago. I actually had one of those old Linux for Dummies books, which made the experience close to painless.
Sadly, the call of PC gaming pulled me back to windows for a while. But with Steam, and more specifically Proton, now those calls are coming from inside the house.
With respins, there are probably at least a few ways to install Slackware with a gui rather than its blue tui. ~ Heck, even a variety of ways to install Slackware itself (~ do they have a gui method too? ~ It’s been a few years since I explored Slackware.)
Slackware has a gui, but it’s not a simple “click here to install” type. It has you creating your own partition table, with all the options.
Back in the day Slackware prided themselves on the fact that a woodpecker mashing ‘enter’ would be able to install the distro.
I installed my first linux using graphical installer over 25 years ago
i installed mandrake in 2004. It came with a nice graphical installer.
Same with Opensuse
3 out of 4 panels should be a picture where the operating system cant find the proper drivers
Which was the last version of Windows where that was an issue?
Real lmao
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.
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.
Isn’t that a bit more than 20 years ago?
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 skipped 2000, but I installed XP a lot of times and I never had to insert a floppy. IDE and SATA drivers were preloaded, maybe you had some really weird storage system?
It was probably a combination of using the motherboard RAID and AMD motherboards to boot.
Microsoft also updated their Windows XP install disk a few times over the years. If you were installing from an original launch disk from 2001 on a PC with 2006 hardware it was quite a different experience than with a disk that already had SP3 and a bunch of newer drivers.
20 years ago you needed to search the web and download all the drivers AFTER the windows install then install all of those.
Also, Green on Black is subjectively better than White on Blue.
