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
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
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.
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.Real
i installed mandrake in 2004. It came with a nice graphical installer.
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…
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
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.
A realistic memory (set to music) of Windows technologies
Isn’t that a bit more than 20 years ago?
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.
I am new to linux Mint and mullvad had an update ready, so i clicked update. It just stayed downloading on 0% for like 5 minutes, so i remembered this ISN’T WINDOWS. So i opened terminal and sudo apt upgrade and Mullvad was updated and new version installed.
It’s weird how windows makes things looks easy, but then they don’t work well. Linux makes things look difficult, but it they work well.
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…
CAN CONFIRM LMAOOOO
Don’t pay back your loans, it’s all a scam hahaha
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.
No, they definitely should.
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.
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.)
This meme would be better if it were:
left column: 20 years ago
right column: todayBoth work because the reversal is part of the point. I didn’t find it difficult to read, so it’s subjectively legible.
My favourite part of the Linux installation process is when it automatically places itself before windows in the grub menu boot order
Inb4 don’t dual boot: I occasionally need to for work
Better than Windows just straight up overwriting your Linux boot partition on an update.
Just boot partition?
I once installed Linux Mint by shrinking Windows 10 partition in Linux against the recommendations. On first Windows boot it seemed fine, except that C: was still showing the old size.
On next Windows reboot it got annihilated with “Repairing drive C:”.I wouldn’t blame Windows for this one. In this case, this is likely because the Windows partition table wasn’t updated when you changed your C: partition, so Windows legitimately thought there was filesystem corruption because the size didn’t match its partition table.
You should always used the currently installed OS to free up space first, so it’s aware of the change. Then run the installer and install to the free space you made.
Or better yet, use separate physical drives for different OSes.
Problem is, Linux Mint installer says nothing about that as far as I recall, and just offers a convenient slider to allocate space between Windows and Linux.
And that was my first computer. Yeah, I am relatively new to computers.
But hey, I only lasted with Windows for 2 days. In Windows 10 I couldn’t even wrap my head around when to use Control Panel and when settings, because look, mature OS, we have Settings 1 and Settings 2.
In comparison, Linux Mint 20 MATE was far simpler, so having really used neither, I went with the easier one. However, that doesn’t mean I had any idea what I was doing. I didn’t even understand the concept of partitions.
Just imagine a total newbie.
“Where is the file stored?”
“On… the computer…?”
One of the many reasons I stopped dual booting decades ago.
Does windows still do this shit? Lol
That really only happens if you use the same drive for both installs, though
“It only really happens if you have a common setup”
You say that as if it’s an excuse. No program should ever overwrite an existing filesystem without explicit consent from the user.
During my distro hopping phase of 2011, I tried out a distro called IP Fire. It wiped out my whole drive on boot.
I still have that laptop, hoping one day I’ll retrieve that data.
That is a shitty design and for an outfit a big as Microsoft, I feel that it is intentional
What is this con-cent you speak of? Some kind of… negative currency? A bad smell?
- Microsoft, allegedly
Overwrite existing filesystem?
- Yes
- Later
Dual booting is perfectly fine. Just try to not use the windows boot partition for both OS or Windows will occasionally “lose” the Linux entry… “Oops” I guess.
If Linux is on its own drive, or at least has it’s own uefi partition, it’s just fine and dandy. Just chain load windows from it and there’s basically nothing that can break.
Linux: Signature look of superiority
That’s only because L comes before W alphabetically tho.
