This image was created by /u/[email protected] 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
i installed mandrake in 2004. It came with a nice graphical installer.
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.
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.
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.
This meme would be better if it were:
left column: 20 years ago right column: today
Both work because the reversal is part of the point. I didn’t find it difficult to read, so it’s subjectively legible.
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.
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.
20 years ago it was way easier to install Linux from a boot disk (like ubuntu or suse) than windows from scratch. Sometimes XP didn’t have the necessary drives and you’d need to find bootable drivers and load them from a floppy disk
It was even easier to install OSx86 on my laptop than windows vista from scratch in 2007
Maybe this is one of those thinking that 20 years ago was the 90s
Yeah in 2005 every major distro had a decent clean gui installer. I recall at the time using fedora. Then Ubuntu a few years later.
But god help you if you needed wifi drivers.
Even in the 90s Redhat had a decent installer.
I guess you’re right in the sense that neither could play audio off drivers packaged with install media in that era.
Well that screenshot was accurate for Gentoo circa 2005, it’s just the worst choice for ease of install, with Linux graphical installs provided by suse, mandrake, and redhat from the 90s.
Fair point could be made that the out of box experience was sorely lacking and you pretty much had to configure;make install most software you actually wanted…
2005… could have had Sabayon Linux. Easy way to install gentoo with a gui installer. So even then. [Initial release 28 November 2005]. Maybe even other convenient gentoo respins before that.
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.
One of the many reasons I stopped dual booting decades ago.
Does windows still do this shit? Lol
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…?”Fair enough, though Linux Mint also didn’t really know for sure what that partition was (other than assuming Windows because it was probably NTFS).
Disk partitioning is always a risk if you don’t know what you’re doing (and sometimes even when you do) which is why it’s always good to have backups!
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.
SUsE Linux had a nice GUI installer in 2005.
Caldera had a GUI installer in 1998…
I never used Caldera, but holy hell the font and design of this installer brings back so many memories.
And at least a couple years before that too, when I started with it as a windows refugee.
I installed my first linux using graphical installer over 25 years ago
windows xp WAS NOT 20 years ago
24 years ago! Don’t forget to schedule your colonoscopy.
October 25, 2001
Don’t schedule a colonoscopy unless you have symptoms of a GI disorder, or unexplained weight loss. The evidence does not support non-targeted screening programs.
This is bullshit lmao
How so?
What should be my default “Remember that you’re getting old!” helpful tip now, then?
Check your linkin park cds for disc rot.
Ugh yeah. I’ve been slowly backing up my wife’s, my parents’, and my own music CDs, and while it thankfully hasn’t gotten to many of them, it’s ate enough to be annoying.
Especially because my wife’s collection is mostly very specific performances of classical music and operas, which can make finding rips difficult when it’s not a particularly popular recording.
And the CD-Rs are almost all toast. I’m lucky the old family PC HDDs still have most of the old family photos, so I’ve been able to back them up. Can’t believe we used to think that backing up the pictures to disc would last longer.
Get your hearing/eyesight tested. Both can gradually get worse without people realising.
The only problem with those is that saying either of those could easily be misinterpreted as me suggesting that they had misheard/misread what I just said. Colonoscopy works because it is a bizarre enough suggestion that the joke will almost certainly land. But I definitely don’t want to encourage unneccessary medical procedures as a casual joke.
Or if you have a family history.
Or if you enjoy the idea…
Or that, and the colonoscopy is indicated by genetic testing.
Damn, I’ll have to look into that.
Your healthcare providers are perversely incentivised to recommend scoping because it’s an easy money maker, but for most people the discovery and removal of benign polyps is not worth the risks that come with an invasive procedure (IV stab to give sedation and pain relief, over sedation affecting tasks requiring concentration, complications due to the procedure itself).
Tbh, Installing Gentoo today is basically the same as it was in the first screenshot anyway :D But then again, most people would object to conflating the Gentoo installation to the “Linux installation”
And there be ways to install gentoo [based respins] with a gui, even 20 years ago.
I installed gentoo slightly over 20 years ago and I don’t remember a ui for it. I do remember compiling the Linux kernel
Okay, let me clarify that with an edit, adding [based respins].
E.g Sabayon’s first release was out 20 years ago.
I remember trying sabayon at the time and being disappointed enough to return to gentoo 😁
You also had to spend hours tweaking your install in any Linux distro. Now most work out of the box.
Windows on the other hand…
“had to”?
got to.
Also not Linux dependent, I’m sure windows users spend hours tweaking their installs to how they want it.
Not as much as we have to now.
I’m usually a Windows shield-bearer around these parts, because it’s not quite as much of a dumpster fire as people say (please for the love of god don’t debate me on this, I prefer Linux and have better things to do), but this is inarguably something Windows has gotten far far worse at. Out of the box experience (besides having to shove drivers into the install media) used to be a pretty definitive thing that Windows beat Linux on. Install and it “just werkd”. It used to be the cornerstone of pushback, that Linux required you to tinker and Windows didn’t. But Microsoft destroyed their lead in that so they only have (fast dwindling) business appeal and entrenchment to lean on now.
But once you got that XFree86 config dialed in, life was awesome.
(Ok looks like Xorg has been around for 21 years, so maybe you were running it instead.)
But they don’t work the way I like so I still have to spend hours tweaking them.
Urgh, we downgraded from Gentoo to Ubuntu.
