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
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!