I thought I’d chuck windows on my gaming laptop an Acer nitro 5 from last year, to see how it’s going do some bits I can’t on Linux VR, certain multiplayer games etc.
What a disaster! I’ve spent the whole day brute forcing drivers and generally dicking about trying to get my setup sorted.
Upon installation, Wi-Fi drivers don’t exist, so you cannot use the internet while installing if you’re on Wi-Fi. Mint’s had this since what 2006? But that’s cool, Cortana is here to chat away and not understand any requests. Once finally in the OS after 20 questions that could be considered harassment if it was a person, nothing was ready to go. Every single driver needed sourcing and installing.
People have the cheek to complain about Linux’s Nvidia install, literally two clicks on most distros if it isn’t already baked in. Go to website find driver, download click click click agree click wait more software click click wait.
Plug in my sound card OK it’s a bit old now UA-25 but nothing happens…hmm find obscure video partially install a driver from Vista then cancel the installation program so you can side load a driver from 8,1 but wait there’s more disable core isolation to allow the driver to work reboot into a now slightly more compromised OS.
OK plug in wheel again not new stuff G25 oh it works cool. Oh, no H-shifter OK download driver. “Can’t find device, ensure it’s plugged in”. Windows decided it knew better, downloaded its own driver that blocks the official one and loads a steering wheel as a gamepad…GG cool cool.
I do not understand why we still have this image that Windows is noob friendly, it’s such a convoluted obfuscated process to do anything. It does worse than nothing, it thinks it’s smart enough to carry out tasks on the user behalf and just bork it.
All of these issues are because I don’t have the new shiny things, but it really highlighted why I love Linux now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to install a distro and play on my 20-year-old peripherals
I am NOT going to post my business card or link my LinkedIn to win an internet argument, I have shown that OPs complaints are unresonable expectations, that was my goal.
You’re sure allowed to think you did, and sure as hell I don’t care about your alleged IT professional background. Just like you say that Windows is noob friendly, I say Windows is NOT friendly, period. The OP makes a great case on yet another reason why Windows is complete and utter crap, and I’m an IT guy that has worked with Linux and Windows professionally. I HATE Windows. I’m not sending my business card either, and I know better than to have a LinkedIn profile. That’s hould be enough to tell us apart.
I have been in IT since the mid 90s and in my experience every OS can be a PITA to install. Both Windows and Linux will install smoothly if the drivers for your network, raid controller and mobo components are all supported. If not it is going to suck regardless of OS.
Windows reputation for noob friendliness, and linux’s unfriendliness, is mostly down to familiarity and that most users will never have to install their own OS and deal with problems mentioned in the post. Most will never even think about it because they dont even know what an OS is or that it can be replaced. If Windows gets removeded up they take it to a pro to fix or buy a replacement.
You have, so far, made the most logical address on this subject, out of any of the others, including myself. I am very biased against Windows, for reasons that may be irrelevant, and I’m also very vocal about it, so if I offended anyone, know that is not my intention, although I regularly come across as if it is. Having said that, I’m removing myself from this thread moving forward, just because I dont want to be part of any discord with myself or anyone else. Everyone should use what works best for them, which is why I’ll try to stay away from further “what is is best?” and similar discussions in the future, and will just keep to discussions that bring something positive or beneficial to the table. God bless you all guys, Jesus lives all of us, without exception. Enjoy.
Windows is noob friendly. If you do what noobs do and just buy an off the shelf PC and don’t think about stuff like drivers at all. Now, Linux isn’t much less noob friendly in those cases and just primarily suffers from lack of system integrators using it and, to a much lesser degree, from a lack of software.