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
Also, Green on Black is subjectively better than White on Blue.
spoiler
No puns here.
Keep it out of the gutter.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.
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 😁
Sabayon was my 2nd home, after suse, and just before my 3rd, proper gentoo. So I sabayon’d before I gentoo’d. The sabayon 3.* series was glorious. All aside distro surfing live systems, multiboots, and distro hopping on my other machine. Then came bedrock, and I stopped my rabid distro-surfing, without getting rid of gentoo.
But yeah, if you’re already on gentoo at the time of encountering sabayon, toorox, calculate, redcore, clover, or whatever, it’ll be a hard sell, having already chosen to have it your way. Gentoo’s all about choice, and best way to do that is to do pure gentoo. But still, only point I was making bringing up the others, is that even gentoo can be installed with a gui installer.
kinda unrelated but why is this image seemingly recreated ui’s rather than screenshots
Because it’s LIES!
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…?”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!
There’s no such thing as ‘Windows partition table’, unless MS came up with some new nefarious bullshit. The partition table is global for everyone, and any partition manager program modifies that.
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.
What is this con-cent you speak of? Some kind of… negative currency? A bad smell?
- Microsoft, allegedly
Overwrite existing filesystem?
- Yes
- Later
it’s the part AI is doing for you now
but they’ve been ignoring it long before AI showed up.
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
Ipfire is a linux firewall software lol?
Linux: Signature look of superiority
That’s only because L comes before W alphabetically tho.
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.
Afaik having two uefi partitions isn’t recommended for some reason. Linux Mint writes Grub into the same partition that Windows is using.
Thankfully, I’m not planning to let Windows update anything anymore, but ymmv for others.
If you work for yourself I get it. If you work for someone else, get them to have a desktop for you there and remote in.
I put windows in a docker on my server, and keep an instance on Azure that only comes alive when I need it. I remote into either one if I have to. No more dual boot.
Just giving you some options. Also it lets me travel while knowing if I need windows even on the road I have one.
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.
IIRC, Caldera also had a Tetris clone in the installer, so you could play while it installed itself.
And at least a couple years before that too, when I started with it as a windows refugee.
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…
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
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.
Tell him a wrist brace helps with mouse-induces RSI when it flares up.
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.
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.
I guess you’re right in the sense that neither could play audio off drivers packaged with install media in that era.
I remember reformatting a Windows computer to get a fresh install and I had to find the driver CD and install a driver for audio, internet and other very basic stuff.
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.
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.
:O CDs aren’t for life?!
There goes my distro-surfing phase’s efforts before I switched to pendrives. Wasted a few spools on distros, archived, for a nostalgic visit I may never be able to take. :3
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).
This is bullshit lmao
How so?
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.
Installing windows for most of that time hasn’t been a thing people do
I remember reinstalling win95 almost daily because how it could break with just a power loss(which happened regularly to me then).
But then I remembered 20 years ago is when winxp was already 4 years old.
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.
to be fair if it had an update button, that should have been enough for it. you don’t need to run commands because this is the Linux Way, but because better solutions are not there yet
I mean,
aptitudeand Synaptic update packages or the whole system fine. It’s just that Mullvad has no business trying to do that itself.
Not exactly. The GUI variant of the updater that you tried also didn’t work well.
CLI mostly works ok (unless a bug causes your DE to be uninstalled if you try to install steam), but GUI is very hit-and-miss.
Just the other day I had a bug in XFCE where I want to scale up the contents of the screen. So I use the GUI display config tool, set the scale to 0.5 (because for some reason they scale the wrong way round, <1 enlarges, >2 makes things smaller). It does work, the display gets scaled up.
After I’m done I want to scale back down and the GUI display config tool just locks up on startup and only shows a blank window with a few blank dropdowns.
A bit of googleing later I found the config file where I can change it back and once I changed the scaling to 1 again, the GUI tool worked again.
I’ve been using Linux exclusively for many years now, but without google I couldn’t have fixed that.
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 remember it was painless, except for some drivers.
But I also remember having to choose how to set up the partition table, including what format it would be in. I didn’t know the difference between any of them, just that ext3 and reiserfs were “good”. So I flipped a coin.
Put some respect on the sackcloth and ashes that Slack is. I did my Slack phase 20 years ago also. Soooo many config files…But if you understood those, Slack was near bulletproof.
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…
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.)
“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.
not quite as much of a dumpster fire as people say
Yeah. It’s not the dumpster on fire. This is fine.
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.
When I switched to Linux in late 2003, with SuSe, iirc everything just worked, out of the box, and I ran it vanilla for a couple years. Didn’t even need to install an image manipulation program, or an office suite, or a second web browser, or many other things, because it all came already installed. When did windows ever have a sound argument for “the cornerstone of pushback” claiming to be superior for “just werkd”? The early 90s? I doubt even then. Seems from my experience like it was more likely always advertising FUD.
But they don’t work the way I like so I still have to spend hours tweaking them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
It was so bad I had to leave. It was bad. Like really bad. People mayhave liked it, but it was objectively awful.
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”
Me too!
XP was what sent me running looking for an alternative. Nearly landed on IRIX, until I found the GNU GPL to read.
EVERY SECOND WINDOWS IS GOOD
Is that what microsoft put in the microsoft windows subliminal messaging subsystem?
(or whatever its called now)
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.
It’s been better than that for around quarter a century. From 2003, I had my first distro run solid for 4 years, before choosing to switch, ran that one for near 4 years too (with more meddling for fun), before switching to what it was based on (and in a sense, been with various installs of mostly that since… call that 2nd or 3rd time lucky). One does not have to go with a distro that does a 6 month fixed release cycle. Long term support can go 5 years (and eased seamless transitions are possible anyway, so that’s near meaningless). Rolling can go forever. There’s still Arch if you want debilitating problems (more than) twice a year. ;D (Now watch me be beat to death with baseball bats that say “Arch BTW” for saying that. lol)
debiliating problems?
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?
And here I like RC cola because it tastes to completely different than coke. I find it to be the most distant from coke flavour of all the colas I’ve had
I bought Pepsi after a long time of drinking almost no sodas, and none of big-brand ones (and I prefer Pepsi to Coke generally). It was somewhat of a shock as to how loaded it was with caffeine and sugar. Next time I’ll rather get store-brand soda that’s five times cheaper and has barely any sugar and no caffeine, even if it’s blander in taste.
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.
and it’s a pity
Don’t forget to remove the french language pack
No :<
Non !
For real!
