I saw a post last night of a dude lamenting how difficult installing Windows was and listed a bunch of problems I find absolutely absurd. You’re telling me you know how to remedy driver issues in Linux, but can’t figure out how to in modern Windows, which does it automatically?
There are plenty of things wrong with Windows that you don’t need to make shit up.
In my experience, windows always gets something wrong with drivers and I have to go do some stupid shit to fix it. And then later fight windows update as it tries to override my fix. Windows problems are rarely immediately apparent, whereas Linux problems usually are.
Was your last experi nice with Windows with Vista or something? 7,8,10,11 have all been almost entirely work free for installing any hardware that isn’t exotic or boutique stuff.
I am not one of the people weighing in based on an arbitrary experience or a small sample set. I’ve installed Windows literally tens of thousands of computers. The only thing can think of in the last 10 years I needed to find a driver for is some USB barcode scanners that emulate serial devices, and the driver for an android phone to be able to flash the boot loader.
Every device that a computer actually needs to run just work.
Windows 10 once had the brilliant idea of de-installing the AMD graphics drivers and replacing it with its own while I was playing a game.
Best AMD can do is show you a message box, it’s been going on for years and years and Microsoft doesn’t look willing to fix their shit. It’s possible to tell windows update to not overwrite “third-party” drivers, but only for all devices, not specific ones. Meanwhile it shouldn’t be doing that shit in the first place.
Windows install once barfed a rescue partition on a disk that it thought was empty, even though I had specifically told it to install to a completely different disk. Ever since then I unhook all drives that aren’t the install drives before launching the thing.
The overall theme with windows is that if it works, it works, if it doesn’t, you’re fucked. And just a centimetre off the beaten path nope, it doesn’t work.
even on Windows 10/11, I’m still frequently hearing about issues at work where the necessary ssd drivers are only included in the default windows installer (not the recovery shipped with the device) like half a year later. at least with Dell this seems to be a common theme.
only included in the default windows installer (not the recovery shipped with the device)
That would be an OEM issue, not Microsoft. They’re supposed to modify the recovery image with whatever it needs, Windows doesn’t just do it automatically.
The OEM version is working fine, as the drivers are embedded there. My point was that without this recovery partition you tend to run into issues on newer devices, as the MS bundled drivers get updated only infrequently.
Yeah that checks out. I constantly have to chase down drivers when doing Windows installs. The way I read your upper comment was the issue being with the recovery partition.
I haven’t had driver problems in forever, unless I’m using some old weird device that I haven’t used in ages. And even then usually going into device manager and telling it what kind of device the unknown device is usually fixes it.
Something most people don’t do. It’s like how Apple can often hold your hand so hard that you can’t leave their preferred path. Windows lets you think it will let you stray without a fight. In niche cases it doesn’t.
All you have to do is change the ownership of all the files in the stores installed folders to yourself instead of the system then the desktop doesn’t load up properly anymore.
You’re telling me you know how to remedy driver issues in Linux, but can’t figure out how to in modern Windows, which does it automatically?
Honestly? Yes.
Windows tries to do a bunch of shit automagickally, but when the process fails it’s a nightmare to diagnose and manually fix. Linux is more rudimentary but also much more transparent. Once you know what you need to do, it’s very easy to see where you went wrong.
I’ve used Linux and Windows about equally. Windows is way less of a hassle. Unless you need a super specialized environment or are running a server, the hoops you need to go through on Linux to do a lot of otherwise simple things aren’t worth it.
Your experience here is what I mean. You have used Windows a lot, so you understand how it all works. I don’t.
I struggled to find drivers for obscure hardware under Windows. If there are no modules, no git repo, it can be confusing where to get them. I found a bunch of sketchy looking websites that claimed they had the drivers, but no obvious way to safely install them. I still don’t know the proper way to do it.
I am familiar with Linux, so I know I need to find modules that I can compile against my kernel. 9 times out of 10 it’s effortless for me.
I saw a post last night of a dude lamenting how difficult installing Windows was and listed a bunch of problems I find absolutely absurd. You’re telling me you know how to remedy driver issues in Linux, but can’t figure out how to in modern Windows, which does it automatically?
There are plenty of things wrong with Windows that you don’t need to make shit up.
In my experience, windows always gets something wrong with drivers and I have to go do some stupid shit to fix it. And then later fight windows update as it tries to override my fix. Windows problems are rarely immediately apparent, whereas Linux problems usually are.
Was your last experi nice with Windows with Vista or something? 7,8,10,11 have all been almost entirely work free for installing any hardware that isn’t exotic or boutique stuff.
I am not one of the people weighing in based on an arbitrary experience or a small sample set. I’ve installed Windows literally tens of thousands of computers. The only thing can think of in the last 10 years I needed to find a driver for is some USB barcode scanners that emulate serial devices, and the driver for an android phone to be able to flash the boot loader.
Every device that a computer actually needs to run just work.
Windows 10 once had the brilliant idea of de-installing the AMD graphics drivers and replacing it with its own while I was playing a game.
Best AMD can do is show you a message box, it’s been going on for years and years and Microsoft doesn’t look willing to fix their shit. It’s possible to tell windows update to not overwrite “third-party” drivers, but only for all devices, not specific ones. Meanwhile it shouldn’t be doing that shit in the first place.
Windows install once barfed a rescue partition on a disk that it thought was empty, even though I had specifically told it to install to a completely different disk. Ever since then I unhook all drives that aren’t the install drives before launching the thing.
The overall theme with windows is that if it works, it works, if it doesn’t, you’re fucked. And just a centimetre off the beaten path nope, it doesn’t work.
even on Windows 10/11, I’m still frequently hearing about issues at work where the necessary ssd drivers are only included in the default windows installer (not the recovery shipped with the device) like half a year later. at least with Dell this seems to be a common theme.
That would be an OEM issue, not Microsoft. They’re supposed to modify the recovery image with whatever it needs, Windows doesn’t just do it automatically.
The OEM version is working fine, as the drivers are embedded there. My point was that without this recovery partition you tend to run into issues on newer devices, as the MS bundled drivers get updated only infrequently.
Yeah that checks out. I constantly have to chase down drivers when doing Windows installs. The way I read your upper comment was the issue being with the recovery partition.
I haven’t had driver problems in forever, unless I’m using some old weird device that I haven’t used in ages. And even then usually going into device manager and telling it what kind of device the unknown device is usually fixes it.
I’ve never had this problem, and I’ve had… Oh man, a few dozen windows machines?
What are you doing to them?
Something most people don’t do. It’s like how Apple can often hold your hand so hard that you can’t leave their preferred path. Windows lets you think it will let you stray without a fight. In niche cases it doesn’t.
I irreversibly broke my Windows 10 install by changing permissions in the Microsoft Store folders while trying to use WSL.
How?
All you have to do is change the ownership of all the files in the stores installed folders to yourself instead of the system then the desktop doesn’t load up properly anymore.
Honestly? Yes.
Windows tries to do a bunch of shit automagickally, but when the process fails it’s a nightmare to diagnose and manually fix. Linux is more rudimentary but also much more transparent. Once you know what you need to do, it’s very easy to see where you went wrong.
Let’s just be clear that Windows is a king of newer hardware and Linux is a king of older one, if we strictly take a driver-bullshit-o-meter.
It’s not that Windows is easier. It’s that you’re more familiar with Windows.
I’ve used Linux and Windows about equally. Windows is way less of a hassle. Unless you need a super specialized environment or are running a server, the hoops you need to go through on Linux to do a lot of otherwise simple things aren’t worth it.
What kind of hoops? Good luck finding a solution on windows if it automatically doesn’t fix it.
Then you can just change something in the registry, which also has a GUI btw.
You have absolutely no clue do you
Your experience here is what I mean. You have used Windows a lot, so you understand how it all works. I don’t.
I struggled to find drivers for obscure hardware under Windows. If there are no modules, no git repo, it can be confusing where to get them. I found a bunch of sketchy looking websites that claimed they had the drivers, but no obvious way to safely install them. I still don’t know the proper way to do it.
I am familiar with Linux, so I know I need to find modules that I can compile against my kernel. 9 times out of 10 it’s effortless for me.