The Day Windows Died

Re:The Day Windows Died by oblio on Monday April 03, 2023 @04:01AM (#35420077)

> I guess I'll crawl back into my cave and keep using Linux for the foreseeable future.

That's a valid choice, but not due to technical concerns.

You're presumably very technically literate since you're using Linux.

You can just save your license key somewhere and get fresh installation media and reformat the garbage on your device with a clean installation.

You don't need any of the Lenovo stuff, your laptop will work just fine with regular Windows Update drivers.

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Re:The Day Windows Died by fsflover on Monday April 03, 2023 @04:10AM (#35420146)

My non-technical relatives are using Linux just fine. They wouldn't be able to install it themselves though: I did it for them.

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Re:The Day Windows Died by mikro2nd on Monday April 03, 2023 @06:52AM (#35421383)

I don't know why they wouldn't be able to install it themselves, tbh. The last n times I've installed (various distros) the install process went something like: select keyboard layout, select locale/timzone, go away while it installs, reboot. There was nothing there to do unless you want to get into customising disk partitions or something.

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Re:The Day Windows Died by CoastalCoder on Monday April 03, 2023 @07:43AM (#35421844)

I just helped my brother install Linux on an XPS 13.

The main part he had trouble with was configuring the firmware to allow the installation, and then know about the new UEFI partition, and then forget about the no-longer-extant Windows boot partitions.

It wasn't obvious how to make that work even for me.

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Re:The Day Windows Died by fsflover on Monday April 03, 2023 @09:21AM (#35423063)

I had no problems like this with my installation. It's just that some people don't even know about bootable USB sticks - this level of "non-technical".

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Re:The Day Windows Died by CoastalCoder on Friday April 07, 2023 @09:26AM (#35481342)

I thought I understood USB-stick bootability, but perhaps not well enough. Could you elaborate?

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Re:The Day Windows Died by _dain_ on Monday April 03, 2023 @09:23AM (#35423107)

>I don't know why they wouldn't be able to install it themselves, tbh.

putting the ISO on the USB, telling the BIOS to boot from the USB, dealing with any random failures in grub or whatever, these are showstoppers for nontechnical people.

(actually the grub failures are a showstopper for me as well, I've never been able to figure out what you're meant to do if you boot up and get an error at that stage. I just re-roll with a different USB drive or distro or ISO-burning tool and cross my fingers)

also nontechnical ppl often will only dare use linux if they have windows as a fallback option, so they want to dual-boot. and setting up / maintaining a dual-boot system has its own set of failure modes.

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Re:The Day Windows Died by mikro2nd on Monday April 03, 2023 @09:46AM (#35423480)

Very true. I'd not thought about the "pre-installation" steps/prep. I take it all back.

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Re:The Day Windows Died by elihu on Monday April 03, 2023 @05:19AM (#35420632)

I don't doubt that apps installed by Lenovo are exacerbating the problem, but even with a clean install it's still Windows. I use Linux for a variety of reasons, some technical, some aesthetic, but mostly because the systems are usually designed to respect their users in a way that Windows and Android don't. Not that there aren't plenty of problems with Linux as well. They just tend to be usability shortcomings rather than design features that are personally offensive.

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