I'm getting sick of this dichotomy. It's trivial to install both. Keep windows 10 on a partition big enough for your games/Netflix/etc., and use Debian/Archlinux/NixOS/whatever for everything else.
Also my laptop literally cannot have linux installed on it thanks to UEFI.
(I installed Ubuntu 17.10 alongside Win10 few weeks ago on my UEFI laptop.)
Windows 10 is basically malware at this point.
It's not even true in many (most?) cases that Secure Boot must be disabled.
Does it have "secure boot" that can't be disabled/other keys added?
Typing this from a laptop that has an Arch partition. I use it all the time for dev stuff. It sure as fuck wasn't trivial to set up.
Or maybe you want me to convince them they should pay someone else to do that because Stallman was right.
I'm sure some people are lucky enough to have friends and family who would accept your values instantly, learn the setup easily and be glad to pay someone else to do it. I can only speak from my own experiences and they don't reflect that (and as much as I might make a comment here and there I won't ever again try to push "my values" down someone's else throat).
Do you handle all of their Windows-related technical issues?
Are they incapable of learning to do it themselves?
Really?
Are you absolutely sure?
It's all-too-common for people to become dependent on technically-minded friends/family like us, but the fact is that it really isn't difficult for them to do it themselves.
The main barriers they face are:
1. I haven't done this before.
2. I don't immediately see the benefit.
What it comes down to is self-reliance. We can teach people to rely on themselves instead of rely on us.
As the saying goes:
> Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for the night. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
... something like that, anyway.
For thinkers, problems are an opportunity to learn. Others, they don't see it that way, they want things to just work without making them think. If anyone you're trying to "teach" and "show them the way" ever loses money or have any kind of non trivial issue because "your linug broke my microsoft access" you'll be forever the guy that broke his computer. And he'll hate Linux forever.
"Yes nana, you just have to install linux-headers first"
funny thing is when you install various distros you have a look at what's installed and you go "geeze it's installed a bunch of crap apps"
I used to run dual boot, but then got annoyed with that, then used windows primarily and VM'd linux, and now I use the linux subsystem in windows and occassionally fire up the VM.
Of course, but is it more annoying than using Windows all the time? OP leads me to belive a growing number of windows users might think otherwise. It's also worth noting that rebooting is an order of magnitude faster than it was 10 years ago.
> having to run updates for both
Updates are a pain in Windows, but they are not in any serious GNU/Linux distro I have ever used. This is one of the main reasons that users are frustrated with Windows in the first place.
> having two incompatible filesystems where it's annoying to fetch a document from one and use it on the other
This is a real problem when you are using Windows, but not when you are using Linux. The idea here is to only use Windows when you need it anyway. It's an inconvenience, sure, but is it more of an inconvenience than using Windows all the time? That's up to the user. Personally, the answer is no.
> doubling the amount of setup and configuration you have to do
Not so much, if you seriously use GNU/Linux for everything you don't need Windows for. Besides, configuration isn't a big issue unless you are like me, and want everything exactly your way; although, GNU/Linux is the only way I can get that.
> Every time I've set up a dual-boot system I've ended up just never using one of the options.
That's you, and that's fine. The best setup for you is almost definitely not the best setup for most other people. That is the entire reason to use and promote free software: liberty.
Windows has made dual-booting difficult on purpose, because proprietary software begets proprietary software and control. Thankfully, there has been plenty of work in the other direction for those of us who want to control our computers, as opposed to the inverse.
In a word: yes.
I have at different points used Windows, Linux, and OS X as primary desktop operating systems, so I am not operating from a sense of total ignorance of what other systems are like.
My experience with Linux was that I needed to do far more configuration because lots of hardware wouldn't work right out of the box and needed a lot of tweaking and digging through Linux forums for someone with the same problem. I'm really not interested in doing that kind of thing on my personal computer anymore.
From my experience, installing and using Linux has been the most straightforward, especially compared to windows.
And that's the point: we all have different experiences, so I think it's a bad idea to tell someone they are going to have your bad experiences of they try something new, because better software ends up getting a bad rap.
I haven't had any negative experience with CUPS, and if I had, that wouldn't define my experience with GNU/Linux.
I don't have an issue with you sharing experiences. I do get frustrated when those experiences are used to define GNU/Linux to those who haven't experienced it at all.
There are too many people who hear that GNU/Linux is not for them, when it is really a fantastic alternative to windows. There's an attitude that free software will always fail people (which is not true), and I find that attitude not simply unfortunate, but malicious.
The way that things improve is for manufacturers to see demand; and that won't happen if people don't see free software as the viable alternative that it is.
In my experience, NTFS on Linux works very well. Certainly well enough for any average user.
There fact is that you should always backup data you care about.
It's the same as saying they aren't responsible for your computer suddenly catching fire. Is that likely to happen? No.
Is the liberty a free OS provides worth the effort to that user? That's entirely up to them.
It's easy to disregard change as too difficult to approach, especially when coming from such a controling and abusive environment (Windows/OS X). In reality, GNU/Linux is so much easier to use than Windows; most people have simply learned the latter first.
That just isn't true. But don't take it from me; here's esr: http://web.archive.org/web/20180109063613/www.catb.org/esr/w...
The problem we have is that a similar problem in Windows is instantly forgiven, because there is nothing you can do about it; whereas in Linux people expect a higher standard (which is often met) because that arbitrary limitation no longer exists.
Sure windows has gotten a lot better since XP, but it has a long way to go to catch up to circa 2006 Ubuntu.
Even when I got one installed I had problems with getting flat mouse speeds, not being able to adjust mouse scroll wheel speeds, even the frickin clock was even messed up. ( had to dig around for the issue then figure out the two OSes where saving the time in different ways every time each shut down)
I've got pages of notes for fixes to various issues I encountered trying to get dual booting working smoothly.
There's no way I'd recommend this to anyone who wants a computer that actually works without a hassle.
But nobody cares how easy it is to install both. Using both is a huge pain.
Bash is so much more powerful than the Windows shell, and try as I might I just don't like Powershell, so WSL gives me a great shell while running in Windows - no need for rebooting or VMs!
You have your disks listed, each with its free/used space. You click the one you want to install to, and drag a slider to decide how much space to use.
That's how easy it was to install Ubuntu over a decade ago.
[0] https://github.com/vladikoff/netflix-1080p-firefox#with-exte...