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Comment by redeeman | Hacker News Reader

BS, windows and macos cant even do proper window managing for a start, and then it just goes downwards from there on.. You can perhaps install various weird third party things, but it does not come with it by default.

If you took people who absolutely never tried any computing, and gave them macos, windows, and for example Plasma, they would NOT consider windows or macos to be ready for the desktop. If you go 15 years back, even way more so.

even in the early 2000s, windows was so hilariously crappy that you had to make floppy disks to even get to install the thing. If PCs didnt come preloaded with windows, regular users would never ever be able to install it, versus the relative ease a typical linux distribution was to install. This is also one of the large reasons that when their windows slowed down due to being a piece of shit with 1000000 toolbars, people threw it out and bought a new, despite the fact that a reinstall would have solved it.

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> You can perhaps install various weird third party things, but it does not come with it by default.

A Window Manager and Window Server don't come by default with Linux... It's always an install-time option on the major distros.

> even in the early 2000s, windows was so hilariously crappy that you had to make floppy disks to even get to install the thing.

Windows in the early 2000s installed just fine without a floppy directly from CD or PXE booting.

Windows in early 2000s didn't even detect your early 2000s SATA drive

Windows in early 2023 didn't even detect the network card it needed to download network card drivers. After changing mobos I needed to boot into linux to download network drivers for windows...

Windows in early 2025 still uses SCSI emulation to talk with NVMe and only now the server part got a proper driver

Windows in early 2025s still need virtio driver injection to boot properly as a VM without IDE emulation

"Drivers working out of the box" were never windows strong part

> Windows in early 2025 still uses SCSI emulation to talk with NVMe and only now the server part got a proper driver

You can enable this in Win 11 25H2. I have it enabled on my box. Doesn't seem to make that much of a difference, so it's more or less a moot point that it has been using SCSI emulation.

> Windows in early 2025s still need virtio driver injection to boot properly as a VM without IDE emulation

Interesting, in Hyper-V that's a non-issue.

Unless you needed a SATA driver not included in the installer because you wanted to avoid a legacy IDE emulation for your disks.

> Windows in the early 2000s installed just fine without a floppy directly from CD or PXE booting.

when was it sata became the norm? im thinking circa 2001-ish, and what windows was latest here? im thinking windows xp. lets try remember, did windows xp include sata drivers on the installation medium?? oh wait, it didnt. There wasnt even ahci at the time, and windows xp didnt include a single sata driver for any of the chipsets at the time

> A Window Manager and Window Server don't come by default with Linux... It's always an install-time option on the major distros.

desktop distributions generally come with a desktop environment default selected, or prompt you to choose between a few. one feature that has been there since more or less forever is alt + left/rightclick mouse to move/resize windows, which is significantly better than finding the title bar or corners like. for an operating system called "windows" its pretty hilarious it has the worst window management of them all, dont you think?

The first iteration of SATA was announced in 2000 and released in 2003.

> desktop distributions generally come with a desktop environment default selected

You missed the point. "Linux", the kernel, does not come with a WS/WM.

> If you took people who absolutely never tried any computing, and gave them macos, windows, and for example Plasma, they would NOT consider windows or macos to be ready for the desktop.

There's some truth to this. I've been installing fresh Windows 11s on family computers this holiday season, and good lord is it difficult to use.

The number of tweaks I had to configure to prevent actively hostile programs from ravaging disk read/writes (HDD pain), freezing and crashing, or invasive popups was absurd.

As someone who came from Windows, and has used Linux as my primary OS for 15 years, and MacOS here and there (cos work provided laptop), I can tell you that Linux was not ready for prime time 15 years ago. Today, I feel it is, but definitely not 15 years ago.

I use Linux on the desktop since 1997, and there was no point where Windows was even slightly more attractive.

I don't know what "prime time" means here.

edit: apart from, you know. Applications and drivers for random hardware.

With prime time I mean being comfortable enough to install it for a non-technical user. Even during Ubuntu's Unity days it didn't feel like I could install it on a computer for my parents or siblings for them to use as a daily driver.

My parents did fine with Linux. My mom still does; it's certainly less maintenance effort from me than Windows would require.

It was fine for non-technical users since at least early GNOME 2, if you're ready to help them set up and maintain. Semi-technical users (Windows power users, gamers, &c — people who like to install and configure things, but fear the deep dark abyss of the terminal) were and remain more problematic.

Unity days were the nadir of linux desktop ux — it was when Gnome 2 was gone, and 3 not yet there. Still better than contemporaneous Windows 8, though.

I can bet there’s no OS that are easy to install for a non-technical user. And that start from booting the installation media. Give someone a OS with their software already installed and they will use whatever OS that is.

People are always task-oriented, not tool oriented unless they’re nerds.

I had Kubuntu installed on my grandfather's computer for a year. I ended up replacing it for Windows because my aunt likes to install stuff on it. But my grandfather was happy with it. He only needed a working web browser and a program to use the TV tunner.

15 years back people were given Windows macOS and Linux and people voted which OS were ready for the Desktop and which were not. The only BS is your inflammatory contribution to this topic.

Nope, Macs were expensive stuff games did not run on, and linux was just not pushed by near anyone.

It was not a war "which desktop is easier to use", it was "which system can run stuff I need". And if "the need" was "video games and office stuff", your only choice was windows.

The average user only cares what they can run on the desktop. Linux did not have as much choice back then.

they were not, they purchased what was in the stores, which was only windows. all the way from first windows to windows xp it was the biggest pile of shit imaginable. the average user wouldnt even have half a chance of installing it, and certainly couldnt use it with any kind of reasonableness, it was a giant mess, it was just the mess people were used to. Most people would throw out their computer and buy a new when windows became slow, because, of course it gradually becomes slower, makes perfect sense, no?

KDE from 15 years back was HUGELY better than windows at the time, and frankly, also windows now

I can’t tell if this is satire.

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