this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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I've recently made the switch over to LinuxMint and I was shocked. Installing a popular Linux Distro is EASIER than installing Windows 10/11 at this point. Seriously. The Linux installer is super noob friendly, very quick and straight to the point, it doesn't need you to create an online account and you don't need be wary of accidentally giving any corporation the rights to steal your data.
And all the software I use (Steam, Discord, Spotify, Firefox, Thunderbird, ...) were all downloadable from the GUI Installer and worked right away OUT OF THE BOX. No fiddling in any Terminal was required.
Seriously, it's easier than installing Windows at this point.
Installing Linux has never been particularly difficult, not in the last 15 or even 20 years anyway. I've always found it easier and more straightforward than the contemporary Windows installation process.
The challenging part is wrapping your head around the Linux/Unix way of doing things when things can't be done through the GUI with just a few clicks.
I think about this sometimes. What stuff can't you do in a Linux GUI that an average person would be able to do in Windows? For the sake the simplicity, lets limit the GUI to Cinnamon, Plasma, or Gnome.
Obviously, there are obscure GUIs out there, but in the main ones, I think just about everything can be done without CLI.
I'd amend that to say I wouldn't count "regedit" or group policy muck to be "easy" by virtue of having "a gui". Those are areas where technically there's GUI that might be CLI-only under Linux, but hardly friendly enough to make a difference.
Amen, I consider myself pretty savvy with Windows under the hood. Most of the time when my users see me ripping around in the registry to fix something they think I'm some crazy skilled hacker\programmer lol. It's funny.
Good point
Until you have problems with hardware or something, generally I'd agree.
That’s pretty rare these days. If you running reading edge then maybe there are a few months or using a wifi- usb adapter.
I know the filesystem is simple to Linux users, but the semantic form of physical drives getting a letter always made more sense to me.
I have three drives in my computer. So they're labeled C:, D:, and E:. You can't place a file on "The Computer" - it's stored on some particular drive. If I install a game on the E drive, and then later somehow remove that drive and bring it somewhere else, that game remains on that drive, even if it's no longer E.
On Linux, as best I understand it, if I have three drives, two of them are at /dev/hdd0 and hdd1. But they're not actually there, they're accessed at /media/hdd0 after mounting them (or at least, that's the convention, and if it's someone else's computer, good luck). Then you either begin every game installation path with that annoying prefix, or you start configuring a dozen symlinks. If you place an item in /home/documents/notporn, then who knows which drive it's on because you don't know what symlinks someone set up to make that folder.
Windows does have symlinks too now, which has been nice for hacking a few installation directories, but I appreciate that it's an exception, and everything else follows relatively logical division of space, rather than this hybrid system where the filesystem isn't just stored files but also devices, programming concepts, and more.
That's one of the things that semi-experienced Windows users need to wrap their head around, but I strongly disagree that drive letters are somehow inferior to a hierarchical file system structure. I mean, the A:, B:, C: ... convention was originally just intended for the first IBM PC with 1 or 2 floppy drives. It was never intended to support complex storage configurations, whereas the hierarchical file system was designed for Unix systems that had to handle multiple magnetic drives from the start. It is a much more flexible system to organize your file storage.
That's because there is a difference between a block device and a mounted file system. Windows just obscures that difference from you with its archaic drive mapping system.
All your block devices and partitions on your block devices will be in
/devwith a meaningful name. You can list them with thelsblkcommand. If a partition contains a file system that Linux knows how to use, you can mount it anywhere you like.No that's not "convention" at all. Some desktop environments may decide to mount undefined drives there, but there really is no convention, ultimately you mount it where you want it to be mounted.
If your unsure,
df /home/documents/notpornshould tell you exactly what drive it's on, but ultimately it's up to you to know how you've organized your storage.BTW I've said this before, but Linux is probably harder for users who know Windows just well enough to be dangerous than it is for relative beginners, because there are so many concepts and things they take for granted that they have to unlearn.
As an interesting fact, windows totally supports mounting positions to folders and as far as I recall it's been able to for a very long time, remember doing it as a teenager and thinking it was cool AF.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/assign-a-mount-point-folder-path-to-a-drive And https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/orphan-topics/ws.10/cc772671(v=ws.10)
Yeah, I believe that was introduced as far back as Windows 2000. It never really caught on though.
I think I did it back in xp, I was trying to figure out when support was added.
I don't think it's super advertised that it's a capability which definitely doesn't help its usage, heck I kinda forgot about it even though I used it until your comment triggered a memory.
I just booted up a Windows 2000 VM to check ... it's there in the disk management tool. It looks a bit weird with the drive icon in Explorer, but ok.
While it might be suitable for server environments with 400+drives, all home setups will have fewer volumes than there are alphabet letters, so it’s a suitable setup there.
Someone else identified how you can run an extra command to identify actual location of a file, and while that’s useful, it’s an extra step that’s unnecessary when the design of the location string itself also identifies that. Unless you can tell me which drive /home/supra-app/preconfiguration/media is on - without running something different. (Vs windows: C:/Users/Someone/AppData/supra-app/preconfiguration/media) That’s what the design of WWW URLs was for - you never have to ask which domain a website is on, and it can even inform you about whether a site is trustworthy.
I don’t think you’re helping your case by showing there’s no drive location convention at all. A friend plugs a USB device in your computer while you’re busy in the kitchen. He’s fine if he just uses a UI autopopup, but if he needs the full path, he has to ask you where you’ve set up auto-mounting, if you have at all.
The thing is, you are absolutely free to use a
/c,/d,/emounting scheme, but you are not shackled to it like you are in Windows. Personally I like to organize my data in one big root (/) file system on my NVME drive and then/datafor my bulk storage on HDD and/nasfor my NAS shares. I never have any problems knowing where my data is.BTW, I notice all your complaints revolve around "OMG it's different" and "OMG the user can choose to do things differently... so complicated". That is kind of the point of Linux you know?
At some point you just have to accept that it's different and move on, or decide that it's too complicated for you and use something else.
BTW, I wonder why people never make this complaint about Apple devices? It also has a hierarchical file structure without drive letters, after all it is also a Unix variant.
This is really what people should understand, you CAN do all these things in Linux... you can change virtually anything to your liking if you are so inclined. And it's usually a Google search away if you aren't sure how to go about it.
The dog whistle of “maybe it’s not for you” is pointless, since all we’re doing here is talking about preferences and opinions of design. Whether something is “complicated” or “poor design” is very subjective across many fields. It’s easy to laugh at someone pushing at a “Pull” door, but less so if there’s a pushbar there and they don’t speak English.
I could easily be facetious and suggest “Maybe Windows is just too complicated for you” but that’s similarly needlessly talking down to people’s intelligence. The topic only came up because it’s frustrating there’s no operating system out there that:
For now, issues like the last one are what keep me on Windows, and I’m not even claiming they’re easy to solve.
Well keep dreaming then. If that is what keeping you on Windows, you will never leave Windows. Nobody in their right mind is ever going to create a new OS with drive letters.
/thread
So just to help a little bit without getting too technical...
df -his your friend to find out which physical drive or partition relates to which directory (called the "mount point")If you want, you can set up each drive/partition to be mounted a bit Windows-esque.
For example:
//mnt/d//mnt/e/And so on.
You'll need to look up
fstabto understand how to do that.I understand it's tricky to get your head around initially as I felt exactly the same coming from Windows to Linux.
Once you get your head around partitions being able to be mounted anywhere, it actually becomes really handy
That’s the default configuration but there’s actually no guarantee that those drives map bijectively to physical devices.
and even the challenging part doesn't really have to be that hard and can quickly be figured out. either via a package installer or it can be as simple as git clone then makepkg -si
I mean with Arch and AUR it's that easy. worse comes to worse if it's not in Octopi or AUR then download the exe, wrap it in wine, and that should do it. I've been using Linux for almost a month now and I think the only thing I just couldn't get working was some Mod package for a game and that's only cause I'm lazy and gave up on it but it would work if I was dedicated to get it working.
The issue is that you have to install it. Most users don’t have a clue how to install windows either, but it came with their PC.
You can buy linux desktops these days too.
Right but most people have no clue, they’ll go to their local store which I guarantee you doesn’t have Linux computers. Online buyers will go on amazon and buy from “known and reputable” brands like Asus, Dell and such. Don’t get me wrong, I love linux and have been using it as my main OS for nearly a decade but to say it’s easy to get/install for your average user is just wrong. Everyone always overestimates what the average user is actually like. Your average user doesn’t even know what an OS or Linux even is.
The problem with buying a Linux box is the cost. Discounting Chromebooks, (which have their own nasty issues with privacy), there are really no inexpensive ready to buy at Walmart priced, pre-installed Linux distro computers.
If you are willing to drop $1000+ for a pretty much mid grade computer, then you have a few choices. Otherwise, Linux distros are DIY. Which takes an effort most are unwilling to do - no matter how easy and how few clicks it takes to install.
Personally, I think all those cheap mini-PCs on Amazron should come pre-loaded with a distro. That would be the a great way for people to become familiar with Linux as a whole.
As someone that has tried nearly every Linux desktop flavor\distro, Mint is GREAT for the novice. Or a pro even.
I’m not a Linux wizard but I’m pretty skilled and I love mint. Although, my preference recently changed to Fedora plasma.
Waaay easier. I tried to fix a work computer that someone but bitlocker on. I couldn't do shit with windows so I threw Mint on it to format it. Loaded right up, worked great. I go to put windows 11 on it and the HD doesn't show up... It needs drivers that I'm struggling to find. I have to run the driver setup on a different windows machine, find the driver and put it on a usb. Problem is, there's no model number on the computer and I can narrow it down to the series that has 20 different ones. It's unreal the pain the ass to just get it to install, meanwhile, linux has been working great on it while I mess with it here and there to try to get windows back on it. (work computer that needs windows for our software support)
And it doesn't work with half the programs I use on a daily basis.
There's ways to make A LOT of things compatible these days, or you could run a VM for your Windows apps.
I think a VM is a bad solution. Maybe if it’s a very rarely used program, but typically the stuff people need that don’t work in Linux are for work which is why people HAVE to use them.
If I did that, I’d just be working out of a windows vm 99% of my computing time, so it doesn’t make sense for me.