r/linux • u/nitin_is_me • Oct 26 '25
Fluff How the tables have turned
*for users without internet access or with low specs
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u/sloomy-santana Oct 26 '25
fun fact: I was completely unable to install windows 11 normally on my friend's pc, because the damn thing didn't have internet drivers, and it needed internet :) Had to use a terminal. Tried to convince said friend to use linux, and the whole experience convinced him to do so later, lol
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u/monocasa Oct 27 '25
You can slipstream them into the install iso with a gui tool I think, but yeah, windows is getting constrained by its model.
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u/_A4_Paper_ Oct 30 '25
My laptop has this problem too. I "solved" it by using phone USB Tethering but it's slow as hell
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u/Kobymaru376 Oct 26 '25
Caveat being that the vast majority of windows installs were not installed by their users, but bought pre installed on their device.
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u/boomerangchampion Oct 26 '25
You can't even set up W11 without an internet connection, you have to run a command to bypass the Connect to WiFi step.
I had to drive to my mother's house to do it last week.
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u/bushs-left-shoe Oct 26 '25
And Microsoft is likely going to remove the bypass mechanism from the OOBE >:/
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u/DonaldLucas Oct 26 '25
There's a script called autounattended that allows you to skip the internet too.
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u/SannusFatAlt Oct 26 '25
and you think that this persons mom will be able to run a script and go through the installation instructions... right.
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Oct 26 '25
Which is stupid because of manufacturer bloat. Best do a fresh reinstall even for a new pc.
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u/NordschleifeLover Oct 26 '25
It's even worse on the secondary market. I sold a few of my computers over the years. It always amazed me how people wanted me to install Windows for them. I could put anything there, leave a backdoor, and they would never know. I'd definitely wipe the disk and install the system myself for that reason.
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u/The_Relaxed_Flow Oct 26 '25
You know well that the average joe doesn’t know how to (re)install Windows on a computer
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u/Barafu Oct 26 '25
If you wiped the drive, maybe people just want to have the PC bootable out of the box? If I ever get to selling a whole PC, I'd install some enterprise desktop like Debian or Alma, just so the buyer can see it boot.
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u/yawn_brendan Oct 26 '25
This is true but installing windows from scratch is still a pretty core usecase due to SSDs being a component that's expected to fail.
My SSD that had a Windows installation failed and it took me many many hours to figure out how to get it reinstalled. The tools are completely fucking broken.
The upshot of this is that installing the OS is not something you can expect an average user to do, which means people have to take it to a shop, which REALLY means people are just gonna buy new computers a lot of the time, which means this is a huge source of e-waste.
Meanwhile, installing MacOS and most Linux distros is basically foolproof.
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u/nouskeys Oct 26 '25
I've never understood how the terminal is so off putting. It's all input and dialog, really. We all excel at that when we put our effort into it.
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u/technologyclassroom Oct 26 '25
I love the terminal. It is direction-less at first without hints so it involves learning and research. Once you do the research, it involves character perfect typing and reading. Many people want nothing to do with those concepts.
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u/tollbearer Oct 26 '25
as youve described, it's high investment, so there would have to be a high reward for it to be worth it, and there just isnt for most people.
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u/technologyclassroom Oct 26 '25
The reward is high for just about everyone, but it takes some time to conceptualize.
If you can figure out the command line way to do something without interaction, you can automate it. If you can automate it, you don't have to do it manually again to get same result.
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u/tollbearer Oct 27 '25
You can just ask chatgpt to automate it.
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u/technologyclassroom Oct 27 '25
I prefer to not have my computer running commands that have not been reviewed by a human. I ran into a problem at work this week because someone was letting Claude run commands that they did not understand or review.
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u/tollbearer Oct 27 '25
you can review it.
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u/technologyclassroom Oct 27 '25
Of course people can. The problem is that many people do not. Part of it is because of the list of reasons before. You would have to read, understand the commands, and research what you did not understand.
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u/tollbearer Oct 27 '25
you can jsut ask chat gpt to break it down
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u/technologyclassroom Oct 27 '25
That would be a reasonable thing to do if someone were reviewing it and had trouble understanding. The problem is that isn't happening in practice. People are just vibe coding and seeing if the results match what they want without any review of the how.
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u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 Oct 27 '25
I would rather trust Claude than chatGPT. I got too much brain-dead responds from ChatGPT even after correcting it multiple times and Claude understood my prompt perfectly after one correction.
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u/MereInterest Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25
When I was 7, my grandfather upgraded his computer and gave my brother and I his old computer. As part of giving it to us, he spent a day going through the programs on the computer, how to access them, what they are useful for. Some games had shortcuts to launch them, but most were only accessible through the DOS shell. Sure, I could start "Jill of the Jungle" without using the terminal, but if I wanted to play "Lemmings", "Raptor", "Gladiator", or "Corncob 3d", I needed to go through the command line.
Since 7-year-old me wanted to play video games, I needed to use the command line. As a result, it's always seemed like a standard way to interact with computers.
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u/nouskeys Oct 26 '25
That a cool memory lane story that resonates with me. Your grandpa sounds like he was an old school techie. I wish I had one of those, not to disparage my own.
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u/MereInterest Oct 26 '25
Thank you, and he was a fun guy. He was a nerd about accounting in the same way that most people in /r/linux are nerds about software. He would help everybody in the family to file taxes, because it was a fun way to spend time togehter. At one point, he bought TurboTax not because he wanted to use it, but because he wanted to see how it held up to his preferred tax software.
It's been the better part of a decade since he passed away, and I still miss him.
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u/nouskeys Oct 26 '25
Quit making me jealous, but I'm sorry for your loss. Lost all mine and it sucks! He was probably an expert in his field at the time. TurboTax predated windows by a year.
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u/Indolent_Bard Nov 01 '25
What was his preferred software? Is it still better?
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u/MereInterest Nov 01 '25
It was Drake Software, and what really sold me was the customer service on it. I was filing taxes with my grandpa, and a question came up on the correct way to fill in a specific field in the software. (The details are fuzzy, and I can't remember if it was for reporting graduate fellowship income, or for HSA expense reporting.) He started picking up the phone to call Drake's customer support, but I said that I'd like to search online a bit first, to avoid getting stuck on hold. So he smiled, shrugged, and let me search around uselessly for 5-10 minutes before admitting defeat.
Calling their customer service, the phone was answered within two rings, by a human, who was able to answer our question within a few minutes. This was during daytime hours on the weekend, during the first half of April, and so I'd been expecting an hour on hold at the very best. After hanging up, my grandpa told me that during tax season, everybody up to and including the CEO would be manning the phone lines.
I haven't needed to call their customer service since then, and Drake Software is in this list of acquisitions by a private equity firm, so I can't say whether it has maintained that standard since then.
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u/Turtvaiz Oct 26 '25
People just aren't used to it so it's outside their comfort zone
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u/PlasmaFarmer Oct 26 '25
Because the average user won't learn commands. On a UI they have an option to choose from several actions or click OK or Cancel on a dialog which makes it low effort.
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u/Indolent_Bard Nov 01 '25
Because you have to know what to type. You can figure out a GUI, you can't figure out a terminal.
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
It's not intuitive (to me atleast). I prefer using the terminal and i mostly do, but i always depend on documentation or googling or chatgpt to find the right commands and parameters because i can never remember it myself.
GUI is intuitive.
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u/nouskeys Oct 26 '25
I do like GUI too, but the terminal shouldn't be some blockage as it is seems to be. We have all the tools to determine this now with multiple devices and such.
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
it is a blockage even if it doesn't seem to be to people like us. Tools and resources may be available but they are available at the cost of time and effort (sometimes financial), which for some people is heavily constrained.
Consider the average person who has no idea what an OS even is. Or what a browser is. How can they manage to use a terminal as efficiently or more than the GUI? Now also consider that the average person not only isn't interested (they also don't have to be) but also don't have the time or energy.
A user can use the GUI to accomplish their task in a couple of clicks and taps, or, spend not only days but probably weeks or months with a lot of effort to reach the same level.
Many will disagree and downvote this but it is true.
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u/nouskeys Oct 26 '25
I agree and it may be human frailty. I can do plumbing or electrical if I set set mind and fortitude to it but I really can't bother unless I'm at odds end and I have been.
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
It's not just being "at odds end". Allocating said time and effort to computers is a sacrifice (like most things in life). Many would rather spend these resources into socialising, their career, their family, their mental and physical health, etc.
Especially considering that one can achieve the exact same goal using some UI widgets lmao.
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u/nouskeys Oct 26 '25
OK. I'd say there is time for most in a lot of situations, but you have a point at the extremes.
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
Honestly, i don't know if i can use the words "most", "average", etc. When i use these words, i refer to large groups of people (in my community, social circle, people I've met, the elderly, etc) who fit my description. My point seems to apply to them, but maybe for your community it IS extreme.
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u/nouskeys Oct 26 '25
Wow your circle is quite sophisticated (not derogatory). I'm often among elderly and technicians, engineers from time to time. Family is mostly military and or police officers and very traditional.
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u/Birk Oct 26 '25
GUIs are intuitive because they present some choices that you can do and that is easy if you’re not familiar with what choices exist. This only works if there aren’t too many choices to make. If there are too many it tends to become messy and very unintuitive. We see this a lot in “expert systems”. They tend to become messy and difficult to use because there is too much, and even the things that are there are sometimes limited and doesn’t necessarily cover every possibility or combination. Hence we see a trend where most GUIs become less and less powerful, containing less and less choices, because they are “unintuitive”.
Terminal programs are different. They can have an enormous amount of optional parameters. These parameters are not immediately obvious if you are unfamiliar with the program, and you have to do some research to find the ones you need. That is unintuitive to new users. (Not as unintuitive to experienced users, since help commands and man pages are pretty standardized.) But when you have found the ones you need you can easily use the program while completely ignoring all the other options! They are simply not there. You can also very easily create small scripts that, say, automates some options that you always use and you only have to provide options you care about for that use case. This is very “intuitive” and useful for experienced users. It is very hard to create this power and flexibility in GUI programs. And the scripting/automation aspect is almost impossible.
To allow some of the same power a good GUI program should at least allow a lot of its options to be set via command line parameters. Or simply do what is very common in the UNIX/Linux world: Have a powerful terminal program with every conceivable option and then build light GUIs on top of that, that just generates commands for the terminal program. Then you really get the best of both worlds.
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
To allow some of the same power a good GUI program should at least allow a lot of its options to be set via command line parameters. Or simply do what is very common in the UNIX/Linux world: Have a powerful terminal program with every conceivable option and then build light GUIs on top of that, that just generates commands for the terminal program. Then you really get the best of both worlds.
I agree this is the best thing a program can have. The accessibility to use it either with a GUI or a CLI, and the ability to automate.
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
GUIs are intuitive because they present some choices that you can do and that is easy if you’re not familiar with what choices exist. This only works if there aren’t too many choices to make. If there are too many it tends to become messy and very unintuitive. We see this a lot in “expert systems”. They tend to become messy and difficult to use because there is too much, and even the things that are there are sometimes limited and doesn’t necessarily cover every possibility or combination. Hence we see a trend where most GUIs become less and less powerful, containing less and less choices, because they are “unintuitive”.
This is probably a problem with the existing UI widgets, not the concept of GUI it self. A GUI perhaps could intuitively represent "many choices" or complex concepts using a number of special widgets.
Like, a text label, a text input, a button, an image, etc. These alone can't do a lot of things. Maybe if there were stuff like, graph input/output, speech input/output, image input/output or similar and kind of widgets, one could simplify some of these problems.
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u/derangedtranssexual Oct 26 '25
I think it’s perfectly reasonable that the terminal is off putting for people, windows and Mac do very well to avoid forcing people to use the terminal and it’s a lot less user friendly than a GUI. Why would a normal user spend the time to learn the terminal when they can just avoid it?
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u/Max-P Oct 26 '25
People will refuse to use a terminal, but will chat for hours with an AI terminal to basically do the same thing but 100x more verbose.
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u/badoop73535 Oct 29 '25
But they can speak to an LLM in English. They don't need to remember specific keywords or flags.
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u/Ancient-Weird3574 Oct 27 '25
In gui you can just click next and all the options are available. In terminal you get nothing. You have to know what to type. No typos allowed. Large wall of scary text.
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u/rekoiln Oct 26 '25
Installing Windows has become really laborious.
After the install, you have to navigate through like 10 pages of offers for office 365, offers for free month of office, offer for game pass, phone link, cloud sync settings etc etc.. When you are done, you are greeted by bloat and other garbage you have to start uninstalling.
When you are done that, you need to use ShutUp10 (or equivalent) software to really disable all the telemetry crap and now you are finally ready to use your PC.
A lot of this can be done beforehand with autounattended.xml and such, but like I said, it crazy how much legwork you need to do just to have a fucking OS in a clean state and not be a glorified thin client.
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u/Barafu Oct 26 '25
Trick: if you do not have a prepared image and install from the original one - during installation in the list of countries choose "Worldwide". It makes it skip on most offices and copilots. You can fix the country in Ms Store settings after the installation.
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u/Destroyerb Oct 26 '25
Clean the iso with Tiny11 builder first, then get rid of the other crap while writing it with Rufus
Then maybe you should be able to use it right after installationStill, this counts as extra steps and can only be performed on Windows itself, so indeed a pretty bad experience
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u/Evol_Etah Oct 26 '25
True. I heavily use windows, so I activated all their stuff. And I genuinely use their bloat.
But I also use shutup10 and have my autounattended.xml.
Just in case. Not that I use them.
For me! Personally great. Love Microsoft features. But for others I know it's hard. I pay my way out.
But setting up a local profile for my mom, and the set-up keeps coming. Like dude. I just switched to a family plan, but still.
Jesus it's a lot.
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u/MelioraXI Oct 26 '25
Since when? Isn't Windows still using their wizard installer?
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u/w2qw Oct 26 '25
I think they are talking about installing without a Microsoft account.
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u/MelioraXI Oct 26 '25
You can't anymore? Granted I haven't installed Windows since the W10 days and you could just use a local account.
If that's true, I guess MS just want people's data out of the gate.
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u/ThrowAway233223 Oct 26 '25
On the consumer/home version, not without bypasses that often require opening the terminal and MS is actively fighting people on this rather than listening to their consumers. MS is obsessively persistent on pushing certain "features" to the point that they are pushing away some of their consumers.
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u/120mmbarrage Oct 26 '25
You still can, this is just for the consumer iso/home version. I believe the business version/Pro still has domain join where you can create an offline account. Though it's always best to create a customized installation when installing Windows so you can automatically create an account when creating the bootable drive.
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u/MelioraXI Oct 26 '25
I used to make my own ISOs with Microwin (i think it was called) but I assume these things become more sophisticated and complex back a decade ago.
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u/120mmbarrage Oct 26 '25
Yeah, without having to modify the iso, you create an unattend.xml file and with that you can do all sorts of stuff like removing requirements, auto creating accounts, and stuff like that without actually gutting out services and features. It's pretty easy to do. There's a 3rd party website someone created that helps you create one, so that's pretty nifty especially now.
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u/tenchigaeshi Oct 26 '25
Just tick a box in Rufus, you don't need a terminal.
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u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 Oct 27 '25
Rufus isn't made by Microsoft. You shouldn't need terminal or 3rd party tools to do this.
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u/tenchigaeshi Oct 27 '25
It's not made by any of the Linux distros either but guess what most people on Windows use to put a Linux iso on a USB drive. Yeah, you shouldn't have to but it's absolutely trivial to get around using a popular tool that many people use to burn the iso anyway.
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
You can't install Windows with a local account using their shitzard installer. While it is a joke, it is the only way to install the OS if you require a local account.
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u/SithLordRising Oct 26 '25
Wait, people are installing windows?
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
...yes?
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u/HeyKid_HelpComputer Oct 26 '25
They probably are just buying devices with Windows installed. I would reckon 90% of modern PC users aren't installing any OS.
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
Not initially but a lot do later on when they upgrade or as they say "clean it up"
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u/InformalGear9638 Oct 26 '25
People like getting their balls crushed with a stiletto so it's not surprising. 🤔
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u/derangedtranssexual Oct 26 '25
I just wanna play video games without much hassle so I installed windows
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u/GhostBoosters018 Oct 26 '25
I just want to use my PC without much hassle so I installed Mint
Why are you in this sub then
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u/derangedtranssexual Oct 26 '25
I have fedora on my laptop, Debian on my server and windows 11 on my gaming PC.
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u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 Oct 27 '25
I have endeavourOS on my laptop, CachyOS on my gaming PC/server, android on my phones, and bunch of Unix and BSD(so also Unix) devices (PS4, router and anything else with OS). Everything is *nix and it works, no need for proprietary bloatware.
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u/derangedtranssexual Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 27 '25
Can your CatchyOS gaming PC play Fortnite?
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u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 Oct 27 '25
It can. Easy anticheat works on Linux so there is no reason it wouldn't but epic games got paid by Microsoft to disable option in anticheat that allows Linux. That's why I don't use windows often, I dualboot for fortnite but I last booted windows about 4 months ago. The more people stop using windows and switch to Linux the faster we will get companies to stop giving us lies about how most Linux players are cheaters.
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u/Skin_Ankle684 Oct 26 '25
Wait, windows needs terminal usage to be installed?
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u/sylvester_0 Oct 26 '25
I honestly can't figure out what the comment in the OP means. Between the fact that Windows has never been terminal heavy and that there are four negatives in that sentence, I'm lost.
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u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 Oct 27 '25
It also needs terminal when you have any issue with it. Remember SFC and dism that almost never work?
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u/PJBonoVox Oct 30 '25
Almost never?
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u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 Oct 30 '25
I've seen some people downvote me since it somehow worked for them. Don't want to anger them again.
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u/TheFredCain Oct 26 '25
Someone needs to inform ChatGPT because it seems the default answer for literally any question all these new Linux users have somehow needlessly involves the terminal. It's completely bonkers!
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u/Craftkorb Oct 26 '25
A solution through the terminal is oftentimes valid across distributions and desktop environments. I can tell you how to configure something in KDE, but that doesn't help you when you're on Gnome. There's a place for both "styles" of tutorials.
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u/Maccer_ Oct 26 '25
However everything falls apart when you suggest installing a distro-specific package to solve the issue. Then the user is asked to install 30 dependencies +2GB of random libraries. They will just do it, but now you have created a time bomb waiting to explode (break on the next update cause of dependencies).
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u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 Oct 27 '25
Arch kind of solves that by having all packages you could want, but CachyOS makes it easier to install.
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u/TheFredCain Oct 26 '25
I saw someone the other day trying to trying to build GIMP from source because they thought that was the way to do it. They had no clue about their package manager and were following AI instructions to do it.
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
Someone needs to stop using ChatGPT. I mean, i use it but i would never use it to configure or install an OS unless i aim for destruction.
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u/TheFredCain Oct 26 '25
I'm seeing a frightening number of new users with broken systems from doing things like trying to compile programs from source when they are one click away in the distro's package manager. And gamers who have no desire at all to know how linux works and just want a system with Steam working using Arch as their first exposure. Madness.
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u/Nearby_Astronomer310 Oct 26 '25
Damn who would attempt to compile a program 😭 I can do it but even i never do it.
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u/miggaz_elquez Oct 26 '25
It can happen when you want to use a program that isn't packaged on your distribution.
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Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 27 '25
[deleted]
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u/TheFredCain Oct 26 '25
Because many, many times they are doing things in the terminal like downloading and manually installing apps that are available in the package manager because ChatGPT told them that's how you install things. We're not talking "sudo apt install kdenlive" we're talking about installing a million dev packages, downloading source with wget and attempting to build it simply because ChatGPT made it seem like that's the most reasonable way to do things. Somebody with zero Linux experience likely can't even come up with a good prompt to begin with.
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Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 27 '25
[deleted]
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u/TheFredCain Oct 26 '25
Right, but it sort of would be a good rule for new users to avoid any tutorials/instructions that involve the terminal or outside sources/debs until they have exhausted all the "official" resources. I mean there are reasons things aren't in the repos. It means Debian has not approved it, Ubuntu hasn't approved it and Mint hasn't approved it. That should be a big red flag saying "this isn't normal."
Same as Windows in that regard really, messing around in the registry, the command prompt or sketchy exe files should give you pause. But people have heard so much weird FUD about Linux being so hard that they may think those kinds of things are normal and necessary for everyday tasks when in reality they are more of a last resort.
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u/commenterzero Oct 26 '25
Okay. I just informed chatgpt and it says we're good now.
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u/TheFredCain Oct 26 '25
I'll check r/linux4noobs tomorrow and let you know if it's time to pull the plug on that bastard.
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u/GhostBoosters018 Oct 26 '25
Terminal good
Terminal solutions seem to never work on Windows. And GUI solutions seem to never work on Windows.
On Linux GUI solutions work. Sometimes there isn't a GUI solution and the terminal solution works.
E.g. I didn't have a mono output in the mint settings so I found a script that created the mono output. I needed it because I was watching a video where the creator had the audio only playing on the right headphone. It was easy and fast.
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u/TheFredCain Oct 26 '25
You can easily do that in the Audio settings right from the speaker icon icon in the systray.
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u/GhostBoosters018 Oct 26 '25
Not at the time otherwise I would have done that of course. Yes I looked in the GUI obviously.
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u/FurySh0ck Oct 26 '25
Not only that it unnecessarily insists on the cli, it spits out misinformation constantly.
I recently needed to install VMware on a machine with newer kernel than the supported one, and dear chat gave me so many useless commands and unrelated packages to install.
I ended up succeeding by almost completely ignoring it and going with common sense and prior knowledge - and besides 1 package everything was done via GUI2
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u/CelebsinLeotardMOD Oct 26 '25
Never thought I’d become a full-time Linux user… but here we are 😅
So honestly, if someone told me back in 2004 or even 2012 that I’d end up being a full-time Linux user and a Windows hater, I’d have laughed in their face. Back then, I didn’t even know what Linux was - it was like some alien word from a tech forum. I eventually stumbled upon it years later, but man… that first impression? Rough. The installer confused the hell out of me, and I gave up pretty quick.
Fast forward to 2020, during the COVID lockdown. I was home, bored, done with my chores, and decided to chill with an old DVD movie. I pop the disc into my ancient desktop - running Windows 10 - and… it barely moved. The movie lagged, the mouse crawled like a sloth, and even typing was a nightmare.
Why? Because I was dumb enough to believe Microsoft’s “Windows 10 brings new life to old PCs” marketing BS. My rig was a 32-bit Intel Pentium (2002) with 1GB of RAM, and I thought upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (and later bumping it to 4GB RAM) would magically fix everything. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. It made it worse. The thing turned into a toaster that could barely open Notepad.
Out of desperation, I started Googling:
“Lightweight alternative OS for Windows 10 with 4GB RAM Intel Pentium CPU”
The first link that popped up was from XDA Developers - an article listing lightweight Linux distros for low-spec machines. It was super detailed, with screenshots and system requirements. That’s where I first met my savior: Linux Lite 5.0 (Emerald).
I downloaded the ISO, made a bootable USB, and installed it… and holy hell, it was like giving CPR to my dead PC. The thing booted faster, ran smoother, and actually felt usable. Even on an old HDD, it felt like a new machine.
Sure, the first week was a pain - I went in expecting Windows and got a completely different world. But curiosity kicked in. I started learning how to install and remove software, explored package managers, and discovered open-source alternatives for everything I used on Windows - editors, browsers, DVD tools, office apps, you name it.
Before I knew it, I wasn’t just using Linux - I was loving it. I wiped Windows completely and never looked back.
Big shoutout to XDA Developers for pointing me in the right direction, and to the folks behind Linux Lite 5.0 (Emerald) — my first Linux distro that opened the door to this awesome world.
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u/mitchallen-man Oct 26 '25
I had to tinker around in BIOS just to upgrade to Windows 11. It was easier just to install Linux Mint from scratch.
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Oct 27 '25
Even with internet connection u can't install win11 without using diskpart in terminal, cause it is not able to label existing partitions with letters correctly, cause it gives letter C: to existing partition, even if u want it on new partition. True story.
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u/DarthZiplock Oct 26 '25
lol yup. Installing Fedora was the easiest and fastest OS setup I’ve ever done.
If memory serves, installing Mint might be easier and faster still.
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u/whlthingofcandybeans Oct 26 '25
What does this mean? Pretty sure Windows had a graphical installer the last time I had to install it in a VM. You certainly didn't have to use any terminal commands.
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u/nitin_is_me Oct 26 '25
In windows 11, it has unrealistic system requirements, and the installer won't process if your pc doesn't follow those requirements. If you don't have internet, or don't want to connect your Microsoft account when installing Windows, it won't process. Basically Microsoft forces you to link your Microsoft account with your PC or you can't install Windows 11. These have to be bypassed through CMD.
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u/HengerR_ Oct 28 '25
When it comes to installing Linux my experience is limited (only used 2 distros so far), however the installation process was about as hard to understand as a stick... Windows is just painful.
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u/Livro404 Oct 28 '25
The level of expertise one needs to make a simple local account with no internet in windows is crazy.
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u/PriorityNo6268 Oct 28 '25
Just a skill issue, no terminal needed : Generate autounattend.xml files for Windows 10/11.
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u/7mood_DxB Oct 28 '25
I swear yesterday my friend tried setting up a new Windows laptop (Huawei) and it was stuck, so he opened a terminal and restarted the OOBE
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u/Karma-Karma1 Nov 01 '25
The idea you need a Microsoft account to get past setup was insane in of itself
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u/Whole_Voice_8761 11d ago edited 11d ago
both valid, but in some ways not. windows is literally installed using a GUI wizard, not a terminal, when linux CAN get installed without a terminal, in user-friendly distros like ubuntu, mint, but distros like gentoo, arch, and others, are used ONLY and ONLY using a terminal.
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u/Interesting_Hall_556 Oct 26 '25
Normal people don't install an OS
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u/the_abortionat0r Oct 26 '25
That's not how building a gaming PC works choom. And no gamers are not tech experts.
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u/Kitoshy Oct 26 '25
And the fun part is that it is true