So at the client I’m currently working for, a bunch of new PCs arrived, and I was watching their employees install them.
The entire installation process, from first boot all the way to installing an alternative browser, got me facepalming myself so many times, my head is now gone.
With Linux and BSD, most distro’s and variants come with either a command line installer or a Calamaris installer, either way it’s often pretty straight forward.
If Calamaris, you pick a language, keyboard layout, timezone, partition layout, username and password, and you’re done.
In comparison, Windblows 11 is not only overly complicated and slow, most of the options are rather bullshit too.
The first thing I noticed is how extremely slow the UI is, you often have to wait an entire minute to go from 1 page to the other.
And the installer is divided into multiple segments separated by reboots.
First part was OK, you choose between Japanese and English, then the IME (only 1 choice, so no idea why they even ask), and hostname.
That’s where the common sense options end.
OK, eye break!
During the 2nd part you get into the bullshit.
You MUST set up a WiFi connection, or it’ll prevent you from continuing.
Even the one that’s connected by ethernet had to be connected to WiFi or it would still not let you continue.
And because you’re connected to WiFi, you MUST log into a Microshaft account or create one, no local account can be made anymore.
Employees were all complaining, even the employer himself found this to be retarded.
Then it asks you if you want to enable a bunch of telemetry (default is all enabled), not like disabling will do anything, but meh.
Then it asks to install OEM provided bloat, again everything is enabled by default.
Then Face ID, Game Pass subscription, connection to an Android phone, and a couple of other stuff, this is all skippable.
What’s not skippable was the PIN code entry.
Then it asks if you want to set up as a new device or copy over files from a different PC.
They set it to new device, and Windblows 11 still copied files over from a different PC anyway.
And then it asked what type of PC user you are.
Reboot, and you get greeted with the ugliest looking wallpaper ever made, so they all had to change it to something else.
Then they were looking for Goolag Chrome, so they opened up Edgy, and it asked to log into a Goolag account, then Edgy insisted on you going though a tutorial or some shit.
They installed Chrome, and immediately bloatware extensions got installed.
Also, they had to manually change the default browser at a dozen different places.
Seriously, anyone saying that Windblows is easy to use and Linux is hard to use, from what I’ve seen, is absolutely wrong.
15 years ago it might have been just my opinion, but now it’s safe to say that it’s an actual fact at this point.
If I were to install these machines, I would probably just give up at the forced WiFi connection part, plug in a live USB, install any Linux or BSD with any DE or WM, and call it a day.
Even the other people said they would have wished to go back to the PC-98 era, because NEC’s PCDOS was so much easier to use than Windblows 11.