this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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most people just assume it's hard and never actually try it
You likely aren't the target market. Assume less.
Installing an OS in general is "hard", but installing Linux is by far easier than Windows these days. Trickiest part is changing the boot order in the BIOS, really.
I've been running some variant of *nix since the mid nineties. Installing windows is head and shoulders simpler than Linux. Lol
No it really isn't. Installing Linux nowadays is literally just booting the usb and following a few things on screen and you're up and running. On Windows you tell it to install, then it drops you into the preparation process after installation that takes a shit ton of time and asks you a million things while telling you it will watch you even after you click to disable every single tracking shit it is showing on screen, and after all that it will still ask you to wait while it prepares the OS for you. And if that is not enough, after that you still have to download drivers for your card manually because it will only install some old version just to get it working.
When was the last time you did it? I'm directly comparing my experience doing both, recently. lol
Last time I installed Windows I literally had to drop out of the install wizard and run a bunch of terminal commands in order to perform the installation without a Microsoft account. They're stricter about that than even having a fucking license key.
I had to do that to get Windows to recognize my SSDs. Yeah, it was a fucking mess.
Linux just worked. I honestly wish at this point that I hadn't even bothered setting up Windows. It was 90% of the hassle.
that's why the only version of Windows worth using is the Pro version of windows, it lets you make local accounts.
So you're saying you can't use this distribution of windows but another better distro? Sounds familiar
luckily both are free or i guess spend the $20 on a key from somewhere if you need to. then you have to live with the fact that most things will function on your operating system without having to think about it or research. it's pretty terrible.
maybe he's comparing it to the windows version he last installed in the mid 90s from like a gateway OEM install which was basically a single click disk image push from a manufacturer CD.
because, yeah, i've installed 3 distros in the last two years across 3 different machines (manjaro mint, ubuntu LTS, fedora atomic/bazzite) and the longest and most difficult of those took probably 20% of the time and 10% of the attention a windows install has always taken in this millennium.
it's almost disorienting how easy and fast installers are now. every time i'm like, "wait, that's it?"
I think there's a small contingent of Linux users who like making it complicated and hate the idea of Linux being accessible and easy for anybody to use. The kind of people who would make sure to tell you how long they've been using "*nix". My mother's in her 70s, has never been a computer toucher beyond the basic necessities, and I set her up on Mint many years ago and she's perfectly happy with it.
Elitists ABSOLUTELY exist in Linux spaces as do chuds and worse people. With that said almost all my interactions with Linux users have been very pleasant so far.
As the old joke goes, the best way to get help in a Linux forum isn't to ask a question, because you'll be told to use the search function or read x documentation. You gotta post that Linux sucks because it can't do whatever you're having trouble doing, and that it works in Windows perfectly.
Yeah idk what he's talking about. Theres graphical installers with sensible defaults for most distros now. It only gets complicated if youre trying to follow some nerds advice about doing custom partitions. The Fedora installer is just selecting a language, a drive to install on, a username and password. Everything else is under Advanced settings.
Generally speaking. I think if someone wants to try Linux they should go for it. But even watching a 10minute vid on how to go about it is probably gonna help a lot of folks. (As someone who is currently using Mint which is like babbys first distro)
It doesn't hurt but I just think the other person was exaggerating how difficult the process is if you aren't doing anything unusual that a random forum said is the best way. If someone has trouble installing Linux, they would probably also have trouble installing Windows from scratch.
It's just that most people don't usually have to do it themselves. That's a general lack of computing knowledge/skills that will always be a barrier and can't be solved no matter how easy Linux gets for the average person to use. It requires that person to gain more familiarity with computers in general.
Which is different than the difficulty of having general computing knowledge, but not understanding the difference in workflow. Such as installing an app from a store like KDE's Discover instead of from the website directly or from the Microsoft store, which would be the closest analog but not as common. That's where I think most of the difficulty comes in but that can also be worked on by distros to help overcome.
I didn't know what a linux was until 2022 when I installed kubuntu for kicks and then stayed on it because I didn't know how to format the USB drive for windows.
Still trying to figure out how to get back to windows
I'm stuck here.
a lot of people use stuff that doesn't have a linux version and probably never will, especially modern games that use anti cheat in the kernel.
a lot of people should probably stop depending on skinner box shooter slop for their recreation but idk I don't make the rules.
For anticheat, both BattlEye and EAC support Linux in userspace as long as the developers click the toggle to include the files needed, the issue is with other anticheat like Vanguard and with devs that just hate Linux users for some reason (Destiny for example). For everything else, I really don't think it's that much of an issue. Sure if someone absolutely needs Microsoft Office, then there isn't much they can do if the online version don't suffice, but Office suites on Linux are good enough replacement for the majority of people and are easy to use. For video editing, DaVinci Resolve runs natively, for Photoshop, there is a no-headache AppImage on github for Affinity running on Wine, but there is talks of it getting a native version (there's also Photopea on the browser). For art, there's Krita for drawing, Blender for 3D Modeling, Aseprite and Pixelorama for pixel art. For vector graphics there's Inkscape. For game development both Unreal Engine and Unity run natively, and there's also popular FOSS stuff like Godot. For CAD, FreeCAD is actually good now. For 3D printing, all major slicer software runs natively, etc.
it's not hate, there's just not enough linux desktop users to make it worth time developing for. it's at like 2% marketshare and most of that is Linux servers. "hate" lol. The persecution is real.
I was obviously exaggerating lol. I know they don't hate Linux. Also no, Linux gaming marketshare is around 3,5% iirc. And it doesn't really take any effort to check a toggle to enable Linux players to play your game if it uses either BattlEye or EAC. Destiny actively chooses to block Linux players for example.