I've never "debloated" Windows so idk about the top half.

The bottom half is accurate. Debian, Fedora, and Mint are easier to install than Windows 10 or 11. Not that Windows is difficult, it's just a bit clunky and idiosyncratic.

I assume Microsoft doesn't care much about the installer since it's generally only used by OEMs, whereas for Linux distros it's a first impression so it has to be polished.

Almost everyone using Linux installed it. Almost no one using Windows installed it.

Mac users:

This sub is delusional

Windows requires pressing next 12 times, what are you people smoking and can I haz?

would love to see some actual market research on this. sit down a sample of users, have them install then use some OSs. interview them on their experience. rather than yknow making up data

Biased as fuck lol. Installing windows is not difficult. I did it first time at the age of 8 witn WIndows 98 and their newer installers are made so the general public can do it. And the bloat and spyware? Thats windows dude. Its not meant to be your OS, its meant to spy on your ass at the benefit of being familiar and (relative) easy to use. Anything you do to it post clean install is your own tinkering. Linux distros are great yall, but install difficulty is not a metric I would use to attack windows. Comparing between distros makes sense.

Install windows, run debloat powershell script. Done.

Microsoft give no shortage of things to complain about without needing to exaggerate.

What an absurdly sycophantic graph.

I can agree that installing Arch is easier than installing a debloated Windows. But Gentoo? I spent 2 weeks trying to install it, but couldn't get past partitioning the drive.

I don't even know what this graph is even supposed to mean. Bitch about Windows all you like but the installation process is typically very simple.

Installing gentoo

As much as I wish this were true, this is in a bubble where Windows isn't already preinstalled on everything.

This is true, but the people who think of Windows as easier to use are not people who install operating systems themselves.

I love Debian, but it's installer is shit.

Um... My grandma installed Windows 11 on her computer and then ran a simple script I gave her after. You guys are delusional.

Windows 11 without a Microsoft-Account = terminal required. Linux Mint = terminal not required.

Installing regular Windows 10/11 is definitely more than twice as painful than installing Debian 12.

Once, I was trying to install Windows 10 and wasted an entire day! The installation would systematically fail at the beginning of the installation with a BS error message that doesn't give any hint about what's going wrong. In the end it just didn't like USB3 as an installation media! I reflashed it to a USB2 and it worked, but OMG was it super slow ! It took literally hours to install !!!

Debian, even as a noobie, you'll go from flashing your ISO to a booted system within an hour. If you've done it once before, you will get it done in 20 minutes.

Installing windows takes stupidly long. You have to click through 60 pages and click "No, i don't want to share my data" just for them to collect it anyway

brother, 99% of users will never even consider installing their own os. the issue isn't that Linux is hard to install, the issue is that pretty much anyone brave enough to even mess with their operating system is either already on Linux, a boomer, or trapped by professional software that isn't available on Linux (that's me, a videographer)

the only way Linux is breaking out of extreme obscurity is if it starts coming pre-installed on commercially available and desirable hardware. the steam deck did more for Linux in a single product launch than the entire decade of combined efforts before that. before the deck i would have said it was simply never going to happen, but who knows. maybe it'll be up to eccentric billionaires that never went public with their companies to push the Linux future we all want.