I just have to say, after having booted into Windows, that Linux is so much nicer than Windows when it comes to doing system “updates.”
So, here I am, sitting in my chair for about 20 minutes looking at a mostly black screen and a highly dubious looking percentage number going up very slowly. It tells me that Windows is “updating” and that I should keep the computer turned on. Good thing I have the computer turned on or I wouldn’t know that I shouldn’t have it turned off, right?
Anyway, I start to think about how this experience goes in Linux. In my experience, I do “system” updates about once a month, and I can see each individual package being installed (if I glance away from my browser session, that is). In Windows, I have no choice but to sit here and wonder if the system will even work again.
Windows decides that it wants to update drivers, apparently (I honestly have no idea what it’s doing, which is part of what pisses me off), because it reboots the computer. Then it reboots again. Then, eventually, everything goes back to the familiar Windows desktop. WTF?
How anyone could prefer Windows to Linux is truly a mystery to me.
I have a relatively recent ryzen system. With a 2070 super and windows 11. Sitting next to it is an i4790 system with a 1060 and no nvme. I use it daily. Love the hell out of it. It just runs. Windows 11 actually refuses to use the KVM. It’s just a constant pain in the ass. So lately I’ve turned it on maybe once a week at most. One of these days soon I’m going to bite the bullet and get a new nvme drive just for Linux on it. That way I don’t have to risk windows clobbering it for how little I will use it. My most recent heavy use of it was free games off of Amazon games. So that I can install and use them on the Linux system. If there’s no proper Amazon games client for Linux. There is a CLI downloader. But it doesn’t let you clean things Etc or notify you.
Heroic games launcher has prime gaming support
How anyone could prefer Windows to Linux is truly a mystery to me.
Easy of use. The “Click here and I’ll do the stuff for you” kind of “easy of use”.
…I mean… Linux CAN be EASY to use – even MORE than Windows. But for that, the user has to dig in deep. Really deep.
You don’t have to dig in that deep to get a good OOTB experience with Linux today, but you have to know and research which box you’re gonna “open”. Which I think is the biggest hurdle for most people that could adopt Linux.
I don’t even remember how updates used to be like in Windows. Except perhaps the nagging associated with manual updates.
Click button. Fugheddaboidut
Well that is how the updates work if you install hardly any software. In case you have, every other one hits you with the update by itself, showing random dialogs, opening a browser to download the binary, asking for the elevation etc etc.
How anyone could prefer Windows to Linux is truly a mystery to me.
I doubt most people would base their decision solely on the update experience.
That being said when I used Windows regularly up to the end of last year, installing updates wasn’t really a problem or even something I really noticed. It didn’t really nag me to restart or whatever and just did its thing when I shut the computer down, taking half a minute longer every now and then - but I don’t care because I just wanted to shut down anyway.
Fedora (and I’m sure more distros) apply updates on restart by default if you update via GUI (“Software” in GNOME, “Discover” in KDE). This also requires a “double restart” (I noticed it because you also have to enter your LUKS passphrase twice). Sure, you can update packages in-place, but depending on the update (not just the kernel) this can cause issues/anomalies with the running system. I’ve had some Mesa updates without a restart cause games to stop working or misbehave, also video decoding.
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