this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I can't say I've ever had this experience with installing drivers on Windows. Is it as smooth and centralized as Linux? No, but it's generally just go to manufacturers website, find product, find support page, locate drivers, download/install, rinse and repeat. Never had to go watch videos that led me to a partial install of drivers for an outdated Windows version. If WiFi doesn't work, use USB tethering from your phone. The laptop will act like it's connected to Ethernet (this at least lets you go to the Acer website to find the right WiFi drivers for your laptop).
Also never had Cortana bother me during setup. You can always skip all that extra crap. Last time I installed Win10 was to update my NVidia GPU firmware and it took 10 minutes.
This is very similar to my experience with a laptop from 2020. I wiped it and tried to install windows on it and nothing worked. It couldn't find a recovery partition (no surprise, the entire disk was wiped) and just refused to continue. I tried everything I could find online to make it work and nada. Partitioning it with linux MBR and GPT, enabling/disabling secure boot, enabling/disabling UEFI, different USB sticks, with a network connection, etc.
The previous experience had been a successful install on another, older laptop but the graphics card drivers were too old and only available from sketchy websites. Experiences before that of reinstalling windows every year or so to keep it fast involved backing up the driver installers and installing them in the right order otherwise it wouldn't work.
Windows was the most tedious OS I had to deal with.
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