These are facts you will not like.

• for a number of years I worked with a group producing and maintaining the AT&T Unix primary distribution.
• the people in the organization worked on the Unix kernel, and it would astound people 20 years later
• these people, one of them easily the smartest I’ve ever known, unilaterally used windows.

Let’s look at that, though, as we move from fact to memories and opinions. What I recall is the standard dev kit at the time was VanDyk SSH. That’s all they needed, but they used Mozilla as their mail and web client. They also needed a music player because of course – even if that was extra.

Windows provided all of those, and WinAMP, and it did two things reliably that Unix at the time didn’t: it booted well and it ran music smoothly. It provided a voice-chat client and ran that smoothly as well. The various chat apps of the time, which were probably three but felt like a dozen, also ran well.

In short, the crappy windows default platform didn’t ask for tweaking and gave the user an SSH client on boot. When highly-paid people don’t need to futz with modelines, the company doesn’t lose money it didn’t need to.

I tell you that to tell you this. Linux has grown up from the modeline days, but no distro is free of bizarre junk shoved in by some wunderkinder with more power than reviewers and pushed by a vendor hoping to create the next big thing – without stopping to ask whether it should, whether it’s useful for us. Machines boot a little more slowly and a little less reliably, and there is a non-zero risk that a very valuable dev’s machine will NOT be available when required. Windows has jammed their own shit into the OS - just privacy risk after ad spooge, on and on - but the thing it does well (when it’s not patching) is boot well and allow us to start Putty and WinAMP and Seamonkey.

And I’m not sure whether a reliable start into something with a bunch of ad spooge is better or not.

I SHOULD MENTION that I’m moving my geriatric mom, and others, to linux later this year. She’s ready, even if I don’t relish supporting her from 9 hours’ travel away.

And I love how the gif included was correct and almost perfect English, but every time it’s quoted there’s a different writing error.

Install windows 11, installer takes 11 hours, run windows update for another 11 hours, restart, install drivers one by one from various websites for an hour, run windows update, restart, uninstall bloatware, restart, disable telemetry in 100s of menus, run windows update, restart, disable telemetry again after windows update re-enabled them, go to various websites to download your preferred applications, install them one by one, restart.

Vs

Install Linux Mint, installer takes 20 minutes, all drivers already there, no bloatware, open software manager, install all your applications from there, they can all be queued, no need to restart, done.

So he votes for Linux, where 90% of mainstream distros installers are literally

• Choose disk
• How much software? (Optional)
• Username
• Password

Where we run in to issues like is: user has gnome installed and wants to turn on file sharing, goes to the menu and serches for it, flips webdav on. Then they can’t figure out that you need to install some packages for it to work, they get frustrated and gives up. Then they decide they need to connect their bluetooth headphones. They flip the bluetooth button. The button just springs back off. They have no idea they need to enable a background service for it to function. These are the type of issues the normal user gets mad at. Things they expect to work, but requires their tech support friend to help them.

Especially the part where it is claimed that users want to go home and pay bills. I have never once actually wanted to pay a bill.