This image was created by /u/kuebic@discuss.tchncs.de for this comment here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/21735989. I had encouraged them to post it somewhere, but as far as I can tell, they never did.
Panel 1: “Installing Windows 20 years ago” screenshot of install wizard with just a couple buttons
Panel 2: “Installing Linux 20 years ago” screenshot of a busy command line
Panel 3: “Installing Windows today” screenshot of a busy command line
Panel 4: “Installing Linux today” screenshot of install wizard with just a couple buttons
I don’t think I ever messed with the Windows 3.1 OS on my family’s 486, but from Windows 95 and onwards I’ve done multiple installs of all the consumer versions of windows and was an avid user of win2k at the time. And for Windows 11 I have only ever installed it in a VM on a Linux machine to test Windows tools that are part of our builds at work.
I’ve also installed the last couple versions of Linux Mint a few times on some newer and older PCs. And some other distros in VMs for various reasons.
ALL of my recent Linux installs have gone far more smoothly and quickly than ANY Windows installs I remember.
Old windows? Better.
New Linux? Best!
Did you install linux at all in the same time in the 90s? SLS? Slackware? Debian? Caldera? RedHat? SuSe? Etc? to have a counterpart reference for that era?.. Contrary to the depiction in the OP image, GNU+Linux was fine and easy to install with a gui installer since 20 years years ago and far longer.
Nope I don’t have experience installing older distros. I used some Unix systems in the late 90s (Sun Solaris) and really liked them even though I wasn’t yet the Linux/FOSS enthusiast I am now.
Your comment does not surprise me at all, though. For any rough edges Linux has had over the years, at least the motivations of the developers creating it have been in the right place all along. That is, making software for themselves and users, as opposed to the innumerable forces of enshittification within tech giants like Microsoft.