[apeace]

Right. I was going to comment "Reason #12 to switch to Linux: you love reformatting the entire system every once in a while, typically after struggling to fix a driver for hours and completely screwing everything up in a way you can't figure out how to undo."

[formerly_proven]

This is an interesting observation, considering that traditionally Windows has had these opaque failure and degradation modes that are "unfixable" unless you reinstall. Personally, it doesn't ring true to me - I've been using the very same OS install for around a decade now, I just kept moving it from machine to machine and I think my laptop install is actually a duplicate. I've restored it from backups a few times, though the leading cause is "accidentally powered off during system update".

[gspencley]

I wonder how much this has to do with first impressions.

Back in the late 90s when I first started experimenting with Linux, the parent's post definitely described my experience. I remember booting up into a text-mode login prompt and running 'startx' and having to do a lot of messing around with manual configuration files. One mistake with an init file could leave your machine un-bootable and you'd have to use a rescue shell to recover. Driver support was a mixed bag for sure.

In current year it's literally the exact opposite experience. I have more issues with installing Windows apps that will make driver changes or add stuff to the registry that causes weird unexpected issues than I have with Linux. Linux is quick and easy to install and tends to "just work" for me once it's up and running.

I'm sure choice of hardware still has something to do with mixed experiences. I did have one bad experience in recent memory with a work-issued laptop and the track-pad not working with Linux. I had to use a personal device while I was employed there since it was a known issue with that particular brand and the fix was an upcoming kernel update. But that seems to be the extreme rare exception for me. Most devices I've installed Linux on have worked perfectly right out of the install and have required me to do zero configuration to make it usable.

[015a]

Yeah; one of my favorites in recent history was the Windows 11 developer preview. I installed it ahead of time to test an application my company distributes. Eventually, Windows 11 is released, and I think: Well, I'd like to get this machine off of the "dev channel" and on to stable, so I can (1) run what my users are running, and (2) not deal with instability.

You can't. Their official recommendation, in the Windows 11 Settings app, is to reinstall Windows 11. There's no way to migrate "backwards" on update channels, you can only go "more unstable".

[petschge]

I have updated my laptop across 4 major releases of Debian now, never reformating the system. And the copy of my home directory (think user profile in windows) is even older. If you don't know what you are doing, saving a full system backup to an external hard drive is actually easy so you can try things and revert if it doesn't work.

[rbanffy]

Same here. The only reason the last install was a fresh one was because I upgraded the storage on the laptop.

My home folder has files that have been with me since 2006 or so. This laptop is 7 years old and this is the third fresh OS install it has in its lifetime - With one exception, it's always been updated to the latest Ubuntu version as needed with the Ubuntu tooling.

What I have been doing to prevent data loss (that never happened) is to keep the interesting parts of my home folder on a separate filesystem and symlink them into my home folder. This allowed the previous fresh install to format the root partition and I didn't need to worry about my data being deleted.

[donio]

I haven't done that once in 25 years of desktop Linux use. One of the reasons I use Linux is that I can actually understand and fix problems.

On my main desktop the image has been rolling forward since 2008 when I switched to 64 bit. Naturally the hardware has been replaced around it several times since then.

[iso1210]

That may be your experience, certainly not mine. I do remember than from the days of windows.

[dgan]

For future readers: this is true (drivers/update problems), but easily fixable with for example Timeshift, or snapper (like openSUSE)

[tantony]

E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages