#ok more context: i use linux mint which is among the most user-friendly ones

[clouds-of-wings]

I wonder if all those people who say Windows is easier to use than Linux are Apple users or something... I feel like Linux is pretty straight-forward, things usually work or else you get an error message that tells you what exactly is wrong. You may have to ask an expert what exactly the error message means but there’s always an expert around in the forums and then you’re good to go.

Whereas with Windows if something doesn’t work (which is often) the usual situation is that you get the message “This didn’t work for some reason, good luck!” or simply nothing happens at all. Then you ask on the Microsoft customer support forum and get an answer that fixes nothing because your error could have 20 different reasons and they don’t know what your problem is either. And then if you’re lucky you find some freeware that works and which someone has written for fun and glory - in other words, exactly the normal Linux approach - and it fixes your problem.

I feel like Windows often tries so hard to keep users away from everything technical that things in the end become needlessly complicated. I can’t get Ethernet to work on Windows 7. On Linux, it’s easy. It’s easier, even for someone with no technical knowledge, to enter subnet masks numbers (you can just jot them down after all, you don’t need to understand the background) than to find the 20 different arcane settings that Windows requires you to set.