Linux > Windows
Just wanted to share a set of experiences I recently had that contrasts Linux and Windows.
This is a tale of troubleshooting two issues. The first is with Windows 11, the second is with Linux, specifically EndeavourOS (an Arch Linux-based distribution).
Windows: Something Went Wrong
I was deploying a set of new Windows 11 24H2 laptops at work. I began with just two of them, to see if there's any issues with the weird software we have to use in our industry. I used one of them myself, and gave the other to a coworker who was willing to be a guinea pig. I had mine for about three weeks when Windows Update showed this error on both of the laptops:
Something went wrong. Try to reopen Settings later.
Okaaaay. Something went wrong. What went wrong? Something. SOMETHING.
I've been using Microsoft Windows since version 3.1. As an administrator and a programmer (both Win32 and now .NET) I am intimately familiar with how it works. Or at least I thought I was. I did all the common troubleshooting, including:
- Uninstalling the latest updates.
- Reset the update-related services and caches.
- Ran Microsoft's own troubleshooter.
- Reset a variety of update-related packages.
Nothing worked. I could check, download, and install updates just fine from the command line (PowersShell), but the Windows Update UI always said "Something Went Wrong". There was nothing useful logged in the Event Viewer (and I had forgotten how bad Event Viewer is at actually viewing events). Since I had been using my laptop for a few weeks I didn't want to re-image from scratch, so I used Windows 11's in-place upgrade option. This option reinstalls Windows but keeps your documents and 3rd party apps.
It didn't work.
So I tried the in-place upgrade again, this time letting it delete 3rd party apps.
It STILL didn't work.
At this point I opened a trouble ticket with our anti-malware vendor, because I couldn't think of any other software that could affect Windows Updates. We went back and forth for awhile with me sending them logs, and replicating the issue on my own with some virtual machines. They weren't able to reproduce the problem, and couldn't think of a reason that their software would affect Updates like that anyway. I looked at stuff like Group Policy, but these new laptops had the same policies that the existing Windows 11 and Windows 10 computers had. Same anti-virus too.
I decided to completely re-image the two laptops. Three weeks had gone by, and Microsoft was rolling out another set of updates. This time, following the exact same deployment process, I never received the "Something went wrong" message. I've been using the laptop for about two weeks. I hope to never see such an unhelpful, un-actionable message again.
Linux: It Don't Boot No More
Today I was updating my home computer, which, as I said earlier, runs Linux. I kinda wasn't paying attention to its messages, rebooted, and was kicked into my computer's firmware interface because it couldn't find an OS to boot. WHOOPS.
So I searched online for how to fix it and found this helpful article. I assumed I had screwed up the kernel update (or Nvidia had ;) ) so I booted from a USB stick, ran a few commands rebooted, and my computer was fixed.
In particular it was these commands:
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt
mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/efi
arch-chroot /mnt
reinstall-kernels
The Difference
Computers are complicated. But Windows has become so complicated that not even an in-place reinstall can fix all the issues. Windows is also too opaque: it doesn't tell you what it's doing, and it doesn't provide verbose messages when things go badly. Linux is not user-friendly, but at least when it breaks it's fixable. There was only about 20 minutes between my initial panic of "oh no what happened to my computer" to "oh that was an easy fix". I'm glad I switched to Linux.
In conclusion, Windows sucks. Need more proof? Read this article about how OneDrive screwed up someone's computer so bad they couldn't log in.