It's been quite a while since I've installed windows from scratch on a new system. I work with windows all the time at my work but it's always virtual machines. I recently built a new computer and as always installed Linux on it. I wanted to play some games so I bought Windows 7 to make that easier. I will give props to windows for a lot of things nowadays -- the fact that I can play games released 15 years ago without problems is really, really nice.

However, there are some things that annoy me that I simply never have to deal with on Linux. First off, when installing from scratch not even the network works upon first boot. I either have to already have a driver disk or load up another computer to download it. I need motherboard chipset drivers, audio drivers, graphics card drivers, etc. Each of these is a fairly large download if you don't already have the disk.

Luckily, I just bought the computer so I had all the disks handy. I ran the intel disk and it installed network, audio, chipset drivers. I then went to the nvidia website at 640x480 to grab the drivers for my graphics card. Everything appeared to work well after going through the 4 separate installers and about 7 reboots.

My network speed was crap under windows, though, it turns out the disks had really old drivers so I had to redownload all the intel drivers to get >1mbps on my card. (And of course another 3 reboots.) You guys are probably used to this by now but it's been a really long time since I've had to manually manage drivers. And this isn't even mentioning all the patches and reboots from windows update, ugh. On Linux the only time I have to reboot is when I get a new kernel.

I installed windows 7 and all of that stuff worked for me

Windows 7: It Just Works.
Why not install all the drivers at once, and do as many things as possible before you reboot the first time.

What Intel card did you have? They should be included with Windows.

Linux is NOTORIOUS for terrible network support. How can you even begin to say Windows is bad? I spent DAYS trying to get my wired networking to work last time I had Linux on my netbook. I had to build a custom kernel because the drivers that came with the kernel, which were actually provided by Atheros themselves, were buggy and did not work. Oh, and then I couldn't run the latest kernel version because they changed the network interface so the old driver wouldn't compile anymore. It worked out of the box on Windows.

None of this is the norm, at all. When I first installed Win7 on my machine, not only did it immediately get drivers for my network card on first launch, it found updated ones for just about everything on Windows Update. Even video card drivers are semi-regularly updated on Windows Update now.

Also, let me speak to the exact opposite for you.

LINUX is the one with driver issues out the ass. Yes, it may "Just Work" when you first boot, but not usually. No, instead you're forced to search around for drivers, many of which are not easily installed with a simple installer, require configuration edits, hacks, reverse-engineered drivers, and searching through various repositories that are NEVER in the default. God forbid you have Wi-Fi on a less common chipset.

Then you have hibernate/suspend issues, which in Linux more often simply does not work.

Not to mention much of this requires reboots, especially if you don't know all the specific commands to stop/restart the necessary services, or know how to work the terminal in general. And video drivers are especially horrible, requiring a whole Xorg restart, which although not a reboot, is damn near close enough.

There are many drivers that do NOT need reboots on Windows too, like video drivers, network/sound drivers, etc. Many "reboots" are unnecessary, only included as fail-safe with older driver installers.

Windows comes with drivers for all of these. If there are better alternatives available, especially for your graphics drivers, Windows Update can install them for you most of the time. Also since when did you not have to worry about graphics drivers on Linux?

Almost all of them are unnecessary, it's just easier.

It's an Intel DP55WB motherboard with onboard sound & network. Does the version of windows matter? I got windows 7 professional 64-bit for "system builders." I ordered it from newegg and it came on a dvd. It didn't have working anything when I booted it, no sound, no network, default 640x480 graphics. Well, the usb mouse and keyboard worked fine.

You guys having driver issues on linux is weird to me since every computer I've worked on in the past 7 years hasn't had a single driver issue. Well, one exception was a wireless card. A long time ago I had problems with winmodems. I'm talking about desktop machines here. The networking on linux is far better than windows in my experience. Are you guys trying to install it on laptops? I would guess that is a lot more tricky.

Oh, and how do you get around reboots? It tells you to reboot then constantly prompts you every so often after that.

Yeah doesn't sound like you had a normal windows experience. When I installed W7 on my Christmas pc last year it was a fluid experience like the others are describing.

Also with the removal of 16 bit support you really can't play old games unless you can bypass the installers. Anachronox still doesn't work either..

.

Microsoft just hates brian and intentionally gives him faulty copies of their software for the specific purpose of pissing him off.

all kidding aside, i have the same experience as everyone else, after installing Win7(since the first beta release) everything has just worked for me too. only problems i've had were related to a bad stick of RAM i had in there at one point.

Are you guys installing from an actual disk or is it the preinstallation from a company like dell or hp?

Only Windows Update will do that, which does sometimes require reboots. But also, Windows has kernel security updates that are required far more often than Linux. It's not that Linux needs reboots less often, it just isn't fixing security issues as often.

Windows Update does have a number of updates which don't even require reboots (And it will not ask you if it's not necessary). Windows Defender, Office updates, drivers, those types of updates typically will not prompt a reboot. IIRC, Microsoft has a once-a-week critical update release schedule, which is not exactly problematic to handle.

A lot of things ask for reboots, but very rarely do you actually have to.
The way I do is I install all drivers, and do as much in windows update as possible before I reboot, although in W7 this is a non-issue because damn near nothing causes a reboot. XP was far worse.

That's your problem. The System Builders disc comes with NO drivers at all beyond embedded Windows drivers. It's intended for a company like Dell to build out with their driver set for a specific model line.

I'm about 99.99999% sure this is false. The only difference is supposed to be the licensure and packaging. Namely, it comes in a sleeve and is bound to a motherboard, as opposed to retail boxes which are not.

I recently built a computer and bought Windows 7 retail. I'm in the same boat as everyone except Brian, and so far it's the best boat I've ever been on when it comes to operating systems.

Why the lack of confidence?

I uninstalled my audio drivers to see what happens. When I rebooted, it just said it installed the drivers for me. I have no idea if it's the same ones it had before or if it's some new one. It didn't go through windows update though and this same thing didn't work when the computer was first booted (or subsequent reboots for unrelated driver updates). I looked for an option in windows update to show driver updates and didn't find anything like that. Meh.

This, dozens of times this. Not exaggerating either, because I know how to use google and install things I'm considered the resident computer expert, so I've had to install windows on computers of almost every single family member that owns one.

It's not some special drivers section. IF there's any to be had on your system, it'll show up in Optional Updates.

is it bad that i punch things when i see this

From you, Tibby, really?

Somone who uses linux complaining about the complexity of installing windows.... that's some twilight zone stuff there

You're right. System Builder is apparently interchangeable with OEM -- I wasn't under that impression.

The "gray" disc comes with no included driver software. Apparently there isn't a name anywhere I can find about this.

I'm tempted to start over just to see if I can get it to work the way you say it's supposed to... but I've already downloaded a bunch of games which took quite a while so it's not worth it.

Brian, I installed from a disk. Doesn't help any but it does answer your second question

Although, to be perfectly honest, knoppix was the best operating system I've ever used when it comes to supporting hardware out of the box. I haven't tried installing a real distro, though. I'm sure there would be plenty of headaches. Actually, that's a little unfair. Vista was absolutely trouble-free with every piece of hardware I've ever used with it.

That said, the later the windows version, the less trouble it's given me. Actually, Windows 3.1 was a lot more stable than 95 and 98. That's for sure.

That's not really fair though. Windows 9x has preemptive multitasking, Win 3.1 doesn't. You can't actually do much with Win 3.1

Every little possible thing worked fine for me with Windows 7 the first time I installed it on the first boot IIRC. Yes it was system I built and an off the shelf copy of Windows (not pre-installed). The driver support has been stellar.

What pisses me off about Windows 7 is having to relearn where every stupid thing is such as control panels and other various basic tasks and functions. 6 months and I'm still relieved when I sit down at an XP machine because I'm familiar with it to a level that I just can't get to with 7.

If only there was a text box where you could type what you want and it would find it for you...

Stop following me.

I've never seen DOS crash!

Windows 3.1 was installed on the first computer I owned. I put a floppy disk halfway into the drive (it didn't snap into place) while booting up by accident and my parents had to call DELL or whoever manufactured my PC to fix my computer because it decided to **** **** up.

I've never noticed this before, but Sol's signature says "my my" in the first line, even though it probably shouldn't. I've always read it as "Got a permanent feather to my cap", so much so that I could almost swear he changed it on purpose.

On an only tangentially related note, I still strongly prefer Spotlight over Start Search for some reason even though they have the same basic function.

I think it's funny how the start search is the first real use for the windows key.

I've long used the Windows key for shortcuts (win+f for search files, win+r for the Run prompt, etc). I'm not sure what it does in the start search and, not being on my computer, I can't check right now.

Ah I forgot about those.