I am very happy if you can enlighten me. Granted, I do not install Windows very often (otherwise I would bake all these things into an image), and there may be improvements. So feel free to make your point and save me time.

An no, security updates can’t run in the background. If I sit a user in front of a PC, the PC has to be secure. Which means that the zero day exploits from a few days ago which are already exploited in the wild have to be fixed. Also yes, software for basic tasks and configuration till usability is reached is part of an operating system install. Otherwise you have to compare the time to install a barebones Linux (1 Minute) with a bare Windows install (still 30 minutes).

I currently use chocolatey for automation of software installs. But Libreoffice alone takes minutes to install on Windows even on fast PCs. If you know a better/faster tool I am happy to listen.

For me the 30 minutes to install is about right. After that I have usable Linux and an unusable Windows.

To get Windows to the same state:

• Add 5 Minutes for clicking trough the "Do you want to enable handwriting? ((( We just allow ourselves to collect samples of everything you write to “improve our recognition engine” )))
• Add 20-30 minutes of security updates (thankfully it got much faster with SSDs, before it could have been hours)
• Add 20-30 minutes of installing necessary software like an office suite, PDF Reader with basic functionality, 7zip. This is only 30 minutes because I spent hours automating the downloads and installs trough scripts.
• If it is my system or a company system: Add 20 minutes to go trough the settings of Win10Privacy to at least reduce the phoning home and to enable some necessary settings for working with the system like “Don’t restart at random times”
• Add 10 Minutes to remove the installed bloatware like People, Windows Maps, Windows Experience Host, …

In summary:
Linux requires 5 minutes attention and is ready after 30min.
Windows requires 40 minutes of attention and is somewhat ready after 2h30min. Even if I skip the privacy stuff its still at about 1h20min.

To be fair: On Windows and Linux I immediately install ublock to Firefox afterwards, on Linux I run a single apt command to install some more niche software which takes about 3 minutes on a fast network connection.

I had great experiences with old games on Linux. Mostly they work better than on a modern Windows system. For Example Neverwinter Nights 2. Under Windows movement is jittery on fast CPUs. There is a community patch for that thankfully. Under Linux it just works with WINE (the patch is advisable for other reasons there too). Also loading times are blazingly fast under WINE and Linux. On my HDD PC 1 second vs 50 on Windows. Now with a NVME SSD, Windows also only takes 2 seconds.

Of course Wine/Proton is not perfect, I still have a dualboot system for that. But I boot to Windows very rarely these days. When I do I am hit with so many slow updates, that I don’t get to my game. Maybe I should stop doing them and cut of its network access.

Really old games tend to be more difficult. For a relative I set up a VM with Win98 as the performance impact won’t hurt the games, some even benefit. (I believe the games where Safecracker and Theme Park) Even older than that DosBox and ScummVM work perfectly.

Yes Hamas is a terror organization, no, that does not allow you to behave like a terror organization when fighting them.

If you have read the article this is not about innocents which where at the wrong place a the wrong time. This article is about deliberate destruction of civilian buildings without giving any justification besides ‘There are some things that we see that you don’t see.’ in some cases evacuation was allowed, in some cases no time for evacuation was given. There is in my eyes no justification for this.

I never said that Israel should stand idle. So don’t push that opinion on me.

What could be done? Attack military targets only, give civilians time to evacuate. (Yes a civilian home becomes a military target if it is used as weapons stash/factory, but there was no indication at all in the cases listed in the article), support the more moderate Fatah in regaining control. Support new democratic elections. Provide help in forms primarily targeted at civilians: Food, water, education. Allow students from the Gaza Strip to study abroad. Part of that is already done, but hampered by the military actions.

Destroying peoples homes and basic utilities will only ensure that hate on Israel grows and support for Hamas remains steady.

I had good experiences with the Zenbook-Flip Series from Asus. Linux support is great, build quality too. It even survived a big drop with only the screen falling out, but still working. I just inserted it again. Battery life is also great which is perfect for university.

Palm rejection did not work reliable however. I just got used to disable the touchpad with a keycombo whenever I started typing longer passages of text.

If you feel the need to express your unswerving support for the actions of the Israeli state under this news article, please tell us, how you see the mass destruction of civilian homes justified and necessary.

Usual disclaimer: I support neither side here. Both use horrible methods to achieve their goals and I hope for a ceasefire and improvement of both governments. From my limited information a revolution will likely be needed in case of Palestine, in Israel elections may suffice.

Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5 Gen 8 Notebook comes with a MEDIATEK MT7922. Windows 11 does not want to install unless you circumvent the requirement for Internet or supply it with a manually downloaded driver.

Linux? Just works.

I can’t speak for the Nvidia issue. (Only that it is widely know that Nvidia actively works against Open source and only just has begun changing their stance, so Nvidia support is still poor on Linux. Their proprietary drivers aren’t great either. I stick to AMD since using Linux, they work great out of the box)

But the audio issue baffles me. Under Kubuntu with KDE I just klick on the Loudspeaker in the systray and choose the device. It even remembers it over unplugging and replugging devices.

Rgarding openssl: Thats the price you pay for freedom, you can change the system how you want, even into non working states ^^ BTW: You can repair such mistakes with a LiveCD even major ones like this.

Well only due to a short cold wave. Now they have 16-30°C in Winter which is 1-7°C above the usual temperatures for this time of the year. https://www.ventusky.com/?p=-19.8;24.3;3&l=temperature-anomaly-2m