The dark story of a Linux user experience with Windows 8
Greetings to the community. I want to tell about one of my dark stories, because it is difficult to keep it in myself, and two like-minded friends didn’t help very much to cry into the vest.
I decided to transfer from a stationary computer to a laptop, as my profession is directly related to IT (the main work is an information technology engineer, plus web programming “here and there”) and sometimes it is useful to have a portable workplace. There was a netbook available, but the diagonal of its screen made me sad at the moments of working on sites, and it didn’t really shine by its mental-computing characteristics.
The last, probably, 7 years old, the main and the only operating system I have is Arch Linux, it is everywhere: on the work computer, on the home, on the netbook, on the VPS. I will not now describe all the advantages of web development in Linux, I can only say that I am just happy to work in this system. So, when buying a laptop, there was no question of choosing a distribution kit.
')
With the laptop was pre-installed Windows 8, I decided this time not to demolish everything on the disk, but to try to make friends with both systems. All the same, the price of the device was wound up for the system, and it would not be superfluous to have a Microsoft product at hand just in case (run something or run at leisure in some kind of game, laptop, after all, not a weak ). The task is, in principle, quite trivial, with the proviso that the laptop had UEFI onboard with GPT disk markings, with which I, frankly, did not work very closely.
I read the manuals on this topic, I began to act. I reduced the section with Windows content to 100 GB, created after it another 100 GB partition under the Linux root, after it a partition under Swap, used the remaining space in the form of an NTFS partition for data for both systems. After it left untouched recovery partition. I installed Arch Linux, everything started up without problems, both systems were loaded by pressing F12.
I decided to look at Windows 8. I downloaded. Well, I’ll make a reservation that the last time I had Windows XP on some of my PC devices, I didn’t work as a regular user with either Windows Vista or Windows 7. I am familiar with them solely on the duty of work. I think you should not even describe which zoo of the preinstalled software on the laptop I found. Every five minutes, one of the programs reports something, Avira shouts that there is a security flaw, someone furiously demands some kind of registration, etc. etc. Avira didn’t find a way of regular unloading from the memory, I thought to extinguish the service, and there were a dozen of them there. In general, I began to remove software products that were of no interest to me. I understand that this moment does not directly characterize the operating system at all, I am only trying to describe roughly the atmosphere in which I got and from which I have already lost the habit.
As for Windows 8 itself. Well, of course, the tile. Then I understood little of it, only that no one is going to save my Internet traffic here: some news, weather, etc., flashes by itself. Anyway. When turned on, I noticed that the account “Admin” was started and used to log in to the laptop. I don’t know if it’s the work of the store’s employees, or if the so-called built-in administrator account is called this (and there’s always Administrator / Administrator), but that’s not the case. It is better to work as a user with less sophisticated rights, using the "admin" with the immediate need. Useful to create a new user. And it asks me to enter the e-mail and password, they say, I will synchronize everything to you, clouds, and so on. And I need it? The system knows better than me. With the creation of a new user had to wait. And, I did not immediately find out how to turn off the laptop. With the power of telepathy, I discovered the Win + I hot key, calling the panel to the right, which, among other things, has a shutdown button. Although, there may be a more intuitive way (aside from pressing the hardware button on the laptop).
But all the salt began later, it was me, just a little described what I didn’t like on the move. There were, of course, the positive moments I noted, but I completely forgot them after the incident that happened today. Boot again in Windows 8, report to me that I, lucky one, can get an update to Windows 8.1 for free. Hmm, why not? Moreover, I heard that in this version they abandoned some radical innovations of Windows 8, for example, the absence of the Start button. I agree, the installer for 3 with something gig began to download. It was already in the middle of the night, I decided not to wait until the end of the download, the Internet is not very fast. He dimmed the screen, went to bed. In the morning I looked that there is Linux running. Yeah, apparently after the end of the boot-up, the automatic installation began, during which a reboot was required, and since Linux boots by default, this is the result. I rebooted the laptop, I select Windows. The installation process continues. By the way, it is not at all intuitive, the percentages just run and the current process is described in two words, such as “Equipment is being prepared”. After all the steps, Windows 8.1 finally booted, but something like the initial setup wizard came up. And here again the familiar song - I am asked to enter the e-mail and password. It is impossible to refuse or even at least skip this step. How so? I did not dare to enter my GMail account, I started a new @ outlook.com account with the staff of this wizard and asked to choke and keep up with me. By the way, they still needed confirmation by SMS and for some reason the activation code did not come in (came as a result with a rather long delay), I was pleased that there was an opportunity to postpone this action, otherwise it would be completely sad.
After all the steps it took to reboot again. After that, the password from the account of my outlook @ outlook.com became the password for my laptop account. Wonderful. Well, like all. I am a happy owner of Windows 8.1. But early I was happy. I reboot into my coziest Linux and ... Oops. Grub says something about the unknown file system. Can not be! At first, I thought that this installer would re-partition the entire disk. With a completely fallen mood, I reboot back into Windows, I go into disk management. No, sections, thank God, in place. But! After the Windows partition, the installer for some reason created another partition about 300 Mb in size. I don’t know if he pressed the Windows partition or “bit off” a piece from the beginning of the Linux root (if the latter, then generally sad, but at a cursory inspection, it’s still the first one), but anyway, the numbering of the sections swam and Linux out of the game. Why is he with me like that?
Even if my assumptions come true and it turns out that the file system is on / alive and it is enough just to configure the bootloader so that everything will work again (now there is simply no way to do this, there is no flash drive or disk to boot from), I have no longer want to deal with this system. Why did you need another section? It is clear that this is a section of the Windows recovery environment, but, you see, it is mean, just like that, without warning, to re-partition the disk. As a result, I remained incapable of working on the weekend. Tomorrow, when I get to the toolkit, copy everything I need to external media, take down the GPT markup, turn off the UEFI, mark the disk with the good old MBR and pump my favorite Arch exclusively on the whole disk. All dating is over. Although, try to convince me.
I decided to transfer from a stationary computer to a laptop, as my profession is directly related to IT (the main work is an information technology engineer, plus web programming “here and there”) and sometimes it is useful to have a portable workplace. There was a netbook available, but the diagonal of its screen made me sad at the moments of working on sites, and it didn’t really shine by its mental-computing characteristics.
The last, probably, 7 years old, the main and the only operating system I have is Arch Linux, it is everywhere: on the work computer, on the home, on the netbook, on the VPS. I will not now describe all the advantages of web development in Linux, I can only say that I am just happy to work in this system. So, when buying a laptop, there was no question of choosing a distribution kit.
')
With the laptop was pre-installed Windows 8, I decided this time not to demolish everything on the disk, but to try to make friends with both systems. All the same, the price of the device was wound up for the system, and it would not be superfluous to have a Microsoft product at hand just in case (run something or run at leisure in some kind of game, laptop, after all, not a weak ). The task is, in principle, quite trivial, with the proviso that the laptop had UEFI onboard with GPT disk markings, with which I, frankly, did not work very closely.
I read the manuals on this topic, I began to act. I reduced the section with Windows content to 100 GB, created after it another 100 GB partition under the Linux root, after it a partition under Swap, used the remaining space in the form of an NTFS partition for data for both systems. After it left untouched recovery partition. I installed Arch Linux, everything started up without problems, both systems were loaded by pressing F12.
I decided to look at Windows 8. I downloaded. Well, I’ll make a reservation that the last time I had Windows XP on some of my PC devices, I didn’t work as a regular user with either Windows Vista or Windows 7. I am familiar with them solely on the duty of work. I think you should not even describe which zoo of the preinstalled software on the laptop I found. Every five minutes, one of the programs reports something, Avira shouts that there is a security flaw, someone furiously demands some kind of registration, etc. etc. Avira didn’t find a way of regular unloading from the memory, I thought to extinguish the service, and there were a dozen of them there. In general, I began to remove software products that were of no interest to me. I understand that this moment does not directly characterize the operating system at all, I am only trying to describe roughly the atmosphere in which I got and from which I have already lost the habit.
As for Windows 8 itself. Well, of course, the tile. Then I understood little of it, only that no one is going to save my Internet traffic here: some news, weather, etc., flashes by itself. Anyway. When turned on, I noticed that the account “Admin” was started and used to log in to the laptop. I don’t know if it’s the work of the store’s employees, or if the so-called built-in administrator account is called this (and there’s always Administrator / Administrator), but that’s not the case. It is better to work as a user with less sophisticated rights, using the "admin" with the immediate need. Useful to create a new user. And it asks me to enter the e-mail and password, they say, I will synchronize everything to you, clouds, and so on. And I need it? The system knows better than me. With the creation of a new user had to wait. And, I did not immediately find out how to turn off the laptop. With the power of telepathy, I discovered the Win + I hot key, calling the panel to the right, which, among other things, has a shutdown button. Although, there may be a more intuitive way (aside from pressing the hardware button on the laptop).
But all the salt began later, it was me, just a little described what I didn’t like on the move. There were, of course, the positive moments I noted, but I completely forgot them after the incident that happened today. Boot again in Windows 8, report to me that I, lucky one, can get an update to Windows 8.1 for free. Hmm, why not? Moreover, I heard that in this version they abandoned some radical innovations of Windows 8, for example, the absence of the Start button. I agree, the installer for 3 with something gig began to download. It was already in the middle of the night, I decided not to wait until the end of the download, the Internet is not very fast. He dimmed the screen, went to bed. In the morning I looked that there is Linux running. Yeah, apparently after the end of the boot-up, the automatic installation began, during which a reboot was required, and since Linux boots by default, this is the result. I rebooted the laptop, I select Windows. The installation process continues. By the way, it is not at all intuitive, the percentages just run and the current process is described in two words, such as “Equipment is being prepared”. After all the steps, Windows 8.1 finally booted, but something like the initial setup wizard came up. And here again the familiar song - I am asked to enter the e-mail and password. It is impossible to refuse or even at least skip this step. How so? I did not dare to enter my GMail account, I started a new @ outlook.com account with the staff of this wizard and asked to choke and keep up with me. By the way, they still needed confirmation by SMS and for some reason the activation code did not come in (came as a result with a rather long delay), I was pleased that there was an opportunity to postpone this action, otherwise it would be completely sad.
After all the steps it took to reboot again. After that, the password from the account of my outlook @ outlook.com became the password for my laptop account. Wonderful. Well, like all. I am a happy owner of Windows 8.1. But early I was happy. I reboot into my coziest Linux and ... Oops. Grub says something about the unknown file system. Can not be! At first, I thought that this installer would re-partition the entire disk. With a completely fallen mood, I reboot back into Windows, I go into disk management. No, sections, thank God, in place. But! After the Windows partition, the installer for some reason created another partition about 300 Mb in size. I don’t know if he pressed the Windows partition or “bit off” a piece from the beginning of the Linux root (if the latter, then generally sad, but at a cursory inspection, it’s still the first one), but anyway, the numbering of the sections swam and Linux out of the game. Why is he with me like that?
Even if my assumptions come true and it turns out that the file system is on / alive and it is enough just to configure the bootloader so that everything will work again (now there is simply no way to do this, there is no flash drive or disk to boot from), I have no longer want to deal with this system. Why did you need another section? It is clear that this is a section of the Windows recovery environment, but, you see, it is mean, just like that, without warning, to re-partition the disk. As a result, I remained incapable of working on the weekend. Tomorrow, when I get to the toolkit, copy everything I need to external media, take down the GPT markup, turn off the UEFI, mark the disk with the good old MBR and pump my favorite Arch exclusively on the whole disk. All dating is over. Although, try to convince me.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/215471/
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