Windows 95/98 were DOS-based and demand MSCDEX entry in Config.sys in order to load the vxd cd-rom drivers. On those days not all hardware vendors issue a 32-bit native driver but relies on MS-DOS drivers for interoperability with Windows.
You mean MSCDEX?
Yup, that one. It was a bad workaround, as people transition to Windows 95 and wishes to leave their MS-DOS roots.
I'll take your word for it. I just remembered MSCDEX when I read MSDEX regarding CD-Drives and a quick ducking backed me up.
You're probably right, which is why I remember it because much trouble.
Yup, I also remember those days well. Windows was not always as plug and play friendly as it is now. Of course younger users would not know of any of these type of issues. Windows had many teething pains in its younger days.
My main Garuda install is the same one from day 1 using Garuda. I sure couldnât say that about my Windows machines as they melted down with great regularity. Even if the install didnât actually break in short order, the longer you stuck with the same install the slower it got. In the end even if your initial install didnât break youâd have to reinstall regularly in order to keep your system from becoming as slow as a slugsloth.
This is something Iâve never experienced in Linux. My Arch based installs have always run like clockwork no matter how many years they have been in use. Unless Windows has changed drastically since I used it last this is a major limitation of Windows. That is something that a 15 minute test will never reveal (like so many other things).
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Thatâs usually how every Windows PC I have ever owned ended up with Linux. Windows would become slow and start feeling sluggish, so I wipe it and stick Linux on it. Admittedly I do have a little 120gb ssd with windows on it in my pc now but it only get used for gamepass(which is mostly for my sons xbox one unless I see something I want play) if I see a game that I want to play on it. Out side of that I feel lost when trying to do anything on windows at all.
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Arch was my first linux distro. Call me crazy but I'm the guideworm kind of guy. I searched for best linux distro and something like rolling release showed up. Took me 2 days to install that. Without knowing shit about kernels, not a single terminal command. After install it only took me 6 hours to mess my Arch to break. So I installed Manjaro with gnome. Don't know till today what happened, but I certainly don't like gnome. Break all my KDE's installs with my customizations. Then the distro hopping started I went from the basics like debian and ubuntu, to super unknown distros. To finalize, after a year here I am using Garuda for a while now. My Knowledge about computers has increased a lot.
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For me, installing arch made me appreciate all the little things that prebuilt distros do for you. Like I have installed it several times but then you realize after it is installed that it won't do this or that you just assumed was built into say KDE(like some of the dolphin plugins that a lot of distros give you but are not actually included in KDE by its self) or setting up some services that just work by default on many distros. So by you starting with arch you got to see bare-bones first before seeing what others make, so that is an interesting way to start, but I am sure it gave you a leg up on most new users since you had a basic understanding of the parts of Linux if you had to install them your self first before having distros where its all done for you.
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The reason why I moved to Garuda Linux is the ease of entry to the Arch-based system, while also rendering the "discontinued date" obsolete, I hate that, happens on a regular intervals under Linux Mint. I don't like static-release distros as I don't like reformatting. I just maintain a disk image of my system for restoration and migration.
Windows has bit rot primarily due to Microsoft being stuck with the use of the Windows Registry. Microsoft devs made a big wrong move when they created that binary garbage called the Registry during the days of NT 3.1 that continues to grow since the day 1 you installed Windows.
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Funny (not really) story. When I first went to work for HostGator they had just switched to linux on all of the companies machines because of a huge mess with malware. you could use xfce or kde, your choice. The linux admin department was overjoyed, but holy crap, everyone else...
Trying to teach office people how to switch to linux, the hardest thing was getting them to learn which apps did what.
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Moving to Linux from Windows is like abandoning your lifelong religion for atheism. (This is the closest analogy I can think of. As I'm also an atheist)
Definitely, the world-view of a Windows user and a Linux user are different.
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I have tried and played around with different distros of Linux over the years but 99.99% of my time has been spent with Windows and macOS. It was pretty ironic timing that Linus and Luke came out with their Linux series right after I had just started playing around with Linux again. My first distro I tried was Garuda Dragonized Gaming and every other distro feels pretty meh compared to it IMHO. The only reason I play around with others if to see how fast or useful they are out of the box. Obviously, I know you can tweak everything how you want in any Linux distro... but most of the default configuration and theming, etc has been more to my taste in this and the Arch documentation has been great for the things I am trying to do with my system.
Recently, I started trying to force myself to stay booted in Garuda instead of going back to Windows 11 for my day to day.. the only thing that kept me booting back into Windows was that my company doesn't allow access to their resources from Linux so I finally decided to install a Windows VM and play with wine more. I also got a couple macOS VMs installed pretty easily, which was a relief. I still haven't tried gaming with Proton really, as I haven't been in a gaming mood for a few months and just been busying with software development and family time.
I've had a workona tab group dedicated to Linux and my troubleshooting and customization of it for a while now. It's been nice seeing the tabs get smaller and smaller related to general troubleshooting and more just tweaks and tips or forums keeping up with discussions. The only real outstanding thing I'm trying to master is how to get Grub to show Fedora, it identifies it in the console output but never ends up creating an entry for it.. so i've been trying to learn more about how all the boot and grub folders and files interact to try and get that customized for me as I like having a bunch of partitions set up for different operating systems to test bare metal.
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By far for Windows users I recommend Mint as their first distro!!
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Linus Sebastian does not honor the principle of learning new stuff. He brought his Windows-mentality to Linux, hence he encounters a lot of problems, which is not really the fault of Linux. He might as well remain with Windows, or if he tries Linux, he should use a Linux distro that is literally skinned like Windows 10/11: Free Edition (x86-64 bits)
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Ah, this remind me the windows FX (or linux FX) experience of mine when i just thought of going to other distro than ubuntu or mint , (i did it 2years ago) ,and really it helped me a lot for switching to linux from window
Most people switching to LInux will be have a "windows mentality".
Linus Sebastian himself admitted, he knows just enough to be dangerous <--- his own words, not mine. That kind of so-so knowledge without investing enough time to do actual research is dangerous, look what he did to his own PoP!OS desktop.
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"âA little knowledge is a dangerous thing.â
Go to school, get a little knowledge, live dangerously. "
~from the movie Lord Love A Duck.
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There are many meme versions of the Dunning-Kruger. I picked this because of all the reasons of which I'm totally ignorant of.
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That's awesome, dude. That upswing...but, nah, I think I'm still on the downhill slide. Darnit. 
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