Windows vs Linux

And I love it. This is when you feel it's your computer, not "this computer"

Meanwhile my windows computer wakes up from sleep in the middle of the night to update and starts a light show in my room.

You can't easily deactivate that behavior.

It's not really my computer, it's Microsoft's computer that they lend me.
- @Tetsuo @vkirlin You could flip the power switch behind the tower to make sure the pc is completely turned off
- You realise you can very easily disable updates and just do them manually when you feel like it?
  
  Or you can shut down the computer when you go to sleep, booting takes less than 30 seconds with a modern computer...
- Even more fun:
  
  Windows BSODs while I'm working on something time sensitive
  
  Restart it
  
  queue 40 minute unskippable update installation
- Weird. So my partner has the same problem but I don't. Curious if you have a pre-built like they do?

I see this shit every day. You know why? User base.

Linux doesn't have to worry about grandma using it. The vast majority of the Linux user base is technologically adept humans that know not to remove the bootloader.

But you know for a fact that grandmas were trolled into or accidentally removed system files so often that Microsoft did something about it.

Also note, Chromebooks - which use a Linux adjacent os that is marketed to a wide audience including kids and the elderly - doesn't let you do shit to system files. Android and Steam Deck are also highly locked down.

The point is its a wierd flex to say that linux gives sudo users the power to break your system when its really just saying your os is too niche to have to worry about grandma.

Permanently Deleted
I can do whatever I want! I'm going to mount my btrfs root partition to a home folder and rm -r ./* all my subvo
Steam Deck is not locked down, you can enable super user access and filesystem management with two simple commands
- It's protected enough from the layman, at least
- 2 simple commands many wouldn't even know where to input.
Permanently Deleted
flex

Bailing out, you are on your own. Good luck.

But you could delete system32 if you wanted, it just broke everything, I can't imagine deleting the bootloader would go particularly well for you either.

Deleting bootloader at least won't kill your system. You can always reinstall it.

Also some dude on Reddit shared neofetch screenshot showing 3+ years of uptime. He doesn't need a bootloader.
- Bootloaders are bloat! Always thought it
Well remember when that Arch update broke grub?

I couldn't boot into my PC at all. And for whatever reason, the fix they posted on the Arch wiki wasn't working for me.

I deleted my bootloader in a live ISO environment and installed a different one (rEFInd). It was actually very easy.

Having the flexibility and power to do whatever you want to your system is truly something I deeply appreciate with Linux.
Yeah this is sort of funny because Linux used to let you delete EFI vars, bricking motherboards, since it mounted them to the root filesystem. It’s since been patched in every motherboard, but sometimes full control is more dangerous than “haha I can just reinstall”

https://lwn.net/Articles/674940/
- Are there not physical ways to reset efi vars? I'm pretty sure there are
Actually, you can't, not by normal means anyway. For starters, there's the Windows File Protection (WFP) which automatically restores any deleted essential system files, and there's also the Windows Resource Protection (WRP), which prevents you from even attempting to delete those files. There are ways you can get around it of course, but even still, you can't delete files which are in use, which means you still wouldn't be able to delete the system32 folder.

The only way to actually delete it completely, would be to boot from a second OS or a rescue environment and then delete the folder.
Deleting a bootloader is a perfectly valid thing to do.
In modern installs you've got to jump through a few hoops to be able to delete system32, because normally it simply won't let you or anything running do that.
I deleted my bootloader recently. You can actually just boot the Linux kernel directly by using efibootmgr to write a custom UEFI boot entry.

Linux is so good at letting you delete the system that it actually does it for you automatically when installing Steam or updating Nvidia drivers!

Linus, is this you? Focus on solving the sexual harassment issues in your backyard.
- the what
Yes, do as I say
Nvidia drivers have me actively fearful of system updates
Good thing it's so easy to install again

*nooo you can't delete Edge

Yes

Memes like these surely help non-Linux people's perception of Linux 🙄

You can even delete your efi partition and brick your board

Edit: I mean delete your efivars

Deleting your efi partition doesn't brick your board. It just makes your disk unbootable, but you can always install another operating system and create a new efi partition.

I think you're confusing with the special efivarfs file system that is mounted under /sys/firmware/efi/efivars. If you delete stuff under there, you're apparently going to have a bad time, because it directly deletes variables in your UEFI firmware which can prevent your system to POST.
- Ah yes. I always confuse them. I even though that what I wrote didn't make any sense since usually I know what an efi partition is. Thanks for correcting me
EFI is on the hard drive. No bricking. You just need to reformat to include it again.

Ya wanna brick a mobo? Botch a flash to the bios chip.
- No, you can brick the mobo from your OS by deleting the efivar partition.

https://tenor.com/5K6C.gif