Ahh, the bad old days where you’d do a clean install and windows would be an absolute basket case until you manually installed every driver. And then after all that you’d still have one unknown device in device manager that you’d pull your hair out trying to find drivers for.
Now you can install windows, do a windows update, and everything is good to go 90% of the time. And don’t get me started on linux, we’ve never been closer to “it just works” than we are today.
Good luck installing your drivers on a fresh copy of Windows if your network card didn’t come with a physical installation disc, because if you have to download your drivers without a network card you’re going to have serious trouble.
There was a time period where it was absolutely easier to set up a fresh Linux distro than a fresh Windows install, because the Linux distro could use your Ethernet card to download drivers even if WiFi didn’t work but Windows couldn’t use either of them.
Ahh, the bad old days where you’d do a clean install and windows would be an absolute basket case until you manually installed every driver. And then after all that you’d still have one unknown device in device manager that you’d pull your hair out trying to find drivers for.
Now you can install windows, do a windows update, and everything is good to go 90% of the time. And don’t get me started on linux, we’ve never been closer to “it just works” than we are today.
Good luck installing your drivers on a fresh copy of Windows if your network card didn’t come with a physical installation disc, because if you have to download your drivers without a network card you’re going to have serious trouble.
There was a time period where it was absolutely easier to set up a fresh Linux distro than a fresh Windows install, because the Linux distro could use your Ethernet card to download drivers even if WiFi didn’t work but Windows couldn’t use either of them.