Before I begin, let me just disclaim that I have not been a regular user of Windows 10 for a number of years now. Partly for performance reasons and partly because my work-provided laptop is a MacBook Pro. But mostly for ethical reasons that hopefully will make sense as we continue!
I’ve taken some screenshots of the installation process that Windows 10 presents to its end users. You’ll likely be familiar with these if you’ve ever had to upgrade Windows, or wanted to reinstall from scratch. The installation process and the screens that are displayed have changed over the years, so some of this may be familiar but some of it might surprise you if you’ve been away from the scene for a while like I have. I’m not going to provide too much narrative beyond the screenshot captions, so feel free to form your own ideas based on these.
For some context, I’ll compare the installation steps with an installation of Manjaro Linux, my preferred operating system of choice for, well, basically everything.
For the Windows installation I’ll be using the officially obtained Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit International English ISO available from the microsoft.com website, and for the Manjaro installation I’ll be using the Manjaro GNOME 20.1.2 Minimal ISO with Linux 5.8 available from manjaro.org.
Windows 10 installation
The first screen we see asks us for the language, time and currency format, and input language that we want to use to continue installation with.
We’re then asked if we do indeed want to install windows.
Kudos to Microsoft for allowing us to continue without requiring a product key. It’s now possible to activate Windows after installation has completed. Allegedly some users enjoy using Windows 10 completely unactivated and put up with the lack of personalisation and the activation overlay so that they can use Windows 10 for free.
We’re asked which version of Windows we want to install. I believe that this selection determines the features that are installed by default.
We must now sign our life away, accepting the licence terms to continue.
We’re now asked whether we want to upgrade, or performa a custom install. This is actually a fresh virtual machine without any existing Windows installation, so I am surprised that the upgrade option appears. I selected custom here.
We’re now asked which disk and partition we want to install to. Trust me when I say this screen can get messy when you have multiple drives inserted, as it’s difficult to know at a glance which drive is which without cross referencing the logical labels against the disk size and partition arrangement. Windows has always struggled in this area in my experience. This installation is simple because I can select the only disk available and click Next.
Now Windows 10 is being installed.
The system reboots and we get a fancy spinner.
Now we’re on to personalisation. We must select the region here and click Yes. I happen to be situated in the United Kingdom so that was the region I chose.
Now we must select the keyboard layuout and click Yes. I chose United Kingdom because I have one of those weird £ symbols on my keyboard, but choose whatever works for you.
Since I don’t have any second keyboard or alternative layouts, I can skip this step.
This is Windows doing something but I have no idea what exactly.
The installation is checking Microsoft’s servers to see which screens need to be presented to me next. I suppose the following screens may vary depending on region and product installed.
I’m setting up for personal use, so I chose that option and clicked Next.
We’re asked to add our account now. The subtitle says that actually this is a Microsoft account. This was new to me since the last time I installed Windows. I’d like to just add a local account, which they call an “Offline account” which you can see the link for at the bottom left, so I clicked on that option.
I am being dissuaded from using an offline account, and in fact if I click Next after clicking “Offline account” I will be redirected to create a Microsoft account again. I am shamed in to clicking the “Limited experience” link at the bottom left in order to continue with a local account. Feeling slightly dirty, I click the link and continue.
It asks me for my name, which is only polite I suppose. I put in my name and click Next. However, I’m still being shamed in to using an online account instead.
It asks me to create a really memorable password now. The password I am using is going to be extremely memorable by virtue of it being the only password I use for absolutely everything. Just kidding, don’t do that guys, it’s really bad. I enter a password (a very memorable one) and click Next. Microsoft are still nagging me to use an online account.
I scrape the deepest barrels of my memory in order to recite the password I just chose in the previous step, then click Next hoping that I didn’t make a typo 🍀
Because my password is probably not very memorable, I must now pick a security question and provide an answer. I absolutely must do this. It will not let me continue without doing it.
One security question is not enough. I must provide another.
And another. It’s essential.
I feel like Windows has lost interest in me and is walking away, thinking about what to say next.
I’m now asked if I want Microsoft to listen to my voice to help improve their speech services. No thank you.
I’m now asked if Microsoft can use my location data to improve their location services. No thank you.
Arguably a very useful feature for some, but on my virtual machine this is rather useless. I don’t want Microsoft to track my device, so I select the second option.
As a developer, I appreciate the need to provide detailed stack traces in order to help pin down and fix bugs. So I can kind of forgive them for not allowing me to flat out refuse this. The only slightly-less-bad option I can pick here is to send a limited set of information about my device when things go wrong. I guess that it’s sending this to Microsoft. I picked the second option.
I don’t want Microsoft to forge my signature, so I select the second option.
Interestingly, the “No” option here doesn’t prevent ads being served to you. It just makes the ads served to you less relevant because they know less about you. It’s a whole lot of bad. I must accept to continue.
Again selecting “No” here means I’ll not be tracked, but I’ll still get ads. I have to accept to continue.
I do not want Cortana to access my personal information. I’m not a fan of digital assistants. Some may find this useful, sure, but be aware how much you’re giving away about yourself by using it.
Windows has lowered the lights, ready for the big reveal.
Slightly less enthused now that it says it could take several minutes. At least play some Savage Garden while I’m waiting. (Rest in peace Windows XP)
And we’re at the desktop! Our first advertisement is waiting for us!
User creation took up 8 screens, and another 8 screens were taken up by asking for my consent to be tracked, with a spattering of loading screens in between. I felt like I had really cheated the system by not creating a Microsoft account; they really wanted me to.
Manjaro installation
This is the point where Joe Average would turn off the computer. The default option highlighted in green will boot up Manjaro.
This is systemd telling us what’s happening in the boot process.
Wait… are we in already? This is actually a “live” environment where you can test-drive the operating system without installing. There’s a button on the welcome screen to install to a hard drive, which is what we’ll do now.
We’re asked for the language. I’m still British so I selected British English.
Although I am British English, it set my location as New York. I’m closer to London than New York, so I clicked the UK in the map and it set my location to London. Nifty.
It now asks me what type of keyboard I have. It’s made a solid guess and sure enough, it turns out I have an English (UK) Default keyboard. I type a British heart in to the test area to confirm. £>
I’m now asked what I want to do with my disk situation. Here is where you can choose between an EFI or BIOS type bootloader, set up partitions, select a boot loader location, etc. and it’s a fairly visual process that makes it clear which disk is being changed, showing different shaded sections on the bars to represent partitions. Linux has generally been very good at conveying this information for the past 15 years. I am just going to erase my disk and click Next.
Now I put in some information about myself to create my user account.
We get a little summary of what’s about to change, then click Install.
We get a little warning message saying that these changes cannot be undone. This is polite and as a Brit, I approve.
We now wait for a few minutes for this bar to fill with a tealy green colour while Manjaro tells us a few things about itself.
That was quick, time to reboot.
We are greeted with the login screen. I click my name and enter my password.
Here we are at the desktop, the system is ready to go!
