You don't. Not easily.

For many years I lived in a very Internet limited space. I kept a total mirror on my laptop that I used to keep a server and two desktops up to date. It was simple and easy. When I had good internet, update the mirror. Go home, update the systems. By limiting the mirror to a single architecture of a single release, it was only ~35GB. This was back in my Ubuntu days.

Even though my internet is much less limited now, I still do things to minimize use. Everything runs Arch now, and I share my Pacman cache among all my systems using rsync. Basically, I try and download packages only once from the internet.

It's really no different in the Windows world. If you suddenly decide you need to edit some pictures, you probably need to download whatever program you want to use. Now, because a lot of Windows programs bundle dependencies in the installer, you have fewer files to download, but they're larger in size. At least using Linux repositories, I'm not wasting bandwidth re-downloading some dependency that I've already downloaded several times before.

Exactly like you do it for Windows installers, by downloading them manually beforehand.
But you have tools allowing to download a package and all its dependencies in a single command, making all the process much easier. Here is an example for APT based systems: https://github.com/rickysarraf/apt-offline

Or of course you could use static binaries if you don’t care about security updates, and you probably don’t care much about them on a fully offline system. This way you have no dependencies to track. (a lot of old non-free game used to do this)

oh, how do you do that?
Yeah that is how Linux works, makes it faster but it's harder on the brain.

I edited my previous post to add an example of such a tool, you’ve just been to quick to answer to see it ;)

apt-offline. I always had trouble getting that thing to work. I'll try it again and let you know how it goes.

I’ve been using it on a regular basis when I didn’t have ADSL at home, with no difficulty, but this was quite a lot of years ago… I just remember loving it because it allowed me to use an up-to-date Linux somewhere with little to no Internet access.

Well yeah that's what it's supposed to do. I can't remember what it was that kept going wrong with it but I'll try it again and tell you.

1B. It's also free, so it does not cost me any money to try it out. I can try many different versions to see which work for me and my hardware, all for free.

Late response is late but I'd like a little more context to this comment feel free to DM if you wish. I can't because privacy settings

Well, normally the metric is 'user-friendly'. Describing some distros as less 'user-surly' implies that it has never been a particularly casual endeavour to get Linux installed / running / tweaked to one's liking. At least not for the average schmo. And by "average schmo", I mean whoever calls you or me or other forum members for help with their computer. Like my mom, or wife, or brother, or or or.

That's not to say that someone with some patience and a knack for searching for answers can't get it going.

So where we at......

1A. It's Open Source (which is all manner of good mostly):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

What that ultimately means is the Linux you end up using goes through many iterations of a 'peer review' process and that whole process is open and transparent, so you are pretty much guaranteed that nothing malicious can be included in the final product as someone will notice and raise the issue. It's sort of like a form of democracy in development.


1B. It's also FREE, so it does not cost me any money to try it out. I can try many different versions to see which work for me and my hardware, all for free. Sometimes it will work, sometimes not so much, but the cost is zero.

1C. Since moving to Linux as my main day-to-day OS a few years ago, i have not looked back. All my concerns over Windows 10 have been negated as i DO NOT NEED to use Windows 10 AT ALL!

Linux has just worked for me and does all i need it to do while being more secure and less maintenance heavy than Windows ever was.

Before MS took Windows in the direction it decided to (re spyway/data gathering and removing users control of their OS) I was a very happy and content Windows user. But that is history and Windows is no longer an OS created for the benefit of it's user more than the benefit to Microsofts business. In this i have to THANK Microsoft for forcing me to change to Linux, i could not have done it without their help :)

With Linux as my main OS i am once more fully in control of my system and have an OS that works for me as a priority rather than it's creators.

A simple and good example is that when I was on Windows, I could not uninstall software that I did not want to use like iexplore. On Linux, I can uninstall to my hearts content and replace whatever I liked with the software of my choice.

Steam is great and I had a good time with it for the most part but their refund policy does not work for me. I would find game breaking bugs after the 2 hour mark and would simply have to wait for the devs to patch if they did. After a few rounds of that I decided to stick to GOG, itch.io, direct from devs and freeware games. It's less hassle for me.

See the main thing that made me start the this thread (though admittedly I could've worded it better) wasn't to ask why people use Linux of Windows. It was why GOG subscribers use Linux over Windows. With my experience with Linux I found it to be very "Net Dependent" more so then Windows. Windows needs internet for activation which I wish it didn't. But managing the OS offline was a lot easier for me then managing Linux. I don't like the way dependencies or package managers are organized or work; for any of the distributions that I used. It's pretty easy and straight forward when you've got direct internet access but trying to run an isolated air gaped system was a massive pain :O

That is extremely odd because Linux is not net dependent. I work for a small IT firm helping charter schools, non-profits and small businesses get up and running with Linux.

Some of the schools have computer classes that have no internet access and it's pretty easy to get isolated rig up and moving. I usually install LAN based games like Xonotic and others for recreation room stuff. This is my 14th year with the company using Linux in this fashion and it's been golden.

Then you have distros designed to be offline like Endless OS.

There's a theory that Microsoft secretly supports Linux to be the real alternatives to Windows, because it knows that Linux will never be a real competitor to Windows because of it's user-unfriendliness to average people, and it prevents a REAL competitor to Windows emerging.