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Posted by chalmovsky 3/29/2026

Samsung Magician disk utility takes 18 steps and two reboots to uninstall(chalmovsky.com)
368 points | 209 commentspage 3
internet2000 3 days ago|
I hate how Mac OS makes it harder to delete than to add stuff to system folders. I forgot what was it, but adding something worked with sudo, removing it required disabling sip. Is there a reason for that?
germandiago 3 days ago||
This is a great reason to choose an alternative.
tracker1 3 days ago||
The last time I booted to a windows drive on my prior desktop was to update the firmware on a Samsung NVME SSD drive to prevent premature failure. Was kind of a pain for even that task as I hadn't been running Windows for about a year at that point... in fact my insiders build of windows was so out of sync it wouldn't even update anymore. Meh.

Since then I've been using Corsair and WD Black drives, since Samsung has gotten overpriced and hasn't seemed as reliable the past few years. That application was one of the reasons.

patentatt 3 days ago||
I recently tried to install Samsung magician on Windows 11. Tried. It flat out doesn’t work, tried some basic remediation and internet searching to figure it out, but could not get it to run at all. Completely nonfunctional. Seems to be an issue with some electron configuration or command line args. I gave up because it wasn’t worth more effort, but I believe it when I read that the software is a dumpster fire.
radicality 3 days ago||
Absolutely agree I hate that software. Last I remember I was trying to upgrade firmware I think of either a usbc drive, but could have been some m2 nvme drive via usb4. Software looked so nasty that I think I managed to get it somehow working in a VM for firmware update.
malfist 3 days ago||
This type of writing is very grating on the nerves. It's not AI slop, but it feels the same way, where AI slop is trying to trick you into thinking every sentence is the pinnacle insight of human endeavor of all history, this writing stops every single sentence to say "Are you outraged? I'm outraged! You should be outraged! This is outrageous!"

Especially when the outrage is that the user didn't follow instructions to use sudo on an uninstaller that needs to touch root owned files.

raincole 3 days ago||
The writing style has a name called ragebaiting. The gold:

> Localization files for every language on Earth

Yeah because English is the only one language that matters. Let's fuck up all the non-native speakers to save, I don't know, 50kb of text files? How could one frame this as a bad thing?

> Help documentation with 40+ screenshots in 10 languages

Seriously how Anglocentric could this author be? Even physical products have multi-language manuals nowadays.

josephcsible 3 days ago|||
Isn't the normal convention to ship all the language files in the installer, but for it to only install the ones that are actually used on the system?
malfist 3 days ago|||
In the past I've certainly seen that, but more and more I see all the language files being installed. You never know when someone is going to change their language, add another one, or add a new user.
MarchApril 3 days ago|||
Firefox certainly did this [Firefox release engineering](https://aosabook.org/en/v2/ffreleng.html) but at one point, having >100 almost identical executables (with the text swap out) for each version would eventually got on some nerves.
josephcsible 3 days ago|||
But aren't those things rare enough that it's better to have people doing them rerun the installer, than to take up extra disk space for everyone that most people will never use?
dcrazy 3 days ago|||
No. Language resources are part of the app bundle, which means they are part of the bundle’s code signature. Removing or altering them breaks the signature.
rsynnott 3 days ago||||
The joke is that the software doesn’t work, so providing more languages is strictly worse, as it allows more people to experience the broken software.
GandalfHN 3 days ago|||
[flagged]
atoav 3 days ago|||
Well I once watched an sysadmin with 430 years of experience swear his way through an installation process. Until I, back then a intern, pointed out that maybe reading the install instructions would have been a good idea, since there were some steps in there that would have saved us some time. We scrapped everything and reinstalled following the instructions and 15 minuted later it worked.

I admit that I also often deviate from installation processes, but only when I really know why I want to do that. And I tend to read the instructions first.

But I know people who are snuggly proud about not reading the manual and I really don't get it.

rmunn 3 days ago|||
> But I know people who are snuggly proud about not reading the manual and I really don't get it.

Agreed... but there seem to be more and more products that either don't have manuals, or whose manuals are so badly written that reading them turns out to be a waste of time. I feel like people are being trained not to read manuals anymore, so I understand the people whose first instinct is "that thing is going to be useless, I'm not going to waste my time reading it". But not the ones who are proud of not reading manuals, that doesn't make sense to me either.

ryandrake 3 days ago||
Installing software should not require a manual. It should require one button click, or one drag action.
rmunn 3 days ago|||
While I agree in the general case (e.g., software aimed at end users), there's also a good reason why the Archlinux Wiki is so good: because installing an OS does require a manual if you want to be able to do any customization at all (yes, you can just install the defaults, but if that's what you wanted, you probably wouldn't be running Arch). And the same applies to systems software not quite as broad in scope as an OS: there can be multiple different customizations you might need to apply, or you might need various dependencies. atoav didn't mention whether the software the sysadmin was installing had a distro package (it might not have even been on a Linux system, no particular reason to assume it was Linux rather than FreeBSD or AIX or Solaris or...), but I kind of assume it didn't, precisely because there were installation instructions. The sysadmin wouldn't have been "swear[ing] his way through an installation process" if the installation process was "sudo apt install some-piece-of-software", after all.
malfist 3 days ago|||
> It should require one button click, or one drag action.

That is way to simplistic to be one size fits all.

close04 3 days ago||||
When all else fails, read the manual. It’s a tried and tested practice among experts worth their salt.

A lit of practices save you 10s each day but when they fail you lose 10 years’ worth of savings.

rmunn 3 days ago|||
Was "430 years" a typo for "30 years" or for "43 years"?
atoav 3 days ago||
30
bKHjNaz23wJ 3 days ago|||
I didn't really expect much from article after:

> What kind of fucking name is that anyway? “Samsung Magician” - for a disk utility?

That must be a total mystery for someone who never heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PartitionMagic

greazy 3 days ago||
I completely disagree. I loved this article. I could feel the authors frustration and disdain for the software.

It was funny and helpful.

Cthulhu_ 3 days ago||
It reminds me of a lot of Windows software, especially virus scanners and supposed antimalware tools, going back 20+ years.
calin2k 3 days ago||
samsung magician managed to help me clone a hdd to a ssd on windows with ease
daneel_w 3 days ago|
https://clonezilla.org/
gamblor956 3 days ago||
On Windows, you run the uninstaller, click once, and a few seconds later everything is uninstalled. You reboot to remove any remaining files immediately, or you can just wait until the next time you naturally reboot and it happens then.

This has been how it works in the Windows world for several decades. Surprising that Apple still hasn't figured this out yet.

streetfighter64 3 days ago||
Not to enter another OS ** measuring contest, but on linux systems you can both install and remove programs with a single command line. No need to search the web for the installer, no need to install the MSVC runtime (dependencies are handled automatically), no reboots needed pretty much ever, etc.

And no, on windows not "everything" is removed by most uninstallers. At least it wasn't back when I was using windows 7. Though I doubt it's really changed, unless you count those "windows store apps", but that's also equivalently available on mac. Both are a poor imitation of a proper linux package manager.

tuetuopay 3 days ago||
Ever tried to uninstall an antivirus on windows? Or any program that does not want to be uninstalled? I've had programs whose uninstall.exe was no different than /bin/true.

On this point, Windows is no better than macOS: the OS relies on the goodwill of the developers to provide working uninstallers. The only protection is a world where the OS provider does the application packaging: Linux repositories, Mac App Store, Windows Store. And even then, apps are still free to litter your filesystem at runtime, unless they're heavily sandboxed. Then FlatPak it is, or iOS apps or Android apps. Not great.

gamblor956 3 days ago||
Yes, I have uninstalled antivirus. The uninstaller removed most of the files, except those in memory. I turned off the computer at the end of the day, and after startup the next morning the remaining files were gone.

The only remaining files were the "user space" like custom preferences or files created by the user using the program. The uninstaller rightfully leaves it up to the user to decide what to do with those.

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