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New Way To Grade Decay of Computer Installations
skojt writes: "I saw this link in Dr Dobb's Journal (the paper edition) about the
behaviour of a slowly decaying computer installation. It refers to a Windows installation, but as the author writes, 'But there will shortly be ports to Linux, Mac OS X, and other Unices; we are confident these OSes are just as prone.'"
Just graph the Kb size of the registry...
I contend that Linux is more prone to installation decay... Just think about all the buildup of dependencies that happens, and those that remain even after the program that depends on them is removed.
Post a link to your server on Slashdot. That'll decay you really quick.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Dr. Dobb's Journal August 2002
Verity is the pseudonym of a programmer based in the UK. She can be contacted at VerityStob@ddj.com.
Verity Stob has developed a new tool that will help you make rapid diagnoses of sick PCs. A rolling computer gathers "cruft." When you spot a class interface that is no longer used by any client, but that nobody dare delete, that's cruft. It is also the word "seperate," added to a spellchecker's private dictionary in a moment of careless haste, and now waiting for a suitably important document. Cruft is the cruel corruption and confusion inevitably wrought by time upon all petty efforts of humankind. There.
At Laboratoires Stob, we have been working on the cruft crisis for a while. Recalling the maxim "to control a problem you must first measure it," we have devised a suitable metric, an index of cruftidity. Our first version, presented below, is based on a typical PC installation running Windows 2000. But there will shortly be ports to Linux, Mac OS X, and other Unices; we are confident these OSes are just as prone.
We would like to acknowledge our debt, in the construction of this instrument, to Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort. His 1805 scale of windspeeds ("Insurance Claim Force 8. Description on land: Tile blown off roof falls onto litigious neighbour's Toyota Shiny") is as valid and useful today as it ever was. Enough preamble.
Cruft Force 0. Virgin. Description: The "Connect to the Internet" shortcut is still on the desktop, and the "How to use Windows" dialog appears at logon. Menu animations and the various event-based sound effects -- even the dreaded Microsoft Sound -- seem cheerful and amusing. Likewise, a clandestine installation of the Blue Screen Of Death screensaver (complete with simulated reboot, natch) from the Sysinternals web site is hilarious. Compilers run crisply, and report only sensible, easily resolved errors. There are just nine directories off C:\.
Filled with the enthusiasm that goes with having a brand new machine, the user resolves to stick to the new-fangled security-conscious temp directory buried deep somewhere below Documents and Settings.
Cruft Force 1. New. Description: User has taken time to rename cutesy desktop icons incorporating the first person singular possessive pronoun.
Twice, the mouse cursor has done that poltergeist trick where, with the actual mouse stationary, it drifts three inches due east and then stops. For no reason at all. Works fine afterwards though. Brrrrrrr.
Cruft Force 2. Comfortable. Description: User has now got around to resetting Explorer so that "web content in folders" is suppressed. Something has made a C:\TEMP directory in the proper place unasked, for which mercy the user guiltily feels grateful.
A strange entry is found in the System event log: MRxSmb: The redirector was unable to initialise security context or query context attributes. Assiduous googling of the key phrases, up web site and down newsgroup, establishes that, although many have wondered, nobody knows what this means.
Cruft Force 3. Lived-in. Description: One time in seven when the user starts Word or other Office 2000 app, instead of running, it pretends it is installing itself for the first time and starts a setup program.
Directory count in C:\ up to 17, and something has pooed a Paradox lock control file there, too.
Cruft Force 4. Middle-aged. Description: Amount of time from screen showing "real" Windows background to the logon box appearing is >30 seconds. Sometimes cannot "browse" other machines on LAN.
Get first real BSOD. Uninstall jokey screen saver, replace with SETI.
An extra disk of huge capacity has been installed. CD-ROM moves from drive F: to drive [:
Cruft Force 5. Worn out. Description: Some time after bootup, always get a dialog "A service has failed to start - BLT300." What is BLT300? Nobody knows. Although one can manually remove/disable this service, it always reappears two or three reboots later.
If one double-clicks a document icon, Word takes 4 minutes 30 seconds to start up. But it still works fine if started as a program. Somebody opines that this is due to misconfigured DDE. Or the Mars-Jupiter cusp.
Cruft Force 6. Limping. Description: [Delphi|Visual Basic|Java] suddenly remembers a trial shareware component -- deleted six months ago because it was rubbish -- and refuses to compile anything until it is reinstated.
"Web content in folders" Explorer setting switches itself back on unbidden. "Setup" programs start crashing while unpacking their own decompression DLLs.
Cruft Force 7. Wounded. Description: No longer able to logon using original account as the system freezes, so must logon as "Verity2" or similar.
There are now nine items in BOOT.INI: the original W2K starter, a brace of two-entries-each NT4s (one Turkish), a Windows 98, and three assorted Linuxen. Left to start up by itself, the machine chooses a broken installation of SUSE and halts with a kernel panic.
Cruft Force 8. Decrepit. Description: A virus checker is installed at the insistence of IT. This actually improves performance, apparently violating Newton's laws.
Blue Screens Of Death are served daily. The SETI screen saver, like ET himself, encounters difficulty calling home and despairing during an overnight run creates 312 copies of its icon in an (impressively expanded) system tray that fills half the screen.
Successful connections to the LAN are very rare.
Cruft Force 9. Putrefaction. Description: Can only see the 32-GB D:\ partition -- the one which has all the source code on it -- at every third boot. Directory count in C:\ up to 93, partly because some [one/thing] has put a complete (but non-working) installation of the Eudora e-mail client in the root.
Starting Control Panel shows rolling torch animation. The applet icons never appear.
Cruft Force 10. Expiry. Description: Machine only runs in Safe mode at 16-color 800×600, and even then for about a minute and a half before BSODing. Attempts to start an app are rewarded with a dialog "No font list found."
Ordinary dodges, such as reformatting the hard disk(s) and starting again, are ineffective. Cruft has soaked into the very fabric of the machine, and it should be disposed of safely at a government-approved facility. There it will be encased in cruft-resistant glass and buried in a residential district.
DDJ
Obviously, BLT300 is part of a new strategic alliance between Microsoft and Subway. In addition to having that wretched "Connect to the Internet" shortcut, Microsoft is now trying to influence the user's choice of submarine sandwich.
Fight back. Install new open source RedHot Club Sandwich Service instead.
~Idarubicin
Based purely on my own experience, Windows does decay quite a bit faster than Linux - but I don't think it's mainly the OS's fault:
It's mainly the users and the applications. There are so MANY applications for Windows out there that want to put an icon on your descktop, in your system tray, in your start menu, etc. It is no wonder when the decay takes place. All these applications do their own thing to Windows.
Then, on top of that, you have many, many, many bad installers. They remove some files, sure, but rarely do they get rid of everything, including registry entries.
Linux has a bit different type of users, and most of the software made for linux is by people who hate "Take-over-your-system-ware" sofware. It also doesn't have the central registry system like Windows. Sure it will have it's problems, but right now it does not. More users and more bad or poorly written apps will cause bloat and decay.
So, as usual, we must blaim the users and the applications for software decay for the most part. The OS should do some cleanup as well, but gone are the days when uninstalling mean deleting the directory it was installed to.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Quicktime, Windows Media, RealWhatever. They always appear in the task bar and the little icon tray thing at the bottom right. No matter how many times I try to remove the startup items it's guaranteed they will have returned on reboot. Aarrgghh! They even have Control Panel entries. This is software at its most rude and obnoxious. Why does RealWhateverItsCalledThisTime need a goddamned 'Start Center'? What's so special about low quality streamed audio and video that ot needs this special treatment? If every application did this I'd need a 3rd monitor for all the itty bitty icons. No wonder I need 2Gb of RAM!
-- SIGFPE
While Linux is prone to falling into dependancy hell, it doesn't suffer from the same performance degradation that you get in windows. In windows, you seem to have to periodically re-install everything just to get your system to load in a reasonable amount of time. You might get into a dependancy nightmare in Linux when trying to install something new, but the system performance doesn't seem to suffer from cruft related degradation.
I've found in my Linux experience that if I try be experimental and cutting edge, I end up, eventually, getting into situations where it becomes a major nightmare to upgrade. On the other hand, if I leave my system relatively stock, tools like red-carpet, up2date, or apt-get, do a pretty damn good job of hiding the dependancy hell from me.
All things considered, I'd rather have it become a pain to install piece of software then to have it be easy and slowly cause my system to become unusable for no apparent reason.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Cruft Force 8.5 Larry Flynt. OS has now filled its system drive partition, thereby reaching more than 3 times its original install. Web browsers will not download files more than 640k, swap file now resides permanently on F: yet C: still has less than 1MB space, all non-essential portions have been removed to a "Temp C: Files" directory on F:, essential system files are beginning to be moved to the temp files, windows/inf is the first target to be moved when an install is needed. Writes random data to HD for fun, windows/sysbackup deleted at regular intervals in order to keep registry errors at bay, more porn than most porn sites.
Now I have a 10gb system drive and win2k. Only disk errors can slow me down now!
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
Mirror
kawai
I've never seen a BSOD on Win2k. Anybody know how to generate one? Does it even revert back to EGA text mode if there is a fault of some sort?
Otherwise, +1 funny article. It invites the question, is it even possible to make a system that won't decay over time, or at least allow a method for repair? Or is that simply impossible. I would think that removing the registry and reverting back to dos-link inifiles (.rc files) would be a start.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
It happens differently, and maybe not as fast, but it does happen. Of course user error is usually at fault (that would explain the extra copy of freetype I had installed in /usr/local that the pango configure script didn't like...)
But then if you leave Windows 2000 (yeah, the article wasn't really talking about 9x, which is in a whole different league...) in its default state it doesn't crash that much either.
And I have had badly misconfigured linux boxen that have stayed up for months anyway. The ability to successfully forward packets and occasionally serve a web page without crashing does not equate to a lack of cruft.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
But these things are CRUFT! And there's MORE in a "virgin" Windows box:
It takes a LONG time to get things cleaned up and usable. You used to be able to just wipe the disk and install Windows from scratch, but more and more OEMs are not allowing thins, only giving you some crappy RESTORE disks...
...the upside of an open-source OS is that you can browse through the source and figure out *why* it is messing itself up... :) And most likely, fix it while you're at it.
That's the power of open source.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Code Rot - The spontaneous process by which unmaintained code slowly ceases to function properly. Also see entropy and decay.
No surprise here. Coders like to change things, API's, software, system registries, etc. Unfortunately, they are often unable to clean up after themselves properly.
-Sean
The main issue with Windows and their apps has been the hideous version control. It has improved since 2K/XP but trying to chase whether a DLL is really needed or not is interesting. Those apps sharing DLLs that install their own versions caus endless fun.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Read the article, it's not what you think.
Interestingly, the author has decided a virgin install of Windows, complete with Welcome to Windows dialog, stupid Windows music, and Connect to the Internet icon, is cruft-free.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
That's funny--mine always required a couple of reboots a day.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Looks just like a BSOD on NT. With some games I find that I'll get a BSOD at least once and sometimes more per night. I havet to assume it's the video driver, but no number of software upgrades have fixed it. So it crashes and i wish I could play the games on linux.
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Use Debian. I'm not saying that it's immune to cruft, but the fact that they have close to 9000 packages which all comply with the Debian Policy (as well as the FHS) means that everything plays nice together, and if it doesn't, it's a bug. There's even a tool called Cruft, which will locate cruft on your system.
...just turn it on!
Infuriate left and right
studying this.
.deb....ouch....
/usr/share and /usr/lib ... but I knew what I had installed ... and I felt comfortable deleting quite a few files from there...but most of them were used anyway.....
But really, all Win users I know who know what they are doing typically reinstall every 6-12 months to avoid this. All sheep will call tech support, which will tell them to place "Dell recovery disk" into the cd-rom tray. Anyway, the win machines I manage, (my family's) do not go far past level 5, and then only due to gator / growing registry. Pretty much as soon as explorer starts crashing / freezing continously (which happens way before daily bsod, but just as damaging) it is time to reinstall.
Now about linux......
I have been a linux user for about 2 years...The first year I did not have much of a clue -- so cruft was a huge problem...It is called installing newer version of gtk while running debian stable and not using a
A year ago....still learning, I started using slack....and did all my own management....I did get cruft is
furthermore....about the only thing that changes in linux, when you have crap in the libs, is that ld.cache is huge, and wasted space on the drive.....but it does not seem to alter performance a bit..or I have not noticed it at all. It simply is not loaded into ram...compare to windows, and you know that the speed of the machine is inversely proportional to the size of the registry.
But back to cruft on linux -- there are lessons I learned from running my system, and seeing others.
1. Use a package manager or keep a log of everything installed. Package manager is preferable if it does a decent job. I think both rpm and apt/dpkg do a very decent job, with rare and fixable corruptions. Gentoo portage seems to be excellent also...but I need time to verify....
Slack and LFS users....keep track of your installs....preferably of each file...To do this use depot / some other organizing tool that keeps everything separate.
2 Install only the stuff you need, uninstall the rest. Do not get carried away with maybe I will use this...If you stop using it and never plan to come back, remove it immediately
3. Do not ever do make install....if you compile straight from source (portage exempt) then make install will kill your hd space and make it very difficult to uninstall...If you are the only user who runs this app then try running it in your home / some other designated directory. Perhaps create a designated directory, and do a chroot install, and then create symlinks. (BTW depot does this for you, so use it if you do this often)
The only real exemption from this is the kernel, glibc, standard utils, compiler, and package manager....everything else must be kept clean
And remember the advantage of linux is that you can control cruft, while in windows cruft controls the computer
badness 10000
Windows Media Player is crippled so you can't make good MP3s (or on XP even download and use som other MP3 making software)
WMP makes perfectly good WMA files, if you want MP3 then you can either purchase an encoder for it(about $10) or buy a third party product like say Musicmatch(about $30). I run Musicmatch on XP and don't have any issues with this, so it's unclear to me why you are claiming I cannot do this.
I'm going to guess you're one of these people who has never used XP but is convinced it is worse than Win98.
decay can easily be measured as a result of
rpm -Va | wc -l
(check all packages and count lines of mistakes)
In my case its value on my working horse notebook
is 26644,
on moderately used server it's 25535
On new machine it should be near 0...
BTW What command do you have on Debian machines to check all packages?
I think it's a bit premature for us linux advocates to say it is immune to this. While a package manager certainly does help reduce dependancy issues, I don't think it addresses the physical issues.
/usr/* will start to get quite fat with binaries and their required libraries. Everytime one of those apps are called, it will take additional time to find the binary itself, then tack on the additional latency produced by the libraries having to be located and loaded into memory and the rusult will unavoidably be the visual degrade in performance.
...
First and foremost to consider is that there is no such think as a O(1) search algorithm("read 'Big Oh of one' for the non computer scientists in the crowd: notation used to measure the efficiency of an algorithm). The ammount of time required to search a list will always be a function of its size.
As the user base of Linux grows, so will the demand and supply of software. slowly, but surely,
Plus as more and more non computer literate people start using Linux, we will have to ensure that the software to support installing and upgrading packages on the system is user-proof, or other problems will result.
Unless someone can win a Nobell prize or Fields medal for finding a O(1) search, I'm afraid the above article is correct.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Either a botched upgrade to the kernel itself, or a hardware glitch (Video driver isn't right...SCSI controller craps out...drive fails while in use...NIC unseated during installation of cable...) have been the only problems I've seen.
When I had low-quality (I mean LOW quality) video hardware, I got IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors while playing games all the time, but with the upgrade to a brand new GeForce3, there have been no problems.
Win2K seems to have gotten software stability down pretty well.
I used to keep my macs working for 3-4 months before having to reinstall the whole shebang. I only reinstalled Mac OS X once since october. Macs are quite easy to keep clean, after some time you know where "cruft" accumulates. If anyone's interested, Alladin sells a product called Spring Cleaning, which I don't use. I clean my mac by hand. Seriously, on Mac OS X the only messy places are ~/Library and /Library. If you put your personal mess in your home folder, that is.
My Gnu/Linux distro of choice is Debian. If you use debian, you know how quickly apt installs those libraries. Have a look at deborphan, which "finds 'orphaned' packages on your system. It determines which packages have no other packages depending on their installation, and shows you a list of these packages. It is most useful when finding libraries, but it can be used on packages in all sections". I run apt-get remove `deborphan` about once a month.
Another great tool for the Gnu/Linux user is cruft, which, as the name says, tries to find the cruft on your system. It generates many false positives (e.g. /vmlinux), so use with many grep and caution :-).
Which tools do you guys use to keep your system clean?
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
There was a technical reason for that. The environment variables needed to be refreshed :)
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
You can get a windows install to never decay:
1) install favorite OS as the host system.
2) install VMWare
3) install windows as a guest OS. Flavor to taste.
4) set the Guest OS drive to non-persistant. Set you home directory to a share form the Host OS.
5) reboot the guest OS as needed. Everytime you reboot, the system is restored from the image stored on the Host OS. Crap does not stay unless you tell it to stay.
or for slightly different purposes, install the OS and tailor it as you like it. Image partition. Reimage the drive when there is too much fluff and bloat hanging around.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
MacOS's preferred installation method ("drag-and-drop") doesn't suffer quite from the same problems as Windows. It's clean, simple, and easy to understand, and it doesn't leave junk all over the disk in mysterious places. But some applications install differently, and there is no single software update mechanism. Still, so far, OSX is holding up well on my systems, showing no signs of decay. But maintaining applications at the latest versions is a significant amount of work compared to Linux.
For Linux distributions, it depends on the installation and update method. Debian systems can be updated for years without "decay". In fact, I haven't seen one "decay" yet, either ones that are updated regularly or ones that aren't. Because all packages come from a single source, they are all integrated, cross-checked, and tested together, a luxury that neither Windows nor MacOS have.
The fact that, in Linux, each program has its own configuration files, often one system-wide one and one in the user's home directories, also makes Linux enormously more robust. There is no single point of failure and if some program's defaults get corrupted, it's trivial to fix and trivial to tell users how to fix it ("rm .foobar" and you should be fine).
When software of Linux can be installed as a user account, rather than root I usually do that. Many end user applications don't require root access for install if you don't run the default "make install". After I start getting "cruft", I add a new user, and start using my workstation as that user, reinstalling software as needed.
Servers don't have as much installed application (or they should not), so cruft is not as much of an issue.
I am on my third user account on Linux laptop workstation. My first account has a gnome config from hell, thanks to a few too many hard poweroffs. Gnome works fine as other users, I don't know how to fix it for that account. My second account just become to cluttered with crap, and I found it easier to create another account rather than clean up.
Each time I switch, I login with my origional user id, with my home dir mapped to whatever my current account is. chmod the other homes so I can still access them as needed and everything works great.
It's an easy way to bring a desktop workstation back to life. BTW - I use kde now, and it doesn't seem to have the same 'cruft' problems I had under gnome. Gnome would lock the station solid on my, forcing hard power cycles. Each time my envirnment would get worse.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
The only way to eliminate cruft (or whatever you want to call it) is to make computers into machines which can function just as well under imperfect physical conditions. A book is still functional, even if you partially break the spine and remove the cover. Fitting lots of failsafes and/or restricting the freedom of installation programs should help reduce cruft. When was the last time satellite control modules suffered from cruft? Or the machines which work our nuclear power stations?
Uninstallers tend to not bother removing everything because some of the old program components may be being used by some other program. The obvious solution would be to stop all programs using each other, but there are two problems with this:
So this policy would be unenforceable, and would require much, much bigger hard disk drives. The only obvious solution to his problem would be to stop making the programs integrate themselves into the system so well, so they can be removed with a simple 'rmdir'.
Someone has already mentioned entropy and decay as a cause of cruft, but if it plays such a big part in it, why will a computer still function fine if you leave it in a cupboard for a decade, blow the dust off it, and plug it back in? The reason is that entropy is caused by crappy coding, crappy operating systems, crappy users, crappy physics and crappy integration. Until these three things cease to exist (not likely), then cruft will continue to occur. I don't think anyone could be expected to keep track of the things a 6-year-old PC has to keep track of:
Uninstaller: Duh! I think I'll randomly leave behind 7 files, due to the 0.02% chance they might be used by some other shite program!
OS: Duh! I think I'll randomly fragment the hard disk drive, and fuck up the file system!
User: Duh! I think I'll randomly install the first software I happen to catch my eye on, and install it wherever it's most convenient!
Physical environment: Duh! I think I'll randomly deposit dust on the surface of the motherboard and the hard disks!
Integration: Duh! I think I'll randomly use DLLs from other programs, but not say which!
At the end of the day, it comes down to a balance between convenience and simplicity. Convenience occurs when everything promises to install itself, and to latch onto everything else. This goes wrong because a program simply can't know where and how to install itself to avoid cruft. Simplicity occurs when everything on a PC is in its own self-contained bundle, interacting as little as possible with everything else. This goes wrong because a program has no way of efficiently obtaining data from other hardware or software.
And in case you were wondering, my computer's at cruft force 3 - Lived-in. Surprising, considering it's a 2 year old Windows machine.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
I have, however, had packages that would not install because of a failed dependency. I'm guessing that rpm was saving me from installation decay by not installing the packages.
Norton Ghost will do.
the image of my 'vergin' Win98 {yeah, yeah, I know, butI don't need fancy, keep 98 'clean' and it will work nicely) , with some software will fit nicely on one cd.
The only problem is I installed several 'important' applications and some crap, but I forgot to make a new image.
So when I reinstall the image I have to figure out the changes, reinstall the security updates, hope I find an old realplayer without banners and ask around for that cute small game.
Ofcource with the proper maintenance working with images is DEVINE. A clean installation in 15 minutes.
Privacy is terrorism.
Finally! Sientific pruf that me sucky windows computer is the fiend behind me bad grammmer, atrocoius speling, and my woeful lack of productivity in my office - Cruft Force 5.
It is a good thing that my is boss is an el' cheapo. His computer is on Cruft force 10 and refuses to repalce it. So with mine at Cruft Force 5 I look like an absolute genius to him!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
I use XP one of my machines and although its held up longer than any other MS desktop OS, I now at the 7 month mark am thinking about a reinstall. Explorer restarts every once in a while and dumps all of my systray programs. Its still very functional, but I can tell a few more random app install/uninstalls and I might start sliding down that slippery slope. Of course everyone see's those strange generic registry unloaded/driver failed errors, troubleshoots for a few hours, then realizes why bother? It seems to be running O.K.
I don't completely blame MS for this, but there is no doubting this type of problem is rampant for any power user who tries to push a MS operating system hard.
Of course the opposite is true as well. One of my clients runs just 98 and Office and never installed any other apps, and they almost never have any crashes.
But then again, what's the point of an OS if you can't install and uninstall whatever you want?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
As per Microsoft. There are no "Blue Screens Of Death" in Windows 2000.
There are however, "Stop Screens" These are completely different and should not be confused with BSOD.
Yea, right.
ls -ld ~/.* | wc -l
Dot files. Loads of them. Four from RealPlayer, six from Gnome, five from Pine, three from Sawfish, and three NFS lock files, among a total of 140 entries.
Good thing Linux doesn't have a registry. It might get cluttered.
--Patrick
There are a few apps out there to defragment and rebuild the registry
which brings it upto speedish again.
all in all the registry as an idea isn't too bad. but like every database it needs tuning and maintaining.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I dub my SunPCI Win2k install as running at cruft force 11 "Undead"
It shouldn't run, it shouldn't even boot into safe mode, but some odd digital alchemy has occured that has resulted in some necromantic miracle, resulting in a cantankerous, yet unkillable install of Windows.
Yeah, I know about the telnet-isn't-secure thing, but that wasn't really my point. Under the conditions in which I was operating, having telnet running was not only appropriate, it was essential. Under other conditions, it wouldn't be a good idea. My point is that you can't draw conclusions about what the default installation ought to be from your own particular circumstances.
And as to networking: tell me about it. I once thought I would be clever and just bring a server up in DHCP, then change it to a static IP address later. Was that a pain in the ass. There are a lot of good things about Linux, but helpful documentation is not one of them.
I'm sure that a dozen people are going to slam me for saying this, but the process of adding a static default route to a Red Hat 7.1 system is not an easy one to figure out.
On a Windows 98 machine I administered, one aspect of its decay was that several keys on the keyboard stopped working ("e" being the biggest loss, if I recall correctly).
No, not a hardware problem. I tested different keyboards and they all exhibited the same behavior. And when the OS was wiped and Win2k was installed, no more problem.
There was nothing strange installed that I could find, AV software was up to date and apparently functioning... Very funny one.
We're on the road to Tycho.
On my XP box Real One put "eventsvc.exe" in the run key of my registry, I removed it. Every time I run Real One it puts it back. This thing is even more anoying than the start center, it just sits in the background until another app steals one of it's file associations. It then pops up a little box saying "this app has stolen my media type". The box has two options, "OK" and "remind me later", there isn't even an X in the corner to close it, you have to use alt + F4. If you don't say OK and this stupid thing is running it will pester you again every 15 minutes or so. You have to kill the process and then remove it from the registry (or use msconfig).
This IMO is the worst kind of cruft. Maybe I want to use Winamp for MPEG 1 audio! Please fuck off!
This piece of junk just sits in the background sucking up a couple megs of ram and using some cpu time when it needs to check that nothing else is moving in on it's turff. The fact that I am playing WC3 when it decides to do this, isn't relevant, Real must protect thier position as the number one most anoying piece of shit in existence. God only know how many memory leaks and all round crappy code is contained in this thing.
Real guys, last time I checked it was still My Computer. Leave your bullshit at the door.
So is Debian the only OS where you can actually install cruft?
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Actually, my linux (RedHat 7.3) installation will freeze occasionally. I find that it freezes when RealPlayer + many other things are running at once. (I think RealPlayer doesn't play nice with resources, but I'm just guessing.)
Has anybody else seen this behavior before, and if so, what was the cause? My computer is so stable otherwise...
Linux MAY be prone to SOME of these problems, but I'm willing to trust that the great majority of what causes windows systems to go nuts on a regular basis simply won't affect linux, not because its immune, but because its not used in the same way.
/home directory has one directory for every user on the system. My personal home directory, as I suspect others might be as well, is an organizational nightmare. But all that "cruft" is isolated. I know where the mess is, and I know only where the mess is. I don't have /etc, /bin, and other important directories littered with files that have no business being there. And no rogue application is likely to change that fact. Sure, an application program might add a directory to /usr/local and leave a large bloated mess under there, but if I decide later that I want to remove it, I can do a recursive delete of one directory and its gone. There aren't any mystery registry values that are going to cause me fits the next time I boot the system. There might be some entires in /etc/rc or crontab, but they won't hurt anything and can be removed later as they're discovered.
First of all, I'm willing to take at face value the fact that a 2K/XP system running only well supported, stable drivers on stable hardware running only a small set of vital application programs will be unlikely to encounter any serious problems. I have no personal evidence to support this, but a few people I know swear by it, so I'm willing to accept it under these conditions.
However, 2K/XP might have gotten it right, but it took MS 20 someodd years to get around to getting it right. And it requires a fairly new computer to be useful. Win 95 runs great on old (read: CHEAP) hardware as far as performance goes, but it has serious stability problems. If I want to run a 7 year old version of Linux, I'm willing to bet
that the last release in the 1.0.x series is just
as stable in a production environment as the latest 2.4.x release is. Sure, it might not be
as feature packed, and might not have the extensive driver support, but if it serves the purposes I require, it will work flawlessly.
As for drivers, Windows virgin installs come with a set of drivers for a lot of legacy hardware. If your system is a couple years older than the version of Windows you're installing, it probably has the drivers for all your hardware. For any other hardware, you'll have to use vendor supplied drivers. If these drivers are unstable, Windows can misbehave, and it wouldn't necessarily be the fault of Windows. Certainly Linux must have the same problem, right?
The simple fact of the matter, those who support Linux tend to support the same software methodology. The drivers, like the kernel, are all open sourced. They're heavily peer reviewed, and those that are integrated into the kernel are solid. And if bugs are found, they're fixed. If the original programmer doesn't/can't/won't fix it himself, there are countless others who can. In many/most cases, the drivers aren't even written/produced by the manufactuerers of the hardware, but by kernel hackers, on their own time. These guys have no interest in being first to the market. They have no desire to play the "just get it working, we can fix it later" game. Their only interest is in releasing solid, efficient code, becuase if they don't, they know someone else will be tearing it apart.
Therefore, the drivers used on linux systems tend to be rock solid. So you have a rock solid kernel and drivers. Now for the applications.
Applications for linux based operating systems tend not to overwrite system libraries with their own versions. General purpose applications are not generally run as root. The worst a normal user can do on a linux box by running buggy applications is to cause it to crash. Certainly, he can send the machine into thrashing or fill up the hard disk, but there are ways the administrator can restrict the type of activities that cause such outcomes. 2K/XP have methods to prevent these same problems, but many of the problems involved with installing misbehaving applications simply shouldn't be a problem in the first place.
As for adding cruft to the operating system, my linux box has the same number of directories off of / as it did the day I installed it, with three extras added for each mounted HD on the system. My
I suppose its possible that a poorly managed linux box can cause massive problems, just as a perfectly managed windows box might work flawlessly. But all I can say is this. It's been 154 days since my last power failure, and my linux server has been up for 154 days. None of my windows boxes have that track record.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I decided to build a new system some time in the fall of 2000, but prior to that I had been running the original Windows 95 install that I did some time in mid 1996. There were some hardware upgrades, sure, but I never resorted to reinstalling. My systems are highly customized, I like to set everything just the way I like it. So to me a reinstall is not something I do lightly. The system was not unstable at all, it was quite a workhorse. Sure, every now and then it would have a lockup of some sort, but we're talking once every few weeks. Now that I run win2k it's very rare indeed.
.EXE, sort of like ldd. You must also be familiar with certain areas of the registry, such as the part where stuff is loaded on boot, the "pending file rename" section, the section where apps install their preferences, etc.
You can manage the cruft in windows. It's not impossible, even if you install/uninstall a lot of stuff. The important things are to know what's running (task list, services, run at startup, etc) and to get to know the registry. You must babysit for poor installation programs. Often they will add crap to startup, or icons on the desktop, or other weird things, which I would always delete. You also have to help some of them wipe their ass when you uninstall, as a lot of them leave junk behind. You have to be willing to go into the Windows system directory and examine questionable DLLs. There a lot of tools to help with this. I recommend everyone who is interested go to www.sysinternals.com. There you will find programs such as REGMON and FILEMON which show you every registry access or file access in realtime, with the ability to filter. Also very useful is LISTDLLS which shows you which DLLs are loaded by every process in memory. If there is a file that's locked you can often find out who is using in with this program. The 2k resource kit has a free utility called Dependancy Walker which will show you the library dependancies of any
I find a lot of times when I use someone else's windows machine I am appauled by the amount of crap they have loaded, and most of the time aren't aware of it. Programs that load stuff on startup without being very clear about it and asking you first really peeve me. I patrol the startup folder+registry entries very strictly, and keep the task list small.
You of course have to make sure your hardware is stable and you have to go through the process of finding a driver combination that is suitable. It can be very frustrating to mess with crap drivers and a ton of strange BIOS settings. But if you stick with it you can eventually find a combination that is bulletproof and will yield stability. If you don't put in the effort to do this, though, you will forever be messing with strange crashes.
It can be done, but it is not for the faint of heart.
That's a level 7 i think,
anyhows for a level 5.....
some fonts were installed,
XFS go a little unhappy
x failed to start because it couldn't find it's default font.
and kept resporning
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Before long OIDs became popular, I could manually go in and clean up the registry. Now I don't have a hope in hell. Still, I find that most OS's do just fine as long as you don't frig with them. I've had one PC running NT4 for 4 years now and it still mostly works, except the APM suspend BSODs one time in 3 and I have to follow a convoluted series of steps whenever I use PPPoE. The secret is to just leave it alone. Don't install new software that you don't need and don't mess with the system configuration unless you write down every single thing you change.
My Linux box has different problems, but plenty of cruft. I have some scripts that I run every now and then to clean up the mess. The lib/modules directory got messed up the day I installed it, and I still can't replicate some of the modules I need so I have to manually install some old ones. Such is life.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Actually, my linux (RedHat 7.3) installation will freeze occasionally. I find that it freezes when RealPlayer + many other things are running at once. (I think RealPlayer doesn't play nice with resources, but I'm just guessing.)
Has anybody else seen this behavior before, and if so, what was the cause? My computer is so stable otherwise.
There are doubtless many, many things that could cause this to happen. But the one that's been doing it for me has been heat.
Nice, hot weather, nice, hot processor, nice, hot video card, not-so-nice noises from the CPU fan that's on it's last legs and is varying speed erratically. And now I get freezes playing graphics-intensive games under W2K or playing MP3s under Linux.
Time to replace that CPU fan.
YMMV.
emerge clean.
/usr/local having high entropy. Now I use gentoo, and I have yet to go outside portage for a package. Now the problem of /home entropy remains....
Poof.
Seriously, if one makes strict use of package management and thinks carefully about the apps they install, the entropy of the system tends not to increase. Back when I ran redhat, it was usually easier to get the source tarball and compile, resulting in
My WinXP install also is pretty streamlined, only what I want. I oversee it like a hawk and think carefully about upgrades and changes to the system. With this regimen, it holds up well, though I rarely use it (maybe that also has something to do with it...). Now where you really run into this problem is on systems of casual users who don't care until it's too late. They have a temporary need, they install an app forever. They see something nifty, they install it without a second thought, without a second thought to resident programs loaded...
In short, any platform can show 'decay' over installed time, but its more a fault of the usage pattern rather than the platform itself. Any reasonable platform will give you the freedom to do what you want, even if the ultimate result is shooting yourself in the foot with your performance and functionality...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Certainly a system that has been in use for a long period of time can become less stable due to increased complexity as new software is added. However, the real question is, how easy is it to clean up the mess and return to a smoothly running system, without reinstalling the entire operating system?
The problem with Windows is the Registry. Practically nobody, including Microsoft's own programmers, knows exactly what to clean up in the Registry to get the system running as good as new, without breaking something important. In Mac OS, however, it's really quite simple. Granted, you do have to have an understanding of how the system works, so I wouldn't expect a novice to know how to do this intuitively, but I'd expect far less of a Windows user.
The most obvious thing is the Desktop file (actually a couple of files now). This is the closest thing the Mac OS has to a Registry, and it's not close at all. Every six months or so, reboot while holding the Command and Option keys (technically, you just have to hold the keys while the Finder is loading) and it will ask if you want to rebuild the Desktop file for each mounted volume (filesystem). A couple minutes later, good as new.
The next thing is extensions and control panels. Perhaps you've downloaded some cheezy shareware thing that's conflicting with some other cheezy shareware thing. Open the Extensions Manager, and have a look. Usually you can easily identify where most things came from; if you don't recognize something, you can turn it off, reboot, and see what happens. You can create multiple extension sets to experiment with if you want.
Finally, preferences. Some app misbehaving? Trash the Preferences file. Everything reverts to defaults, but nothing is really broken.
And of course, if you want to uninstall an app, usually you just need to trash the folder the app is in. Sometimes it may come with control panels or extensions; just trash those too (they're easy to identify). If you want to be thorough, trash the prefs too, although it won't hurt to leave 'em.
I have yet to see anything easier to maintain.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Dont know what you're all doing wrong, cause the OS on my Win95 CD has been fine for 7 years. Jeez.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Hello all.
.dlls.
I don't tend to run windows but my friends do and I've noticed an alarming trend: proliferation of adware.
I know a lot of you will be saying "well duh" but I don't run Windows' desktops much. I run Linux as a desktop/workstation OS and I administer Linux and W2K servers. Windows, to me, is a shell for running Warcraft 3 and Operation FlashPoint 8)
An alarming amount of windows software (especially "shareware" or "freeware") installs all sorts of annoying adware. Popups, animations, banners: cpu-wasting, flashing, scrolling, dancing cruft. Think of a website with really annoying advertising methods and then think "What if my destop randomly did that" and you'll get an idea of what it's like.
During installation of these adware-containing programs you probably wouldn't realise that your computer is about to be seriously cruftified.
The adware is usually embedded in
There's special programs you can download for windows that just try to remove/disable as much adware from the OS as they can.
I must say I don't miss windows one iota. I know with a bit of hacking I'd be able to disable any adware "suprises" but I think I'd pop a vein in my forehead before long.
Cheers
Andy
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
You just need the right tools... Many people have already mentioned the wonderous tools over at Sysinternals, but no one's mentioned any of the stuff writen by some finish dude named Jouni Vuorio. Over at his site there's a really nice set of power tools with a registry cleaner, powerful file manager, and remote admin capabilities. While this set of tools is curently in beta I've never had a problem on my home Win2K desktop. On the other hand, I won't use beta software on production machines at work so I just use his stand alone RegCleaner which even when set to "Auto clean" and "Extra powerful" has yet to damage the registry on any PC I've used it on. It has even fixed a few PC's which would only boot into safe-mode. They're not open source, but they're definatly free as in beer. Try 'em out, I think you'll be as pleased as I am.
So msconfig is in W98, not in W2K and in WXP. Damn!
-- SIGFPE
Get a Sound Blaster Live! and install the Creative Labs drivers on you SMP Win2K machine. Guaranteed to crash on a regular basis - especially if you play Quake 3.
I've seen Win2K crash a lot - these days it's generally to do with Mozilla consuming too many graphics resources (my machine starts having problems redrawing windows, and then I get a BSOD with a stop in nv_disp.dll).
Most of the time, as long as you are installing into the same prefix the package was previously installed into, you don't have to remove the old files. Occasionally filenames change, but it really turns out to not be too much of a problem. Individual packages vary of course. For instance, Mozilla should not be installed over top of a previous installation.
For libraries, it's usually better to install over top of the old install, and ldconfig will update all the symlinks, and programs linked against the previous version will continue to use the previous version(of course, that varies package to package as well).
Then of course there are some things that it's easier to keep in it's own separate place, such as gnome or kde. I put them in /opt/gnome, /opt/gnome2, and /opt/kde. /usr/local/gnome(etc.) would be good too. That also allows you to keep different versions of gnome/kde on your machine and test/switch versions at will.
Basically, as long as you know what you're doing, it's quite simple really.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The majority of these comments seems to infer 2 basic things in regard to the article:
1. The user of the machine is either competant or cares about the state of the machine. (ie. comments about how easy it is to keep it clean/organized/know what's going on)
2. Assumes that every computer on the planet has an IT department standing behind it who knows what it's doing.
I take care of hundreds of networks for a living and the last thing I want to do when I get home is to fart around with my own boxes. My boxes are probably at Force +13 on the F*'d up scale, but as long as they work and my data is backed up I don't care. I might have some time in January to set them back up.
The point is, while there are lots of perfect little computer housekeepers here, in my experience, this article hits it right on the Windows Key. Personally I can't believe people have time to type through all the laughing.
If you guys have time could you come over and clean up my mess? I'll leave the door open.
First try 'make uninstall' - if the Makefile has an uninstall package that will work. Or try 'make -n install', meaning "pretend to make install". This will usually show where the files went.
But neither is really needed because when you install the new version of the app (make install) it will overwrite the old files.
Most cruft can be attributed to users who do not take the time to learn about their computers and what it takes to maintain them. How many people go out and buy a new hard drive when they run out of disk space instead of going through the add/remove programs in Windows, RPM manager in Linux, or wander through all directories and check for things no longer needed.
... I know everything falls off of slash ... work with me here...) How big is your WinNT directory?? Mine is 1.24GB, and contains 9,191 files. That is 12% of my hard drive space, and 10% of all files, including my p0rn! Linux/Unix doesn't put all of its eggs into one basket, making it a little easier to prune the cruft that builds up, or at least a little less dangerous.
... another thing Linux/Unix has in its favor. If I put all the user directories on a separate partition, I don't lose all my settings when I reinstall Linux.
I have lived with 10GB for two years now just by pruning cruft whenever I get less than 300MB free. I would love to spend $100 on 80GB, but that would only lead to more cruft.
Linux/Unix does hold one bit over Windows, there is no single directory that becomes crufted. (Please
Face it, unless you and I are willing to spend many hours pruning the cruft on a regular basis, it is often easier to delete and rebuild. Oh yeah
Bad registry...evil registry...corrupted registry...
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Especially if you get in the habit of compiling programs from source without a package. I don't mean compiling deb or rpm source packages, or source that can generate a package too. I mean where you just download the tgz and do a "./configure && make && make install". Those generate true cruft.
However, I think that even though Unix can have more cruft, its also easier to get rid of it. Windows, and especially Windows XP, has the registry which can easily load up. Who knows what the hell needs what. Especially when you've uninstalled programs that don't like to remove registry entries. Windows XP will even protect itself with backup copies of the registry and you can only remove some files in a special way other wise XP will just replace the removed or user-replaced file with its own backup. It has backups of backups too.
Anyway, since Unix generally doesn't have a registry (for better or worse) it also easier to remove the cruft. If you strictly follow your distributions packaging system, cruft in Unix should be fairly low because you have a way to track the cruft.
Debian (and maybe RH too) has a way to reduce cruft even further. If you modify files after installation of a package, you can have it rebuild that package with your changes included.
Debian rules and Red Hat drools!
Let me be the first to call bullshit. I use both IE and Outlook on Win98 and Win2K, and have had machines that run fine for 3 years with reinstalling. That includes installing pretty much everything I can get my hands on, uninstalling 3/4 of that, etc., etc. Just because you know how to maintain a Linux system, doesn't mean there aren't some of us that know how to maintain a Windows system. It's just a different knowledge set.
I'll go with that...though it's much easier to tell users to reboot every day than every 40 hours. And, on my own system, or ones that I administer full time, they can easily run a week or more without reboots.
As for Windows ME, my figure would be to reboot it immediately. Then keep rebooting until your hard drive crashes, then buy a new one with another OS.
Not to mention Explorer's 'View as Webpage'! After getting rid of the Welcome screen and deleting extraneous desktop crap, that's the very first thing I turn off.
Dyolf Knip
Being accepted as a Debian package means that your package does follow the Debian policy. That means that there are over 9000 packages where the developer was concerned enough about the policy to follow through with what put you to sleep.
The dselect, apt-get, dpkg, gnome-apt, installers do just what you are asking a package installer to do. When you build a package, using Make, or other software building applications that support Debian packages, your package does identify what files are needed, what independently developed packages are required. It also handles uninstall very well.
Is it perfect? Nope. But in comparison to Windows software installers, it is light years ahead.
Of course BSD users will brag about how their installer works for any platform that has a C compiler... and that there exists drivers for the hardware... Sounds like a really lousy way to be set up to uninstall software later, but I am not judging the system, I don't use it.
-Rusty
You never know...
Hmm, five minutes after install EXPLORER.EXE has crashed, at least "cmd" can still be run.
Hmm, back to NT4 or wait for the sixth service pack, the one that brings XP up to the standard of CP/M.
It's a pity that they didn't just put a GUI on VMS and sell that.
Aside from all the other comments made in defense of these other OSes here, most of which I wholeheartedly agree with, I'd also like to point out that I think this is something that User Mode Linux will help to avoid. UML makes it a bit safer to play around with installing software that could potentially add cruft. You can have a UML file that has programs you're experimenting with, and then once you're confident that the programs work well and that you won't later decide that you don't need them, install them to your main Linux installation.
The first ever Ultimate Frisbee video game: here (now
I refuse to use Real Player and the free Quicktime player precisely because of their annoying nag nature. Quicktime is particularly bad because it asks you if you want to upgrade EVERY SINGLE TIME you play a file or stream.
And all it does so far as I can tell is tell an
application designer how to play nice with
everyone else.
No. It tells a Debian maintainer who chooses to add an application (of which he is not usually the designer) to the archive what he _must_ do.
Until operating systems have a generic installer
Debian has one.
and application designers don't have to do any
more tell this installer "here are my files, i
need to store this config info, and these are my
dependncies, do what you will"
That is what the Debian package management system does. It is the job of the Debian maintainer, not the program author, to package the program so that it complies with Debian policy and functions properly with the package management system. Familiarity with Debian policy is one of the requirements for becoming a Debian maintainer.
let the one who knows the details be the one to
handle them.
That would be the Debian maintainer. There are about a thousand of us.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I'll second that. I keep 98 on my machine for the occasional 'game that winex can't handle yet' and the install is about 8 months old now. It's a record-holder at this point because 6 months is usually it's turning point, the point at which it goes to hell very quickly. I think the 8 month record is due to the fact that I only boot into windows twice a month or so. Tried de-crufting the registry with a variety of tools to no avail. It's latest surprise is not recognizing/seeing my usb Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad. Thank god a modprobe sidewinder is all it needs under linux.
The utter dependence on the registry for all things COM is what makes Windows more fragile than most other systems. After several months or years of installing, uninstalling and updating software, the registry is full of dangling CLSIDs, type libraries, ProgIDs etc. Worse, the versioning system can get completely screwed up with several generations of ActiveX DLLs co-existing and periodically getting re-registered by their respective parent apps. VB developers have a particularly nasty experience, since by default VB re-generates all the CLSIDs of COM objects each time a project is built, without usually bothering to clean up the previous ones. So over time the CLSID subtree is littered with orphaned COM class debris.
.NET architecture promises to eliminate much of this mess, since class installation and activation is FS based like Java, and not registry-based like COM. Only time will tell if it turns out being any better, though.
Right now my work system (W2K) most of the time takes forever to pop up the context menu on files in Windows Explorer. It didn't always do it, but I can't really identify a major change to the system that precipitated that. No doubt some of the shell extensions that are being activated each time are looking for "stuff" that they're either not finding, are being slowed down by other components that they're relying on, or experiencing some other type of timeout. The menu can take 30 seconds or more to pop up. Similarly, some types of file operations take equally long: deleting a file from within Windows Explorer can take over half a minute, half of that time waiting for the confirmation dialog, the other half waiting for the "deleting file" animation dialog to quit. These are all most likely COM related problems that could probably easily be fixed--if you know what you're looking for. Unfortunately, a trace on registry operations during a context menu popup generates so much output as to be virtually useless.
Things like these all add up to make the Windows user experience increasingly frustrating with advancing time, particularly because of the seeming intractability of the problems. The new
I think the thing is that a lot of the obscure hacking that tends to happen in Unix and Linux is derrived from trying to push it's limits. We take the time to deal with these things because we actually have the opportunity to do so.
To illustrate my point, let's assume I'm having a problem with the video under windows versus a problem with video under linux. The symptom in both systems is the same, sporadic system crashes. So let's see what happens when I go try to solve my problem.
I search on-line and find out that there's a known problem with the video card. I find out that, for windows, the newest driver is expected to be released in a few weeks that will fix this problem. So, I wait a few weeks, get the new driver, and get on with life.
Now, under Linux I find out the same thing, that there's a bug and it's expected to be fixed in the newest release of the driver. The difference though is that, if I'm willing to put the work in, I can download a patch for this problem and recompile the driver. So rather than being out of luck for a few weeks, I'm only out of luck for how long it takes me to implement the fix.
I think that this environment promotes an attitude that encourages noodling with things to get them to work. Under windows, we are trained to try CTRL+ALT+DEL, then download a fix pack. Nobody is encourage to get into the guts of the thing even if it's possible. In windows, every effort is made to discourage hacking on the system.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You've just kicked the legs out from under one of Windows' biggest talking points...that is sooooo easy. In a way I suppose it is. Anyone can manage to use a Windows machine for a year or so before the quirks become highly annoying. Getting out of that jam without losing a buncha stuff is far from easy for nontechnical users. Keeping it from becoming highly annoying is well.....highly annoying.
Oh well, if I had mod points I would have modded you up for the link to sysinternals and your lucid description of those utilities. I have to maintain Windows machines at work and appreciate anything that makes it less of a trial.
That's the worst! After spending some time in KDE where I never needed to doubleclick, I thought that would be cool in Windows, too. It lasted about a day, and that's just because I'm stuborn.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Through the use of crash reports, Microsoft's next service packs and OS should withstand much more cruft without crashing. It might run slowly, but the only excuse for un-fixed crashes is a lack of knowledge.
Microsoft has already released a number of hotfixes for issues that were discovered because of the crash reports that users have submitted.
Microsoft is also using the reports to identify 3rd party drivers and other software that causes crashes. Microsoft *does* fix anything that causes a crash in NT/2k/XP that they know about...this is their way of finding out why end users experience crashes.
That's the problem with cruft, it is hard to reproduce it in a controlled environment, but because developers usually need to understand what causes the problem, they want all testing to happen in controlled environments. Crash reports give developers enough information to know where to look for the problem and they give managers the big stick of "This problem has hit 100 users" so they can justify the programmer spending the time needed to understand and fix the problem.
It's true that {Li,U}nix machines do build up cruft. I have 4 machines running 24/7.
Machine 1: DHCP/DNS/NIS/SYSLOG server for my lan. This has been sitting at CF1 for 3 years. I log into it about once every 2 months, to add or remove a user.
Machine 2: Firewall and mail/http/ftp server. This probably was at a CF 3 after 2 years, up until last week when i moved from redhat 5.2 to slackware 8.0. It's seen a fair bit of tweaking, and frobbing, and i'm not disappointed. After all, windows has a CF 4 out of the box.
Machine 3: My Laptop. It's at my girlfriend's apartment, I'm not sure but it's probably at CF3 or 4, but it's running a late model redhat distro, which comes with the cruft pre-installed
Machine 4: My Desktop. My poor desktop. It gets a full reinstall every 6 months. What can i say? Unix was designed to be configured and left alone. Not somthing I can do (well, i could but it's no fun) When my machine reaches CF 5 it's an excuse to finally upgrade to the latest release of my favorite distro of the week.
What? Me? Worry?
Most cruft can be attributed to users who do not take the time to learn about their computers and what it takes to maintain them.
This statement is flamebait, pure and simple. And it's not even troll tuesday.
I have a friend who, every night, takes 3 DVD's, rips them, and sets up a queue in Gordion Knot to compress them to CD size. Then he wakes up in the morning and does it with 3 more. He has a connection at blockbuster. So while everyone else's computer is sitting idle, or running dnetc, his is slamming DVD's.
Downside? He re-installs once a week.
He starts with a fresh install of windows XP, NTFS formatted. But, I don't care what the OS is, if it has a journalised filesystem, or if it runs a disk cleanup utility in the background, when you slam 12 gigs on, in the form of three VOB file that are 4 gigs EACH, then wipe it off, TWICE a day, there is NO operating system that handles that well. That's punishment that no filesystem was designed to take, or at least no file system that can take that and still run windows and Gordion Knot. After a week of that (which would be 168 GB, in 4GB files, added then deleted to the filesystem, not to mention temp files created while compressing), the computer churns to a halt when trying to do anything requiring moderate disk access.
I don't think your statement is intended to do anything except karma whoring. There are extreme circumstances in every case, and it's obvious that you, and everyone else on slashdot know this.
~Will
sig?
I'll give you the quick answers to your questions. First of all, you should know that properly maintained Windows 2000 and XP systems are absolutely rock-solid, provided that you do basic system maintenance, have good hardware, and use drivers that are signed and that work with your product.
:P
/var/log/messages.
;)
I don't claim Windows 9x products. In fact, I reformat those computers and put 2000 or XP on instead.
"For instance, can you look at a Windows process listing and be able to explain what every process is and what it's for?"
In a word, yes. You have to be able to do this to pick out viruses (and sneaky bastards like that RealOne bullshit.)
"Also, are there any diagnostic tools?"
Yes. They range from standard ping/nslookup to third-party programs that will do just about anything you can on *nix. Check out a package called NetScanTools for all the TCP-dumping, port-sniffing goodness. (I'm too lazy to Google.) Also, for more fun/cool things like virtual desktops, changing system preferences, etc., check out the Windows XP Power Toys (put out by Microsoft.)
"Does Windows log noteworthy events somewhere like the Unix syslog? If so, where is it?"
Event Viewer. In 2000/XP, go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer. Works just like
"If I do figure out what is going wrong, what do I do about it?"
You hit the Microsoft knowledge base. This is really one of the most underrated tools in Microsoft-land. However, it has pretty much any obscure bug/feature you would want documented, including registry hacks, etc. Can't find it? Go bug Microsoft tech support. They're usually quite helpful if they sense that you're not a luddite.
I am a Windows guru. I like being a Windows guru. Several of my friends are Windows gurus. We're the ones who maintain Windows networks, bash people who think that since Windows 98 sucks that all Windows versions must suck, and find it ironic that so many people bash MCSEs because they know a stupid one. (Yep, it happens, folks. There are several million stupid college graduates out there, too, but that doesn't mean that college degrees are worthless.) Yeah, I think MCSE can and should be more stringent. But that doesn't mean the cert itself is a bad idea.
Knowing Windows is an easier job than knowing UNIX, for sure. But it's not the cakewalk some geeks seem to think it is. Having used both Windows and Linux on the desktop, I can honestly say I vastly prefer Windows. Servers are another story, but then again I don't claim to be an Exchange guru.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I have a mate who does the same thing every night with an Apple laptop running OSX and an external firewire drive.
He doesn't seem to have any problems with speed or stability and the machine had an uptime of a few weeks (has to reboot for the odd install) - including being put to sleep etc to go to work.
I recently checked the thing and it was as happy as a lark
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Cruft Force 4. Middle-aged. Description: Amount of time from screen showing "real" Windows background to the logon box appearing is >30 seconds.
running windows 2000 (upgraded NT4.0)this is not even a bad thing on a pentium 350.
Sometimes cannot "browse" other machines on LAN.
The "other" machine is windows 98 and had to be tuned on AFTER the windows 2000 machine.
Get first real BSOD.
Due to some flakey "connextant" modem driver. If it get "speech" instead of dailtone i get a real BSOD.
The USB mouse still needs the PS/2 mouse, or i get a BSOD after hibernation.
Uninstall jokey screen saver, replace with SETI.
I am a dutch power cow, and have dnetc installed.
An extra disk of huge capacity has been installed.
8 GB did not cut it, a 40 GB 7200 rpm driver is added.
CD-ROM moves from drive F: to drive [:,
cd is at f,g,h , and after that is a m: hard disk partition.
But this is still manageable. I was at cruft force 5 in the NT4.0 age. But I managed to clean up networking under windows 2000.
I still have not decided if i buy a new PC if i going to move the current installiton to it or make it a brand new XP "cruft force 1" system. I think my current cruft force is very workable, as long a new user is not put in front of it.
At work I have a Windows 2k box. I don't have admin rights to it, but I have installed as much un-needed stuff as possible. I like lots of little meters and media players on my desktop. And guess what, there is NO cruft in it. If I don't start all those crufty programs, it is almost as good as new. And that's a PII 350, 64MB box.
It is all the experimental programs that the "Power Users" download, that lead to the accelerated decay. Because most tested applications clean up after themselves.
And all those registry-bashing Linux people. God damn, from what I read over at gnome.org, there is some sort of GNOME-registry, which "everyone" agreed was a "good thing". The thing with the Windows registry is all the dumb programmers, IE Creative, who loaded ALL their mixer settings into this, it was a whopping 3 MB! And when the "clean" registry from Microsft was below 1 MB(Win95), then that was a huge degradement. But if you know what you are doing, it is not harder to do some cleanning in the Windows registry than removing unwanted files from a Linux system.
And on top of that, Windows XP comes with a feature called "System restore", which allows you to get back all those settings that worked so well, including the registry. OK, I've only used it once, and it may not be the "best" tool there is, but it is certainly better than nothing.
After a week of that (which would be 168 GB, in 4GB files, added then deleted to the filesystem, not to mention temp files created while compressing), the computer churns to a halt when trying to do anything requiring moderate disk access.
Probably fragments the swap file. Try configuring the swapfile as a fixed size right after the install (Set max and minimum size to the same values)
Also, partition off a large segment of your disk for the data files alone. Between this and fixing the swapfile on the disk (Possibly on its own disk) should stop system degredation.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
in the core of the OS? dos was the core of windows xx pre 95. windows 3.1 probably ran on dos 6.0 at the latest. i must admit that dos 6.22 was and is my favorite microsoft operating system. is it possible you were thinking about windows nt 3.x?
-- john
I would be supporting Apple. I have no more love or admiration for Apple than I have for Microsoft, and since using Quicktime is avoidable, that's precisely what I'm doing.
It seems to be a bug with something that Blizzard is doing because I am yet to BSOD my system on anything but Blizzard games. When StarCraft caused the system to BSOD, I figured it was a problem with the IPX drivers, but since Diablo II can do it on Battle.net, I'm beginning to doubt that. (I've also seen Java manage to reboot my machine randomly - hasn't happened recently, but some how Cocoon managed to reboot my Windows machine with the 1.3 JDK. Don't ask how, it just did...)
I'd guess I have network card issues, something's probably wrong with my LinkSys card drivers ("Works with Linux! Download drivers from our website! Uh, you aren't planning on using the Ethernet for Internet access, right?" - later versions of their driver disk come with Linux drivers, and Linux kernel 2.4.x have the appropriate drivers, but Linux 2.2.x at the time I got the card didn't - meaning a quick boot to Windows before I could get Linux up and running...)
Other than randomly rebooting with JDK 1.3 and the occasional multiplayer Blizzard game BSODing me, Win2k's been rock solid. Although I use Mozilla as my browser, solving the "Explorer bringing the system down" liability that Win2k has. (Mostly when some page causes IE to start chewing threw resources, or when some app manages to crash the Explorer desktop instance and it gets screwed up when it's autorestarted.)
My only beef is that I rarely get "unkillable" processes - processes that Windows claims are being debugged. Ah well - I can deal with it.
It's better than my current Linux Gnome 2 install, which steadfastly refuses to use any window manager except twm... I'll get around to fixing it eventually, but since I mostly use my desktop for games and Java development, I really don't find myself wanting to go back to Linux. Sorry guys...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I searched high and low for a solution to crufy Windows, and I believe this may be it. It's a decent set of instructions to get Windows running completely off of a CDR. It uses a ramdisk for its write purposes , and of course all changes are lost when you reboot.
Once you have the CD to your liking, you can escape the cruft of Windows.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I didn't say the microsoft registry was a good implementation.
But a centralised database with journalling rollback and propper commits is a very good place to store you system settings.
It's easy to index in an efficient manner
You can run scripts to check for bad stuff
Evrythging is where it's ment to be and easy to find.
An if you using a fully fleged DB then you can do a lot more with the configuration.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The big difference here is the motives of the people involved. Under capitalism, I exploit you because I think I know what's best for me. Under communism, I exploit you because I think I know what's best for you.
Yeah, that's the theory, anyway.
You know what the difference between theory and practice is, don't you? In theory there is no difference.
In reality the only difference between Capitalism and Communism is the path to power: In Capitalism one gains power through private industry, while in Communism one gains power through government service.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Typical. Can't anybody admit a defect in Windows with out clamming it's universal or blamming the users.
Universal:
Over the years thies problems have not surfaced in other operating systems.
Users:
Mac Os has the same kind of users as Windows and Linux actually shares the same userbase.
Only a precentage of Linux users don't like 'take over' software..
Also Ms Dos itself never degraded.
Just look at how each defect happends in Windows and how other operating systems work and you'll see thies problems are unique to Windows or at least not normal.
Stop blamming the users for using features Microsoft included.
Stop blamming "the nature of computers"
Put the blame where it belongs....
Poor design...
More over most problems could be fixed easly if Microsoft would just stop making excuses.
I don't actually exist.
Yeah, I told him to make a data partition, but he apparantly is lazy or something. I think his excuse is he likes to start clean. Makes him feel fresh or something.
~Will
sig?
Right on both counts. First, this isn't a server. It's a homebrew computer, built with OEM parts bought from pricewatch. Not the highest quality stuff, but the hard drive is a Maxtor 7200 RPM 30 GB. But the machine wasn't built (hardware wise) to take that punishment.
And it could be an OS bug, or a problem with NTFS. As another reply to my post pointed out, it could be a badly fragmented swap file.
~Will
sig?
My point wasn't that no machine can handle it. But I doubt that a credit card company is using a sub-$800 machine to hold their databases of terabytes. My point also wasn't Linux V Windows, but rather that my parent claimed that people's OS's start to slow down because they're stupid. That is a flamebait statement.
Will
sig?
if I create 200 files that all start with myapplicationdataset and then have a 3 digit number attached, most hash designs will result in a single list
Let me repeat: you do not understand hashing. One characteristic feature of a good hash function is that similar inputs do not result in identical outputs.
What you just claimed about hashing reveals about the same level of understanding as saying, "having rolled a 1, you're probably going to roll a 2 next," about dice.
I'm not going to waste any more of my time correcting all your mistakes one by one. Go read something by Knuth, and please stop trying to "build" computer scientists. I'd feel safer hearing of lemurs building nuclear power plants.