Slashdot Mirror
Running Windows With No Services
mattOzan writes "So how many of the almost 4 dozen default-enabled services does Windows XP really need in order to preserve basic functioning, like web surfing and running applications?
Zero, as it turns out.
Mark Russinovich at Sysinternals demonstrates that if certain steps are followed, Windows XP will still run with only two active processes: System and Csrss.exe. No Smss.exe, Winlogon.exe, Services.exe, Lsass.exe...
And, contrary to the expectations of various lead engineers at Microsoft, even Internet Explorer will still work under such conditions."
...I bet fewer services will mean less servicing, no?
The bottom line is that this stripped-down Windows configuration is not practical, but makes a cool demonstration of just how little of Windows is required for basic functionality.
- There will be a delay before Explorer redraws the desktop
- won't be able to logoff
- Networking is also crippled
I don't think this stripped-down Windows provides even the most basic functionality expected by many users nowadays.It's like patients are treated as long as their hearts are beating, even though everything else has shut down.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I would have to wonder what DOESN'T work in this state rather than what DOES.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Hmmm. Define "work"...
I disabled Themes and Windows Audio and now my productivity is near zero. Who could work without visual styles and music?!
DxBlog - It's where you want to be
Seems like an awful lot of work to kill some services. Personally I think starting in runlevel 3 is much easier, maybe Windows should think about going to a CLI-only interface for some of us uber-geeks out there. That'd gain them some respect in my book.
As long as we can get BSODs, windows basic funtionality is assured.
I hope that message wasn't indicative of what happens when you try not to run any Windows services...
Anywho, of course most of the services aren't needed at all times, but if they aren't turned on by default, a lot of extraneous apps that expect them will either not install or not work correctly. Hence, they are turned on. Are not most services blazing along on Linux by default to the glee of OpenBSD booster?
Alright then. Don't want em, kill em. It's easy, but the average user would have to read up and learn to do it. On whatever OS. Probably easier to leave them running by default so as not to fark things later. Or not because of the inherent security holes. Up to you. I'm ambivalent as long as my Windows boxes are behind a sharing router on private IPs without a lot of forwarding and firewall software.
With respect to resources, I'll check it out some time to see if there's really any improvement. Filed under "Review Later"....
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I wonder how this well XP will run on qemu with all of those services turned off? There is very little I need from windows and I wonder if this would help with those final annoying things I need from windows at home.
Obviously the final result, a dubiously functional installation is not really groundbreaking for end-users, but there's much to be said for turning off the many services that ship enabled as default with Windows XP to gain both the performance and security benefits. Knowing whats running, what it's doing, and whether its really neccessary is a good step towards maintaining a system which has a low attack profile and is reasonably secure.
Business Voyeur
In The Olden Days, you could install a Linux disto without 10,000 daemons running... ah, those were the days... Linux was noticably faster than Windows out of the box! ;)
Agile Artisans
So wait a minute...
Are they saying that, even without all that crap that normally get started...it still crashes?
Or is that not what they mean when they say Windows works?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Really? Does it? Isn't this just an old joke with not much fact to back it up anymore?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Anyone know what a similar exercise looks like for Mac OS-10.4? It is not, shall we say, exactly a speed demon and it would be nice to know what could be safely turned off when one is running CPU-intensive processes. Thanks.
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
For running games, if you really care about it, you can CTRL ALT DEL and close explorer.exe. Then, run the game from the 'run' menu in Task Manager.
You probby won't notice any speed difference.. But your penis will be larger.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
the majority of people reading this will not wonder even Internet Explorer will still work under such conditions but if Firefox will still work under such conditions
do.what.promptcmds
Take a look at Black Viper's list of WinXP SP2 services.
UNTRUE! I just tried his suggestion and it didn't work AT ALL!
As long as we can get BSODs, windows basic funtionality is assured.
In Windows Vista it's a Transparent Ice Blue Screen Of Death, and it's tabbed.
You're still hosed, but it looks nicer.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Real men (like me, of course) just use sync from sysinternals and hit the power switch. Fastest Windows shutdown on the planet.
Do you know who Mark Russinovich is? Besides writing key books on windows published by Microsoft themselves he is also a very important member of the windows developer community. There is no way in hell Microsoft would want to make him an unsatisfied customer. If they really didn't like what he is doing I bet that they would try to bribe him with large sums of money to stop instead.
Philosophy.
Apparently Microsoft Genuine Advantage is one of the services you can disable.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Interesting...so you can kill almost everything.
I wonder if you can automate that.
And then, I wonder if you can provide the functionality that goes missing by running your own services. Sort of subverting Windows from the inside, and giving you more control over it.
But then, I'm not that interested. I've got my control. Total control. Without having to wrestle it from Windows.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
A favorite sci-fi book from my youth had (something similar to) this to say ...
... but it seems to vanish before I can grasp why .....
"As the scientist dug deeper into the structure of the atom, he found out that underneath the quarks, etc. there was nothing - just emptiness."
Seems to me that this applies in some way
I'd be more interested in selectively turning off services to make Windows as fast as possible.
I don't like how programmers bloat their programs; how the programs expand to fill the speed and HD capacity of the modern computer. I have half a mind to install DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 on my 1.2 GHz box. Fewer unnescessary services, and programs really will open instantly.
Speed is the very reason my default photo-editing client is Paint Shop Pro 4, not Photoshop Elements. Why the hell should I wait minutes for a program to load? What is this, 1980?
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
-William Brendel
Really? Does it? Isn't this just an old joke with not much fact to back it up anymore?
You clearly haven't been using a system recently that's been riddled with spyware, I've just had a hell of a time trying to get rid of some stuff on a friends pc that constantly kept rebooting the pc, restarting explorer and crashing winlogon.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
It just goes to show you how twisted and obscure Windows is. Even Microsoft's own people don't know how their operating system works. How can they expect to keep it reliable and virus free if they don't even understand what processes need to be running?
Well I doubt Russonivich has anything to worry about, he's one of the people that wrote the "Windows Internals" book from the Microsoft press.
Now that aside Windows integration is considered a GOOD thing by most normal users. That's one of the frustrating thing about Linux/UNIX form their perspective. There's a million options, and they have no idea what they need or want. What's more, if they make the wrong choice something might not work, since it depends on something else.
That's why Windows, and OS-X ship with so much integrated. They are targeted at users that want to be told how it is. They don't want a choice of 10 window managers, they want to have one that just comes up by default.
Now if you like the BSD way of doing thigns, that's cool, but don't assume that it applies to everyone.
Building from source is another great example. Linux people tend to see this as the best feature of Linux, that you custom compile things, and you don't have to worry about binary compatiblity. Newbies tend to see this is one of the worst features. Compiling is highly intimidating, as they don't understand what's going on. What''s worse, if something happens, they can't fix it, they don't know how to edit make files, or update headers, etc.
The Windows method is more targeted at the masses, have an enriched OS that isn't just defined as it's kernel, but it's APIs, GUI, media layer, and basic apps. Linux is a minimal approach that defines only the kernel, leaving everything else up to the option of the user.
Both are valid, and don't assume yours is the superior way.
Can this squeeze a few more frames per second out of my favorite games? How much RAM does this free up? As the user of an out of date laptop, I'd boot into a CLI if it meant it could significantly drop system requirements for best performance. I'm not enough of a penguin head to do it in Linux yet. (btw, I read the article and realize it's not practial, still a neat idea)
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Does that include oil changes?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
AT least when I was using w2k. Of course there was a lot of trial and error to determine what was needed and what was not. Many times those services were the equivalent of the startup folder. I did notice performance boosts at times, but these boosts were offset by the occasional quirks that would require 10 minutes or more to track down the needed service. Ultimately I realized the lack of documentation or at best the sparse KB articles combined with the intermittent problems negated any semi-worthwhile gains. Except for that damned messenger service, which I realized was necessary to disable long before Microsoft ever got around to it.
Eventually I discovered Linux, ps -aux, and all the documentation I could ever want and was happy.
Unequivocal control, now that's what I'm talking about.
Sysinternals is teh r0ks0rz!
No, seriously. If you don't know this, they have a utility called "Process Explorer" for Win32. It's like top on steroids. Actually, its vastly better than top, or any other process monitor I've ever seen. It will show you pretty much everything there is to know about a running Windows process; file handles, TCP connections, you name it. Its small, fast, mercifully lacking a "setup" and free.
They've got a bunch of other stuff for Windows I now consider essential. Check them out.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Open up the run box and type in msconfig.
This handy utility will allow you to disable all the annoying tasks you don't need on boot-up.
You clearly haven't been using a system recently that's been riddled with spyware,
So we're supposed to blame MS for Spyware? Windows doesn't ship with system-crashing spyware, and it's not even like viruses are its primary way in. Most spyware is willingly installed by clueless users.
My Windows machine at work is currently at 221 hours of uptime. I don't even remember why it was rebooted prior to that, but it wasn't because of a crash. The current version of Windows XP is pretty stable if you ask me - not as good of a 24/7 OS as most *nix's, though not for reasons of stability. Its interface is not designed for keeping large numbers of applications open at once, and it doesn't seem to handle memory all that well at this point (this used to be one of its strong suits compared to other OS's). But it doesn't crash unless you do something stupid (like install spyware) to make it crash.
In the past, I've found this list to be very handy in figuring out which services are simply unnecessary. While I don't agree that you want to shut down *all* services (I wanted my USB key to work...stuff like that), You can shut down a LOT of unnecessary garbage to help speed up the system and boot time...not to mention make things a little more secure.
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
...get a Windows/Linux/BSD/OS X debate. I mean, really...
If an OS can crash because of software then it has a basic design flaw. If an OS can get a virus then it has a basic design flaw. The only thing that should cause an OS to crash is severely corrupted memory and or CPU. I have worked with software that can function as the system RAM is being actively corrupted. Few people want to pay for this level of software but you can design an OS that will still run if you randomly rip out ram chip but hey let's blame it on the l33t hackers and say it's the software's fault.
This is great! Love the screenshots too, but WTF is that system idle process running at 99% !!!???!!! Jesus H that thing is a hog! Does anyone know how to kill it? I don't want to burn out my CPU...
Blarf.
Well Windows "shutsdown" on its own accord often enough, so that isn't a big problem (well it isn't a NEW problem)
Such a wonderful attempt at "humor"/trolling/zealotry.
If it actually happened, it'd be funny, but it doesn't anymore (did it ever?) - not unless you have severe hardware problems or you're so clueless that you let your machine get overrun with viruses and spyware.
Pfft.
Yes, but while I use both Linux and Windows, and am quite happy with both, I've never had Linux shut down on me unexpectedly either. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
My Windows machine at work is currently at 221 hours of uptime.
I was just about to reply to this to say how either you must be lying, or else your system must be horribly insecure because you don't reboot it for the monthly critical updates. Then I noticed you wrote 221 hours and not 221 days.
Usually uptime is measured in days!
I'll probably be modded down for this...
If an OS can crash because of software then it has a basic design flaw.
Not if that software is running as the administrator.
If an OS can get a virus then it has a basic design flaw.
I don't understand that one. How could an OS possibly protect against all viruses? It'd have to be impossible to modify executables.
On your typical Joe User system with broadband, your point is laughable at best. I have seen far too many typical Joe Users with system that are just "owned" by spyware/adware/malware/viruses. I live 1,300 miles from most of my family. Their systems are really, really bad. Every time I fly up to see everyone, I really an just doing "Windows admin" tasks for everyone. It is pretty sad that MS Windows allows a typical Joe User to totally destroy their system so easily, especially if those Joe Users use the "recommended"/"preferred" MS software of IE and outlook express.
Yes, technical users can lock down their home WinXP systems. My corporate WinXP dev workstation has not been rebooted for a long time and runs well (with the exception of explorer.exe crashing every time I log out!); This is at a fortune 500 that has spent 100's of thousands if not more on security (on a side note, we just spent a lot on an SSL VPN (in addition to our traditional VPN) solution so that any of our users that want to access our intranet from home need to go through that SSL VPN. Why did we buy this? Because we have 140,000+ employees and the _majority_ of those home users had viruses that were trying to get into our network and we had to protect our MS Win based servers (not our Linux or Solaris servers)! The majority of our non-technical home users had viruses running MS Windows!). My home WinXP system runs very well because I have protected it with a hardware firewall and a Linux firewall and locked down my wife's login account to just "Power User" so she cannot totally kill the system.
Now try to get the millions of Joe Users to implement these types of restrictions/securities/etc and see the backlash. They just won't/can't do it. The tasks are just too technical for most. The funny thing about all of this is that most Joe Users _do_ have some type of security. Many of them have Norton "firewall" or some other end-user type "protection". It is just funny how most of them _still_ are able have their systems destroyed in an average of 2-3 months or so.
Of my family members, so far I have gotten my brother-in-law to switch to Mac OS X (he is a photographer and wanted Mac anyway) and my sister to switch to Linux (web/email junkie only). I wrote down the root password for both of them, though they have no clue what to do with that root password. Both of their systems are still chugging along without issue. I can logged into each system every so often thanks to dyndns.org and I apply patches. I tried to do dyndns.org on some of my families WinXP boxes, however, they were getting infected faster then I could patch/clean them. It really is much easier for me to go North once a year with a bootable Linux CD and burn backups of their personal files and then do a restore, than to try to admin all their systems remotely.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
have been providing facts and utilities for years now, in the face of threats and obfuscation. Those with long memories will remember how they exposed the fact that NT Server and NT Workstation were the same binary product, but with different marketing and license terms, back in the mid-1990s.
As for a virus, it really depends on the user. If you were logged on as root on a Linux box and ran something bad, bad things would happen. Why should it be different with Windows? The major issue with Windows is that most people run it with Administrative accounts as poorly coded programs don't work under User access levels. Of course if Microsoft had a way to fix it most people probably would still run under administrative accounts. You can't stop user stupidity.
Probably. But maybe he's running a system with a microkernel, which doesn't need to be rebooted to patch a root exploit.
Hell, maybe he installed a minimal version of Linux a year ago, and is using kernel modules for all the advanced functionality. There probably aren't any root exploits in that (what root exploits are there in the kernel, and not the apps, anyway?)
Probably you can automate this by using some windows scripting and the Process204.zip program from the Fine folks at BeyondLogic.org http://www.beyondlogic.org/
This may be useful for maintenance purposes, as some posters commented in the article's comments zone. Not that is very wise to run a machine like that all the time, as the article itself says.
But what I like the most about this, is that the article shows that WinNT 5.0 (A.K.A. Windows 2000) and WinNT 5.2 (A.K.A. Windows XP) can be trimmed down to a bare minimum. Another mith debunked.
Other of my pet peves comes from the dos era. The slashdot crowd used to say that DOS can not mount a drive into a a directory to form a unified directory tree like in Unix. This was false then (please see the description of the JOIN command mor the method in DOS). The functionality was present in Win95 and 98, but seems absent in 2000 and XP.
Miths like this abound on Slashdot and are repeated time and time again, until they become truth. Check first, post later.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Who needs a 15 year old. I can bring you some of the professors I used to work for and they should do the job quite nicely.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Moderation is becoming more and more useless for the n00bs because of the slant in moderation. At minimum, I'd like to see the default at "0 nested" or "1 nested" instead of "1 threaded". It generates more noise, but gets some of the contrarian opinions a little more out in the open. If we're really gunning for smart folks on the site then I'm sure they can figure out how to turn moderation on if they want it. The same argument could be made the other way, but I prefer to give people the raw facts and then let them decide what filters to add.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
I don't think I've ever had Windows shutdown of its own accord since Windows 2000 SP1.
What you say was certainly true in the Windows 98/ME days, but NT based systems are much more stable.
Which sounds quite nice for killing off spyware nasties/etc on the system...
As was noted in a comment to his blog, this technique can be used to kill Winlogon.exe. The most annoying and insidious malware is hooking itself into this process which, ordinarily, isn't even killed by booting into any of the "safe" modes. Man, if Adaware can run in this mode, my prayers are answered.
Now, the fact that Winlogon.exe can actually be subverted by malware is another story entirely...
No Start menu necessary! You just need to know the right options to rundll.
For instance, in Windows 98, it's:
C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL32.EXE user,exitwindows
Google (along with a bit of experimentation) can help for other versions of Windows.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Drivers crashing the OS is afaik unavoidable.
A program running with administrator privileges can install a driver.
Now granted, with most OSes, including unix ones, it's much easier than that. For instance, if you screw with the inodes of a running system, you can crash HP/UX (at least you could when I worked for HP). I wouldn't necessarily call that a design flaw, though. In fact, it could very well be considered a security feature. If something that fundamental is screwed up, either you've got buggy hardware, a buggy OS, or you're under attack. In any of those three cases I'd say it's safer from a security standpoint to panic than to try to repair yourself.
Some people of course have different needs. Some systems can't afford to reboot, they're that mission critical. But for most operating systems it's better to blue screen or to panic or whatever it's called. Reliability can be handled by having multiple systems running.
... is just basically DOS?
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Of course they would say they are surprised that Internet Explorer would work under these conditions. Remember that one of the claims in the antitrust trial was that due to the architecture of the system, it basically wasn't possible to remove IE from the OS.
At the login window, enter ">console" for the user, no password. Then use your regular l/p to get a bare Darwin shell. On my dual G4, top shows 99.8% idle when I'm on the console.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
why dont you return your warez version of xp for the real one that does not default to 48 services running. or is that hyperbole ?
Someone mod parent AC up.
One of the the comments posted to TFA specifically states that winlogon.exe is still running in safe mode – sure it is, how would you otherwise log in? – and killing it as explained in the article enables removing of viruses that attach themselves to winlogon.exe, without a need to boot from external media.
This means that grandparent is simply wrong, safe mode won't kill winlogon.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Windows is perfectly stable, as long as you don't add any third party software to it, including anything that comes on the installation CDs.
=)
Something is horribly wrong with my OS!
You're the guy who tried to kill the kernel idle daemon, because it was eating 90% of his
CPU time.
I've actually discovered an even better solution, myself. With a little bit of toying around, I've effectively eliminated unexpected program crashes and virus attacks while still allowing all useful applications to run on my favorite operating system. See, I found this little button on my Dell case and pushed it. And then I took out my Powerbook.
Process != service!
My.. my friend (yeah, that's the ticket) was messing around with a program to try to disable the copy protection of the latest splinter cell game, and to do that, the program "un-hooks" your physical CD drives. he accidently clicked the wrong button and the hard drives were disabled. Windows kept running. He could open "My Computer" and all it had was "Shared Documents" and "User's Documents" windows crashed a few minutes later and was back to normal on reboot. Never did get the game working, though.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Supposedly - IF you run Task Manager from PowerPrompt which starts up a shell with System privilege.
Hard to find a downloadable copy of PowerPrompt though, you really have to search Google for it.
Great tool for trashing spyware that's protected by Windows itself.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
'Saying "I like Windows because it's more secure and robust" isn't flamebait, no matter how untrue we all believe the comment to be.'
/. could do the same.
Depends on the context. If the original story is about Windows, it's appropriate, even if in response to one of my posts condemning that fucking POS. If the original story is about Linux, it may be less so. As long as it's presented as a sincere OPINION, it's one thing.
It also depends how many MORE untruths are uttered, such as "Linux can't be installed by anyone", "There is no hardware support for Linux", "Linux is unusable", etc., buttressed by references to "Linux fanboys" and the like - all for someone who hasn't used Linux at all or at least in the last five years.
Whereas my usual response to that is to call the poster an idiot and a Microsoft shill - which is a RESPONSE to flamebait (if not to a troll, which is dumb on my part), as well as being flamebait itself.
Other suspicious comments include those Microsoft shills who claim their Windows 98 has been up for three years with never a crash, no infections despite being on DSL 24-7 with no firewall or AV, runs like lightning on their 133MHz Pentium I with 32MB of RAM, yada, yada. (I exaggerate only slightly here.)
Or their company site has never been compromised, no server has ever had to be rebooted for a year, and all the MCSE sys admin does is eat pizza all day because he has nothing to do. Oh, and all this cost SO MUCH LESS than Linux's TCO because of that splendid Microsoft engineering.
Most of the pro-Linux posts of that nature I've seen tend to be a hair more believable - especially when they compare their servers directly to the Windows ones ALSO in their company.
As for moderation in general, I couldn't care less. I browse at +1 and read the stupid stuff to see how stupid it is and the smart stuff for what I might learn. Anyone new to
It does waste a hell of a lot of my time, though. Especially posting random pointless comments like this one.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"The drivers are run at kernel level for speed reason as user mode would give a major performance hit."
I can see that with the video drivers.
What about everything else?
Do I need my sound card to run at kernel speed?
The hard disk driver?
Even the NIC card?
I don't think so. The CPU is spending most of its time idle on most machines, so why do drivers for SLOW HARDWARE have to be running at kernel speed?
Because some designer thought it was a good idea back in the 286 days?
Modern OS's do not allow user space to control the hardware. Why allow drivers to take control of the system totally away from the OS?
The biggest annoyance I have with Windows (and even with Linux to a lesser degree) is how it can go wool-gathering for several minutes when some app is trying to do something with hardware that isn't responding? Even Task Manager isn't responsive.
On most mainframe OS, no matter what the hardware is doing (because it's being controlled by an external controller, mostly), the OS can be woke up with a couple keystrokes. This needs to be done on PCs. The point of a preemptive OS is that it can regain control of the system on its terms - which means it's responsive to the USER, not the hardware. Which keeps the USER in control.
Putting drivers outside the OS's control is just dumb design - let alone letting any moron at any hardware company write one and then install it at kernel level. That's just plain idiocy.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
disable those services but keep it functional:r vicecfg.htm
Windows XP Home and Professional Service Pack 2 Service Configurations by Black Viper http://dhost.info/kyeu/mirror/blackviper/WinXP/se
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
This is not news. In the 15 years I've been running Windows all I've ever had was poor service if any at all.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Standard marketing speech. 32 is almost three dozen, and three is almost four.
98Lite? http://www.litepc.com/
Brilliant! Allow home-grown tagging for an anchor,
use the URI as the anchor text, but still append
a stupid [foo.com]. Brilliant!
Were that I say, pancakes?
2k3 Server. Then again, I built it from scrach and installed the OS, so it had half a chance :).
(FreeBSD admin by choice, Windows admin by necessity)
1. It encourages people to reboot. (i.e., as intended)
2. It causes people to delay installing the patches because, well, they have to reboot in the first place, and they get sick of the nagging.
So the result is that most people do what I've done, which is "download updates for me but let me choose when to install them." The problem is that a lot of the time they'll wind up not installed. (*I*'ll install them, but God only knows about Joe Bob.)
This kind of thing is rampant in the Windows world. For example, Norton Antivirus (I think it is) has an option to do automatic virus scans on a schedule. This is a GOOD thing. It should be done. Unfortunately, since it doesn't run with the equivelent of a "nice 20" and it insists on hogging the console as well (until you background the thing), a lot of people, including me, just turn the autoscan feature off.
The one exception to this is probably firewalls. When firewalls do this kind of thing and don't play nice, they do it ONCE for an application most of the time, so it doesn't become annoying. Sure, it might crash the whole freaking 3D app when it unceremoniously grabs the desktop to pop up a little bubble dialog, but it should happen once if at all, and that's it. So it isn't the same thing.
Now, while we're on the topic, I might as well get my post downmodded by saying something that Windows tends to do well that I like. Well, Windows specifically doesn't do it, but the various firewalls out there do. You authorize *applications* to either access the net or not, which is nice. Granted, it isn't all that you need for a decent firewall, but it would be nice if Linux made that kind of enforcement fairly transparent. (Of course, make the admin have to turn it on. Don't do it by default or all sorts of stuff will break.)
Yep, I wholeheartedly aggree with your whole message.
Once Linux started shipping on CD's, as opposed to the early stack-o-floppies installs, the first reaction was to install and activate everything they could possibly download and pack on that CD.
(And I suppose the fact that at the time the flamewar was "but my Linux system gives me more free stuff than your Windows comes with", also didn't help the cause. Everyone just _had_ to pack 5 web servers and 20 IRC clients on a CD, and offer to install them by default, just to brag about how much more stuff they include than MS does.)
I didn't use RH at the time, but I do still remember installing SuSE in 1999. (Although I did briefly have Linux installed too, the stack-o-floppies way, prior to 1999 I was by and large an OS/2 fanboy.)
Ooer. Now that offered to install everything and the kitchen sink by default, and pretty much everything depended on everything else. I _know_ at least Apache was installed and started by default, because some documentation module depended on it. But it's more like it offered to install and start by default some 2-3 web servers, _and_ MySQL and god knows what else.
By comparison, nowadays most distros got a bit more clue. And then there's Gentoo. I'm not the biggest fan of Gentoo generally, but there you only have the stuff you've emerged, and the stuff it had a dependency on. If you haven't explicitly emerged Apache or PHP or such, there's just no way you'll have a web server on that machine.
And, yeah, you're right about the heavyweight GUIs and desktop managers. Looking back in retrospect at the times when we used to brag "my Linux starts faster and uses less memory" with a straight face, I have to wonder where and what went wrong.
I still remember compiling and starting KDE 2.0 on my old 128 MB K6-III. I mean, gah, all my memory was used up with just that and X before I even started any programs. And it just went downhill from there. Nowadays Windows XP actually loads faster, used up less RAM and is more responsive than a KDE 3.x desktop, and that's just bloody sad.
Mind you, I too use a more lightweight desktop, which keeps things a lot snappier. I'm on XFCE at the moment, and for a long time I was a IceWM+DFM proponent. Gave me something pretty close to a Windows desktop (DFM managed the desktop nicely, IceWM took care of the task bar and menu) on a couple of megs RAM.
But still, as soon as I load a couple of programs, I get all the GNOME2 and KDE libraries in RAM anyway.
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