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Will Windows 10 Finally Address OS Decay?
colinneagle (2544914) writes The real question on my mind is whether Windows 10 will finally address a problem that has plagued pretty much every Windows OS since at least 95: the decay of the system over time. As you add and remove apps, as Windows writes more and more temporary and junk files, over time, a system just slows down. I'm sure many of you have had the experience of taking a five-year-old PC, wiping it clean, putting the exact same OS on as it had before, and the PC is reborn, running several times faster than it did before the wipe. It's the same hardware, same OS, but yet it's so fast. This slow degeneration is caused by daily use, apps, device drive congestion (one of the tell-tale signs of a device driver problem is a PC that takes forever to shut down) and also hardware failure. If a disk develops bad sectors, it has to work around them. Even if you try aggressively to maintain your system, eventually it will slow, and very few people aggressively maintain their system. So I wonder if Microsoft has found a solution to this. Windows 8 was supposed to have some good features for maintaining the OS and preventing slowdown. I wouldn't know; like most people, I avoided Windows 8 like the plague. It would be the most welcomed feature of Windows 10 if I never had to do another backup, disk wipe, and reinstall.
Silly muggle, there's no difference between the two.
Sadly the way updates work with MS they become the far bigger problem. You can easily see this by installing a "clean" system, examine its timing (please don't even think about using system internal benchmarks...), then patch it and notice just how much speed you suddenly miss.
That's a problem you probably won't solve quickly...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This hasn't been a problem in my experience since around Vista, maybe even XP.. I really don't remember.
The only times I see anything remotely resembling this is when, over time, family and friends accumulate so many add-ins, toolbars, and other on-startup junk that there's a noticeable effect. That has nothing to do with OS 'decay': it's the user installing - wittingly or unwittingly - too many resource hungry programs. The solution is simple enough: just uninstall whatever is not actually needed.
If the problem was really in the OS, then windows server which shares many of the same underpinnings as Windows desktop(s), would suffer the same fate. Since servers like domain controllers and exchange servers run for years without that issue, the problem seems to be from the crAPP that gets installed, as the parent explained, as well as the article. Bad headline to suggest the bad apps are M$'s problem
Doesn't entropy always win?
Microsoft would have to redesign the whole OS to have its apps sandboxes for something like this to work
Like on a modern mobile device, sandbox your apps so they don't clutter the whole system and when they're erased, they're completely gone.
OS/2 installation never decay as Windows. It is all on the config.sys, you simple delete all the stuff you don't like and it is done. http://www.os2world.com./
j/k this post was only 1 paragraph, instead of 3 libraries of congress. The style and narrative is the same though. =/
This is not a painstakingly maintained system, but I am not in the habit of installing toolbars and updater services. If an application installs any of those, they are deactivated or uninstalled. People install "registry cleaners" and "optimizers" and download "codecs", "players" and "downloaders". That's what ruins their systems. Once malware or anti-malware has gotten in, there's no way to restore a system to its former speed and security.
Installed applications in Windows should be entirely self-contained. They should have their own directory, their own temp files, and their own registry hive. When the application is removed, all of this should vanish as well.
I personally never experienced that for daily use. Installing/uninstalling applications and updates do since there are always some left-over garbage, but that's simply not addressable unless Windows kills all non-standard installers and forces them to play by Microsoft's rule (sadly even their own left garbage, but it's the first step to make them manageable), as it is on various Linux distributions.
With SSD, since it gets slower with more writes, a reborn system wouldn't be faster. It'd be pointless and you should really just dump it after 5 years.
Not really. It's just bad design.
Your server isn't getting games installed on it, which put all kinds of settings in the registry, then removed later when the game is old and tired, leaving behind cruft (including DRM bullsit) in the registry.
When a program is UNinstalled, all traces of it should be gone. Apple took a different approach, which arguably works far better. Even if stuff is left behind, it just takes up a bit of disk space, and doesn't affect the system at all.
You may find this interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Funny. I never had to do a wipe since XP. Despite running my machines mostly 24/7. Maybe just learn how not to mess up your OS...
I have this dream of running windows in a fully locked down fashion.
No writes allowed to the Windows directory. Any attempted writes result in immediate termination/quarantine of said app.
A long time ago I created a 20gb windows partition. Silly me. Now I'm cleaning out garbage out of the c: every few weeks just to keep the thing running.
Saying the OS decays and slows down without any supporting data is about as informative as saying society is in decay. Btw I've never had this problem on any of my XP or Win7 systems.
If your disk develops bad sectors, the OS most certainly does not "have to work around them". Any modern drive will self correct its own bad sectors upon identifying them. If a disk is developing so many bad sectors that this is a constant problem, then the disk is about to fail, and you should expect performance to be degraded. This has nothing to do with Windows.
Here is the kind of answer I do not want to hear: "The typical cost of hard drives is less than .15 Cents per Gigabyte. This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive. That's about the same cost as a large bag of potato chips. " (cite). Yeah, so? Maybe I'm on a laptop with a small SSD? Maybe it's a VM that I have a dozen copies of? Don't waste my resources and then try to talk me out of caring.
Since..let's say Vista, OS decay doesn't happen.
You know what does affect OS performance? Malware. Silly PC users not installing updates and getting infected, or just infecting themselves because a dancing pig said it was a good idea.
Microsoft doesn't have to fix OS decay. They need to continue to educate their users about security and then make a version of notepad that can understand unix newlines.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I'm sure many of you have had the experience of taking a five-year-old PC, wiping it clean, putting the exact same OS on as it had before, and the PC is reborn, running several times faster than it did before the wipe.
Are you running XP? Ever since Win7 I've not had this problem since I switched off XP. Learn to uninstall things and learn how to manage startup.
All you're fixing by reinstalling the OS are all the configuration mistakes you made over the years. Stop making mistakes, or learn how to correct them, and you don't need to reinstall.
You could also set a restore point just after instal and revert...
Or reinstall the OS into the same directory it currently resides, having the same basic effect.
Your problem seems to be your lack of expertise in windows, not with the OS itself.
Also, I'm not a MS fanboy... hate em... but what you're talking about is not a windows problem. It's a user problem. I guess they should make it easier to deal with, but the fact of the matter its far easier to fix this in windows than Linux. And far easier to make linux unbootable via the same mistakes than windows.
My 8 month old Win 8.1 install is as snappy as the first day and has only decayed because my SSD has a bug. (SAMSUNG 840 EVO) I thought my install was getting slow but after a SSD refresh it is almost as snappy as the first day. Has it decayed? Most likely, but when the difference is 1 or 2 seconds at startup you hardly notice.
I used to reinstall XP every year or two to get it back to a fresh copy, but I ran the same install of 7 from 2009 until... well, the present though that computer is my second one instead of my main one now. Including installing games and at one point switching from an nvidia to an ATI video card. Runs as awesome as ever. This problem has basically been solved... SSDs and huge amounts of ram help.
The last Windows OS I ran was XP, prior to migrating to Mac. I didn't run anti-virus, never had any malware problems, and never had it slow down. I ran CCleaner maybe once a month and/or after installing / uninstalling an app or installing OS updates.
Will Slashdot finally admit to being paid by Microsoft for positive press?
You deserve everything that MS decides to inflict upon you...
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
8.1 brought huge improvements in disk space usage -- just look at the 16GB tablets shipping with it. Hopefully 10 will be even better.
... let alone understand it ? /sarcasm Naive ...
The continual bloat of _registry_ is the cause of the problem. That is not going away anytime soon.
Hmm, so why don't Unix machines have this problem ... gee, maybe because they don't use a single bloated binary config file.
Windows is too stable for you? You want OS decay? Try ReactOS instead! It's an alpha quality Windows XP clone, and it doesn't even support NTFS. That's right, your FAT32 will be toast after the first blue screen. Reinstall every day, it's fun!!
Seriously, get some fucking perspective.
This is what slows a PC down. Remove MSSQL Express now and you are back in black. Back. In. Black.
Probably the accumulation of malware stealing CPU cycles. It's hard to avoid with the current state of the art on any commercial desktop OS, except by being very careful and selective when browsing, opening email attachments, etc. And sometimes even that's not enough.
XP was fast as hell until you patched it up to SP3. Microsoft borked the hell out of that OS. Windows 7 I have not had the gradual slowdown problem at all.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive.
I think you just don't understand what WinSxS is, how it works, and what the problem is that it is designed to address, suggest you start reading a bit more.
The reason the old Sxs assemblies need to be kept, is that installed software may require the usage of an old assembly.
Just because an update has superceded a certain library version, does not mean that all applications that still rely on it should be broken.
The SxS assembly backups have a vital role, and they don't actually use as much disk space as you think, due to hard linking --- Windows Explorer gives you an impression that more disk space is consumed by this folder than actually is.
The reason is... various installed files throughout the system will be hardlinked here, causing an appearance that a lot of space is in use here, but in reality --- these hard links are just a second Zero-usage copy of files that are installed elsewhere.
Only a couple gigabytes worth of files that have been updated and no longer have other hard links here, should actually be considered usage of the SxS system.
Honestly, I don't know what the complaints about Windows are going on about. I'm typing this on a Win 8 tablet, sitting in the sun, running real programs (including dev environment) that an iPad or Droid couldn't hope to handle. It took me an hour to get used to the new start page, and anyone who takes longer is really just not trying. Sure, if you are a Win hater, you've got good reasons and stick to them. If you like Windows, 8 is awesome. As Irving Berlin might say, anything your iPad can do, my Venue can do better (at three times the price).
No but the Dumb-ass developers and Distro makers throw config files all over hell in random places.
If your config files are not in /etc or ~/.appname then the developer is a complete moron. /opt/dev/random/stinky/appname/config.cfg is NOT acceptable.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
maybe they can teach Google the trick. My wife's Note 2 was taking 15 or so seconds to open the messaging or camera apps and finally today I just did a hard reset and started from scratch.
It doesn't matter whether Win10 finally addresses "OS decay" or not.
All that matters is that there's a succession of stories so they've got you talking about it - from website to website, day after day, one story after another.
Oh, and that you attack Mac users for being "sheep"...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
I have to say that I don't believe I experienced "OS decay" in any of my recent boxes. Recent includes one box that is some 7 years old and is running Windows 7 from pretty much the time it was released (ran Vista beforehand, and yes, that one was painful, but consistently so).
Windows 7 hardly degrades over time, at least in my experience. Sure, the more apps/devices you install the more time it may take to boot and the more memory these startup apps will consume, but I think that mysterious 'OS decay' is not all that mysterious anymore, and can be easily avoided by not installing crapware and an occasional (yearly?) visit to msconfig's Startup pane, to get rid of stuff that you may have once thought is useful but really isn't.
Another thing that pretty much killed OS Decay is SSD. SSD trims bootup times so significantly, and improves responsiveness of apps - that the so called 'OS Decay' - more apps running on startup and having to swap in/out of memory - has a much lesser effect even if you do suffer from it.
Last - I believe much of the perceived 'OS Decay' has a lot more to do with 'App Decay', or perhaps it's more accurate to call it the opposite - 'App Bloat'. Generally speaking, there's a lot less emphasis for memory optimization with every passing year - just take a look at how much RAM your browser windows are consuming. They're typically ultra fast - but they're trading RAM for speed. If you have a 2GB or 4GB system, OS reinstall or not - you're going to have a slow box as you start opening more than a handful of tabs, combined with a few Chrome extensions. At 8GB you could do OK if you're not too demanding. But admittedly, I only did away with memory related issues completely as I got a 16GB box. Combine a system that's constantly approaching out-of-memory with a magnetic disk, and you have a recipe for a performance disaster.
That seems to have been a problem only with Windows XP. I didn't have it with Windows NT 3.1, NT 4, Windows 2000, or Windows 7. (I skipped XP).
Ubuntu Linux seems to have an incredible number of background processes that aren't really necessary.
A domain controller or an Exchange server is not likely to exhibit these issues unless you start doing things that are affected by this problem. Running programs that take a chunk of disk space and use it for reading and writing data in their own database format using their own code while responding to network queries for weeks is probably one of the least likely activities to get affected. (Unlike, say, the performance of the bookkeeping when installing updates etc.) It's similar to how even older versions of binary-translating virtualization packages weren't any slower at running user-mode code at full throttle: that's the part that's *not* being slowed down, it was the emulated peripherals that were.
Ezekiel 23:20
Pretty much every app wants to have some update service or helper or whatever. Most of the time "cleaning" a PC that's dragging is a simple as running msconfig and unchecking most of the startup app and services.
I usually get a "b-bbut the last guy/tech/business said I have to reformat and reinstall! :( "
Ever.
Since Windows 3.1.
Not ever.
I know how to clean the damn thongs without performing radical surgery, and so does every professional I work with.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
at least you can simply rm -rf /opt/dev/random/stinky/appname/config.cfg and the problem is gone.
Unfortunately you can not simply delete the folder in windows, more likely you will have later an issue with uninstaller saying it can not uninstall the application
whut?
After installing the preview today and using it for a couple of hours, my conclusion is that we are still putting lipstick on a pig. The new Start Menu is a joke... it's somewhat more useful but the inclusion of XBOX, weather, health, news, etc on an Enterprise install is nonsense. The flat pastel UI is still crap. And the melding of Metro and classic windowed apps is bad... there is no easy link to Control Panel, only a link to the hobbled PC settings Metro app. The install is straight up Win 8... they barely changed anything from where I sit.
On the plus side, even in a VM it is relatively snappy, which I did find with Win 8.1. And the default install is only 10GB, which easily destroys previous versions. Our 8.1 test VM came in at 17GB.
If it's still going to take them a year to tweak this hunk, there is no question I am all Linux all the time from here on out. I disagree with the one UI for all platforms approach, and with the consumer apps for Enterprise users configuration. Yes I know I can fix that with Group Policy, but how about they ship an Enterprise edition in an Enterprise configuration right out of the box.
My only Windows will be a Win7 VM for the two apps that don't run on Linux (Visual Studio and MS SQL) and my one piece of incompatible hardware, a Dymo label printer.
Never had this problem, Apple has it though.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Randomly placed config files in Linux is a problem, but nowhere near as large as the problems caused by the registry on Windows. In Microsoft's defense, when the registry was originally thought up probably in the early to mid 1990s, it was thought to be a good idea. However, the test of time has not been kind to the Windows registry.
Microsoft would do better to follow in the footsteps of Apple when they switched from System 9 to OS X and redo EVERYTHING in the Windows operating system instead of keep adding more duct tape to fix each new problem with the ancient os.
I think what the commenter was attempting to state is that Unix systems tend to maintain their configuration as files on the filesystem which result in:
O(1)
lookup time for configuration.
Whereas the Windows registry is a database which results in:
O(log n)
lookup time for configuration.
This is also coupled with the fact that entries in the registry continuously accumulate and are historically not scrubbed when a program is removed from the system.
Remember looking up program configuration information tends to happen at program start which results in slower start times.
That subsystem never shrinks, I remember in Windows 2000 perhaps, there was actually a gui setting to dictate the size of the registry. Anyone remember this?
The software you are using is garbage. Applications don't HAVE to store ANYTHING in the registry -- that's the vendor of your crappy games doing that. Also, each vendor supplies an uninstaller -- obviously yours aren't doing the job. I suggest you have a talk with the thick-headed developers who write your games. Or, just join the rest of us in 2014, get an SSD and don't worry about it.
Actually Windows 8 seems to do a better job than windows 7. After 2 years I haven't touched my windows 8 system in this respect. As an added bonus most of my data is on network drives, so the ease of laying down a base image is the least painful of all.
Linux suffers just as much from cruft buildup and most of my linux installs are on VM snapshots. Defrag a hard disk? Wow haven't even thought about that in years.
systemd will fix that for you, with the added "feature" of parsing text
for their business model to function...and they won't break it.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I think it's time to take your meds.
Relative to appname it is... In the shop where I work, /etc is exclusively for system provided packages configuration , ~/.appname for user specific configuration and /opt/appname/etc/configuration.cfg for application installed outside of those provided by the OS.
Even with an SSD, if applications are leaving behind shit in the various places shit can run on startup, you might be losing CPU or memory to some task that doesn't need to be there.
You can have this problem on other OSes like OSX and Linux too, but Windows is the only OS where the SOP is to make a mess of things. Don't like an app on OSX or linux? Just delete them. most of the garbage goes with it.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
at least you can simply rm -rf /opt/dev/random/stinky/appname/config.cfg and the problem is gone.
Unfortunately you can not simply delete the folder in windows, more likely you will have later an issue with uninstaller saying it can not uninstall the application
Why would you remove the application's configuration files before you remove the application? Are you meaning to re-install it? Then uninstall the application, or run the Repair option in Programs and Features. If that part is broken, blame the package maintainer. And if you still need to blow away the configuration files, do it after the application is uninstalled.
As for the registry, there's a great front end that fully resembles a file system view and dozens of third party tools that make parsing it a snap. Most of the time you want the software hive.
It's nobody's fault that you don't know how to use Windows, much like it's nobody's fault that I don't know how to use Linux.
It is simple to Windows running at top speed.
1) fix the PAGEFILE. Go inot the settings and change ti to fixed size - 2x-3x size of ram - both of minimum and maximum size. Do not let WInodws manage it! It wipes it out and builds each time you boot the system. Since MS builds file from 0 sector out, and does not look to size it needs, it become fragmented over all the holes that have been left by other processing creating and deleting files.
2) Get a real DISK FRAG Tool. IOBIT has free one the is great. It will even defrag the PAGEFILE (if you fix it) and well was the registry, during boot. Further it will defrag on the fly when your use of your machine usage is low, to keep it in shape.
3) Clean your registry! IOBIT also has a great free tool Advance System Care. It will scan and cleanup most of your booboos. Normally the first time, I run it on machine that is "slow". It wil fix upwards 9000 errors the registry. Also will tracck down many junk files left in temp directories. One machine was helping on it cleared from one temp directory over 20000 opjects left behind from a word processor.
4) Dump the System Restore from time to time. This is just junk removal. It has its place and can be of great help. But if you have not installed any new in say the last month, disable it, to clear out the trash, and reable it.
Again it is simple HOUSEKEEPING!!!!!! And stop whining.
If you really want to run the FASTEST WINDOWS install??? PC with 8GB or 16GB of ram, Install Linux 64. Install a virtial machine software (say VMware) Create a windows VM. Do what is listed above. Fire it up. It will be faster that loading windows on the bare metal of the same machine.
NO!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Not really. It's just bad design.
Your server isn't getting games installed on it, which put all kinds of settings in the registry, then removed later when the game is old and tired, leaving behind cruft (including DRM bullsit) in the registry.
When a program is UNinstalled, all traces of it should be gone. Apple took a different approach, which arguably works far better. Even if stuff is left behind, it just takes up a bit of disk space, and doesn't affect the system at all.
You'd think so, but it's pretty common to uninstall a broken program, then re-install it. Keeping the old parameter settings makes it easier (sometimes!) to re-install, since you don't have to set it all up from scratch. Network settings are a case where I often benefitted from this behavior.
Then there's shared files and components such as DLLs. It's often quite difficult to reliably determine when the last using application has been removed, especially if people have been brute-forcing stuff instead of using the control panels and installers that keep count.
Still, I wouldn't mind having a "nuke" option that would at least remove all the files that belong exclusively to the app for cases where there's no possible reason why they would ever be referenced again. Murphy notwithstanding.
I've found that there are really no issues with regards to running a new OS for long periods of time. There was a time when regular reinstalls were a part of my regimen but that is long past. I reinstall only when there's a specific need. That doesn't mean I just put up with a slow computer either, I demand very fast performance from my systems. A reinstall just isn't needed to maintain that.
Likewise, components have gotten much better, and upgrades more incremental, so I've found the need to buy new hardware that would necessitate a reinstall to be less.
My guess? This person either has crap on their system that causes issues, or this is just a "magic incantation" they've always done for supposedly better performance without understanding or examination.
Not really. It's just bad design.
Your server isn't getting games installed on it, which put all kinds of settings in the registry, then removed later when the game is old and tired, leaving behind cruft (including DRM bullsit) in the registry.
When a program is UNinstalled, all traces of it should be gone. Apple took a different approach, which arguably works far better. Even if stuff is left behind, it just takes up a bit of disk space, and doesn't affect the system at all.
Yes it is bad design. It is bad design by the people who create applications. The level of incompetence is staggering and this includes all the big name vendors.
Funny you should mention Apple. The Windows version of iTunes (the shittiest piece of software ever written) installs support files for 34 different languages. There is no option to only select the language you want at install time and the user is completely unaware that iTunes has just dropped approximately 4,400 un-needed files onto his hard drive.
But wait! It gets better! iTunes also creates a registry entry FOR EVERY SINGLE FUCKING FILE!! I am not making this up. ~4,400 files AND registry entries that can be deleted with absolutely no effect on the functioning of iTunes.
... so why don't Unix machines have this problem ... gee, maybe because they don't use a single bloated binary config file.
Just give Poettering some time, he'll take care of this.
When I install Windows, I work hard to set up everything exactly as I like on install day. Then I make a backup of the OS partition - which has only programs, no photos, videos, etc. - using Acronis TrueImage. Then I proceed as normal, and when something gets screwed up, I just restore from backup. This completely undoes any effects of winrot, and the system immediately feels like it was installed that day. What I usually do then is update my applications and settings, and immediately make a new backup. A full restore takes about 4 minutes, and a backup with max compression takes something like 12. I find this so convenient that I use no antivirus. When I start to suspect that I may have installed malware, I just restore from a backup, and four minutes later, my system is perfect. I've been doing this since Win2K days, and if this method weren't available to me, I wouldn't be using Windows.
First off I would say that one problem is that windows needs to be restarted every once in a while. Servers are included in that as every windows system I have worked with (quite a large number) becomes unstable if it is left running indefinitely. Linux does not have this problem (I have had more than one Linux system running for over 2 years straight with no change in performance or stability), The second problem is the slowness over time. I generally re-install my Windows system at least once per year because of this. I can also show that this does happen on Windows servers. The reason it is not seen on Windows Servers very often is because software is not normally installed and removed on servers as often as it is on desktops. Again Linux does not have this problem (at lest most Linux software does not cause it). I have had my Linux server running stably and just as fast as when I first installed it for over 5 years of randomly installing and removing all kinds of software on it and not all of it was from the repositories that come with the OS, there were quite a few things that I downloaded binaries to run and that I had to compile my self and some of it caused many different problems and created errors. Most of this was fairly simple to disable or remove and once it was removed the system was back to where it was before the software was installed.
I remember in the transition between INI files and the registry (how I miss the days when applications had their own discrete text-based configuration files... oh wait, *nix still does!), and Microsoft sent out countless missives all but ordering developers to move to the registry. The registry was the approved place to store configurations, likely, I'm sure, because sticking all user settings in a single hive that could be passed around from workstation to workstation for roaming profiles.
Of course, the down side has always been that the registry just becomes cluttered with crap, particularly on a system that sees a lot of software installed, updated, reinstalled and uninstalled. Throw in there nearly two decades' worth of COM objects being incremented and decremented unsuccessfully, and a computer that's been running for five or six years, and fragmentation of the file system, and it can lead to just awful response times.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Windows ME was the first Windows operating system with the now-common System Restore feature, allowing you to "roll back" your computer to a previous date and hopefully remove any recent errors.
8.1 brought huge improvements in disk space usage -- just look at the 16GB tablets shipping with it. Hopefully 10 will be even better.
The fact that they can cram their bloated OS onto a 16 GB device is not impressive.
The SxS assembly backups have a vital role, and they don't actually use as much disk space as you think, due to hard linking ---
Windows Explorer gives you an impression that more disk space is consumed by this folder than actually is.
That's nice to hear, because that folder often displays as upwards of 15GB, often as much as everything else in the OS combined, at least on the servers I'm looking at. Confusing, though, if that's not really what it's taking up.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Is Linux really any better, though? I've had a Fedora system that I've just been updating continuously for several years now. It was fast at first, but after pulling in so many updates for so long my system fucking crawls. It got much worse after systemd was installed. My slow system got even slower!
You should be able to install 1000 programs, uninstall them all, and your system should be identical to what it was before. Anything else is a failure.
The very existence of the registry is wrong. Operating systems like Unix, Linux, MacOS, Solaris, etc. don't have a registry, and don't have any significant "OS Decay".
When a program is UNinstalled, all traces of it should be gone. Apple took a different approach, which arguably works far better. Even if stuff is left behind, it just takes up a bit of disk space, and doesn't affect the system at all.
Apple took a different approach on iOS.
OS X suffers the same problems as Windows, although perhaps not as severe.
You consider this article positive? Troll logic astounds me!
Config files go either under
* /etc/app - system wide, distribution provided /opt/app - foreign applications, system wide
* $HOME/.config/app - user specific, don't just dump to $HOME
*
Then you have 3 places. Maybe 4 for legacy $HOME/.app stuff
Why is this not the same as "The Registry"? Because it's filesystem level and there is no stupid GUUIDs for keys. Imagine if some application installed their config files under unreadable with GUUID paths. Then the under does not know WTF those things ever suppose to be.
But that's a system that COM and COM+ invented. It works great until someone does not follow the rules, which turns out to be quite a few users and vendors.
Just make the following into a batch file and run as Admin:
@echo off /F "tokens=1,2*" %%V IN ('bcdedit') DO SET adminTest=%%V /F "tokens=*" %%G in ('wevtutil.exe el') DO (call :do_clear "%%G") :do_clear :eof :noAdmin :theEnd
FOR
IF (%adminTest%)==(Access) goto noAdmin
for
echo.
echo Event Logs have been cleared! ^
goto theEnd
echo clearing %1
wevtutil.exe cl %1
goto
echo You must run this script as an Administrator!
echo ^
pause>NUL
Back when I still used Win7 in a VM, mine was something like 23 GB reported, but when deleted, 8 GB was freed. Which, to be clear, is still absolutely ludicrous.
No idea what TFA is talking about.. Only "decay" I've noticed is caused by people getting suckered into installing malware.
Even with the hard and soft linking taken into account (there's a command line way to get the total amount of space actually consumed), my winsxs folder is still 15gb. Way more than a couple gigs. Very painful on my 60gb SSD.
Holy shit.
I mean, it's general knowledge that iTunes for Windows is most likely the worst piece of software ever written... But what you describe takes it to a whole new level of stupidity.
Hell, it almost makes it sound like they're trying to slow down Windows on purpose...
When I get my new PCs, the first thing I do is wipe them clean and reinstall windows.
I'm just careful when I grab the disk labeled "Ubuntu" because I know that version of windows doesn't come with all of the problems the OP identified.
The continual bloat of _registry_ is the cause of the problem. That is not going away anytime soon.
I've got 277 items in my add/remove list, dating back to about 2.5 years ago, yet my system is almost as fast as it was back then. Why? I'm not naive. I have no PUPs, malware, or other unwanted programs, I run MBAM and MBAE instead of a "real" AV (much lighter real-time protection), and I'm smart about what I let run at boot. Registry bloat is not a problem, it's clueless users who cannot maintain their system. The only issue right now is that my memory usage is a bit high after a clean boot, but that's because I'm running Nvidia drivers, Geforce Experience, uTorrent, Steam, three different cloud storage programs, and a file indexer covering 500,000 files (Everything FTW!).
I rebuilt my XP boxes every year or so. I've had Win7 on the same box for 3.5 years, no problems. It could be that today's hardware is so over-powered, not even MS can generate enough bloat to slow it down.
That said, it would be nice if Win10 forced apps to behave better and kept the registry clean. Not holding my breath.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Servers don't have anywhere near as much software installed/removed as a desktop machine, so this is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison.
Microsoft went further than just having a bad registry, they essentially forced developers to use it if they wanted to get the approved sticker (ie, to say "works with Windows 95" or such).
Then again, winsxs is only one of several directories that often have people asking, "can I delete this?" See also C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution, System Restore, and Windows.old, and c:\windows\installer. They are a mix of necessary and junk. From end to end, Windows is designed to keep everything, forever, just in case, instead of keeping track of things properly in the first place.
Microsoft recently released an update to address this with the disk clean up utility. It has come in handy on both servers and workstations. http://support.microsoft.com/k...
I hate ethics, I avoid them on principle.
Years ago, people would joke that "emacs" stood for "Eight megabytes and constantly swapping". At the time, it was meant as an insult. These days, 8Mb is hardly anything.
I did a clean install of 8 and 8.1 in VMs to compare disk usage. 8.1 used slightly more.
I'm well aware of the hardlinking that Microsoft does. I've also done some actual analysis measuring the real disk usage of WinSxS by using tools that count the hardlink references. On my Windows 7 installation that had a 16GB WinSxS folder, 14GB of that was unique to WinSxS with no other hardlinks. It isn't as efficient as Microsoft claims it to be.
You should understand what you are talking about before going off on one, otherwise you just make yourself look silly. The registry is cached in RAM while the system boots. It's tiny. Have you ever even gone to see how big the registry hives are? Are you now telling me that accessing parts of such small files is "the cause" of a Windows system's performance degrading? Do you have any idea how long registry reads and writes take?
Just because bullshit is repeated ad nauseam doesn't make it true.
As for the registry, there's a great front end that fully resembles a file system view...
I've called regedit.exe a lot of things over the years, and great was never one of them.
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
Decay is caused by poorly written apps writing to the registry each time run. Windows treats it like a database with copies and forks and you have a recipe for disaster.
UAC controls and warnings if an app didn't install right fixes this
http://saveie6.com/
also a windows with reboot for 2 year will be missing a lot of updates as well.
"Disagree"? Parent has provided proof. You can't disagree with what is factually correct.
If you are asking "Can I delete this random directory in my system directory?" then the answer is either:
"Here's a page on Technet explaining what it is for. Read this, then do not delete it."
or:
"If you have to ask, no."
Stop fucking around with things you don't understand and maybe your operating system will stop going slowly or breaking. Did you even look at the logo of sites like www.howtogeek.com? You're actually taking these people seriously, and going about ripping the innards out of Windows on the advice of some whack jobs?
Oh I dunno. You haven't seen the state of some of the servers I've been asked to take over. Let's just say the word "iolo" and "Windows Server" should never been seen in the same screen.
"Only a couple gigabytes" is both a lie and exactly the sort of attitude problem the GP was talking about. Out of curiosity, I did an informal survey of around 30 Windows 7 machines a few years ago. With hardlinks normalized, you're still looking at 6-8 GB for freshly installed and updated systems, and closer to 15 GB after some normal use (Office installed, etc). That is ridiculous. No other OS does this. There is something wrong with the OS architecture if this is truly "vital".
Compile and install a program on linux with ./configure, make and make install? then you will likely be left with no means to uninstall it at all. And I have no idea why there are non-library files in /usr/lib.
Hell, it almost makes it sound like they're trying to slow down Windows on purpose...
Bingo
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
And then there was a transition to C:\Documents and Settings\username\AppData ? (or \Users\usernames\AppData which is the same)
It's certainly better than that piece of shit dconf-editor that Canonical uses to administer dconf, which is the current Windows registry favorite alternative in use with Linux applications right now. dconf-editor is extremely limited compared to regedit - fucking hell you can't even use dconf-editor with just the keyboard!
Sorry, pet hate. Linux has a registry - dconf (originally gconf) and no-one's written a respectable GUI to manage it yet.
I just looked through my registry, and find no sign of these 4,400 entries you mention.
Not saying iTunes hasn't dumped a lot of gratuitous crap into my registry, because it has. But this "entry for every file" thing? Not... in evidence.
Even if Windows slows down over time, there's easy ways to deal with it.
Since Windows XP, you have a program called "MSConfig" that allows you to remove any startup programs, especially ones that are pure redundancy or are otherwise not useful.
And with modern systems - Web browsers slow down the system more than anything junk that accumulates in the OS. I've had both Firefox and Chrome running at the same time, with the resulting commit charge around 8GB, sometimes approaching 12GB. Once I stopped using one of the two browsers, the constant thrashing stopped, and everything else is much more responsive. (Firefox is still freezing, but that's a memory leak issue.)
I take it you and the parent haven't actually used any other operating systems? They're not all like this.
I provided a link to a Microsoft-provided process that can often delete gigabytes of garbage from these directories, if you go to the effort of making it. The whole setup is a wasteful mess.
I think the big problem here is the way NTFS file system and Windows Registry works...
http://www.howtogeek.com/115229/htg-explains-why-linux-doesnt-need-defragmenting/
Even with an SSD, if applications are leaving behind shit in the various places shit can run on startup, you might be losing CPU or memory to some task that doesn't need to be there.
Win Rot is alive and well in Windows 7.
Both my gaming machine and personal laptop have serious performance issues after 8 or so months (OK, the laptop is 2 years old but I use that infrequently). Both have SSD's, both were blisteringly fast when first installed.
Surprisingly enough, my work laptop is fine but I dont install much on there.
As a sysadmin, the biggest issue I have with Linux servers are the servers running out of space (mostly because some slovenly developer or DBA didn't bother writing a script to clean up log files or other output so it just grows until the disk runs out of space). Clogging up disk space with garbage is sort of *nix rot. Whilst Linux and OS X have no registry to clog up things, running out of disk space is a lot more painful on *nix than it is on Windows.
Very few *nix machines ever get used in the same abusive fashion as most people treat their windows boxen though.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Betteridge's law of headlines:
Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by no.
I'll believe it when I see it. It's not just Windows that has this problem, after all. Android and Mac suffer from it, and even Linux isn't immune (or there'd be no Paco).
M$ did that to Xenix too hard and sim links eveerywhere
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive.
I think you just don't understand what WinSxS is, how it works, and what the problem is that it is designed to address, suggest you start reading a bit more.
The reason the old Sxs assemblies need to be kept, is that installed software may require the usage of an old assembly.
Just because an update has superceded a certain library version, does not mean that all applications that still rely on it should be broken.
When you've got a 19 GB Win SxS folder on a 40 GB HDD (which is plenty for a server and expensive on Tier 0 SSD's) it's a serious issue. 19 GB is not ridiculous, it's not even usual for a 2 yr old server that's been updated regularly. 19 GB across 250 virtual servers is a serious waste of space. Even 6 GB is a massive costs in infrastructure. Not every update needs to keep dozens of updates. Fortunately Microsoft has addressed this problem (as of April this year, so relatively quick in Microsoft time) so that the WinSxS folder can be cleaned up.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
make uninstall Also compiling from source should rarely be necessary. Most modern distributions will include a ports like system that will allow you to compile source into a fake root, use the information gathered to build a package, and then install the package with your package manager. This ensures everything is cleaned up properly upon package removal. Of course even building a package for the software is probably unnecessary as it's very likely someone has already done it for you. Linux' package management is vastly superior to both Windows and osx (don't you just drag a folder into the garbage can? Give me a break). You just have to know what you're doing.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
"OS decay" doesn't exist... except for Microsoft releases...
Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't intentional.
How else can MS release a "newer and faster" system when no real improvement can be done?
Either you get system decay or upgrade hell.
Even linux has the upgrade hell problem--and it's forced onto you since the latest -rc type apps are readily available. I tried flat installs on a DellPowerEdge, DL380, System328 and an X3650 blades.... AND nothing worked from opensuse 12.1 to latest, Ubuntu 13, CentOs... only Ubuntu 12.04LTS worked on just the DL380. Either issues with graphics, or RAID or CPU. Really it all comes down to graphics hardware... really, really, no one is stick to the VESA standard it appears.
There is no garbage in WinSxS. Windows keeps old or unused files for a reason. You shouldn't be deleting these - manually via a Microsoft tool or otherwise - unless you are low on disk space. Windows does its own automatic passes of storage directories and removes things it doesn't need itself. As the OP said, the size reported by Explorer of WinSxS is the only "garbage" because of the way the contents are handled and linked.
Things aren't as simple as the XP days, for better or for worse. However, in my experience reading the technical details of Vista+'s new features, they are usually for the better. They also make sense once you read up on them at a site that is authoritative and experienced.
Just wait until systemd gets in there.
I have a pc I bought in 2009 with Vista on it. I only installed Win 7 at one point. Don't remember if it was an upgrade or clean install but it never slowed down compared to before.
I know people who format and reinstall every other week. I have no idea what they are doing to their PC.
Yes, but this is why you give /var its own partition. ;)
Microsoft does not come up with new versions of Windows that will breathe new life into five year old computers. Microsoft designed windows to be a PITA to install on an old PC so that you'll upgrade to a new one with the latest Windows pre-installed. Microsoft is about putting as much planned obsolescence into their software as the customer will allow. Microsoft won't embrace interoperability, standards, and robustness until they absolutely have no other choice.
Unless this is new in the last month, no it certainly doesn't. Stop spreading this kind of misinformation.
Good idea, create a .deb and install it.. but that's (as a matter of perception) hardcore sysadmin stuff, not user stuff.
Yes I'd like to compile some outdated or too new or different (*nix) stuff.. Or say, lone wolf projects, of which emulators are an example. And there are ppas or additional repos but then you need to manage the ppas and the guy doing the ppa might have done a crap job. (oh, I remember being told that in synaptics you can find installed packages that came from a ppa, but I wouldn't have thought of looking there and I still don't know how to do that from the command line).
Easy way out is with ./configure --prefix=/opt, but I don't feel that's right if I need to compile libraries before. Maybe I'm wrong. Else, I had thought of using some simple scripts or commands to know what files were added in /usr and such but I'd fear doing some non-robust crap.
Your suggestion makes sense, though it makes me feel like you're some Gentoo, BSD or Arch (?) user. I suppose it's all distro specific.
How about it?
The funny thing is that on machines (ab)used often, backing it up with wbadmin, then nuking it and restoring it from the saved image actually seems to speed things up to the "freshly installed" speed.
Not sure why it helps, be it NTFS issues, actual registry files or other core OS files fragmented, or some other factor, but it does. A backup/format/restore seems to do just as good as a reinstall. It could even be a rootkit that hid itself from the backup utility would not be present when the system was restored, although it doesn't hurt to mount a drive on another box and scan the disk image for nasties just in case.
Which is plenty for a server and expensive on Tier 0 SSD's
Microsoft's guidance on this is pretty clear last I checked; 32 gigabytes is the absolute minimum disk size for installing 64-bit versions of Windows server, and they wind up recommending a minimum of 80gb storage for most deployments, and their docs go on to state, you need to take into account the roles that will be installed, lifetime of the server and constant growth of the boot drive an additional 20gb per year due to updates. You do not need to install your C:\ drive on a SSD; there is no document recommending or stating that it is cost-effective and worth placing your boot disk on size limited high cost devices.
My recommendation would be that on servers you use the enterprise SSD devices for additional caching purposes or storing small files, such as SQL server tempdb, or your system paging file.
By automating defrags; something that people never did on their own. They didn't even know about it. And page files didn't grow and shrink as much, becoming fragmented as a result. Worst thing about the page files is the system would refuse to defragment them. So you'd get systems with 16,000 little fragments all over.
Windows ... : http://baetzler.de/humor/haiku...
One of my favorites:
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working
Windows is like that.
Windows is not an operating system, it is a menace to society.
However that puts the Linux movement into a bad 'catch up' (with what?) situation. A shame it is not more prevalent meanwhile.
Markets are not driven by price or functionality ... regarding what we 'could' do with computers/software everything you perceive right now is 30 years behind what *I* did 20 years ago at the university.
The last 50 years of research have no impact at all at current day computing, except for silicon and SOCs etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You just killed 10 years of trial software, which will expire if not bought but can be activated by copying a string of text from an email.
I'm not going to argue the merits of trial software now, but being able to reinstall trial software would put a crimp in this business model.
Legit software should remove all traces of itself when uninstalled, I'm not arguing that. Freeware is included, paid software, all of that.
"Anything else is a failure", however, is pure ignorance.
Why do you think it is faster for the operating system to access myriad various bits of information as required from a multitude of idiomatic files scattered all over the place than it is to read a single simply organized hierarchical structure that easily fits into memory?
Windows has many design flaws, but settling on a standard centralized configuration structure isn't one of them. People who don't like it are just special snowflakes who don't like being told what to do.
1. Problem with application.
2. Decide it's the config file and it's easier to start from scratch
3. Rename config file to configfile.bak
4. Start application
5. Problem solved.
Operating systems like Unix, Linux, MacOS, Solaris, etc. don't have a registry
This deficiency will be corrected by systemd.
You just have to know what you're doing.
You can make Windows systems run crap-free and full speed again as well, by cleaning out all the obscure registry entries and system services and automatic updaters and cached thingies and temporary wotsits. You just have to know what you're doing.
Also, as with the part of the Linux strategy you forgot to mention, you have to be willing to spend forever doing it, because the tools provided as standard are just about hopeless.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
So.... what, then?
This is a serious question. I'm a user of MSFT products. Until certain apps get ported to Linux, I'm likely to continue to be a user of MSFT products. But the OS to me has never been the app. It's a program loader and resource manager in which I run the apps that I actually use. I have no interest in new versions of the OS, as long as it'll still run my programs. I was one of the people who didn't leave XP until forced. And I won't leave Win7 until forced. I don't look forward to OS upgrades, I want to get work done. It seems to me that this frame of mind directly contradicts Microsoft's business model of endless costly upgrades. How are endless non-costly upgrades going to work for them? (It certainly works for me, but I don't really believe it yet.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
That's nice. I have a USB flash drive on my keychain that runs a modern Linux kernel and boots to a graphical environment. It weighs in at under 8 MB. What's your point?
16 GB is a lot of goddamn space for an OS today.
16 GB was a lot of goddamn space for an OS twenty years ago.
16 GB will be a lot of goddamn space for an OS twenty years in the future.
There is no reason for an OS to inflate just because storage is cheaper. OSes progress by being smarter, not bigger.
Yep, it's a registry thing.
Until stuff is sandboxed properly this is going to continue to occur (although it's slowly gotten better over the years) it's still not ideal.
Microsoft needs to license BSD...
... so why don't Unix machines have this problem ... gee, maybe because they don't use a single bloated binary config file.
Just give Poettering some time, he'll take care of this.
Actually, if anything he is pushing to improve things - the goal is to allow stateless systems - as in you can mount your distro as /usr on a ram drive and have everything work. If you use something like systemd then all the OS-provided stuff is in /usr and will be cleaned by the package manager, and the only stuff in /etc is stuff the admin puts there (and presumably can clean up themselves). Also, just about all the config file templates can be overrided on a per-line basis so that what you put in /etc is the minimum necessary to do the job.
"Both my gaming machine and personal laptop have serious performance issues after 8 or so months"
Meanwhile I've been running the same Windows 7 install since the tail end of 2009. That's with a fuckton of install, uninstall, and the occasional defrag and registry cleaning, especially on this tiny 120GB disk. Still runs exactly as it did back then.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The performance of Windoze is designed to degrade over time. IT'S BY DESIGN!
Here's the thing... anything inside the WinSxS folder means that at least one piece of software uses that dll version. If you have 16 gb in there, there's 16 gb installed / being used by various software.
Except there wasn't. Well, there was. A bit. Sometimes. Naturally, this half-baked approach actually made the problems worse.
Even today and with native Windows applications, many aren't very well behaved in following the "standards" here, because Microsoft did such a terrible job of promoting good practices.
Anything that isn't a native Windows application -- including almost every darling of the open source world, for a start -- probably ignores not only the application data directory but also the program files directories and insists on spewing its crap all over your filesystem and environment. Oh, and $DEITY help you if you need to do anything with Cygwin, and $CHORUS_OF_DEITIES help you if you have more than one ported application that requires Cygwin.
It is telling that you can't even schedule a backup of the "official" place to store documents without considerable effort, because Windows itself sets up so many links that most backup tools can't handle them.
And that's before you get idiots like the Chrome team at Google who think it's clever to install executable software in your data directory in order to deliberately circumvent Windows' normal security model, just so their auto-updater can do things it shouldn't without anything silly like troubling the user for permission. I'm always a little surprised that Microsoft hasn't, with considerable and legitimate justification, flagged Chrome's installer/updater software as malware and automatically removed it at some point.
On the bright side, if Microsoft can actually manage to produce an operating system with a sensible filesystem structure and application installation/update/uninstallation tools that actually enforce that structure, they might yet salvage the Windows brand and convince significant parts of their potential market to upgrade again.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Wow, a slashvertisment telling us that next version of Windows will finally work. Really, we mean it this time, promise. What do we get with Windows 10? These are the titillating bits so far: the start menu will come back, and it won't suck donkey balls if you keep using it for more than a few months. Wow. I can hardly wait.
Registry bloat is not a problem, it's clueless users who cannot maintain their system.
In other words, it's a problem. A solution that requires all users to have technical knowledge isn't a solution, it's a fantasy.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Operating systems like Unix, Linux, MacOS, Solaris, etc. don't have a registry,...
True, and clearly a win.
...and don't have any significant "OS Decay".
ROFLMAO. IME, the only thing more painful than maintaining a Windows system over the long term is maintaining a *nix system over the long term.
Let's consider Linux. First, you probably get to choose between a stable or a not stable version of your distro. Choose stable and you're OK as long as you don't need to run any software released in the last 3 years and you're OK with being forced to upgrade the whole OS after maybe 2 years anyway (which will quite possibly trash your entire machine to the point of not being able to boot, or at least breaking minor features like RAID arrays, assuming you actually managed to configure one of those properly in the first place after your distro's "user friendly" installer messed it up completely). Alternatively, choose unstable if you want to run more recent software but don't mind stuff breaking all the time instead of every couple of years on a schedule.
Either way, if you want anything that hasn't got into your distribution's package management system yet, you're almost invariably forced into compiling your own software and manually installing it with makefiles. Those might, if you're really lucky, also offer a make uninstall option that actually does cleanly uninstall. That might, if you're even luckier, still work six months later, as long as no-one inadvertently installed a new version of the manually compiled code over the top to "upgrade" it, or just ran make distclean without thinking leaving you with no idea what make uninstall should have done. In any case, Linux is going to enforce absolutely no system hygiene at any point in this process.
OS X is of course doing much better with a similar foundation, as anyone who has spoken the words "Apple" and "shellshock" in the same sentence over the past few days can testify. Or at least, they'll be able to testify, just as soon as they've finished wiping and reinstalling their botnetted systems, because the patch everyone else had within hours only arrived for Apple gear several days later and long after exploits were widely found in the wild.
You're absolutely right that we should be able to install many programs and uninstall them with no lingering effects. But the idea that the registry is the only thing preventing that on Windows or that *nix systems do better is crazy. The only reason *nix systems don't break more often is that the only people running them are geeks and professionals, and those kinds of people are less likely to install random junk and more willing to dive in and fix internals when stuff goes wrong.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Actually on OSX an app still pollutes its way by leaving Cache files behind. This sucks.
from what I understand, the winsxs folder contains what appears to be lots of duplicate files, but are acutally hard-links to the same file. Doing a simple right-click -> properties on the winsxs folder and it shows 19 GB != the acutal space it's using. see here
Well. Then why don't they do better Free Space accounting.
Wow.
32 GB "absolute minimum" and 80 GB recommended? An additional 20 GB per year because of updates? Are you butt-fucking kidding me? Do you Microsofties ever take a peek at the competition? Has it never occurred to you that this is not normal or even reasonable?
It's not still a thing. I can make a case that it hasn't been a thing since Windows XP.
I've had systems with Windows XP on them that have been fine for years without any major issues. The secret is simple, and it comes from SpaceBalls Nonetheless.
Take only what you need to survive
Install what you need and that's it. If you start installing and uninstalling everything under the sun of course it's going to get slower because you're filling up the system with bootup garbage or adware you probably don't need, and it's probably not going to remove itself cleanly because you're relying on some Monkey in a Code Zoo that doesn't know how an MSI Installer works to make a clean uninstaller.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
The very existence of the registry is wrong. Operating systems like Unix, Linux, MacOS, Solaris, etc. don't have a registry, and don't have any significant "OS Decay".
Tell that to the SystemD folks with the corruptible, non-ACID Journal file and whatever it is they use to save system state. (Solaris is only slightly less sucky in that they use SQLite for service state/configuration, so they didn't go full retard and try to re-invent the wheel.)
For batch file and CLI use, %appdata% will do. Unless you're looking for local, non-roaming stuff. Then it's %localappdata%.
If you're developing in .Net, be sure to use Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData) or Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData) unless you want to clutter your code with calls to Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariable().
Any of these will avoid the ambiguity you have in your post.
Seriously? With every version since XP being buggier and more spaghetti-coded than the former, you really think Microsoft is capable of fixing this problem?
Their software just keeps filling up with cruft. They need to start over completely from scratch.
Yes, but this is why you give /var its own partition. ;)
Great idea in theory, right until a Dev decides to put the log files out to /etc/application/logs and my employer frowns on the use of violence to enforce sensible ideas.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
and you can say good buy to.
your email app from being able to see any office files.
When you drag from the file manager or Office to your e-mail program, the operating system would make a read-only view of the file in the e-mail program's space.
no more flash , java , quicktime and more on the web.
Three words: good fcuking riddance.
adobe apps can't work with each other
Having been published under the same private key (that of Adobe Systems) would let them run in the same sandbox, if the model you envision is anything like the model of Android.
no more visual pinball working with pinmame (at least both are open source and can have both join to one app)
They could join through more structured data sharing mechanisms, such as local sockets set up by firing an intent.
IDE / codeing apps may be come hard to do.
Console gamers and iOS fans would say "good riddance". But they could work the same way AIDE does on Android.
No more NV or ATI driver apps
Again, having been published under the same private key (that of NVIDIA or AMD) would let them run in the same sandbox.
games can't have mods or map editors.
Console gamers and iOS fans would say "good riddance", as I described in another article, because modding helps cheating. But a mod could be installable through the same share mechanism I mentioned above.
Anyone who's stuck with Windows and is vaguely intelligent will surely know about CCleaner which knows where all that junk lives and gets rid of it, fixes registry problems, makes it easier to remove unneeded services etc... I've restored several crippled Windows machines back to full health just by running CCleaner with default settings. If Microsoft had any decency they would buy Piriform and make it a standard feature; Microsoft Unfuck or something like that.
The one kernel of truth in your joke is that sometimes you do have to reorient the Wi-Fi AP to improve signal coverage. And sometimes you have to unplug and reseat cables in order to get devices into an operable state. One phone rep recommended disconnecting the USB line and "shaking the bad bits out".
and everything will be iOS/Android
Good luck running Visual Studio or Xcode on one of those. But I will grant that Android has AIDE, which might sub for Eclipse in a pinch.
As a sysadmin, you ought to know that Linux systems come standard with log rotation and management utilities that (surprise) sysadmins are supposed to know how to configure.
Trial software can work around this by going into reduced functionality mode until it verifies payment. Much already does, such as the "lite" versions of apps on Android and iOS. So does Doom, which comes with only the first episode unless you register.
Your server isn't getting games installed on it, which put all kinds of settings in the registry, then removed later when the game is old and tired, leaving behind cruft (including DRM bullsit) in the registry.
You'd be surprised at how many games have the same digital restrictions management BS in the game's dedicated server app that they have on the client.
Unless Winqual disqualifies your application for storing settings in an INI, XML, or JSON file in %appdata% or %localappdata% instead of in the registry.
Mirekusoft Install Monitor (www.mirekusoft.com) was created specifically to address that situation.
If you had any clue about how databases work you'd know that there's absolutely no problem with having useless stuff in the registry.
Because guess what, Windows DOES NOT READ THE ENTIRE FILE !!!
It accesses the required fields, like a database, doesn't touch the rest, caches entries when needed, ...
But then, that "bloat" problem doesn't actually truly exist. We're not in Windows 95 or even XP times anymore, that was 12 years and more years ago.
Or, just join the rest of us in 2014, get an SSD and don't worry about it.
Windows itself takes the majority of the 32 GB SSD that comes with a Windows 8.1 tablet such as a Transformer Book, Aspire Switch, or older Surface Pro. I imagine that most people don't want to have to manually shuffle data between such a small internal SSD and an external HDD.
Meanwhile I've been running the same Windows 7 install since the tail end of 2009. That's with a fuckton of install, uninstall, and the occasional defrag and registry cleaning, especially on this tiny 120GB disk. Still runs exactly as it did back then.
Its entirely possible you're slowing down at the same pace as your machine.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No, but it is heading in that direction, if you run the Gnome desktop (why would you do that to yourself anyhow?); see gconf
Also, check out systemd. That's going to be fun to administer. >_<
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Has Microsoft discovered portable apps ? When I delete it, they are GONE. In fact I can have multiple copies and launched different version. If Microsoft had an elegant sand boxing system such as in mobiles, you are home and hosed.
And of course the notion of moving the registry around between workstations when you roam is great, until you log in twice concurrently.
Which registry is then the right one?
Oh, ok, my profile is corrupted?
It would have worked better with lots of small files and syncing those that had changed. Even a brutal "keep the most recently updated config file" would work for roaming if they were discrete files.
32 GB "absolute minimum" and 80 GB recommended? An additional 20 GB per year because of updates? Are you butt-fucking kidding me? Do you Microsofties ever take a peek at the competition? Has it never occurred to you that this is not normal or even reasonable?
As a sysadmin who deals with both Windows and Linux (Debian and Red Hat mainly) I can say that most vendors seriously over estimate their minimum requirements for servers. 40 GB is plenty for a 2008 R2 server, 60 if you're feeling generous.
An extra 20 GB for 40 servers is 800 GB on tier 0 storage (and yes, for these 40 servers they are required to be on SSD).
Its not just MS, regularly see tiny little packages designed for accounting or some such that have stupid requirements for a low number of users. Some things like a full version of MSSQL server, 8 cores, 16 GB of RAM and it only deals with about 10 GB of data, even some Linux applications that specify it must be a physical (and they'll refuse to help you if you install it on a virtual). Its sloppy testing and sloppy marketing.
As I said, in 2014 Microsoft finally admitted that the growing WinSxS folder was a concern and created a way to clean it up. It shrunk my 19GB down to just under 2. I understand why Windows needs to keep some old assemblies, but they dont need to keep all of them.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
It might be better but crap software on top of crap software on top of spyware that sneaks on, which never gets fully cleaned up, all the slowness is error handling to keep the os from crashing or actually doing someone it has to jump through hoops to perform.
Want your computer to run fast? leave it barebone and stable. Install a vm u can toss anytime without worry and use that for your dirty work...
brand new, it sounds new, different, impressive, then six months down the line you ears get used to it and you think something happened to the gear. I expect OS slowdown is a lot like this.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
then you suck at windows.
You certainly don't understand it. I bet you're one of those idiots that actually believes "Registry Cleaners" provide some kind of measurable benefit. Newsflash: They don't.
Not really. It's just bad design.
Your server isn't getting games installed on it, which put all kinds of settings in the registry, then removed later when the game is old and tired, leaving behind cruft (including DRM bullsit) in the registry.
When a program is UNinstalled, all traces of it should be gone. Apple took a different approach, which arguably works far better. Even if stuff is left behind, it just takes up a bit of disk space, and doesn't affect the system at all.
Having leftover files and registry entries from apps that have been removed does not slow down Windows. Like any other OS, they just sit there doing nothing.
What does slow down Windows is disk fragmentation and lack of RAM.
Windows tends to have a lot of patches. Over time, these patches spread OS files across the hard disk. This leads to file fragmentation. When you are running a 5400 RPM drive, have a lot of apps installed and removed, and a lot of OS updates load files from the hard-disk slows down as the disk head has to travel a lot. Background disk defragging was first enabled by default in Windows 7. Of course, the ultimate solution for disk fragmentation is to use SSD drives as there is little penalty for fragmentation due to the high random memory access speeds.
Most Windows boxes today have at least 4GB of RAM but older Windows systems ran on 2GB of RAM. Even so, as you install more apps that have background components, they take up memory. When Windows needs more memory than what is available, it will cache unused parts of the OS and idle apps. This was accomplished by storing the cache data in the Windows page file on hard disk. When an idle app is clicked on, the cached data has to be reloaded and the previously active app needs to be cached back to disk. This whole process is really slow.
There are two ways to solve low memory issues:
1. Install additional memory: Windows Vista/7/8 32-bit recognizes a maximum of 4Gb of RAM. To install and use more than 4GB, you need to install the 64bit version of Windows. Most systems sold in the last 5 years run Windows 32-bit with 4GB of RAM or less. Only recently have systems been sold with Windows 64bit and 8GB of RAM. In my opinion, 8GB should be the minimum.
2. SSD: It might, at first, seem weird that I'm mentioning SSD in the memory section. The OS caches memory when it runs out of physical memory. SSD drives are really fast, much faster than physical drives. So, even with a system with low memory you would see a big difference using a SSD for your OS drive.
The point is that a combination of Windows improvements (background defrag on hard drives, 64-bit OS), technical improvements (SSD), and cost improvements (8GB RAM vs 4GB RAM) have contributed to eliminate the gradual performance degradation that we've seen in the past. It could be argued that adding better components to the system is just masking the limitations or design issues of the OS. But, as long as it works do we really care....
In my opinion, a Windows 7 64bit, or higher, system with 8GB of RAM and a SSD OS drive will not experience any performance issues over time for the average user. Windows performance degradation is a thing of the past....
It's not a generic term. Call it "Windows Decay" by its proper name. I don't know of any other operating systems that have this problem.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Will they fix the explorer.exe's GDI leak that's been around for ages?
Or the fact that sometimes I cannot paste between Word and Outlook and must use mspaint as a go between?
There are countless niggles they do not fix
Yep, I just ran "C:\Users\Dzov>CMD /K WMIC OS GET InstallDate" and got an install date of some 5 years ago:" InstallDate 20090808155049.000000-300"
I don't even think that was on the same motherboard and cpu (second gen i5), but I'm not really sure. I don't know if it's the same speed or not, but it runs fine.
Well..... I'm not for one minute saying that iTunes on windows doesn't suck. But I couldn't find these registry entries anywhere. Care to share where you found them? If iTunes continues to run without them there, and doesn't recreate them, then how do you know iTunes put them there in the first place?
Maybe he only has 512MB of ram and antivirus running. That'll cause a fair bit of hd thrashing.
C:\Windows\WinSxS is using 20.1GB on my system, or 12.5% of my very expensive SSD. And then there's another 8.11GB of crap in C:\Windows\Installer that doesn't really need to be there.
Admittedly those things can be moved to other drives/partitions (albeit with some degree of risk) by altering some registry settings. But Microsoft applications (I'm especially looking at you, Outlook and WER/Windows Error Reporting) generally have a nasty habit of filling up a user's hard disk with what should be temporary files *in*hidden*folders* that never ever get deleted. The average user has no way of finding these things to remove them and the Microsoft-supplied Disk Cleanup wizard does fucking nothing about them. It's only thanks to tools like Steffen Gerlach's Disk Scanner and Jam Software's TreeSize that I even knew these fat folders existed.
Not in my experience. I've upgraded my OS all the way from 10.5 to 10.9 (I refuse to use those silly big cat names... Worse than Ubuntu's naming scheme, and that's saying something) and each time it's got faster. In that time I've installed and un-installed countless bits of crap software - and hosed and un-hosed my system on various occasions too.
Thus far, it runs just as fast as it did when I got it.
From what I've been seeing, OSX degrades in the same way windows does. And you're definitely right about those issues with linux. Hell, even apt will fail to remove a package from time to time.
How many Temp folders does Windows even need: C:\Windows\Temp, C:\Temp, C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp ... how many others?
It seems to me there isn't anything special about any OS: Every single one degrades in performance as applications come and go and time passes. OSX is definitely not immune, nor is linux.
It's a phenomenon we've all been living with forever, but we're only really starting to notice it because you don't need to upgrade every 2 years.
You consider this article positive?
In order to sell a new version of their product, Microsoft need to create discontent with the existing version.
There was no incentive for anybody to "upgrade" from W7 to W8, and very few businesses have made that step. It looks like Microsoft will be pushing "OS Decay" as their issue du jour, as evidenced by Slashdot's contribution to their marketing campaign.
Troll logic astounds me!
Your logic in suggesting my post is trolling is quite clear, despite being a fallacy.
Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a rhetorical device where adverse information about a target is pre-emptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that the target person is about to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Riddle me this, Batman...
If it is the application developer's fault (and frankly, the idea that every app has to be absolutuely perfect otherwise one permanently jacks up their OS is idiotic beyond belief), then why is the ONLY a problem in Windows?
You can install/uninstall crap on other OS's with no accumulative or persistent performance issues. Why? Because they weren't designed by idiots.
I have one W7 install that is *permanently* in limbo, unable to install Visual Studios redistributables because of a Windows patch bug, and there is literally no information on how to fix it, other than "reinstall OS" from the M$ horse's mouth.
That is when you know a design is pitiful and worthless.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Hello,
What NetworkWorld freelancer Andy Patrizio complains about, cruft or OS decay, in the RTFA was largely addressed by Microsoft in Windows 8.
Microsoft worked in depth with silicon developers (i.e., the folks who make chips/chipsets for various things that require drivers like motherboards, videocards, network adapters and so forth) as well as software developers that used drivers (anti-malware, encryption, backup and so forth) to ensure not just that installation and removal went smoothly, but that performance was within acceptable levels, which in particular had been a problem for some of the bloatier anti-malware programs often seen pre-loaded onto consumer-targeted PCs, not just during startup and shutdown, but also during common day-to-day activities.
Since Mr. Patrizio didn't bother to use Windows 8 for any length of time, though, he didn't find out about the performance improvements, which, I suppose, is why we are commenting on his rather sad polemic.
Regards
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
Yes it is bad design. It is bad design by the people who create applications. The level of incompetence is staggering and this includes all the big name vendors.
Wait, are you saying you think the registry is a good idea?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why does a complete computer illiterate get their rantings published on /.?
make uninstall
You're assuming that a person made the effort to support that call.
But you're right that a package manager should resolve all that.
The problem is that you have to know what you're doing.
The problem is that it's not automated on an application level.
Even those tools which market themselves as cleaners of registry often pick up items which are still needed and delete them or miss things which aren't. The core problem is that for the average user keeping the system clean is not possible on a windows machine and an attempt to clean it often breaks things in strange ways.
Heck just thinking back to DLL hell days "It appears this file is no longer needed do you want to keep or remove?"
The only thing Microsoft missed from it's uninstaller package is "ARE YOU FEELING LUCKY PUNK?"
I have yet to see ANY OS "decay" with Linux. Been a daily user on several machines (Kubuntu and Xubuntu) for about 4 years now and haven't seen it yet.
I've been using linux for 20 years. ./configures and install all of the required dependencies, and then revert to the state 1000 installs earlier. How do you get every $HOME/.app directory ? Every doc, lib, header, config ?
I can not achieve 1000
OS X is easier. But it's also much more difficult than you would think. I've administered some large osx installs, and to really run the systems well involves *nix. See above
I am far too ignorant of the windows internals to use Windows well, and am a crappy windows admin. The tools I've needed to profile hardware utilization have been awesome. The tools needed to admin the system have been completely unfamiliar. I wish I had windows had an essential guide to the tomes of documentation. I'm pretty sure I could not log in, install a program from DVD, use the program for a few hours, uninstall, and leave windows exactly how I found it.
Gawd I suck at life.
Lots of people here are saying, just uninstall all the cruft that is causing this. But that doesn't seem to work.
I have absolutely experienced this as a computer repair man. I never saw this kind of issue on my MacOS 9, MacOSX jobs. Why did this happen in Windows 95,98,ME,XP,Vista,7. I would go though and uninstall everything, see only a little improvement. Then end up reinstalling the whole OS and reapplying all the updates to get a snappy system.
This IS a problem. Its not user induced because MacOS doesn't seem to experience this.
So barring dumb users....Why does this happen to only Windows?
>The last 50 years of research have no impact at all at current day computing, except for silicon and SOCs etc.
This.
Doing new stuff in silicon is like shooting fish in a barrel. You just go find some research paper that has a good idea, then go and design it in hardware. I little hard math is enough to ensure that no one else is doing it.
Software seems stuck in a research time warp. Plan 9 was how long ago? Yet we don't have network transparent multi processing and per process name spaces in popular OSs.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Rephrasing:
Crappy OS must stay bloated with crap left behind by crappy trialware to support their crappy licensing gimmics.
This is a real problem, I have experienced it myself on my computers and at work where I work in IT on some 4,000+ PCs. The help desk probably re-images a dozen machines a week partly due to this problem. I know for me it is often because I am downloading various interesting software packages, and then I am too lazy to uninstall them. And a large percentage of software does not uninstall cleanly - not really a Microsoft problem there, not completely.
Personally I kind of like Windows 8.1, and I really only think it was a marketing flub to try an force a touch interface on people. Bad Microsoft, no biscuit. But I digress...
* On some machines we use a product called Citrix Provisioning Server (used to be Ardence), booting the machines off a network read-only drive, and we have other software that saves select important user settings and files. We refer to this as "stateless" and is the closest thing you get to being immune to this problem. Unless you really have skillz and screw up the master image this is based on. This has been the "Always runs like new" experience for us.
Other ways to achieve a similar effect:
Use virtualization
* Windows 8.1 includes a FULL version of Hyper-V, a type I hyper-visor that is fast (you could use others as well of course). Basically, install Windows twice, one being the host and put nothing on there but the guest. Then immediately make a snapshot of the guest. Use that VM for web surfing or any activity that will introduce cruft, etc., and you can always revert to the snapshot and be pristine one again (of course you will need to do updates again, re-install software, etc.). This also would let you use Win7 as the guest, if you like that OS better. XenClient Enterprise is another nice one but it costs money (no, I don't work for Citrix, but I am a Citrix admin). Oh, and although this is similar in effect to backing up with an image, it is much faster and you don't have to buy something like Acronis (although it is nice). I can't recommend things like VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion, Parallels, etc. because Type II hyper-visors like these cause a big performance hit for everyday use, especially if you have invested in a nice machine and want to take advantage of it. These have good utility for other things though.
Make your own thin client
* If you have access to Microsoft Enterprise licensing, you can use the ThinPC version of Windows, which is made to turn a PC into a thin client and includes a write filter. Such a machine will not retain anything on reboot. So you would need a way to save data / settings elsewhere. But, you can turn the write filter off to install things permanently and then turn it on again. Effectively making an "appliance" with the apps you need, but doesn't really get slow over time (at least no where near as much or as fast). Great way to test things.
Microsoft did include a "refresh your PC" built right into Windows 8.1, but I will admit I have not tried it myself yet.
I'll have to be the "arguably" part of this one. Junk is left on Macs, and a lot of settings and special folders can screw you pretty hard on a Mac. From plist files to Library litter to temporary files to /usr/bin linkages to /Developer folders, there are plenty of gotchas, secret handshakes, and areas where you can screw yourself or removal of an app can screw you. I don't know about you, but my user/Library folder on my machine is 38GB out of 256GB on this Mac, and if I delete all of the applications on this machine, that crap will still be there.
Same thing goes for my Linux machine. Cleanup and maintenance are tough problems to solve completely. iPhones and Androids serve as pretty solid rethinks of this (though they can also suffer from some rot), but I haven't used a desktop/laptop OS yet that doesn't rot over time without solid maintenance. For me, I'm looking at about 20% of my local storage on my two Library folders. Making .app folders skips out on any sort of cleanup responsibility, and 20% isn't chump change to me.
That's the kind of nonsense that happens when you let Windows devs write Linux apps.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
So basically what your saying is that unix has fixed the OS decay problem by removing the uninstall feature. Well that sounds reasonable :)
The solution to the other problems that you describe is not shrinkwrapped / easy. My latest attempt is a dual install with one partition for stable, one for unstable and a shared home. This allows disk snapshots of the not running system to allow primitive versioning and rollback.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Apple is a major offender of installing stuff that automatically runs on startup... On Windows machines. They were also one of the first companies to do this circa 1995. When you installed Quicktime, it would automatically run a stub in the system tray in case you wanted to launch quicktime. Now, every damn application does that.
Also, just look at any Windows machine that has iTunes installed on it and you will undoubtedly see a bunch of other stuff like:
Bonjour
Safari
iPod service
Apple makes great software.... For apple computers, but they really know how to screw up Windows.
It's called the Windows Store. It's part of Windows 8 and newer and applications in it install and uninstall exactly the way you think they should. They built it and gave it to you and no one showed up.
1) CCleaner - it just works, clean the reg too....seriously its the only reg cleaner I use. 2) Autoruns - Dragons here! so really only tweak things on the login tab unless you uber l33t 3) Defrag - optional on your 1TB drive with 970GB free -- Close contenders: add/remove progs, msconfig, PC optimser pro....yeah right
Either way, if you want anything that hasn't got into your distribution's package management system yet, you're almost invariably forced into compiling your own software and manually installing it with makefiles. Those might, if you're really lucky, also offer a make uninstall option that actually does cleanly uninstall. That might, if you're even luckier, still work six months later, as long as no-one inadvertently installed a new version of the manually compiled code over the top to "upgrade" it, or just ran make distclean without thinking leaving you with no idea what make uninstall should have done. In any case, Linux is going to enforce absolutely no system hygiene at any point in this process.
If you want to install software that hasn't got into your distribution's package management system - you should compile it, make package and install package. How do you expect your OS to enforce system hygiene if you do not use correct procedures to install packages? If you install by 'make install' you are basically just copy bunch of files somewhere.
That's can be solved easily with cron run scripts
You dont add and remove apps, this isnt apple.
We call them Applications, Programs and executables.
We have a few web-servers, the new ones come automatically with Windows 2012 version, there are terrible, everything is put somewhere else. And a lot of stuff doesn't work, because of some new security measurements... It's no fun working with them...
Most vendors seriously over estimate their minimum requirements for servers. 40 GB is plenty for a 2008 R2 server, 60 if you're feeling generous.
You don't get to say "They overstated their requirements," and, when the software actually needs to use as much resource as was stated to be required "Oh look, they're using too many resources". And no... 40GB is not "plenty" for a 2008 R2 boot drive; it is pretty much the absolute minimum for a couple years worth of service, with a likely space exhaustion, eventually.
An extra 20 GB for 40 servers is 800 GB on tier 0 storage (and yes, for these 40 servers they are required to be on SSD).
This is because of your broken deployment choices, and bad assumptions about OS space usage, not an issue with the software. Attempting to Micromanage microsoft operating system storage requirements will cost you more time in man-hours, than 1TB of SSDs ever would.
And you're accusing vendors of overstating requirements, while you're suggesting servers require SSD storage for just the boot drive?
Don't you see the irony in that? Of course servers don't need SSDs for the boot drive. Bloody SATA RAID5 is the most popular storage solution for Windows server system boot volume.
It's simply not true that SSD is needed for system boot drives.
Install the applications or databases requiring performance on SSD, not the OS.
"This deficiency will be corrected by systemd." - can you produce a link for me where it explains how and when the systemd registry will be in place and how it works?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
is the systemd journal file a registry with config settings or a journal with log information?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Dism.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
You can delete if you want - all running this command does is removes your chance to go back. There's also a scheduled task you can configure built into the OS that does the same thing
so i have to replace all applications when a library is changed? sounds like pie in the sky of a Utopian ideal where all application developers in all companies are working to the same schedule and release at the same time. Enjoy maintaining that system !!
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
As you add and remove apps, as Windows writes more and more temporary and junk files, over time, a system just slows down.
Yeah, it's a damn hard problem to solve. No surprise it's taken them 20 years to figure out that you could just put all of the files that belong to one application into a few folders exclusive to that application and then wipe them when the app is removed. Instead of, say, the absolute dumbest thing you can do, which is scattering them all over the place without keeping a record so you are absolutely guaranteed to never, ever, find them again.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Ubuntu 3D Desktop
Ubuntu Demo
Distro Watch
It doesn't even seem to allow playing solataire without being subjugated to being harrassed to send payment to M$ or some other obscene corporate entity. My poor mother is begging me to install Ubuntu on the laptop I bought her when the HD on her desktop died. She just wants to check her email, view Facebook, and play Solatire. After seeing that Ubuntu has morphed into a not very differntiated clone of Win8 I'm about at the end of my rope to find a useable non-money sucking system for her.
Packages don't guarantee good cleanup, but it is easy to inspect a package to figure out if it does proper cleanup. Goes for deb and rpm.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Do you mean that there are people who don't completely reinstall their computer with a different OS every few months, struggle to get all the devices working, then when its finally stable see some other distribution that looks worth a try?
Unless it's only broken due to registry settings that it follows as ordered even if they are stupid instructions. I think that's one is behind so many people advocating such extremes as a full OS reinstall every year or two, maybe longer on win7. Only a few applications and knowing enough to rip out the registry entries in such cases (I've had to do that far too many times for people and I'm a *nix guy when I work on computers) saves a full reinstall or falling back to an image.
Personally I see this as a failure of application programmers and testers to understand the platform they are working on than blaming it on Microsoft. The registry may be a stupid idea in some situations but it mostly works and it's nowhere near as stupid as those who write stuff to the registry without bothering to have a way of cleaning up afterwards.
sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop ...aand nothing happens. Thanks, ubuntu! Google about it and all you get are weak excuses about metapackages and whatnot.
We had such things before the registry existed. It wouldn't work unless you input a word on page whatever of it's manual, a code on the box or some other secret outside of the file on the disk.
If it's not part of the Win 10 sales pitch, then my 99% confidence answer is no. They are not going to invest in some feature that no customers will know about (because noone is talking about it).
Plus, as someone else pointed out, it may very well be part of the master plan, that system rot leads to users wanting to upgrade. And there definitely is some system rot going on - someone wrote in another post that this is no longer a problem since Win 7, but I have experienced this countless times with Win 7 over the years, with just standard installs without any fancy tinkering on my part.
No. It doesn't. It hasn't for years. I had a WinXP image that followed me for 8 years and never got reinstalled. It had any amount of stuff installed over it and was in constant daily use (took it to work, worked all day on it, brought it home, played games all evening on it).
It's not an inherent property of Windows that it "slows down" or any such nonsense. If you ask it to run 20 services on startup, it will be slower than if you ask it to run 10. It's a given. The trick is to make sure that NOTHING IS RUNNING unless it needs to be.
Computers DO NOT GET SLOWER WITH AGE. They are the same speed to within MILLIONTHS of a second. If you ask them to do more then, yes, they will seem slower. Don't ask them to do more - remove unwanted programs but most importantly do NOT let things run on startup or in the background unless they are vital. Hint: Almost nothing is vital. QuickTime does not need to be in your startup. Java does not need it's QuickStarter. Adobe stuff needs NOTHING running in the background. And so on.
Do that, and the computer does not slow down at all. I have an 8-year-old XP image to prove it until I stopped using it a couple of years ago (and not because it was slow - because I was managing Windows 7/8 networks).
If you manage your machine properly (and you're working in IT if you post here, I assume), it does not happen. And it's no more a burden than having to reinstall everything after a format. I have NEVER formatted a machine to clean it. I've gone back to known-good images on work machines, but those images have histories going back years too - but kept PRISTINE so they could re-image nicely.
If you format, as far as I'm concerned, that's a harder version of the "reboot will fix it" mantra. A total cop-out. I have brought machines back from the dead (five minutes to get to Windows logon, down to 45 seconds on the same hardware) by proper management of the machine and pruning only third-party services and junk on startup.
Stop making excuses and doing the "Microsoft-fix". Manage your machine properly and it's never an issue.
That's why I just format and reinstall every 6 mos. Apps don't matter, data does. I save data offline anyway as part of my retention plan. The OS and everything gets wiped, which eliminates all the app spoor and rootkits and various things that build up. I have no idea why people aren't wiping their system regularly anyway.
I'm a satanic clam.
The only time I ever experience this issue is when my wife has decided not to use her laptop and has instead decided to use my carefully tended to machine.
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jnr.
And that is terrible.
Just look at the windows games.
Some save games to My Documents, some save to Saved Games (correct way) and some save to AppData (hidden) and even some save to game own directory (rare).
My AppData is over 30GiB by size, simply after installing 52 games from steam (not run a single one yet). Full of games own data pushed there. Office can take alone few gigabytes and web browsers as well.
The AppData is the dumping ground for devs. Slowing down system, making difficult to make backups (save games, settings etc).
Please devs, My Documents isn't place to store pictures, videos or music, those has own directories. Downloads should go to downloads. Saved Games directory should have a game name as Dir name and then have all from settings, profiles and save games in that.
AppData should not even exist as now. Roaming, local and local roaming are just terrible by idea.
It might be part of their marketing plan, but it is still not positive press, as you allege. And your condescension doesn't change that.
I have found work systems that run like the day they were installed, with software added and removed over years.
Proper software being installed and removed has no problems, and doesn't slow the system down.
However, people who are fucking absent minded, install any software they feel like because the smiley banner said so, then try to remove it, run into fucking problems.
Operating systems don't decay.
People put stupid shit on them.
It's like a garage, you kept sticking shit into it, removing a few things, putting some others back but until you bother to properly reorganize it or clean it out, it gets cluttered.
There are a few people whose garage is sacred ground, they make sure to only store what things are worthy of their garage, and it's always immaculate.
So I'm going to rephrase this topic
"Will Windows 10 finally babysit me so I can do everything I want while pretending to wear the big boy pants"
No, probably not. But fortunately with more app based windows sanctified only software, one day, you might have that.
To poison the well there must first be a well.
Making unfounded wild claims then pushing others to object to those claims while providing citations is also a logical fallacy. I will let you stare at the overused info graph and tell everyone which it is.
There's .1 of a difference :)
We have several Macs that have developed significant decay over time. I'm pretty sure Apple products is not exempted from this weakness.
Microsoft spent a lot of time and money engineering system slow downs.
They had board meetings that weighted just how small a change, what setting of search indexing, could be engineered to break.
Proof: Last update to Windows XP was to fix a deliberate system slowdown that was added to Windows XP - that makes the system crawl. They had to remove it before the end of the service period so as not to draw attention (after, it would draw more attention) and to remove it so in ten years nobody would even think that for many many years people were running on sabotaged OSes.
Windows XP: Search is the feature!
Windows Vista: Windows XP's search is shit! Use this!
Windows 7 (is that right?): Windows Vista's search is shit! Use this!
Windows 8: LOOOOOOOOOL we're just fucking with you, in a plan that was hatched ten years ago, push out this, then skip 9, then 10 to make people feel they have to pay $100 FUCKING DOLLARS for an OS. What bullshit.
Windows 9: LOOK SEARCH WORKS! We took the start menu, made it fullscreen....theeeeen shrunk it back down again! buy this shit like a mindless fucking cunt that you are.
Fuck shared libraries. Yeah, it was a nice idea to save space when we didn't have enough. Just include every piee of code that runs with the program, lump all the data&code that comes with the program into one big selfcontained blob. Yes, you might have 4000 duplicates of some piece of code, but so what? Most programs have resource files that take way more space anyways.
This is without crapware, anti virus using only Microsoft drivers.
... and you could forget about OS decay.
You need to swab your RAM and empty the bitbucket.
While you're doing that, you might as well top off your monitor with liquid crystal. It's not related, but since you're doing maintenance anyway, you might as well.
Calm down. Your mom will be back soon with more Hot Pockets and juice boxes.
I used to work for a company making USB devices. Every time I plugged in new hardware (and sometimes after I reflashed its firmware) Windows correctly detected it, discovered the driver needed, and stored the association in the registry. That caused quite a bit of registry growth over time, naturally. But the registry is a database. O(N log N) doesn't cause slowdowns. And the practical result was that detecting the same hardware was a lot faster on the second try.
BTW, the registry isn't a single binary config file. It's already partitioned. But you don't need to care how exactly - the API is stable and unified so details do vary between Windows releases. As for bloat, well, having security on every level is not free. But text is much more bloated than binary to start with.
You have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
You would be the only one i've ever heard of whose Windows install would behave like that.
The slowdowns are happening over a long timespan, don't you think its more probable that you have just gotten used to it along the way?
also a windows with reboot for 2 year will be missing a lot of updates as well.
A Linux machine with no reboot for 2 years may have a lot of updates installed but won't necessarily be using any of them. Unlike Windows, Linux keeps a single in-memory copy of executable code that gets shared by all running instances. Software updates are only replacing the on-disk files so unless you actually stop all daemons and drivers using a particular file (or just reboot the system and be done with it) the old versions don't get unloaded are still being used when new instances get started.
Doesn't MS permit the use of XML files for storing configuration settings? I seem to recall reading this in one of the .NET programming docs.
The registry is a database. It is designed to store vast numbers of keys in a hierarchy, and a default install of Windows will have tens of thousands of them. Even the most bloated apps will only add a fraction of a percent to that. Performance of the registry really isn't the issue.
Performance problems come from app that hook in to other things, particularly explorer. That is done via the registry, but the registry itself isn't the problem. For example, if you install Adobe Reader it sets up a DLL with a hook that makes Explorer load it in order to provide thumbnail previews of PDF files. This slows the machine down because now Explorer takes longer to load, uses more memory and executes extra code when a PDF file is displayed as a thumbnail.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Technically programs can be installed to the user's home directory when you select "Install for this user only". Of course that is if the installer gives you the choice to begin with. Open source programs on Windows tend to clutter the home directory with configuration folders that start with ".", just like on *NIX systems.
The answer is no. Really, your question could have ended with anything after "Will Windows N finally address," and the answer would have been the same. Windows 10 will not finally address anything.
Next question.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
You forgot .local, .gconf, .gnome, .gnome2, .kde
Of course, you realize that the reason that Linux has not caught on as a desktop environment is that it requires too much Linux background knowledge to run/maintain a Linux system? If requiring system-specific knowledge is a mark against an O/S, Linux has a long ways to go to be a viable O/S.
Actually, that's pretty impressive given that iOS barely fits into a 16GB iPhone.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Are you sure about that? It;s been my experience that the "Install for this user only" option usually just places the program's Start Menu items into the individual users' Start Menu rather than the All Users. Possibly the same with the registry settings - never looked that close. But AFAIK, the actual executables still installed in their normal places,
The OS should be doing all of this automatically.
And, while I'm at it, WTF is up with keeping a pagefile in 2014? I have 24GB of RAM and turn the pagefile off. I've never seen my commit above 13GB, even with multiple RAM heavy programs running. (FWIW, I've never encountered a PF problem in 5 years of running without one)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'll chime in because that is my experience as well. with both home and work PCs.
Once I get through the install of the windows updates, the systems performance pretty much hits a steady state, as long as I maintain it.
I do see others having this problem and I really don't know what the difference in usage is. I install and uninstall software fairly routinely in the course of my job, so that can't be the only factor.
Libpng. Ring a bell?
You consider this article positive? Troll logic astounds me!
Slashdot is the Fox News of the open source world. If you aren't blaming Microsoft for everything from Ebola to your dog's farts, you're a paid shill.
If you want to install software that hasn't got into your distribution's package management system - you should compile it, make package and install package.
I've heard that argument before, but if we're assuming the behaviour of make install/make uninstall is sufficiently non-trivial to worry about the system getting messy, how are you supposed to make that package without becoming an expert on what each piece of software's make install would have done anyway? The closest I've seen to automating this process is tools like checkinstall, but since make install can do arbitrary things, no automation tool can be fully trusted if you haven't vetted the makefile behaviour first.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yes.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Whilst Linux and OS X have no registry to clog up things, running out of disk space is a lot more painful on *nix than it is on Windows.
If a Linux machine is left with zero space, it will still boot but you will not have any log of it since there is no space to write it.
If a Windows machine is left with zero space, it will fail to boot.
So failing to boot is less painfull ?
Your logic escape me
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
One program: Revo Uninstaller.
We recently had issues with STK at work. A multi-thousand dollar (with our toolboxess) software program just stopped working. We tried an uninstall-reboot-reinstall. Still didn't fix the problem.
So we ran Revo Uninstaller on it. Revo creates a system restore point, does a quick scan for the program, runs the application uninstaller, then scours the disk and registry for "cruft" left behind. For STK, that amounted to over a thousand files and roughly a hundred thousand assorted registry entries left behind. Revo then prompted if we wanted to remove them.... of course we did. After that we reinstalled and worked as new.
A simple "uninstall" just won't cut it these days. Application developers are lazy and don't clean up after themselves.
You have missed Dconf didn't You? Gnome developers decided that single bloated binary config file is exactly what was missing in linux desktops.
You are such a fucking moron, users are not going to do that you idiot so it is a flawed system. If you can do that you can clean up the registry too.
ok, of course if you install and uninstall on a daily basis, your machine is going to be crap, Temporary files are not deleted correctly to my satisfaction even when you purge the temp folders of the user profile and the machine, there is always stuff in there that needs to be removed manually.
Defrag is still needed and windows 7 left the defrag on scehdule on a daily basis so your HD are always compact BUT, the decay will still be there because of your hard drive degradation whether you clean your machine or not, it's a bunch of factors that no OS can circumvent unless you have a SSD HD or maybe have an OS that moves your file all over when sectors gets corrupted.
I have Windows 7 and it works perfectly and havent reinstalled over 3 years and it runs 24/7
Operating systems like Unix, Linux, MacOS, Solaris, etc. don't have a registry, and don't have any significant "OS Decay".
O RLY? Try deleting portion of /var/sadm/install/contents file
which might be a 30-50Megs of text. The contents file is the "registry" of Solaris.
...but the main reason Windows XP got slower over time was because Windows Update was designed to slow down exponentially as Microsoft released more updates. After they finally fixed that, a Windows XP install works just fine after 10 years of proper use.
Apple took a different approach, which arguably works far better. Even if stuff is left behind, it just takes up a bit of disk space, and doesn't affect the system at all.
Depends on the app. Some have installers that can be pretty obtrusive as well, but Apple doesn't provide an "Add/Remove programs" thing to uninstall. Their older apps, you could just drag/drop wherever, which I generally preferred, but unfortunately some things really do need installers. Then there's their App Store apps, which are generally sandboxed in a way that, similar to the drag/drop installs, will only really leave behind preference files, which take up disk space but are unlikely to cause problems. On the other hand, some of those (e.g. Apple's own Xcode and Server apps) have installers that make changes to the system on first run, and those are pretty impossible to remove.
I'd like to see a system which monitors every change to the system during the install process and first-run, and then the uninstall automatically rolls all of those back. I'm sure you'd have to make some concessions, maybe allowing certain settings to be retained on an uninstall if the developer specifically excludes them, but it's always been downright silly how many things get left behind when you install/uninstall an application.
Yes... no single bloated binary config file, instead, at least three of them: gconf, dconf, xconf
Woosh!
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Couldn't agree more. /etc/application/logs quoted. give it it's own damn partition if it's big, mount --bind it maybe?
and parent had the answer to his
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
It's waxy yellow dll buildup.
OS X comes with a utility called Migration Assistant that can effectively duplicate an old machine onto new hardware. Technically, despite several iterations of new hardware and operating system upgrades, I am running the same installation as I was with 10.5 in 2007 and I have not experienced any operating system rot. My current four core 16Gb SSD machine is just as fast as my original 32 bit two core 4Gb MacBook pro.... .... oh wait...
Seriously though, I wonder how much operating system rot is really down to disk fragmentation. I don't think I've ever had a machine that suffers from it, but with Windows boxes I do defrag regularly.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
ROFLMAO. IME, the only thing more painful than maintaining a Windows system over the long term is maintaining a *nix system over the long term.
Let's consider Linux. First, you probably get to choose between a stable or a not stable version of your distro. Choose stable and you're OK as long as you don't need to run any software released in the last 3 years and you're OK with being forced to upgrade the whole OS after maybe 2 years anyway (which will quite possibly trash your entire machine to the point of not being able to boot, or at least breaking minor features like RAID arrays, assuming you actually managed to configure one of those properly in the first place after your distro's "user friendly" installer messed it up completely).
Or not.
Alternatively, choose unstable if you want to run more recent software but don't mind stuff breaking all the time instead of every couple of years on a schedule.
Either way, if you want anything that hasn't got into your distribution's package management system yet, you're almost invariably forced into compiling your own software and manually installing it with makefiles. Those might, if you're really lucky, also offer a make uninstall option that actually does cleanly uninstall. That might, if you're even luckier, still work six months later, as long as no-one inadvertently installed a new version of the manually compiled code over the top to "upgrade" it, or just ran make distclean without thinking leaving you with no idea what make uninstall should have done.
Or not
In any case, Linux is going to enforce absolutely no system hygiene at any point in this process.
Or.....whatt? -sniffs system- Seems ok.....
OS X is of course doing much better with a similar foundation, as anyone who has spoken the words "Apple" and "shellshock" in the same sentence over the past few days can testify. Or at least, they'll be able to testify, just as soon as they've finished wiping and reinstalling their botnetted systems, because the patch everyone else had within hours only arrived for Apple gear several days later and long after exploits were widely found in the wild.
You're absolutely right that we should be able to install many programs and uninstall them with no lingering effects. But the idea that the registry is the only thing preventing that on Windows
Is crazy, yes. The registry is not the only thing Windows does wrong/messily, agreed.
or that *nix systems do better
Is a lot more sane. You don't *have* to package source install trees into deb/rpm/whatever packages before dropping them into your root filesystem, but you do have the option (and are kinda nuts if you don't, especially on a serious system). Maybe there's an equivalent '.msi HOWTO' somewhere out there, I've never looked for it - but isn't this entire thread of conversation about how the MSI system leaves crap lying around after uninstallations that it shouldn't, so even if you do follow best practises for installing (originally) non-packaged software then later uninstall it you're left with junk?
is crazy. The only reason *nix systems don't break more often is that the only people running them are geeks and professionals, and those kinds of people are less likely to install random junk and more willing to dive in and fix internals when stuff goes wrong.
And the reason that people who are less likely to do dumbass shit and fuck about with systems best left unfucked gravitate away from 'maintaining a Windows system over the long term' is....?
Our house went windows free years ago and hasn't looked back.
Viva la Linux.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
If the problem was really in the OS, then windows server which shares many of the same underpinnings as Windows desktop(s), would suffer the same fate. Since servers like domain controllers and exchange servers run for years without that issue, the problem seems to be from the crAPP that gets installed, as the parent explained, as well as the article. Bad headline to suggest the bad apps are M$'s problem
So the answer is to buy a Windows PC and lock it in a backroom and access it via services? Maybe use a Linux or OSX client? Fact is, even a highly controlled corporate desktop/laptop will slow down. It just happens.
Windows still stores EVERY SINGLE update in your windows folder so it can be removed/restored at any moment. This clutters up the HDD way too much. But the OS gettting slower has nothing to do with that. As some others point out it isn't due to the OS itself getting slower it's how you operate the OS. Maintaining startup, services and some other factors can lead to a perfectly running machine several years down the line.
ME - bad
XP - good
Vista - bad
7 - good
8 - bad
So MS have finally decided to break out of that good-bad-good-bad cycle by skipping version 9?
Why don't you just go back to system restore point #1? This will wipe the registry and unload every DLL ever installed. Things may remain on the disk, but windows will be restored to zero, while leaving documents intact. Simply reinstall the apps you want to use and you're back in business.
The software you are using is garbage. Applications don't HAVE to store ANYTHING in the registry -- that's the vendor of your crappy games doing that. Also, each vendor supplies an uninstaller -- obviously yours aren't doing the job. I suggest you have a talk with the thick-headed developers who write your games. Or, just join the rest of us in 2014, get an SSD and don't worry about it.
Utter nonsense. Microsoft won't certify your product UNLESS you store certain things in the registry.
Certainly you can write your programs a different way (as I do), but don't expect to get your software Microsoft certified.
Just to save everyone a whole lot of time and energy, and basically summarize every argument that is going to appear for this article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Or they followed Microsoft's methodology for software development. You can complain all you want about incompetent developers/companies, but most just follow the Microsoft standard, which is to not use configuration files but use the registry. Far too often Microsoft treats programmers as hobbiests and doesn't take what they do seriously. It you don't actively keep up a MSFT certification, you'll never hear about You buy VisualStudio Enterprise and you're left up to you own. It's suggested that you buy MSDN. The companies I work for don't generally give developers access to it, they use it for the "free" software.
I blame MSFT for the state of Windows software. They define the culture that encourages bad software.
I still have a 98SE machine that runs extremely quickly.
Here's the trick - LEARN THE FUCKING OS.
I'm not slowing down. I've taken timed measurements of boot-up times and maintained them over the course of several years.
I've been at a steady 13 second boot from power-on for the past 3 of those years on 7. 8 years on XP at 17 seconds, 13 years on 2K at 8 seconds. 98SE (on a 450MHz P3 laptop with 640MB RAM) at 6 seconds for about 15 years (one reinstall because of a botched driver, not the fault of the OS.)
I also had WinME running as smoothly as 98, but the mobo died there and that machine is hence retired.
And that's on top of changing hardware every other year where feasible. All machines still operational with the exception of the one mentioned right above.
Sounds like you and those you know don't know the OS, how it works, or how to utilize it.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So let me get this straight... Your argument is that people are so content with Windows 8 that Microsoft has to start a poison well campaign against it to convince people to upgrade? Really?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Win7 added the known folder constant FOLDERID_UserProgramFiles and by default this is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs which is what per-user applications are supposed to use...
This is why I put my OS on a separate drive and take an image of that drive when I have everything set up the way I want it set up. This allows me to freshly start from that point at a future date without having to re-install everything from scratch.
There are situations where your being held hostage - if you want xyz then you have to download and run this app. If you need xyz then your forced to comprimise the integrity of your system. This shouldn't be the case. Sandboxie has a system in which you can run those apps in a box, then choose what you want to bring over from that box (xyz) without bringing over everything (bad virus). I used this in order to get Minecraft mods for my son from evil websites like iLivid.
If sandboxie-like functionality was built into the core OS then it's a simple matter to fix issues on grandma's computer when she installs EVILVIRUS in order to get a recipe. If the gui is clean and clear then grandma can fix it herself. It also presents a clean system to the sandboxed app so the virus can't steal your private info.
If Microsoft had any sense "if(0)" then they would use this technology along with the containers idea from docker as their future installation mechanism. This also make differential backups much easier. It win win win all over the place.
Really, it is a matter of how proficient you are with the OS. I often break my Linux box that I use at work when trying to get something more abnormal working, I know that if I had the skills and knowledge I could fix my Linux box as easily as I fix my Windows box at home, but that is just not the case. The internals of a GNU/Linux system is a lot harder to understand than Windows and varies a lot by distribution.
For example I broke my Linux laptop hotspot some time ago and I can not get it working again, I looked around the net and it seems I need to downgrade some bizarre network package I never heard about, I will just format the box and get it working again.
Now Linux is a lot harder to break in the first place, but when it does I usually just format it (which is a lot less painful than formatting a Windows boxes because all applications keep their stuff in my home folder). The problem is that in Linux you run into the abnormal situations far more often than in Windows. On the other hand in Windows you run into Spyware and Crapware far more easily.
I can confirm this, having worked for a company that wrote backup software. While Microsoft does have some rules in place, they are not good enough. We had to make all kinds of exclusion rules to prevent backups of temp files, cache files, etc.
http://technet.microsoft.com/e...
Determine the Actual Size of the WinSxS Folder
Applies To: Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2
Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /AnalyzeComponentStore
That'll output the actual size of the sxs folder.
If this is supposed to be positive press, it fails miserably!
- finally address a problem that has plagued pretty much every Windows OS since at least 95
- I avoided Windows 8 like the plague
On top of that, the question is not answered, nor is any reason giving to make us think windows 10 even attempts to fix degradation
Who's paying you to troll slahdot?
Since this is Windows we are talking about, I'll just go ahead and assume you were taking about %DEITY% and %CHORUS_OF_DEITIES%
Whether you see this depends on how observant you are, how much stuff you install/deinstall, how badly those programs overlap their shared objects (typically dynamic link libraries, which is what MS calls run-time shareables on Windows), and how overpowered your system is.
It's 100% a fact, though. The problem is that historically windows was architected as a personal computer operating system - designed from the ground up for a single-tasking singer user with no external connections. As Windows has matured into a fully networkable system that allows sharing parts of the system with other users (and implemented true multitasking and service daemons,so that some processes are not actually user processes) many of the bad design decisions have been re-engineered out of existence, but several of them are still hanging around causing problems. The worst of these is that Microsoft decided early on to let user applications install code into the C:/windows directory. This created the infamous ".dll hell" as well as system decay.
In a system like MacOS or Darwin or VMS or a well-architected Unix implementation, all the files belonging to a user application live in a known place, and other applications that might depend on the first (say, add-ons or plug-ins for a spreadsheet app) all look in that place to find anything they might need. In Windows, part of the application live in their own poorly defined places (obscure registry locations and oddly named folders) and parts are loaded into the system folders. In later versions of windows, these places have gotten better defined (for example, app folders are mostly, usually in C:/Program Files instead of just some randomly named place) but there's still the problem of .dll files that are expected to be shared by applications.
Example: You load a program to balance your checkbook, and it puts a file named "BlagC.DLL" in your C:\windows\system folder. Then you load the ButtWiper3000 program to monitor toilet bowl cleanliness, and it wants to also load a DLL with the same name, because both these programs were built from the Blagovich C compiler, which always generates this DLL. The version that came with ButtWiper3000 is newer, so it overwrites the old one. So if you uninstalled ButtWiper3000, it can't uninstall completely, or you'd be unable to balance your checkbook. So none of these programs will completely uninstall, for fear of breaking something else, and cruft accumulates. This is just one of the many bad effects of having no strongly enforced application code isolation ("sandboxing" if you prefer).
If you install a hundred crappy apps, and then uninstall 95 of them, your system will slow down. Will you notice? Not necessarily! You might be ideologically committed to not noticing, or the slowdown might be in your network processing which was already bottlenecked by a crappy Internet connection, or the slowdown might be in your core processing, and you were already bottlenecked by your crappy disk drives, or (most likely) the slowdown will happen so gradually over such a long period of time that you could not possibly tell without reinstalling, or (second most likely) you will buy a new system before you finish slowing this one down enough to notice.
The situation has gotten better with every release of windows since Vista, and will probably continue to get better. It's already possible to install a few commerical applications without special privileges - this indicates that they are properly isolated from the rest of the system.
/opt/app is not acceptable either. /etc
$HOME/.config (I'd rather it be called etc to be consistent) is fine but /opt is just bullshit.
two places, no more. having to go hunting for crap is one of the biggest problems with linux.
and it has always been there. Gnome X11 and a lot of others crap in $HOME/ And it's all because the developers are lazy and need to be beaten with a sack of doorknobs.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
apt-get install logrotate
> another backup, disk wipe, and reinstall.
The biggest problem for me is there is no way to backup and restore your installed applications! The 6 month shuffle goes more like: backup data, disk wipe, reinstall OS, reinstall every single application you use finding all of the serial numbers and resetting all of your preferences, restore data.
WTF?!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The software that "stores everything in the registry" is not garbage per se. It's just software that was written by developers that listened to Microsoft between, say, 1995 and 2010. Because they were told "nonono, *.ini files are bad, store everything in this great registry thing we invented".
From my personal gut-feeling that "drive to use the registry for almost everything" peaked around 2005-2006, before the trend was reversed. At least judging from the work related "enterprise stuff" where I still (have to) have some contact to Windows machines.
I manage a bunch of legacy apps that all use INI files, and it is one of the things I like. Your DB move locations? Update the local INI file to reflect the new location. It takes notepad, a cut and a past, or about 5 seconds. Recently had to update a new .NET application for the same purpose... oh that will be actual development and support costs, etc... Poor design didn't help either.
Also makes testing easy, being able to switch between dev/test/prod DB instances simply by using a ";".
As an added bonus, because it doesn't use registry you also get around the privileges BS, when in a corporate environment can be a pain as usually no one has them. Of course security probably likes it.
Well, I was talking about Cygwin at that point. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it. ;-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This is exactly part of the issue of the slowdown over time. The system spends more and more time searching for the correct files in the SxS jungle to use with each system call. Yes the registry can get muddled up but bloat caused by MS architecture failures seems to be the culprit in my opinion. I don't have metrics or references just 20 years experience as an admin. The SxS mess was created to fix the DLL hell mess.
An often overlooked killer is the environment path. Say for instance you install a program that prepends their path to the environment path and guess where the OS starts it's search every time it looks for an object on disk, in that folder. The entry %SystemRoot%\system32 should be the first in the path.
No Brains, No Headaches
WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!
My dog is now farting blood. I will never use a Microsoft product again.
I just looked through my registry, and find no sign of these 4,400 entries you mention.
Not saying iTunes hasn't dumped a lot of gratuitous crap into my registry, because it has. But this "entry for every file" thing? Not... in evidence.
Well, it might depend on the version of iTunes, but I'd bet that you just don't know where to look. Few people do, even many experienced Windows admins and devs, because almost none of them actually write installers. Of those who do, most just go through some clicky InstallShield Express wizard built in to Visual Studio.
Look under the key where MSI stores all the obfuscated GUIDs which represent installation component IDs. If you have a system with even a modicum of software installed on it, this area is just chock full of sub-keys. It gets better: on Windows XP systems with a lot of complicated software installed (e.g. multiple versions of MS Office and development tools), the number of keys can grow beyond what the built-in registry editor utility can display in the tree-view in the left-hand pane. So, you might need a third-party registry viewer to be able to see all the MSI component keys on XP; I don't recall whether later OS registry editor utilities had the same limitation.
- T
I hear you. Just had a dev say "Come on its 2014 just give every VM 8 GB of RAM". And we were talking about increasing RAM for about 20 VMs that were currently at 2GB by 1GB ... Most devs have no fucking clue about systems administration. Just glad I'm dev lead and our architect and devops do have a clue.
I seem to recall reading about it on slashdot, but the closest reference I could find is here: http://stackoverflow.com/quest...
.NET applications may be what I was thinking about.
ClickOnce
This is my experience too. If you stop installing / uninstalling, chances are good you avoid system slowdown. Use virtualization to try things out. For example with Vmware or VirtualBox.
OK I get no slow down over time, BUT and there's a BIG BUT, I have multiple apps for maintenance installed. I have a LOT of apps on my pc for my music and video and photo processing equpiment and studio. I also run games at times. Once a week though I look for any new crap ware that's been snuck on and remove it, then i do a check for any windows updates that are optional and decide whether or not to install. I then run driver and program updates with THREE driver update check programs (yes they each catch things the others miss) and three programs that check for software updates in addition to the self updating programs ( and again things are picked up). I then run registry cleaners, and an error check program that cleans out temp files, active X and .com errors, etc. I follow that with a full virus scan and then a full disk scan. Reboot and a chkdsk on reboot. I also run diskeeper and keep my files consolidated. Yes, it takes a couple hours a week, but I haven't had any slowdown in two and a half years. Pain in the ass, but to me worth it for productivity.
Tuck
Keep on pondering, and suddenly the flower of mind will bloom with enlightenment, illuminating the whole universe.
I have an original XP build laptop that I have used every single day since 2007 and it ran like a champ until MS recently dropped XP from support. Strange how now it's started running like crap. Coincidence? I think not.
Fortunately Microsoft has addressed this problem (as of April this year, so relatively quick in Microsoft time) so that the WinSxS folder can be cleaned up.
How did Microsoft address the WinSxS problem last April?
If the problem was really in the OS, then windows server which shares many of the same underpinnings as Windows desktop(s), would suffer the same fate. Since servers like domain controllers and exchange servers run for years without that issue, the problem seems to be from the crAPP that gets installed, as the parent explained, as well as the article. Bad headline to suggest the bad apps are M$'s problem
The problem is one of recovery files that accumulate. MS never deletes a recovery file. If MS kept three or four generations only, then one could delete these obsolete disk fragmenters and performance would be restored. And a good defragger would help too.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Are you kidding? The only thing /. hates more than Microsoft is Apple. So I guess if you are Apple fanboy you might see it that way. Oh... Never mind.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Okay... There is no such thing as "OS Decay". The reason a windows based PC slows down over time is because of a crappy file that keeps the settings for almost EVERYTHING in or on the OS called the "registry". It's a crappy invention from MS that should have NEVER been invented! That along with other drivers and 3rd party files that get loaded at start-up slow down your PC. The solution? Re-load the OS. That has been the answer since the Windows 95 days, and as long as MS uses a registry, it will continue to be the solution for years to come, my young one.
The real solution is to come up with an OS from the ground up that needs no more than 1 or 2 files to boot up, and modules, or "extensions" that add functionality and that are user installable at the click and drag of a mouse. OS is slow? drag the extension to the "disabled" folder and restart. Oh wait... This sounds familiar... That's right, it was already invented and it was called Mac OS 1.x-9.2.2. But Steve Jobs killed it off in favor of an OS that REALLY suffers "Decay" called BSD UNIX with a GUI over top called Mac OS-X.
Sarcastic, but 100% truth :-/
So all windows software is garbage...including the makers of this suite called "Office". Would you be so kind as to call Microsoft for me? I am busy calling every other developer on the world
I've never figured out that argument. Who, having experienced the crappiness that is iTunes on Windows, would want to buy a computer where the entire OS is created by the same company that made iTunes for Windows? I mean, it would be like running an OS created by the same people that wrote Java!
If your narcissistic enough, you'll fingure that people will switch from Windows to OSX or IOS just to experience the full Itunes experience, if the version of wiindows is Win8/8.1 it not very much narcissism either.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Agree with Ms. Public, a server is a very different environment than a desktop, app, environment, saloomy is comparing two totally different worlds. The MS OS has always been a bad design for desktop environment. But I have used Windows 8 now for two years and it has not slowed down and I have not done any clean up other than malware removal occasionally so perhaps MS did get the OS problem corrected with Windows 8.
Agree with Ms. Public, a server is a very different environment than a desktop, app, environment, saloomy is comparing two totally different worlds. The MS OS has always been a bad design for desktop environment. But I have used Windows 8 now for two years and it has not slowed down and I have not done any clean up other than malware removal occasionally so perhaps MS did get the OS problem corrected with Windows 8.
Arch, good guess. You're obviously using something debian based, probably Ubuntu. I haven't used Ubuntu in some years, but I don't remember them actively supporting the use of a ports-like system. It would certainly be possible in Ubuntu, but without community involvement, rather pointless.
Give Arch a try in a VM. I've yet to encounter a piece of software that hasn't had the source converted to a make package by someone in the AUR. Using the AUR is as simple as downloading the tarball, extracting, running makepkg, resolving dependencies, then pacman -S .
Oh, and don't use the base arch installer unless you have a lot of time on your hands. Go with something like ArchBang.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.