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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Hi,
You're incorrect.
As I stated, the registry as an optimized database. A few extra records do not affect query time.
I will be happy to met money that my 3 year old install of Windows 7 will not have any speed decrease over a new install on the same hardware.
If the OS slows down, it is because there is something causing it that you can remove. It isn't due to "decay".
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
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.
Not that I can be bothered actually doing that but since you're saying that I'm guessing you've done it and had significant results, what were they and for which version?
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.
... 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.
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.
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".
No idea what TFA is talking about.. Only "decay" I've noticed is caused by people getting suckered into installing malware.
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...
People don't tell you XP is old because of performance reasons. It's a security nightmare.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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
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.
Compared to osx and linux distro updates, Windows (at least Win 7) is a true dinosaur. Imagine how many man-hours are wasted worldwide while waiting for Windows to update, with a reboot required pretty much every single time. Even if you don't consider the time spent applying a patch during shutdown, there is often the additional waiting during boot, and more often than not it seems Windows want an additional reboot during startup. Which sucks hard if you have default dual-boot into Linux, because you fire up the PC, choose Windows, go grab a coffee, and when you come back ... behold, there is the Linux login. Because Windows of course decided to do some additional rebooting.
Yes, osx some times goes offline for a while when applying a large system patch, but this happens only every few moons, whereas with Windows you know you are in for a system update ride if you haven't touched that particular install in a couple weeks.