The future of Windows... NT 5.0, Win98, Windows 2000
dusd...@knowspaam.amsn.com
Hi,
I was wondering if anyone has heard any rumors about the following in
upcoming Windows and NT releases...
Have you noticed how many files and folders NT and Win95 install with? On
NT4.0 here I've got 5,090 files and 187 folders in my WINNT folder alone!
Couldn't all these files and folders be combined into a few DLL's and EXE's?
Why doesn't NT or Win95 have more then say, 5 folders and 10 files when
installed "bare minimum"? Do they really *need* to be out in the open like
that?
Has anyone heard any rumors about future Windows and NT versions eliminating
and/or combining *most* of these files and folders?
Kind Regards,
D a n D u s k i n
dusd...@KNOWSPAAM.amsn.com
(remove "KNOWSPAAM" before replying)
Alan Donovan
dusd...@KNOWSPAAM.amsn.com wrote:
> Have you noticed how many files and folders NT and Win95 install with? On
> NT4.0 here I've got 5,090 files and 187 folders in my WINNT folder alone!
>
> Couldn't all these files and folders be combined into a few DLL's and
EXE's?
> Why doesn't NT or Win95 have more then say, 5 folders and 10 files when
> installed "bare minimum"? Do they really *need* to be out in the open
like
> that?
So what's the big deal? For the last 30 years UNIX systems have always had
several hundred files required for proper operation, the only difference
with
UNIX is that it comes with decent security defaults so that an idiot user
can't
trash the system by poking around inside c:\\winnt with his/her brain
switched
off. And so what if it takes 224Mb (mine does)? It might be a little
faster
to install if it had fewer files but disks are cheap, and hey, who installs
their own system these days?
alan
Scott Gilbert
Well, I disagree with your sentiment and acceptance of the bloat. Just because disks are cheap (as is memory), doesn't mean I want
to give an unnecessary amount of it to the operating system for stuff I couldn't care less about. In my opinion, a minimum install
should get me up and running without all that extra stuff. One reason Unix has all those thousands of files is because there isn't
a standard registry to keep a lot of that stuff in. NT has them because Microsoft gets sloppy and realizes most people don't care.
I always admired that you could have a running DOS machine with less files than you have fingers. The rest of the machine was yours
to do what you wanted with. That's elegant. As for all the shortcomings in DOS.... I guess I can live without those.
On the other hand, I do agree with what you said about the security defaults. It's no small matter to lock down a workstation and
still make it a usable machine. I long for the days when normal users can only write to their user directories. Even if you do
change all the default permissions, many apps including those from Microsoft) only work if they have a lot of liberty with the
system directories. This probably wouldn't be the case if NT shipped in a little bit tighter state to begin with.
What's the point of having robust security if you can't use it?
As for who installs their own system - I do. About once every month or two after some program replaced a newer version of a DLL
with an older one.
Alan Donovan wrote in message <01bd3d82$b8aa6720$106283c1@adpc16>...
Alan Donovan
Scott Gilbert <xsc...@nospam.theriver.com> wrote:
> Well, I disagree with your sentiment and acceptance of the
> bloat. Just because disks are cheap (as is memory), doesn't
> mean I want to give an unnecessary amount of it to the
> operating system for stuff I couldn't care less about. In
> my opinion, a minimum install should get me up and running
> without all that extra stuff.
> I always admired that you could have a running DOS machine
> with less files than you have fingers. The rest of the machine
> was yours to do what you wanted with. That's elegant
Actually I don't like bloat either; if I'd heard 3 years ago
that an average NT install took 250 megs I'd have freaked,
given that you can get a minimal Linux running with literally
1.4 Megs of (floppy) disk (I _mean_ minimal) and pretty usable
systems with a few dozen.
But then in many ways I still long for minimalism: the more
obscure features of windows annoy me, the slowness of
everything, the having to wade through esoteric stuff just
to find the simple command you really want.
> One reason Unix has all those
> thousands of files is because there isn't a standard registry
> to keep a lot of that stuff in. NT has them because Microsoft
> gets sloppy and realizes most people don't care.
Not sure about that: UNIX nowadays is a hell of a lot tidier
than NT, and personally I find the registry an enormously
cluttered filesystem. On UNIX, you have well documented text
files defining all of the system configuration and status
and logging, and each application stores its own data in
its own format on disk. Ok, with the registry it's possible
to save an enormous amount of lightweight data very quickly,
eg position of windows last time an app was used, file
history, etc, but I like to know what every file means and
does and value simplicity higher than the kitchen sink.
> As for who installs their own system - I do. About
> once every month or two after some program replaced a newer
> version of a DLL with an older one.
Yeah, me too. But most users of windows have never installed
it once.
alan