Warp wrote:
> (I have never heard of anybody doing that; certainly I have
> never encountered the need).

I've done it ever so occasionally, but usually by the time I figured out it 
broke something, it has been too late to fix it that way. I think the 
corporate world likely uses it more often.

>   Every time Windows installs a new version of .NET, it writes a huge amount
> of files to the C: drive. These are important files and cannot be removed
> (unless you really want to uninstall .NET, making many programs not work).

Yep. Every new version has basically a complete copy of the whole thing, and 
.NET is really pretty big.  .NET 2.0 programs break if you install only .NET 
3.5 runtime, because they're trying to avoid DLL hell. You *could* uninstall 
the 2.0 runtime tho, if you weren't still using it.

>   There are tons of temporary files which are *not* removed by Windows' disk
> cleaning utility. You have to manually search for them and remove them.
> Those alone accounted for several tens of megabytes.

It always ticks me off that things like Java and Adobe and QuickTime and all 
those people are too lazy to write the plug-in that'll let "disk cleanup" 
delete the stuff. Having to track down where Java is caching every applet I 
ever looked at and Adobe is storing every font it uses like I can't download 
it faster than Adobe can read it from the disk is rather a PITA.

Indeed, I'm a bit annoyed that firefox doesn't plug into that system as 
well. :-)  I really don't want to go to every program that might be holding 
a bunch of stuff cached and find the appropriate menu entry to clean it off.

>   Every time you install a program, even if you don't install it in C:,
> Windows will write uninstallation info for that program in the C: drive.
> AFAIK there's no way around it. The only way to remove them safely is
> to remove the program itself.

Unfortunately, the number of uninstallers is similar to the number of 
installers, so unless you get everyone using the standard systems (which, of 
course, become legacy with new standards showing up every year or so) you 
can't necessarily interpret the data to remove it.

> many of the programs don't remove the data when they are uninstalled.

Yeah. The old uninstallers would just delete that which they installed, 
without actually cleaning out the data left behind. Usually leaving 
directories sitting around where the game had saved state into the program 
files subdirectories. Kind of a safety thing - don't uninstall the data just 
because you uninstalled the program. Reasonable, but annoying sometimes.

>   I have never noticed this phenomenon in Linux. It doesn't grow over time,
> even if you regularly install and uninstall programs.

It cleans up after itself better, perhaps. New functionality makes it grow, 
of course. I'm sure if you install OpenOffice, build a bunch of 
spreadsheets, then uninstall OpenOffice, you don't wind up deleting those 
spreadsheets. If you uninstall Beagle, it leaves all its thumbnails and crap 
around, too. The dot files don't go away when you delete a program.

The problem with Windows is every program somehow feels the need to cache a 
bunch of crap and not hook into the standard ways for cleaning that up.

> is easy enough). Even if some programs do write tons of data there, it's
> somehow easier to find that data and remove it if you don't need it anymore.

Yeah, it's all dot files in the home directory, for the most part. On the 
other hand, Linux I think has far fewer background type services. Stuff to 
watch for updates will, for example, grow with the size of the repository.

> It's more hidden and somehow more "silent" in Windows.

I wonder if it's because it's more heirarchical and library-driven in 
Windows than in Linux. I.e., there's not just "a dot file in your home dir", 
but "a dot file inside a product directory inside a vendor directory inside 
one of three different hidden directories depending on how you're logged in" 
sort of thing.

But nowadays, most of the stuff that's per-user cruft winds up in 
/users/warp and usually /users/warp/appdata, organized pretty logically if 
you actually go exploring.

>   But the point is that program data tends to keep confined inside your
> home directory (inside subdirectories starting with a dot), rather than
> being scattered all over the system.

That's not really true. The global stuff in Linux is in global places in the 
system, like /var and such. I was frequently running out of room in /var and 
had to go in and clean things up, altho I don't remember now what it was 
that was sticking things in there.

You have to clean up web server logs, audit logs, wtmp, all that sort of thing.

Granted, everyone and their uncle writes crap into your home directory in 
Windows, and then leaves it there indefinitely. I don't think you can 
reasonably complain tho that installing programs leaves data installed in 
your system directories. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I'm told you can change some registry key (manually of course) to make 
> this folder live somewhere else. 

You don't have to change things manually. You right-click on the folder, 
select "properties", select "location", and give it a new location. 
Everything respects that nowadays, unless you're installing programs from 
the Win98 era perhaps.

> But I'm not sure how many programs 
> would actually take notice; ever tried installing Windows in, say, 
> D:\WINDOWS, and seeing programs stuff files into C:\WINDOWS anyway?

The "windows" directories are harder than the "doc&set" directories, yes.

> Yeah. The updater for Adobe Acrobat Reader likes to stuff the installer 
> files in a temp folder inside Documents and Settings. For no defined 
> reason.

Because that's where it has permission to write temp files. Putting it in 
the local tempfile direcotry would have been better, yes.

> I'm still wondering why no OS has yet come up with the idea of 
> seperating "documents" from "settings", but hey...

They did. They called it "the registry". Everyone bitched about it being 
separate from the file system. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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clipka wrote:
> I don't think Linux package managers will automatically 
> un-install those if you uninstall that image processing package 

Actually, Windows will do this, too. The problem is that not every installer 
will mark what dependencies it uses, so you'll often get the question "Hey, 
the DLL called <incomprehensible>.DLL looks unused, should I uninstall it?"

If some installer somewhere that someone wrote just looked to see some 
package was already installed and skipped the installation, instead of 
bumping the use count, then uninstalling X mysteriously breaks Y, which of 
course is exactly what everyone complains about on Windows.

Many, many of these problems are caused by lazy third-party programmers. 
Windows would be a lot cleaner if they only supported the latest version of 
stuff. :-) Or if MS had gotten everything right on the first try and never 
had to support the broken stuff.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> clipka wrote:
> > I don't think Linux package managers will automatically 
> > un-install those if you uninstall that image processing package 

> Actually, Windows will do this, too. The problem is that not every installer 
> will mark what dependencies it uses, so you'll often get the question "Hey, 
> the DLL called <incomprehensible>.DLL looks unused, should I uninstall it?"

  Btw, that's another annoying feature of Windows. Even though Windows
moved away from 8+3 characters long file names in 1995, most if not all
DLLs and other system files still adhere to that convention, for no
apparent or logical reason, so instead of getting a nice descriptive
file name telling you exactly what the DLL is for, you get a crpyptic
8-characters-long name which could well be random for all you know.

  Why are they doing that? I understand it that they did it the first
few years, but even today, 14 years later? That makes no sense.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> I'm told you can change some registry key (manually of course) to make 
>> this folder live somewhere else. 
> 
> You don't have to change things manually. You right-click on the folder, 
> select "properties", select "location", and give it a new location. 

And which version of Windows do you need for this option to appear?

> Everything respects that nowadays, unless you're installing programs 
> from the Win98 era perhaps.

Heh. On Monday, I've got to see if a Windows 2.0 program works OK under 
Windows XP. The fun part? To run it, you must replace SERIAL.SYS with a 
custom modified version. (!!)

It still amuses me that this program can't print on any network printer 
who's name is more than 8 characters long...

>> Yeah. The updater for Adobe Acrobat Reader likes to stuff the 
>> installer files in a temp folder inside Documents and Settings. For no 
>> defined reason.
> 
> Because that's where it has permission to write temp files. Putting it 
> in the local tempfile direcotry would have been better, yes.

Oh, sure, it could put the installer file in

   %profile%\Local Settings\Temp

But it doesn't. It puts it in

   %profile%\Application Settings\Adobe\Acrobat\Updater

The Java installer does something similarly retarded for some reason. 
Maybe it's an IE quirk of some kind?

>> I'm still wondering why no OS has yet come up with the idea of 
>> seperating "documents" from "settings", but hey...
> 
> They did. They called it "the registry". Everyone bitched about it being 
> separate from the file system. :-)

You can't put, for example, the Word "normal" template in the registry. 
But then, I guess it depends on what you consider to be "settings" and 
what is "documents"...

FWIW, I think the registry actually works quite well for what it's 
supposed to be for. You can lock it down with security, it's got 
seperate user and system sections, and so on. The only real flaw is that 
it's more or less impossible to do manual things like copy one user's 
preferences to another user account, but only for one specific 
application. (Because you will never, ever determine which keys to copy...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > many of the programs don't remove the data when they are uninstalled.

> Yeah. The old uninstallers would just delete that which they installed, 
> without actually cleaning out the data left behind. Usually leaving 
> directories sitting around where the game had saved state into the program 
> files subdirectories. Kind of a safety thing - don't uninstall the data just 
> because you uninstalled the program. Reasonable, but annoying sometimes.

  The best uninstallers ask you whether you want to also remove save files
and such, giving you the option of preserving them or removing them safely.
That's how all programs should do it, but unfortunately not many do.

  (Preserving save files can be handy if you want to uninstall a game which
you might want to re-install later and continue from where you got stuck,
if you are in the mood.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>   Btw, that's another annoying feature of Windows. Even though Windows
> moved away from 8+3 characters long file names in 1995, most if not all
> DLLs and other system files still adhere to that convention, for no
> apparent or logical reason, so instead of getting a nice descriptive
> file name telling you exactly what the DLL is for, you get a crpyptic
> 8-characters-long name which could well be random for all you know.
> 
>   Why are they doing that? I understand it that they did it the first
> few years, but even today, 14 years later? That makes no sense.

I have no idea either, but it's pretty annoying.

The thing that makes me laugh is installers and splash screens and icons 
in glorious 256-colour dithered halftones. Um, WHY? We have 24-bit 
displays today, ya know. And *not* dithering the graphics makes it so 
much more compressible, while also looking much cooler...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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clipka wrote:
> in addition. I don't think Linux package managers will automatically 
> un-install those if you uninstall that image processing package (it 
> would be ill-advised, as I might have installed other, 
> non-package-managed software that also relies on that library).

Non-package-managed software installed by hand is of no concern to the 
package manager.  It will uninstall swiftly.

I'm used to compile up-to-date libs required by some hand-compiled 
up-to-date software and install it to my ~/lib.  It's only annoying to 
do the usual "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/lib foo" everytime, but, hey!, that's 
why bash history is for. :)

> The only difference is that in Linux this is less opaque, and having 
> additional libraries installed may therefore not be regarded as "growing 
> of the system".

At least .NET is capable of having multiple versions of the same lib 
installed at the same time.  The .NET runtime resolves the right 
dependency for each program.  So, as .NET advances through desktop apps, 
be prepared to see lots and lots more junk like this! XD

> The reason is that by convention, Unix software doesn't automatically 
> install (or even ship with) libraries it needs, while Windows software 
> comes full with all components required, automatically installing them 
> if not already present. I guess this is one of the core benefits and 
> banes of Windows.

Don't forget huge statically compiled executables... easy to install, no 
DLL hell and lots of space lost...

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> And which version of Windows do you need for this option to appear?

I think it was there in XP but you got to it a different way. I.e., it was 
buried in the control panel somewhere.

>> Everything respects that nowadays, unless you're installing programs 
>> from the Win98 era perhaps.
> 
> Heh. On Monday, I've got to see if a Windows 2.0 program works OK under 
> Windows XP. The fun part? To run it, you must replace SERIAL.SYS with a 
> custom modified version. (!!)

I'm not surprised. All the old 16-bit apps seemed to bypass the COM drivers 
and go right to hardware.

> The Java installer does something similarly retarded for some reason. 
> Maybe it's an IE quirk of some kind?

Could just be ... retarded! :-)  What makes you think the people writing the 
installers know anything more about Windows than you do? :-)

> You can't put, for example, the Word "normal" template in the registry. 
> But then, I guess it depends on what you consider to be "settings" and 
> what is "documents"...

Right. ANd yes, you probably could, but you wouldn't want to. :-)

> (Because you will never, ever determine which keys to copy...)

Yeah, I always thought so. It's very optimized for what it's good at. 
Unfortunately, it's quite undocumented as you say, and there's no permission 
system in Windows that's at a per-program level rather than a per-user level.

Which is kind of funny, given that nowadays how many people writing programs 
want to be in charge of your computer.  You would think by now people had 
figured out that the user might not want "the program from Adobe" to always 
have all the privs that the user has.  Altho Singularity has the only 
ACL-based permissions system I've ever seen address this.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Warp wrote:
>   Why are they doing that?

I don't know. I can't imagine anyone cares whether there's both a long name 
and a short name in the directories at this point. Disk space just isn't 
that dear. :-)

For the Windows stuff, I'd guess it's at least "ain't broke don't fix it". 
But anything written in the last 8 years or so should get over themselves. 
Certainly anything that won't run on Win98 shouldn't be using short names 
liek that.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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