One significant (and annoying) difference I have noticed between Windows
and Linux is that Windows seems to grow over time. It's not *completely*
Windows' own fault, but for the most part it is.

  Something like a half year ago I had 10 GB of free space in my C: drive.
Today I had less than 4 GB, and I had to do some serious cleanup to regain
that space again. (I always install all games and most programs to my D:
drive. I only install the most critical system tools and such in the C:
drive. The ones I have installed in the past 6 months certainly don't take
6 GB of space.)

  It wasn't any one single file or program. It was the sum of a ton of
little things.

  Every time Windows installs an update or service pack, it writes the
necessary info inside the \WINDOWS directory to uninstall it. Since there
are hundreds of such updates, these directories end up taking a rather
significant amount of space, even though individually they are relatively
small. I think they took over half a GB in total. They can be safely
removed if you are OK with not being able to uninstall the updates and
service packs (I have never heard of anybody doing that; certainly I have
never encountered the need).

  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).
There's little that can be done to remedy this problem, other than making
NTFS compress those directories (which saves about 20-30% of the disk space
they take).

  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.

  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.

  Also, many programs (especially games) want to write tons of data
under the "Documents and Settings" directory in the C: drive. AFAIK there's
no way to change this. Most programs write just a few megabytes, but some
of them write really huge amounts of (mostly useless) data in there. What's
worse, many of the programs don't remove the data when they are uninstalled.
This alone easily accounts for a gigabyte of useless data, or even more.

  Every time any part of Java updates itself, it feels the need to leave
its old files in their place, and install the new files in new directories
(under C:, naturally). This easily accounts for hundreds of megabytes.

  And so on. There are tons of things which make the C: partition grow,
even if you try to avoid it. If the C: partition is relatively small, you
are going to run out of space sooner or later.

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

  The somewhat equivalent of "Documents and Settings" in Linux (and in Unix
in general) is your home directory, but programs don't tend to write tons
of data there (except Firefox and Thunderbird, but cleaning their caches
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.
It's more hidden and somehow more "silent" in Windows.

  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. I have so far not found the need to
clean up my Linux system, while I have found the need to do so with my
Windows system several times because of space running alarmingly low.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   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).

AFAIK, my Windows system didn't have *any* version of .NET installed 
until that time I installed VisualStudio. (But then, I guess it depends 
which software you're trying to run...)

>   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.

It's usually fairly small though. So unless you install *a lot* of stuff...

>   Also, many programs (especially games) want to write tons of data
> under the "Documents and Settings" directory in the C: drive. AFAIK there's
> no way to change this.

Ah yes, this is loads of fun.

I'm told you can change some registry key (manually of course) to make 
this folder live somewhere else. 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?

>   Every time any part of Java updates itself, it feels the need to leave
> its old files in their place, and install the new files in new directories
> (under C:, naturally). This easily accounts for hundreds of megabytes.

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.

>   The somewhat equivalent of "Documents and Settings" in Linux (and in Unix
> in general) is your home directory, but programs don't tend to write tons
> of data there.

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

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

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Warp schrieb:
>   One significant (and annoying) difference I have noticed between Windows
> and Linux is that Windows seems to grow over time. It's not *completely*
> Windows' own fault, but for the most part it is.

It's not like Linux wouldn't been growing over time, too, if you install 
new software occasionally. For instance, when installing an image 
processing software package, it may pull in some image library packages 
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).

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".

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.

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> It's not like Linux wouldn't been growing over time, too, if you install 
> new software occasionally. For instance, when installing an image 
> processing software package, it may pull in some image library packages 
> 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).

  Note that I didn't even mention DLLs in my original post. Everything
that makes the Windows partition grow over time is stuff which is *not*
related to system libraries. (Of course the DLLs also make the system
larger, but that's another story in itself.)

  There's little of that in Linux.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp schrieb:
> 
>   Note that I didn't even mention DLLs in my original post. Everything
> that makes the Windows partition grow over time is stuff which is *not*
> related to system libraries. (Of course the DLLs also make the system
> larger, but that's another story in itself.)

You didn mention .NET, which I'd definitely file in this category.

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Warp schrieb:
> > 
> >   Note that I didn't even mention DLLs in my original post. Everything
> > that makes the Windows partition grow over time is stuff which is *not*
> > related to system libraries. (Of course the DLLs also make the system
> > larger, but that's another story in itself.)

> You didn mention .NET, which I'd definitely file in this category.

  Except that .NET installs a whole lot of things which are not simply
some DLLs in the \WINDOWS\system32 directory. And with "a whole lot",
I mean exactly that. All the .NET versions combined take like a gigabyte
or more.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp schrieb:
>> You didn mention .NET, which I'd definitely file in this category.
> 
>   Except that .NET installs a whole lot of things which are not simply
> some DLLs in the \WINDOWS\system32 directory. And with "a whole lot",
> I mean exactly that. All the .NET versions combined take like a gigabyte
> or more.

That doesn't change the fact that those files are part of the .NET 
"package".

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On 09/19/09 07:51, clipka wrote:
> It's not like Linux wouldn't been growing over time, too, if you install
> new software occasionally. For instance, when installing an image

	Barely. Probably depends on your distribution, but on mine (Gentoo) it 
is easy to control.

> processing software package, it may pull in some image library packages
> 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).

	Gentoo usually does, unless it is well known that a package will 
definitely _need_ the old library. Usually, you have to run an 
additional command where it will find all packages that depended on the 
old library, and recompile them against the new library (Gentoo is 
source based).

	The only real part where Gentoo can "grow" if you're careless is when 
you install a package that requires a lot of dependencies. It will 
install the dependencies and that package. When you remove that package, 
the dependencies are still there. So once or twice a year, I have to 
give a special command to figure out all those dependency packages that 
are no longer needed, and uninstall them.

	Don't know how other distros handle that.

-- 
No, Taco Bell is NOT the Mexican Phone Company!

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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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