Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10 • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#211

Post by rincebrain » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:31 AM UTC

la_barba wrote: post #100

outworlder wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you backup etc and home, you can pretty much restore a linux machine back to working order. Yes, you might be missing packages in a brand new install, but then the extra files are harmless. People put etc in git even: https://joeyh.name/code/etckeeper/ The registry is much more magical and it is difficult to find and remove cruft, so I suppose there's an argument against it.

>If you backup etc and home, you can pretty much restore a linux machine back to working order. Hmm, I've never done this. In terms of config files, are there never any breaking changes between versions? Like ..is a v1.0 config file always guaranteed to work with v2.0 and vice versa? I guess and a related question - what is the best way to determine if an /etc/ config file isn't required?

Stuff can break - there's not especially strong guarantees across versions, but if I, say, took /etc and /home from a Debian stretch system and put them on another Debian system, it would likely mostly Just Work.

It gets more exciting the further you drift - e.g. if you're going to Debian buster, or something more significantly different like Fedora/RH, you'd probably want to cherrypick config changes from /etc, though /home should be fine(tm).

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#212

Post by slacka » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:33 AM UTC

0815test wrote: post #170

gambiting wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree - I have one with a quad core atom, 1GB of ram(!!!) And latest windows 10 1903 edition runs very nicely on it if you stick to the built-in apps. I usually have it next to my main PC as an additional monitor with the wireless projector functionality .

I'll hazard a guess that your Win10 machine on 1GB RAM is swapping plenty. A lightweight Linux distribution can run a reasonable desktop workload (including some web browsing!) on 1GB with zilch swap use, or on as little as 512MB with tolerable use of swap. It's a bit disappointing in a way, but Linux (and not even every Linux distro, for that matter) is the only OS where I can visibly tell that I'm running something…

No, Windows did not eat your RAM. Your "guess" would be wrong. I've installed Win 10 to 1GB VM machines many times. The OS itself takes a little over 512 of RAM in this scenario. No swapping at all if your not using any apps more than 512MB.

The reason you probably are assuming Win 10 is unusable is that on your 8 or 16GB machine Windows uses free RAM to speed things up. It's is smart enough to not do this on memory constraints setups.

Funny thing is Linux users often made this same mistake with "free -m", hence the need for this site: https://www.linuxatemyram.com/

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#213

Post by arpa » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:35 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #66

theandrewbailey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More info on what that does: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur...

I don't really see the need to have the ability to uninstall service packs... Especially not if it's wasting 25% of the space on my tiny SSD! The original windows installation media could be used to restore the system if something went horribly wrong anyway. Why the need to keep every previously used version of every dll?

Because Microsoft. We will lie to you about making registry backups successfully to save a few megs of space, bud god forbid we touch the winsxs elephant in the room.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#214

Post by zvrba » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:40 AM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #196

Can someone explain why a monolithic Registry is a good idea, compared to something like macOS's .plists? I can usually intuitively infer where the plist for a particular app or subsystem may be stored, or just search for it using regular file system tools, and I can use many tools to read, edit and selectively backup/restore plists as well as compress them (something I make use of often, to restore settings only for…

> Can someone explain why a monolithic Registry is a good idea, compared to something like macOS's .plists?

Why monolithic may be good: because it's global and baked into the system. An application doesn't have to search for its config files. Registry is always there. It's a database.

And it's better than INI or XML files because updates are transactional, and you can even have transactional updates over multiple keys. It also supports fine-grained access control. Manually implementing transactional updates in text files is a hassle and you can forget per-value ACLs... unless all of this is hidden behind a registry-like API.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#215

Post by arpa » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:43 AM UTC

cookingrobot wrote: post #173

gmueckl wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you automatically translate hand-layouted dialogs (originally even manually adjusted for localizations where required) into a completely different layout and design language? Never mind the few dialogs that do custom controls and custom rendering (joystick test and joystick calibration, for example). In plain Win32, that stuff is often part of the window repaint event handler and not encapsulated in a way t…

They could render it off-screen, and use neural network style transfer to make it look fresh..

Oh the wonderful AI hallucinations we would see! And nobody would be able to debug them as a bonus. I like the idea.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#216

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:53 AM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #143

Causality1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile Microsoft steals 7GB for "reserved storage" just in case they happen to have a giant update to install without your consent. "we disabled registry backups and made the dialog box lie to the user to save storage space" is a nauseatingly transparent lie.

If it’s that transparent, what’s the truth? Whats the REAL reason for this nauseating, unacceptable, decision?

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#217

Post by pas » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:55 AM UTC

la_barba wrote: post #100

outworlder wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you backup etc and home, you can pretty much restore a linux machine back to working order. Yes, you might be missing packages in a brand new install, but then the extra files are harmless. People put etc in git even: https://joeyh.name/code/etckeeper/ The registry is much more magical and it is difficult to find and remove cruft, so I suppose there's an argument against it.

>If you backup etc and home, you can pretty much restore a linux machine back to working order. Hmm, I've never done this. In terms of config files, are there never any breaking changes between versions? Like ..is a v1.0 config file always guaranteed to work with v2.0 and vice versa? I guess and a related question - what is the best way to determine if an /etc/ config file isn't required?

etckeeper records the exact package version changes too. it's extremely handy for small shops (so unless you do 100% immutable infrastructure, it's worth it)

you start culling packages with apt purge, that should remove config files too, and see what breaks, if nothing, well, try to push your luck further.

also with dpkg -S /etc/some/file you can see which file belongs to which package and target that package

usually on a server you know what you don't need. it's a bit more trial and error on a desktop. (because those can break in a lot more fun, unexpected ways, harder to know what is needed)

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#218

Post by ajdlinux » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 5:57 AM UTC

rstuart4133 wrote: post #146

nightski wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like something was seriously wrong with your install. I am on a desktop running windows 10 since its release on which I use daily and install a lot of software - and the windows folder is sitting at 12 GB.

> the windows folder is sitting at 12 GB I don't think the Windows folder is a particular good indication of Windows space usage. A while ago Microsoft put a tablet killer design out there: 11 Screen, 4GB RAM, Touch Screen and 32GB SSD. Man+dog shipped them. Then man+dog found the machines died because Windows ran out of disk space on patch Tuesday. So regardless of what is in the windows directory 32GB is not enough…

My mother's Intel NUC runs into this problem. Next time I go to visit I think I'm going to have to figure out if we can move the Windows install off the 32GB eMMC onto something else...

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#219

Post by Razengan » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 6:01 AM UTC

zvrba wrote: post #214

Razengan wrote: post #196

Can someone explain why a monolithic Registry is a good idea, compared to something like macOS's .plists? I can usually intuitively infer where the plist for a particular app or subsystem may be stored, or just search for it using regular file system tools, and I can use many tools to read, edit and selectively backup/restore plists as well as compress them (something I make use of often, to restore settings only for…

> Can someone explain why a monolithic Registry is a good idea, compared to something like macOS's .plists? Why monolithic may be good: because it's global and baked into the system. An application doesn't have to search for its config files. Registry is always there. It's a database. And it's better than INI or XML files because updates are transactional, and you can even have transactional updates over multiple key…

What does being "global" mean here, and why is it good?

macOS apps don't have to search for their config files either; support for them is baked into their system APIs as well.

The macOS/iOS UserDefaults system is actually very nice, allowing multiple tiers/domains for precedence of settings. For example a specific setting may be optionally overridden for a single session via any app's launch arguments [0]. How do you achieve something like that with the Registry?

The Registry architecture may make things easier for Microsoft, but the plist architecture seems to make things easier for users and developers.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#220

Post by pas » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 6:11 AM UTC

hirsin wrote: post #98

philjohn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marginal gains. 50MB here, 100MB there ... pretty soon you're talking real storage usage.

Pretty much this. I once tried adding a new ~3 MB binary, and it was rejected on effectively these grounds. Now consider that the team making these in/out decisions has a backlog of requests just like it for larger items...

Is there a team that can exterminate other teams in very medieval ways that fail to make stuff installable to non system drive?

Because there should be.

It's crazy that everything still wants to put stuff on C:\ ... I'm looking at you Visual Studio and Win SDK.

Plus Users\Public shared goodies. And the %userprofile%\AppData. I get that every application thinks it needs to put its cache/files there, but then why can't folks relocate users' homes? :/