Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 123 posts

Re: I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

#51

Post by newsclues »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #40
aflag wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a matter of getting used to. The task manager drives me mad. I never feel like I'm full control or know what's going on. Whereas with kill, ps, top and friends I feel like I can diagnose things a lot better. The task manager doesn't even seem to have a search bar, whereas I can just use "grep" in linux. Just right now I was trying to see if indeed it didn't have a search bar and task manager crashed when…

Windows has somewhat stripped down versions of the same kind of commandline process management: tasklist | findstr chrome.exe taskkill /IM chrome.exe /F taskkill /PID /F

Some people dislike windows but haven’t experienced modern niceties like powershell

I doesn’t totally suck

Re: I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

#52

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

qsdf38100 wrote: post #42
est wrote: post #3

I miss taskmgr so much on Linux/macOS. Everything in taskmgr feels so logical and manageable without extra steps.

Sysinternal process explorer is the ultimate taskmgr for Windows, for example you can see the threads for each process, and even their call stacks! When a file can’t be deleted because it’s open in a process but you can’t find which one, you can even search into memory for all processes and find the culprit in 3 seconds. Or see what files / reg keys a process has currently open and even force-close them… give it a tr…

>Sysinternal process explorer is the ultimate taskmgr for Windows

The whole Sysinternals Process Utilities[1] is a goldmine worth bookmarking for any windows power user, and the quality of the tools is great.

The only thing I don't understand is why they aren't shipped by default with every windows installation. They're so useful and no bloat, it boggles my mind why they're not there by default.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/proc...

Re: I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

#53

Post by ppod »

est wrote: post #3

I miss taskmgr so much on Linux/macOS. Everything in taskmgr feels so logical and manageable without extra steps.

There was a great little tool that I think used to be in Ubuntu, but possibly another distro, where you could press a keyboard combo, and it would turn the cursor into a little crosshairs, and then if would kill the app running whatever window you clicked on. I don't remember what it was called, anyone know?

Re: I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

#54

Post by RhysU »

ppod wrote: post #53
est wrote: post #3

I miss taskmgr so much on Linux/macOS. Everything in taskmgr feels so logical and manageable without extra steps.

There was a great little tool that I think used to be in Ubuntu, but possibly another distro, where you could press a keyboard combo, and it would turn the cursor into a little crosshairs, and then if would kill the app running whatever window you clicked on. I don't remember what it was called, anyone know?

xkill?

Re: I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

#55

Post by kqr »

Jcowell wrote: post #21
eganist wrote: post #11

> Task Manager will load in reduced mode if resources are short, like only loading the Processes page if that's what's needed to get going. It's one of the very few apps that won't just "fail and bail" when things go wrong. This has saved me a few times, but every time I've seen it I always figured task manager was just failing to completely load. Glad to know that this was a deliberate state.

Is there a name for a process like this? Very interesting approach I want to take with future software.

Good engineering? An engineer worth their salt should always, in my opinion, contrast resource demand with resource supply and scale down the complexity of the workload in the face of a resource shortage.

Re: I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

#56

Post by YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #44
clowd wrote: post #43

> There should be nothing that TaskMgr can't kill Except Defender/Malware Protection...

And nowadays I don't think it can kill assistant/Cortana.

I just killed Cortana on a windows 10 laptop and on a windows 11 workstation with it... why lie if you are proven wrong in about 10 seconds?

Re: I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

#57

Post by js2 »

Jcowell wrote: post #21
eganist wrote: post #11

> Task Manager will load in reduced mode if resources are short, like only loading the Processes page if that's what's needed to get going. It's one of the very few apps that won't just "fail and bail" when things go wrong. This has saved me a few times, but every time I've seen it I always figured task manager was just failing to completely load. Glad to know that this was a deliberate state.

Is there a name for a process like this? Very interesting approach I want to take with future software.

Besides graceful degradation mentioned in sibling comments, it could also be considered a form of load shedding.

https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/using-load-shedding-...

Re: I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

#58

Post by ppod »

RhysU wrote: post #54
ppod wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a great little tool that I think used to be in Ubuntu, but possibly another distro, where you could press a keyboard combo, and it would turn the cursor into a little crosshairs, and then if would kill the app running whatever window you clicked on. I don't remember what it was called, anyone know?

xkill?

Yes I think that was it, thanks.

Re: I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

#59

Post by duskwuff »

eganist wrote: post #23
Jcowell wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a name for a process like this? Very interesting approach I want to take with future software.

Closest I can think of is Safe Mode, at least based on the definition - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_mode - but running on reduced resources isn't exactly the same, so I'm sure there's a better answer. Inviting correction by people with more extensive engineering experience; most of mine is in breaking rather than building.

"Limp-home mode" -- as seen in many cars -- comes to mind.

Re: I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something (2020)

#60

Post by sodality2 »

Apologies for attacking Dave's credibility on an unrelated thread, but his comments on Linux are absolutely falsehoods. He said that all Linux machines have some sort of proprietary blob Linus Torvalds put in there on EVERY release, for his own purposes. Compared to Windows, which is entirely closed source.. I just blocked his channel after that.

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/rb2xzk/dave_plummer_...

Related falsehoods about Linux's SysRq (now deleted, comments relevant):

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/rva3ui/so_before_i_g...

Related, his company's settlement for incredibly shady business practices, lying to customers that they "really needed his software, for security of course":

https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s...

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/rb2xzk/dave_plummer_...

Post reply on HN