221–230 of 556 posts
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It allows you to install applications from any source, not only the official store. It allows for a variety of installers to exist with different features for different use cases. It allows you to install the application in any location you choose. It allows for portable installations and to run software just copied from other sources.
What is "it"?
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> can't you write [a self-deleting executable] in C? The point of the exercise is that, on Windows, you can’t, because Windows won’t let anyone delete executables that are currently in use (try it, you won’t be able to delete one either). Upgrading shared DLLs in the face of this fact is why installers for Windows programs often have to have you reboot the system (and in more civilized times asked you to close other…
I wonder why Raymond Chen suggest a WSH solution. Isn't PowerShell the official scripting language for Windows nowadays?
interesting investigation and js. Though I'm wondering why does windows rely on the software to uninstall itself?
historically all windows software has either been unzipped into a folder or installed using an installer created by the vendor, so as a result the vendor has to provide their own uninstaller too. uninstallers are complex enough that the OS can't completely take their place, though Windows has shipped with an install/uninstall framework called MSI for a long time.
I used to bundle an INF file in a CAB archive (converted to self-extract executable) to distribute software. Using only Microsoft's own tools.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It allows you to install applications from any source, not only the official store. It allows for a variety of installers to exist with different features for different use cases. It allows you to install the application in any location you choose. It allows for portable installations and to run software just copied from other sources.
What is "it"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would disagree, files that the user cannot edit or should not edit should not be going into their home directory. Things like cache files should go into a system wide cache directory instead.
Cache files might contain user's sensitive data. Makes sense to keep in them in the user's home directory in those cases.
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Those files are user data, not part of the software package.
I would disagree, files that the user cannot edit or should not edit should not be going into their home directory. Things like cache files should go into a system wide cache directory instead.
If you have separate partitions, would you really want user data to go to the system partition? Or a third partition?
Do you find having more places that user programs can write a benefit?
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I wasn't just talking about defragging. I was also talking about live volume shrinking. > Also see my link for a solution on unix, where you can indeed fix this problem Looping through every FD of every process just to find ones that reside in your volume of interest is... a hack. From the user's perspective, sure, it might work when you don't have something better. From the vendor's perspective, it's not the kind of…
I have considered it. Never had any serious problem about it during 15 years of desktop linux use as a developer machine. Grandma would not have more problems than unplugging the pendrive where the file was opened from, and trying to save it, for example... Modern operating systems have far worse and more user hostile patterns. And for the live volume shrinking: the kernel can solve this problem, it there is a need f…
You're not the typical customer of Windows.
> Grandma would not have more problems than unplugging the pendrive where the file was opened from, and trying to save it, for example
Actually she would, because in that case writing to the same file handle would error, not happily write into the ether.
Also, you have one tech-savvy grandma. I don't think mine even knows what a "pendrive" is (though she's seen one), let alone try to open a file on one, let alone try to save her files on it, let alone use pen drives on any regular basis.
> You just made a strawman you are sticking to.
The only strawman I see here is your grandma using pen drives to save files.
What I'm pointing at are real issues for some people or in some situations. Some of them you might be able to solve differently at a higher investment/cost, or with hacks. Some of them (like the UX issue) are just trade-offs that don't automatically make sense for every other user just because they make sense for you. Right now Windows supports some things Linux doesn't, and vice-versa. Could they be doing something better? Perhaps with more effort maybe they could both support a common superset of what they support, but it's not without costs.
Software shouldn't uninstall or update itself. There should be a package manager to do this. Then at least you have one attack vector less per application.
I think package managers are the single most impressive feature Linux distros have over Windows. Everything else I use has some kind of equivalent; for a dev environment you can sort of get by with MinGW and MSYS. But if there's anything on Windows remotely as capable as apt or pacman, I haven't heard of it.
winget: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/wi...
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Except they all leave files everywhere in ~, ~/.cache, ~/.config, ~/.whatevertheyfeellike
The ~/.whatevertheyfeellike is an antipattern (that is annoying) but the others are well defined in the xdg_desktop spec[0]. Personally I appreciate knowing where the config/cache for each application is. (Though it does annoy me when programs don't follow this as in your third example) [0] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-...
Why do Windows programs need special installers/uninstallers? Why isn't this handled by Windows itself?
It is, these days. Windows 10 onwards has a native package format called MSIX that somewhat resembles packages on Linux. They're special zips containing an XML file that declares how the software should be integrated into the OS (start menu, commands on the PATH, file associations etc). Windows takes care of installation, update and uninstallation. The system is great, in theory. In practice adoption has been held ba…