Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#11

Post by squigz » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:07 AM UTC

90s_dev wrote: post #5

> Also, I tend to stick with default configurations because it makes bug filing easier. I've learned to use default configurations pretty much everywhere. It's far too much of a hassle to maintain customizations, so it's easiest to just not care. The exception is my ~50 lines of VS Code settings I have sync'd in a mysterious file somewhere that I've never seen, presumably on github's servers, but not anywhere I can s…

> It's far too much of a hassle to maintain customizations

Is it? The vast majority of the time, I change settings/set things up the way I want, and then... leave them for literally years. Hell, I can directly restore a backup I have of Sublime Text from years ago and my customizations will work.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#12

Post by shriracha » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:12 AM UTC

Great read. Raymond Chen's blog is absolutely legendary.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#13

Post by analog31 » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:15 AM UTC

This relates to something that might have started around that time: The practice of displaying the splash screen for a finite time period, then showing the user environment before the software was fully started. It was suspected that both OS's and apps were doing this, because people notice when "the app takes too long to load."

Now you have to guess whether the software has really loaded or not before you start using it.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#14

Post by skydhash » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:19 AM UTC

90s_dev wrote: post #5

> Also, I tend to stick with default configurations because it makes bug filing easier. I've learned to use default configurations pretty much everywhere. It's far too much of a hassle to maintain customizations, so it's easiest to just not care. The exception is my ~50 lines of VS Code settings I have sync'd in a mysterious file somewhere that I've never seen, presumably on github's servers, but not anywhere I can s…

I only depends on an handful of tools (emacs, vim, lf, mpv, fish, foot,…) so I took the time to configure them and then just store the config in a git repo I sync everywhere. For personal computers I use stow. For remote machines, I just copy-paste. The nice thing is that those tools are so stable I could move to Debian stable and be OK.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#15

Post by optymizer » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:19 AM UTC

squigz wrote: post #11

90s_dev wrote: post #5

> Also, I tend to stick with default configurations because it makes bug filing easier. I've learned to use default configurations pretty much everywhere. It's far too much of a hassle to maintain customizations, so it's easiest to just not care. The exception is my ~50 lines of VS Code settings I have sync'd in a mysterious file somewhere that I've never seen, presumably on github's servers, but not anywhere I can s…

> It's far too much of a hassle to maintain customizations Is it? The vast majority of the time, I change settings/set things up the way I want, and then... leave them for literally years. Hell, I can directly restore a backup I have of Sublime Text from years ago and my customizations will work.

It is. I used to customize everything. On Windows 95/98/2000/XP - custom cursors, themes, icon packs, custom Windows loading screen, the works. When I used KDE (and Gnome for a while) and compiz came out, I enjoyed flaming windows. Same story - custom icon packs, make grub menu look nice, hell, custom kernels compiled for my CPU, etc.

Somewhere along the way I lost interest in customizing the OS. These days I routinely switch between MacOS, Windows and various Linux flavors on lots of computers. The only thing I may customize is I write my .vimrc from memory.

On my Android phones, I change the wallpaper and I disable animations. Otherwise, stock everything.

Now that I think about it, it can't be the time saved, surely I waste more time on HN. It likely correlates more with using computers for work as opposed to for fun and learning. Even the learning I do these days is rather stressful - if I can steal an hour or two on the weekend, I feel lucky, so spending time to customize the environment seems like a waste.

Maybe if life slows down, I'll find joy in customizing my OSes again.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#16

Post by pdpi » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:29 AM UTC

A bit meta, but I've come to look forward to the "Why did happen with " headlines that herald a Raymond Chen post. These are always fascinating.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#17

Post by Larrikin » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:30 AM UTC

optymizer wrote: post #15

squigz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's far too much of a hassle to maintain customizations Is it? The vast majority of the time, I change settings/set things up the way I want, and then... leave them for literally years. Hell, I can directly restore a backup I have of Sublime Text from years ago and my customizations will work.

It is. I used to customize everything. On Windows 95/98/2000/XP - custom cursors, themes, icon packs, custom Windows loading screen, the works. When I used KDE (and Gnome for a while) and compiz came out, I enjoyed flaming windows. Same story - custom icon packs, make grub menu look nice, hell, custom kernels compiled for my CPU, etc. Somewhere along the way I lost interest in customizing the OS. These days I routine…

Eh, I find a computer not customized to my work flow to be a waste of time. The amount of time I spend using someone else's computer is such a small amount of time.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#18

Post by SudoSuccubus » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:32 AM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#19

Post by alex-mohr » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:33 AM UTC

The code in question reminds me a lot of my favorite Kubernetes bug:

  if (request.authenticationData) {
    ok := validate(etc);
    if (!ok) {
      return authenticationFailure;
    }
  }

Turns out the same meme spans decades.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#20

Post by TheDong » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 3:39 AM UTC

90s_dev wrote: post #5

> Also, I tend to stick with default configurations because it makes bug filing easier. I've learned to use default configurations pretty much everywhere. It's far too much of a hassle to maintain customizations, so it's easiest to just not care. The exception is my ~50 lines of VS Code settings I have sync'd in a mysterious file somewhere that I've never seen, presumably on github's servers, but not anywhere I can s…

Reproducible self-contained configurations give most of the same benefit for bug filing.

Just your regular reminder that nix is good actually.

"I have a bug, you can get a full VM that reproduces it with 'nixos-rebuild build-vm --flake "github:user/repo#test-vm" && ./result/bin/run-*-vm'"

And the code producing that VM isn't just a binary blob that's a security nightmare, it's plain nix expressions anyone can read (basically json with functions).

And of course applying it to a new machine is a single command too.