Comments on: Windows Sucks (an old rant)

By: Shaara

Shaara — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:38:28 +0000

When I launch some *.deb package, who can tell it doesn’t have “rm -rf /home/* &” in it’s post-install script? Most utility programs now can be just dumped in arbitrary folder and will work from it. Some crucial shared components are signed now and in that way “promise” not to break anything.

By: The Customer Is Always Right | Piestar

The Customer Is Always Right | Piestar — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:35:32 +0000

[...] I’ve even written a post bashing the Windows software installation method and since this is technically an anti-Linux (and thus [...]

By: Roogie

Roogie — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:25:43 +0000

Yeah, I’d definitely support an OS managed installer rather than this free-reign bullshit. I’d also like applications to be more compartmentalized in Windows.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:10:22 +0000

@Thomas

Your commentary and that of Kerberos are not analogous to each other.

Your former commentary, until recently, involved the typical “Linux > Windoze” fare, apropos of nothing.

Kerberos is stating that while he prefers Windows, he can also point out its problems. Windows users, unlike Linux users, don’t pretend our platform is problem-free.

By: Thomas B.

Thomas B. — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:04:25 +0000

Omg, I say bad stuff about Windows, and everyone flames and attacks me, but when Kerberos does it, no one flames him :p

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:43:41 +0000

Check out this essay by Sarah, an intern at the FSF. It reads eerily like the writings of a brainwashed cult follower.

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/sarah-mcintire-introduction

By: fellowhater

fellowhater — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:28:13 +0000

Startup apps has always been a bit of an annoyance. Thankfully, it’s solved in less than 5 minutes with the Sysinternals autoruns utility. Win7 also helps, by hiding such clutter and popups, which should also discourage vendors from adding something there that won’t ever be seen.

By: Roogie

Roogie — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:06:25 +0000

One really bad offender is Visual Studio.

Installation:
It gives you the option to specify what directory you want to install in. It then creates a folder and a few non-critical files in that directory. Afterward it ignores your specified directory and just installs in Program Files (no big deal if that’s where you want it). If you’re on x64 then some files go in Program Files and the majority in Program Files (x86). This begs the question, if the software is going to ignore my specified directory then why give me the option at all?

Uninstallation:
When you run the uninstaller all it does is partially removes the Visual Studio program. The dozens of other software that came with Visual Studio are not removed. It leaves it all behind? What the hell? Is it that hard to write a “remove everything” routine? Then of course if uninstall things in the wrong order you’re completely screwed and will be forced to remove things manually (a very long and painful process making the manual removal of old versions of Norton/Symantec seem like child’s play).

I like Visual Studio but damn the installer/uninstaller is completely retarded. You’d think it’d be a trivial matter for Microsoft to make these routines work properly.

By: wbkang

wbkang — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:21:14 +0000

I don’t think you can even cause BSODs with softwares in Windows now… The only places it can go wrong are drivers.
And I totally agree with problems crap installers and start-up programs. I know some softwares used to replace dlls in system32-and break my system. The problem is mitigated a little bit by file system virtualization I guess.

These days, core system files are not writable unless you are the “TrustedInstaller” user, which I assume it is the user Windows Update use.

By: .net jerkface

.net jerkface — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:27:04 +0000

You make a good point that Windows is plenty stable, it is third party crap that causes problems.

Vista has made a lot of improvements in terms of program limits compared to xp, especially when it comes to the registry.

Software repositories definitely have their benefits, the chief being that they prevent people from downloading random crap.

However I still prefer the win/osx system to dependency hell.