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Microsoft's Windows 10 upgrade adware keeps coming back!

GiGaBiTe said:
When I first moved from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, I thought the registry was a godsend. Instead of having to hunt down hundreds of INI and PIF files to change settings, you could use regedit and configure everything from a central program manually if need be.

But the registry didn't age well and by the end of the Windows 9x era, it became a PITA to have around due to increasing complexity and the all too common possibility of massive corruption that breaks Windows.

*nix suffers from the same problem Windows 3.1 did, thousands of config files with thousands of different ways to configure them. There's no defacto standard other than the awful new Systemd that tries to stick its tendrils in everything and causes even more problems. It's getting harder and harder to find a modern SysV based Linux today that isn't overly complex to use.
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I agree. Look at how it's done in AmigaOS, though. It's like a cross between the two: 'config' files are all stored in an orderly way in ENVARC: and mirrored in ENV: but they are just ordinary files that anyone can manipulate in the normal way. That kind of transparency sounds like a bad thing due to the way malware works, but really it's a good thing because the user always has very simple access to all the settings files.
 
For *nix. personally, I'd like to see each package (configuration files and executable binaries) in its own unique directory. Don't like a package? Just rm -r the directory and it's gone. Want to reconfigure? You know where to find the files. Move the application to a different machine? Just copy the directory.

I'm stunned by the amount of stuff that ends up in /usr/bin. Half the files there are a mystery to me.
 
Chuck(G) said:
For *nix. personally, I'd like to see each package (configuration files and executable binaries) in its own unique directory. Don't like a package? Just rm -r the directory and it's gone. Want to reconfigure? You know where to find the files. Move the application to a different machine? Just copy the directory.

I'm stunned by the amount of stuff that ends up in /usr/bin. Half the files there are a mystery to me.
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I'd like to see that too. Unix loses its appeal when the user doesn't have a constant understanding of what is where.

I'd still like to see a Amiga-esqe /prefs/ directory for all config files, sorted by directories with the package name. It's very handy to have the entire system worth of config files in one spot. When copying a package from one machine to another, the user/admin could easily choose to include that system's configuration for the package, or not.
 
I've been caught more than once by the "we have a global configuration file and per-user configuration files that override the global one". Keep changing the global configuration only to discover that it has no effect. Naming of configuration files could use improvement as well.
 
I thought I was careful, then I downloaded GWX Panel and found that Windows 10 had installed itself at some point. GWX Panel took care of it, but now I am very careful to review the descriptions of all Windows Updates to avoid installing a Windows 10 nag or Telemetry.
 
Chuck(G) said:
For *nix. personally, I'd like to see each package (configuration files and executable binaries) in its own unique directory. Don't like a package? Just rm -r the directory and it's gone. Want to reconfigure? You know where to find the files. Move the application to a different machine? Just copy the directory.

I'm stunned by the amount of stuff that ends up in /usr/bin. Half the files there are a mystery to me.
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It's shocking to me that that apparently never occurred to anybody back when the traditional *nix layout was still being established - instead they wound up with the most counterintuitive arrangement where any individual package can have files spread out across half the root-level directories in the system, and then they take it farther still with /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/share/bin, /usr/share/local/bin, /usr/local/share/house/that/jack/built etcetera etcetera. It's no wonder they need package managers in *nix-land.

(It's especially irritating because there's absolutely no reason they couldn't have a sensible layout other than tradition - the only technical issue I can think of that would make a package-oriented layout tricky is search paths for executables, but there's plenty of ways to work around that.)
 
If we just replace Unix with multi-user AmigaDOS (preferably with mufs PFS3), all these and other problems go away. :D

I think most people don't realize the power of assigns, especially PROGDIR:
 
commodorejohn said:
(It's especially irritating because there's absolutely no reason they couldn't have a sensible layout other than tradition - the only technical issue I can think of that would make a package-oriented layout tricky is search paths for executables, but there's plenty of ways to work around that.)
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I've still got my Unix System III manuals and there weren't that many programs in comparison to today's plethora. Most were self-contianed. My suspicion is that the whole mess grew like Topsy. It really got serious when the windowing desktops arrived. Lots and lots of little bits and where to put them?
 
Chuck(G) said:
For *nix. personally, I'd like to see each package (configuration files and executable binaries) in its own unique directory. Don't like a package? Just rm -r the directory and it's gone. Want to reconfigure? You know where to find the files. Move the application to a different machine? Just copy the directory.

I'm stunned by the amount of stuff that ends up in /usr/bin. Half the files there are a mystery to me.
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Not to derail this thread even further off topic (okay, fine, that's exactly what I'm doing) but I swear there is a distro + package manager out there that is trying to do this. Under the philosophy of "it's 2016, hard drive space is cheap", it supposedly even grabs compatible versions of dependencies and installs them locally along with the software itself. I wanted to try it recently but can't for the life of me remember what distro it was. Any ideas?
 
commodorejohn said:
Would never have happened if they were still using Amigas for that...
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I never saw it on live TV, but do you remember seeing Software Failures on those cable channel guides?

I always assumed that was Commodore's sole impetus to make 3.x ROMs automatically reboot, something that isn't always a good thing. Sometimes I leave something running overnight that quits when it's done and I never know if the system rebooted.
 
KC9UDX said:
I never saw it on live TV, but do you remember seeing Software Failures on those cable channel guides?
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Oh, that brings back memories. I recall one of those sitting at a Guru Meditation Error for a day or so.

But this Windows 10 thing is different because it is advertising and intentional. I honestly don't see how Microsoft has not gotten in to trouble about these popups. But I guess everyone has just come to expect annoying scary sounding popups from all software these days.

It's too bad she didn't take a moment to tell off Bill Gates or whoever is running that sinking ship these days that they don't want no stenkin' Windows 10.
 
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