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Vista has both symlinks and hard links. here is the output of mklink on my computer
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6001]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Matt>mklink
Creates a symbolic link.

MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target

/D Creates a directory symbolic link. Default is a file
symbolic link.
/H Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
/J Creates a Directory Junction.
Link specifies the new symbolic link name.
Target specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link
refers to.

Ah I see, thanks for that!

I love being corrected when I'm wrong - it's the best way to learn!

So I guess then that hardlinks are designed so that if you overwrite it, the linked file itself is overwritten, and a special procedure is needed to remove the link.

Still, Explorer & any other app should still be able to realize when the file is a link rather than the actual file.


Thanks again :-)

--The loon

The idea behind a symlink is that it points to another file. The idea behind a hardlink is that it is another handle on the file, no different then the first handle on it, just stored in a different logical place.

just google it and you will probably find a billion links to clearer and more succinct explinations than mine ;-)

symlinks are a better idea 99% of the time. when i read that ms was implmenting hard links my first thought was "why?". my guess is that winsxs is one of the only reasons they exist on the platform.

Edited 2008-11-22 20:28 UTC

Nice little tidbit about how Microsoft's unwillingness to pay your degenerate-thief-lowlife-scumbag uncle has something even remotely to do with the article.

Microsoft didn't impose enough restrictions on software vendors to prevent bloating the system. For example, some software will just put a huge .msi file somewhere in "installation data". Windows generally has a very bad software management system. Result is that Windows installations degrade over time and often a reinstall is needed to get a properly working thing without all the bloat.

As if this is not bad enough, Windows itself tends to accummulate lots of garbage data, caches, logs, update backups, registry blossoming, and whatnot.

My 1 year old XP installation now boots much slower than initially for unknown reason. Bootvis revealed that it spends 40 seconds in "Disk" loading part, which should normally take 2 seconds, for no clear reason - I failed to find any diagnostic tool that could reveal what's happening. Add to that various crapware startup tools that each app vendor feels free to add, and you get a 2-3 minute booting time.

On the other hand, I enjoy packaging systems found in Linux distributions like Fedora or Ubuntu. It's so much simpler to update the system and add / remove whatever i need. It's also easy to add additional repos when you need stuff that has legal problems (patented codecs etc.). The approach found in OSS feels light years ahead of the "unmanageable blob" approach of Windows.

Caches logs and backups aren't garbage...



5 bucks says you need to defrag.

If that isn't it, check out what is loading at startup, and what services are set to autorun with msconfig. If you can't figure out what is taking so long, open up your logs, and see if there is anything timing out in the application log or system log. If you aren't the kind of person that uses them, there are probably several hundred thousand entries at this point, so feel free to clear them then reboot to get a better picture of what is going on.

I really follow this idealistic idea, but I don't think MICROS~1 will, sadly.

Systems as you suggested are very welcome to fields of use where the costs for running the machines are more important than the costs of purchasing them. Of course it's cheap today to buy huge hard drives and tons of RAM, a fast state-of-the-art GPU, mainboard and processor. But now for the power supply and the energy consumption - I think they've grown more expensive than, let's say, a 10 years old typical PC. Energy consumption is usually better on "less performant" systems ("low end stuff"), but NB that performance is not a property of hardware or software alone - it's about the combination of both. Well written software is usable even on "low end stuff", just have a look at the many non-"Windows" operating systems such as BeOS (and its successors), the Linusi or the UNIXes.

The tendency is this: Increase hardware power. Sell software that eats it up completely and cries for more. Sell better hardware. Sell more hungry software... you're getting the idea. That's what industry calls progess - selling all new stuff every few years just in order to keep the users doing the same stuff they did years before.

With today's means, it's relatively easy to build systems as you suggested. But that's not the way MICROS~1 makes profit. You need to buy - you mustn't use free products that offer better performance (and, in conclusion, better usage of the present hardware and furthermore better cost relationships). Whenever a new "Windows" comes out, you can already prepare to buy new hardware. The "old" stuff goes to the waste dump. The environment says "thank you". So instead of creating more efficient software industry just throws mre memory and bigger disks at the customers.

My usual final take:

disk capacity + memory installed
------------------------------------------- = usage speed = const.
OS and software requirements

The "const." conclusion is obvious because that's what happens if you keep increasing numerator and denominator of this quotient.

And functionality seems to increase roughly as the cube root of (disk capacity + memory installed). That's the *real* tragedy.

Edited 2008-11-23 20:50 UTC

Indeed, my Linux powered 1.6GHz Atom Netbook (Eee 900A) feels much more sluggish than my L2 cache less 400MHz PPC (MPC5200) driven multimedia frame (a design study based on Efika 5200B) powered by MorphOS 2.x.

1.) Read the article
2.) Look for the words Netbook / SSDs

"Jeez. Right now we can get 1 TB hard drives for not much more than a hundred bucks. Unless Windows take more than 50 Gigs (which is far from it), I fail to see the problem."

The problem lies in computers such as netbooks. If they have an SSD, then the space is a huge issue. In your scenario that is desktop computers and standard laptops. Currently SSD's generally only come in 4-8 GB sizes. With the growth of the Netbook market, not being able to install your flagship OS as there is not enough space would be an issue, would it not?

Yes, the SSD right now is limited in size and it is a major issues if the Operating System takes up the entire disk leaving a minute amount of space for the end user.


Also, another note one has to take in the amount of space required by Microsoft Office.

Still the biggest problem is the mentality of programmers/developers that have been told disk space and memory is cheap. What happens if the price of storage and memory sky rocket as the Oil situation that brought the economy to a halt.

What happened between Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 7?

All programs/operating systems need to be written with the mentality of disk storage & memory are a premium then the performance aspects by the end user would be surpassed and any new hardware would increase performance and enable home users to have a QoS.

Are you kidding?

Have you seen how much space band aids take up these days. With the amount of wounds windows had and has, just the scars would fill 7 gig

You must still be using Slack with Fce ... Ubuntu is a pig of disk space.

Look again. Even the x86_64 version of Ubuntu still fits on, and can run from, a single CD. That's the full version and not some cut down version. And there's room for the installer, so the Live CD and install CD are one and the same.

Edited 2008-11-24 16:47 UTC

You are partially correct.. Except for the fact that everything on a LiveCD is compressed substancially to fit it on a CD. It can be done like this because you're not making any changes to the core of the OS, and any new updates to it will mean a reburn of the disc. Not an issue, but figured I should point that out. Same goes for Knoppix and pretty well most LiveCDs that have that much jammed in on it.

Not to be contrary. But I said:

"""
Even the x86_64 version of Ubuntu still fits on, and can run from, a single CD. That's the full version and not some cut down version.
"""

That is all *completely* correct and not just partially correct.

Except when you 'install' on a hard drive, it bloats out. So when talking about OS' bloatness (which is what this topic is about), you're comparing compressed to non-compressed.

Sure, it runs, but you can also enable compression on NTFS partitions. However, nobody wants to do this since it usually makes the system sluggish. It's true that 'some' compressions make reads/writes faster (at the expense of CPU cycles), but usually isn't the best compression technique out there.

Andrew,

Of course the installed image is larger than the compressed installation image; Surely any OSNews reader should recognize that implicitly without anyone having to jump in to share that startling "insight".

Anyway, IIRC, the installed OS is about 1.5GB. Not bad at all by 2008 standards. By comparison, I believe Vista requires about "a 20GB disk with at least 15GB available free space". About a 10 fold difference. Even with NTFS compression, you're never going to get that within a factor of 5 of Ubuntu's installation size. Even Windows advocates in this thread have admitted that you'd never squeeze it onto an 8GB SSD.

Edit: And why did I even bother to type all this out, anyway?

Edited 2008-11-24 21:16 UTC

That is the official requirement for home basic, which is the "We have a sub 100$ sku" edition. When you talk about vista, you are talking home premium/ultimate/business which have a 40gig requirement.

Big difference is that anyone with build 6801 can test this out for themselves, as this is not something that is planned, but something that is actually done. The keynote demo of win7 at the PDC was done on a netbook.

Out of curiosity, what were the specs of the netbook?

Lenovo S10, which is a 375$ machine, and higher end in the netbook world. people have been installing build 6801 on a few different netbooks now, with results comperable to XP.

this guys installed on an Asus eee 1000h with 1.6 ghz cpu and a gig of ram http://blog.laptopmag.com/eee-pc-1000h-runs-windows-7-well his biggest issue was that 720p video didn't run that great.

You've never used SCO Open Server. It's a veritable rat's nest of symlinks. (At least they were symlinks and not hardlinks.) I never quite understood what it was that they were trying to accomplish with them. Whatever it was, I never needed it, and reveled in the simplicity and clarity of FHS when I escaped to it.

Edited 2008-11-24 15:13 UTC