"Ten Outdated Elements of Desktop Operating Systems"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 22nd Jan 2010 17:06 UTC
OSNews, Generic OSes Taking a break from reporting on the latest netbook or phone rumours, Engadget posted an article yesterday about several elements in desktop operating systems writer Paul Miller finds outdated. While there's some interesting stuff in there, there's also a lot to discuss.
E-mail Print r 0   · Read More · 84 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/hks
Thread beginning with comment 405564
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
merkoth
Member since:
2006-09-22

You make it sound like the registry is magically free from file latency. Guess what, underneath it all the registry is composed of files as well.


Guess what, every part of the OS is composed of files.

It might be faster as far as an API goes, but these days you can do the same thing just as quickly with XML. Gconf on Linux, as well as OS X Plists, are XML files and both have APIs that are simple like that of the registry. At this point, the registry has become a complicated rat's nest and is being used for too many things. I hate trying to remove some unwanted ad-ware and having to go into a registry path such as:
HKEY Classes Root\CLSID\0xa2d9ff48\001a4dd3... etc etc. Ridiculous, and pointless to boot. It wouldn't be so bad if legitimate programs used the registry in a sane fashion, but they don't. At least with OS X Plists and Gconf the legitimate keys and folders have sane names, anything odd sticks out immediately.


I don't know anything about OSX's internals, but gconf is just as ugly as the Windows Registry. The fact that is stored in plain textfiles doesn't make it any more understandable than browsing regedit. On the bright side, you can edit it even from text mode.

In any case, I never stated that the registry was any better than other configuration methods. I only tried to give one of the reasons Windows developers actually used the registry in the first place. Why do they keep using it today is something I don't understand at all.

Reply Parent Score: 2