Dave Solomon of Sysinternals was experimenting about how many services are necessary for at least basic funtionality of Windows. What he discovered, however is that Windows can be perfectly used for almost all basic use, such as web browsing or running aplications, without any services running. In his article he explains how to achieve this. Apparently even Microsoft's own vice president of the Core Operating Systems Division was surprised about this.
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Member since:> I find it amusing that these guys made it so difficult
> to achieve
They made it so difficult because
1. most services ARE essential. RTFA - they could not even log off after shutting down all serrvices, nor would the task bar display any windows.
2. shutting down these services is "outside the specification". You cannot *expect* anything to work in this state, and they made it difficult to prevent people from abusing any effects they observe in this state.
> Mac OS X works right out of the box as a great client
> system with ZERO services running by default. Why
> does Windows need anything running at all?
So OSX does not have a kernel nor processes running after startup? Or do you think the microkernel-ish idea of moving functionality out of the kernel and into separate services is bad (and if so, then why)?
Member since:They made it so difficult because
1. most services ARE essential. RTFA - they could not even log off after shutting down all serrvices, nor would the task bar display any windows.
Essential by design under Windows. Other operating systems don't have that limitation and thus can start with no services and still be quite functional.
2. shutting down these services is "outside the specification". You cannot *expect* anything to work in this state, and they made it difficult to prevent people from abusing any effects they observe in this state.
This only emphasises that MS has made some questionable design decisions...after all no other OS seems to have this design and the associated limitations.
So OSX does not have a kernel nor processes running after startup? Or do you think the microkernel-ish idea of moving functionality out of the kernel and into separate services is bad (and if so, then why)?
Microkernel has nothing to do with it. The same applies to monolythic kernel operating systems.
Having services local and network accesable as appropriate and only spawned as needed is a good idea. That's why you may hear about unix/Unix being secure -- it uses things like init (and improvements to init) to lessen the impact of running an arbitrary service. Windows has svchost, though it's not as aggressive as init/xinit and others.
The fewer things that are running, the lower the complexity. The lower the complexity, the more likely that defects or odd interactions will not impact the system. Require that everyone runs 48 services and not only do you loose these benifits but you introduce the chance that attack vectors are plentiful and easily exploited -- something that should sound familiar.
Member since:
I find it amusing that these guys made it so difficult to achieve. Mac OS X works right out of the box as a great client system with ZERO services running by default. Why does Windows need anything running at all? It just creates a big security hole every time it's turned on.