Linked by David Adams on Tue 26th Jul 2005 15:09 UTC, submitted by Varg Vikernes
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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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.
It depends on your definition of "service" and in what context the term is being used.
Maybe someone needs to define just what a service is in Windows NT. Its nothing special beyond an application that can respond to messages from the service control manager. Besides having to follow certain security policies that are different than an admin while running in the SYSTEM security account thats the only difference. Its a regular executable application otherwise.
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.
OS X has a login process and like the xp login process it runs at all times. Kill it and fast user switching etc. is gone just like on XP.
The Dock on OS X is a process, just like the taskbar is a part of explorer.exe on windows.
I do not know many people who would consider OS X usable without the Dock. Its listed as a core service of OS X.
Yes other Operating Systems do have this design (all of them in fact as every software application or 'service' has some kind of runtime requirement or dependancy) and most people consider it to be a limitation when they cannot do basic things like navigate the UI of their computer as advertised once they disable all the 'services' on the machine.
Having services local and network accesable as appropriate and only spawned as needed is a good idea.
Agreed and it can be done on a windows system but historically has not been done by default as shipped from MS.
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.
Agreed.