Ubuntu, XP and Vista dual boot.

[Frank]

I'm actually surprised MS hasn't made an effort to get rid of the registry
by now. They've already admitted that it was a bad idea, so why don't they
start working on removing it? Sure, they need to be concerned about legacy
applications but if MS announces that the registry will be gone after Vista
(or gone after Vista's successor or whenever), developers can start
preparing for it. MS could leave the registry in place to run parallel to
whatever replaces it, or perhaps even create some kind of virtual registry.
I'm sure there are some clever folk at MS that could come up with something.
And when the time comes that the registry is completely abolished any
applications that still require it will either have to run on a dedicated
legacy computer/OS or run in a virtual machine. That's what's happened to
DOS.

I'll bet internally, they've had some very hot discussions (arguments)
on that very subject.
Frank

 

[GO]

Oh I agree. The registry is the Achilles heel of the windows os. But
what can ms do about it? Dump it in an all new os? Great, but what
about all those apps designed over the decades that need a registry
to run. It's like a chicken and egg situation.
It nice that with nix based os's you can reinstall the os and not have
to do the apps.
The real problem with linux is the 300+ distros out there. It's like
they're trying to bring down an elephant (representing the pc market)
with a shot gun.
Ain't gonna happen!
Frank

I'm actually surprised MS hasn't made an effort to get rid of the registry
by now. They've already admitted that it was a bad idea, so why don't they
start working on removing it? Sure, they need to be concerned about legacy
applications but if MS announces that the registry will be gone after Vista
(or gone after Vista's successor or whenever), developers can start
preparing for it. MS could leave the registry in place to run parallel to
whatever replaces it, or perhaps even create some kind of virtual registry.
I'm sure there are some clever folk at MS that could come up with something.
And when the time comes that the registry is completely abolished any
applications that still require it will either have to run on a dedicated
legacy computer/OS or run in a virtual machine. That's what's happened to
DOS.

 

[GO]

I'll bet internally, they've had some very hot discussions (arguments)
on that very subject.
Frank

I'll bet, especially if Ballmer was involved.

 

[DefecTalisman]

Ok thanks to all but non still to answer the simple question at hand.
Vista will fit and run on a 20gig drive, this I know. As for anything else
installed. All on a 250gig drive. 4xIDE
cables(3x20gig(5400rpm)1x250gig(7200rpm))
From what people have said so far I am gathering vista 1st on primary
master, then xp on primary slave, then ubuntu on secondary master, then
programs/files on secondary slave?

Will vista automatically pick up the other OS's?
If not am I better off putting a 3 phase switch on the power
cables(remembering not to switch the switch unless powered down)? There is
no need to have to acces any other drive except the 250gig when using any of
the OS's.

 

[Stephan Rose]

Oh I agree. The registry is the Achilles heel of the windows os. But
what can ms do about it? Dump it in an all new os? Great, but what about
all those apps designed over the decades that need a registry to run.
It’s like a chicken and egg situation.
It nice that with nix based os’s you can reinstall the os and not have
to do the apps.

You do need to install the apps again, at least the ones that don't come
pre-installed, but the application settings, which really is the important
part, are preserved and untouched.

While I agree with you that the registry is a major problem of Windows, it
is not the only problem.

The first thing Windows would need to do is to get rid of having "drives".
The whole concept of having multiple drives just needs to go away. That
already then allows flexibility beyond anything imaginable right now in
Windows.

Here an application writes its settings to /home/user/.application where
".application" is generally the name of the application itself and the "."
in front of it indicates that the directory is to be hidden.

Has the advantage that if I want to app to have a clean-slate settings
wise, I can just delete the settings. If I want to experiment with
settings I can just backup the directory. On a reinstall, the
directory will still exist and settings will be preserved.

But the other key thing is this. The application does not know, nor does
it need to know, where /home actually resides. It doesn't care what
physical media it is stored on.

And with the new mounting system used in 7.04, it does not even matter
anymore in what order the drives are connected on the SATA or IDE bus. I
could disconnect all my drives right now, and reconnect them in a random
order and on reboot everything would still be in the same place. It uses a
special unique identifier now instead of the order in which the drives are
detected.

Windows on the other hand with its Drive letters, which change if you
change the driver order, the application always needs to know on what
physical media the data is stored as it has to specify a drive letter in
the directory path. That alone already generates a whole bunch of trouble
in disconnecting application settings from the operating system as a
different partition would mean a different drive letter. There is no fixed
physical media independent path an application could use.

So that's the first thing that needs to go away. No more drive letters.
Just one single file system structure that simply maps partitions to the
appropriate directories and by doing so gives applications a path
independent of the physical media setup to store its data.

Next of course, you are right, registry. But if windows had the above, the
registry would be far less of a problem. At this point in time, the
registry could be split into two halves.

All the operating system keys could go into the operating system directory
tree, and all the application keys could go into the user directory
tree.

The registry would still be an ugly thing to have around, but at least the
application part of the registry could then be disconnected from the
operating system part from the registry.

That would also make it far easier to prevent applications from mucking
around in the operating system part of the registry and screwing up the
whole system.

The real problem with linux is the 300+ distros out there. It’s like
they’re trying to bring down an elephant (representing the pc market)
with a shot gun.

The 300+ distros actually are not the problem. over 95% of them are just
permutations of the main ones. Let them exist all they want. Choice isn't
a bad thing as long as a new user is easily and instantly steered at the
main handful of distributions that actually matter. Then later on, those
who wish to play around with the other 95% can do so if they like.

I mean take Ubuntu. You have a few different Ubuntu distributions out
there, but they are all essentially identical except for how they become
pre-configured. You have Ubuntu, Kubuntu, edubuntu, xubuntu,
ubuntu-studio, and maybe a couple others but only differing in their
initial configuration and what apps come pre-installed. But anything
you can do with one, you can do with the other. I find that to be
preferable to the several Vista versions where some things you can do with
one you *can't* do with another. And any new user is initially steered at
just plain simple Ubuntu, and if they want to take their own initiate to
explore the others, that is up to them.

And ultimately, doesn't matter how many distributions exist. Only a few
will actually come out as the ones that are commonly used. Those will be
the only ones that really matter. Right now I see that to be Redhat,
Ubuntu, Suse, and maybe 2-3 others. The rest I find to be irrelevant.

If someone else wishes to run some weird distribution with some odd never
heard of configuration, then that will be their choice and their problem.

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

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