5 ms·

*NIX: Hard links since the 70s. Glad Windows is becoming less of a toy.

by bsdlove 10y ago

ivank 10y ago
NTFS hard links have been available since NT4, released 31 July 1996.
- flukus 10y ago
  And finally out of beta.
- deathanatos 10y ago
  While bsdlove's comment wasn't that great, were not most Windows users not using NT until Win2k, and even then, sym & hard links weren't useful, since you needed (and continue to need¹) administrative privileges to create them? ¹excepting the recent change where a "developer mode" can be activated, but that still doesn't make them useful on an end user's machine, or to an end user.
  - jyrkesh 10y ago
    Developer mode is just a place for MS to stash new beta features so they can be tried out for a longer period of time than Insider Rings are allowed. I'm willing to bet it'll be default in another release or two w/out dev mode.
  - ygra 10y ago
    Hard links and directory junctions (the sort of directory symlinks that existed before Vista) never required administrative privileges.
    - tiraniddo 10y ago
      Well at least with hard links that's not strictly true. Using official win32 apis you need write permission on the file you're linking to so you can't link to say a system file as a non admin. Try mklink with the /H switch. Of course that's a bit of a lie, if you use the NtSetInformationFile api you don't need write access :-)
    - jaclaz 10y ago
      To repeat myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13095172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13095172
  - josteink 10y ago
    > While bsdlove's comment wasn't that great, were not most Windows users not using NT until Win2k, and even then, sym & hard links weren't useful, since you needed (and continue to need¹) administrative privileges to create them? To be fair it was first with Vista that Microsoft tried to seriously lock users down and keep administrative privileges far away for the common user. I'm pretty sure most Windows 2000-users had admin rights. This was not the reason symlinks was not adopted.
- pjc50 10y ago
  .. but not with a standard command-line tool shipping with the OS to create them. Which was kind of an odd decision.

*NIX: Hard links since the 70s. Glad Windows is becoming less of a toy.

by bsdlove 10y ago

*NIX: Hard links since the 70s. Glad Windows is becoming less of a toy.

ivank 10y ago

NTFS hard links have been available since NT4, released 31 July 1996.

flukus 10y ago
And finally out of beta.
deathanatos 10y ago
While bsdlove's comment wasn't that great, were not most Windows users not using NT until Win2k, and even then, sym & hard links weren't useful, since you needed (and continue to need¹) administrative privileges to create them? ¹excepting the recent change where a "developer mode" can be activated, but that still doesn't make them useful on an end user's machine, or to an end user.
- jyrkesh 10y ago
  Developer mode is just a place for MS to stash new beta features so they can be tried out for a longer period of time than Insider Rings are allowed. I'm willing to bet it'll be default in another release or two w/out dev mode.
- ygra 10y ago
  Hard links and directory junctions (the sort of directory symlinks that existed before Vista) never required administrative privileges.
  - tiraniddo 10y ago
    Well at least with hard links that's not strictly true. Using official win32 apis you need write permission on the file you're linking to so you can't link to say a system file as a non admin. Try mklink with the /H switch. Of course that's a bit of a lie, if you use the NtSetInformationFile api you don't need write access :-)
  - jaclaz 10y ago
    To repeat myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13095172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13095172
- josteink 10y ago
  > While bsdlove's comment wasn't that great, were not most Windows users not using NT until Win2k, and even then, sym & hard links weren't useful, since you needed (and continue to need¹) administrative privileges to create them? To be fair it was first with Vista that Microsoft tried to seriously lock users down and keep administrative privileges far away for the common user. I'm pretty sure most Windows 2000-users had admin rights. This was not the reason symlinks was not adopted.
pjc50 10y ago
.. but not with a standard command-line tool shipping with the OS to create them. Which was kind of an odd decision.