8 ms·

Windows seems far worse to me, and has always seemed worse. Somebody just asked me to help fix their Windows laptop, which is running ridiculously slowly. My in

Windows seems far worse to me, and has always seemed worse. Somebody just asked me to help fix their Windows laptop, which is running ridiculously slowly. My inclination is to wipe it and install a fresh version of Windows. That'd be pretty easy in Linux (I use a separate /home partition and routinely reinstall the OS) but Windows is such a mess, how do you untangle the user's own data and installed software?

mehrdadn 9y ago
> That'd be pretty easy in Linux (I use a separate /home partition and routinely reinstall the OS) but Windows is such a mess, how do you untangle the user's own data and installed software? %UserProfile%\{Desktop,Documents,Music,Pictures,Videos,...}?
- incompatible 9y ago
  Is %UserProfile% an environment variable? Will there be multiple settings of it? Hopefully if the user's data is all in one subdirectory tree and I could cope. I'm not sure if it will work for software though, it tends to require random setup like registry changes and would also require reinstallation. Which may be difficult if it was pay-to-install software of if the original vendor is defunct.
  - mehrdadn 9y ago
    > Is %UserProfile% an environment variable? Is $HOME an environmental variable? It's certainly exposed as one. Same here. > Will there be multiple settings of it? Will there be multiple settings of $HOME? You can certainly set it to a different value for some program, but does that mean you have multiple settings of it? Same here. > Hopefully if the user's data is all in one subdirectory tree and I could cope. "Hopefully" the same is true when you do the same on Linux and cope there? > I'm not sure if it will work for software though, it tends to require random setup like registry changes and would also require reinstallation. Which may be difficult if it was pay-to-install software of if the original vendor is defunct. ...what? You explicitly asked about saving "user's own data" and not "installed software". The entire point of your comment was that you wanted to wipe the software while keeping the user data. So I gave you a solution for keeping the user data that let you wipe the software. Now you complain it doesn't work for migrating installed software?!
    - lexicality 9y ago
      > ...what? You explicitly asked about saving "user's own data" and not "installed software". The entire point of your comment was that you wanted to wipe the software and keep the user data. So I gave you a solution for keeping the user data and letting you wipe the software. Now you complain it doesn't work for migrating installed software?! I think they want to disentangle the user's installed software from the OS, rather than disentangling the software from the data.
      - incompatible 9y ago
        Yes, that was it.
      - mehrdadn 9y ago
        > I think they want to disentangle the user's installed software from the OS, rather than disentangling the software from the data. Huh? /home on Linux contains user software now? That's literally the example he gave for this on Linux...
        incompatible 9y ago
        There's a missing step after reinstalling the OS of running one of more apt-get commands to reinstall the software. Windows doesn't have apt-get of course. I do tend to have software installed in my home directory (stuff I wrote or at least compiled myself) and generally it would still work after replacing the OS. Missing shared libraries could break it, but it's not the sort of software where that's an issue. If a Linux system has proprietary software installed, you'd probably also have to copy /usr/local and/or /opt. Hopefully it would be statically linked or supplying any share libraries it needed but I suppose there's no guarantee.
        jodrellblank 9y ago
        Windows doesn't have apt-get of course. It has an app store, and it has an installable package manager - https://chocolatey.org/ https://chocolatey.org/
lexicality 9y ago
Generally speaking with modern Windows, it's the user's installed software that's the problem rather than the OS. There's a button in the settings to remove it all: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17085/windows-8-restore-refresh-reset-pc https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17085/windows-8-res...
- incompatible 9y ago
  Thanks.
- mehrdadn 9y ago
  > Generally speaking with modern Windows, it's the user's installed software that's the problem rather than the OS. It's the same problem on Linux... sudo {apt-get install,pacman -S,whatever} $blah and now have fun setting up and restoring everything in /etc/, ~/, /var, ~/.config/, etc. to just like it was before.

mehrdadn 9y ago

> That'd be pretty easy in Linux (I use a separate /home partition and routinely reinstall the OS) but Windows is such a mess, how do you untangle the user's own data and installed software? %UserProfile%\{Desktop,Documents,Music,Pictures,Videos,...}?

incompatible 9y ago
Is %UserProfile% an environment variable? Will there be multiple settings of it? Hopefully if the user's data is all in one subdirectory tree and I could cope. I'm not sure if it will work for software though, it tends to require random setup like registry changes and would also require reinstallation. Which may be difficult if it was pay-to-install software of if the original vendor is defunct.
- mehrdadn 9y ago
  > Is %UserProfile% an environment variable? Is $HOME an environmental variable? It's certainly exposed as one. Same here. > Will there be multiple settings of it? Will there be multiple settings of $HOME? You can certainly set it to a different value for some program, but does that mean you have multiple settings of it? Same here. > Hopefully if the user's data is all in one subdirectory tree and I could cope. "Hopefully" the same is true when you do the same on Linux and cope there? > I'm not sure if it will work for software though, it tends to require random setup like registry changes and would also require reinstallation. Which may be difficult if it was pay-to-install software of if the original vendor is defunct. ...what? You explicitly asked about saving "user's own data" and not "installed software". The entire point of your comment was that you wanted to wipe the software while keeping the user data. So I gave you a solution for keeping the user data that let you wipe the software. Now you complain it doesn't work for migrating installed software?!
  - lexicality 9y ago
    > ...what? You explicitly asked about saving "user's own data" and not "installed software". The entire point of your comment was that you wanted to wipe the software and keep the user data. So I gave you a solution for keeping the user data and letting you wipe the software. Now you complain it doesn't work for migrating installed software?! I think they want to disentangle the user's installed software from the OS, rather than disentangling the software from the data.
    - incompatible 9y ago
      Yes, that was it.
    - mehrdadn 9y ago
      > I think they want to disentangle the user's installed software from the OS, rather than disentangling the software from the data. Huh? /home on Linux contains user software now? That's literally the example he gave for this on Linux...
      - incompatible 9y ago
        There's a missing step after reinstalling the OS of running one of more apt-get commands to reinstall the software. Windows doesn't have apt-get of course. I do tend to have software installed in my home directory (stuff I wrote or at least compiled myself) and generally it would still work after replacing the OS. Missing shared libraries could break it, but it's not the sort of software where that's an issue. If a Linux system has proprietary software installed, you'd probably also have to copy /usr/local and/or /opt. Hopefully it would be statically linked or supplying any share libraries it needed but I suppose there's no guarantee.
        jodrellblank 9y ago
        Windows doesn't have apt-get of course. It has an app store, and it has an installable package manager - https://chocolatey.org/ https://chocolatey.org/

lexicality 9y ago

Generally speaking with modern Windows, it's the user's installed software that's the problem rather than the OS. There's a button in the settings to remove it all: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17085/windows-8-restore-refresh-reset-pc https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17085/windows-8-res...

incompatible 9y ago
Thanks.
mehrdadn 9y ago
> Generally speaking with modern Windows, it's the user's installed software that's the problem rather than the OS. It's the same problem on Linux... sudo {apt-get install,pacman -S,whatever} $blah and now have fun setting up and restoring everything in /etc/, ~/, /var, ~/.config/, etc. to just like it was before.