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Windows has had hard links for a decade or so. Vista even ships with "mklink" which can make three different kinds of links. Before that, you could download uti

Windows has had hard links for a decade or so. Vista even ships with "mklink" which can make three different kinds of links. Before that, you could download utilities to make them. Windows won't unlink a link that is in use because its normal filesystem API promises that behavior. You can use different APIs to get different behavior. The registry exists in the format it is in to boost performance, not hinder performance. It supports approximately the same ACLs as the filesystem so there is nothing that makes it inherently less secure than the filesystem. And, the registry is designed to be exposed by custom GUIs, not by regedit. For example, to change the registry setting for the default program to open ".html" files with, you could* use regedit, but the Windows philosphy says there should be a dedicated UI for it instead (the "Default Programs" UI in this case).

anigbrowl 17y ago
'Strue. I do get frustrated with the registry model, although I've gotten good at dealing with it. On the other hand, custom GUIs help to improve Linux penetration, since many people are intimidated the command line or configuration file editing. I like Win and Linux, Mac seems to me to combine the worst of both. Sure, it's personal. Application compatibility matters, Linux lags badly on video & audio editing tools. When I first ran Linux around 1993, what really annoyed me were Emacs & vi. Sure, they're powerful, but extremely alienating to new users. DOS had Edit, or Windows 3 had Notepad. Ubuntu and like distros succeed because most people just want to drive without learning how to be a mechanic. Linux's biggest problem is people's perception that there's no 'standard' distribution and that they're going to have do an awful lot of icky maintenance.