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0 pointsphendrenad25y ago0 comments

> Astronomically lower probability of catching a virus.

Correct, but when was the last time you got a virus on Windows? (Obviously it's different for Regular Joe User, I'm talking about the HN audience).

> No bullshit forced updates when the OS feels like it.

In practice, my Windows install always updates in the middle of the night when I'm not using it. It closes all of my apps and only reopens the web browser. But, it's not so bad. It doesn't bother me. I can however see how it might annoy some people. But I think the effects of this are exaggerated.

> No phoning home with you being unable to launch an app when your manufacturer's server is slow.

Windows phones home, but to be fair, this post is about Linux vs Windows, and being unable to launch an app is a MacOS problem, not Windows.

> No shuffling about trying to install drivers for a thousand components before your computer is usable.

This is true in some situations. For instance, if you install Windows from scratch you'll have to wait while it downloads drivers. More of an automated process, no shuffling about. The alternative on Linux is to roll the dice and hope your drivers are baked into the kernel, if not you're back to (very manual) shuffling about.

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snazz5y ago

> In practice, my Windows install always updates in the middle of the night when I'm not using it. It closes all of my apps and only reopens the web browser. But, it's not so bad. It doesn't bother me. I can however see how it might annoy some people. But I think the effects of this are exaggerated.

Apple has definitely figured out the "reopen apps when you reboot your computer" feature. I wonder why it's taken Microsoft so long to do the same.

kazinator5y ago

Even if Microsoft were to provide some special API for this, tons of legacy programs won't be using it, and most new ones will also ignore it.

Under Microsoft Windows, application installers can register some handler to run on startup, and can implement this themselves: the program can check whether an instance of the program was interrupted by reboot, and if so, start it up in a special way whereby it is told to recover the state from the most recently saved parameters. Those could include volatile state like position of windows, object selections and whatever.

There is really nothing for Microsoft to do there other than maybe lead by example; implement some sort of best practice in a few notable Microsoft programs, document the practice and encourage developers to do same.