Windows woes

[pragma]

In article <e0dtb1$2mld$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Juan Jose Comellas says...
>
>At some point in the past, the only way to be able to be certified
>"Windows-logo compatible" was if you used the registry to save your
>program's settings. I guess they wanted to make it really difficult to
>switch computers without reinstalling. The registry is probably the worst
>abomination to come from Redmond and it's the cause of most of the problems
>Windows has.

Here's how I look at it.  The registry works fantastic for a few things:

1) Making explorer do file type magic
2) OLE/Drag-and-Drop interoperability (more file type registration and metadata)
3) COM registry
4) Application initalization

.. but design wise it has the following drawbacks:

1) Behaves as its own entity in memory (can you say "cache-thrashing"?)
2) Has its own LRU algorithm and behavior
3) Is prone to bloat, as applications abuse it in various ways

Now if I were to ask a linux/unix guru "does the operating system have any kind
of universal configuration storage medium, that is both fast and optimizable?",
the answer would be "the filesystem, duh."

I think the registry's #1 problem is that it has put on the winNT kernel, the
responsibility of maintaining two separate "filesystems", with completely
different interfaces and use characteristics.  As a result, the two compete for
the same resources (CPU, Cache, RAM and Disk Bandwidth) rather than cooperate.

Another way to look at it is: what happens to the registry if you're using a
program that doesn't talk to it?  Yep, it's still in RAM waiting to be used.  

Why they didn't just come up with a universal configuraiton file tree ( /etc
anyone? ), with filesystem drivers that feature superior or tree-specific
caching, I'll never know.  In every possible way, it would have provided a more
stable configuration, for about half as much engineering.

- EricAnderton at yahoo