Poll: Should/will Microsoft ever drop the C:\ and just go with directories?

[Spyro]

This thread is kinda meaningless because I'm quite sure that MS on't change that. And they shouldn't either because that would break a ridiculous amount of software. Even though /cdrom, etc. is more logical, MS has used the a:, c:, etc. way of labeling drives since dos. This is yet another issue where windows is windows and linux is linux. I don't see any reason for things to be otherwise

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Spyro
This thread is kinda meaningless because I'm quite sure that MS on't change that. And they shouldn't either because that would break a ridiculous amount of software. Even though /cdrom, etc. is more logical, MS has used the a:, c:, etc. way of labeling drives since dos. This is yet another issue where windows is windows and linux is linux. I don't see any reason for things to be otherwise

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Windows should be Linux or vice-versa. I'm just curious about how many people like the whole c: scheme. When my friend first told me about Linux, back in like 1996, he mentioned the directory scheme. I loved the idea.

As far as it breaking backwards compatability, it might, but I personally wish the computer industry would just make a jump. Stop making things for like a year and start anew. Dump x86 and create something better.

Of course, that's just me wanting to see technology leap ahead, I'm sure it would be bad for the industry.

I hope this is coherent, I just woke up.

 

[filmmaker]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
I hope this is coherent, I just woke up.

Makes sense to me

 

[spyordie007]

but I personally wish the computer industry would just make a jump.

although I would also like to see the mass of "old stuff" to "just die" and people to move on it's impractical to expect that anything like that can ever happen. The other problem with that line of thinking is that we would be in a position of wanting to again do the same thing another 3-5 years from now

I hope this is coherent, I just woke up.

You're a bastard, you are 2 hours ahead of me and I've already been up for 5 hours :|

-Spy

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

but I personally wish the computer industry would just make a jump.

although I would also like to see the mass of "old stuff" to "just die" and people to move on it's impractical to expect that anything like that can ever happen. The other problem with that line of thinking is that we would be in a position of wanting to again do the same thing another 3-5 years from now

I hope this is coherent, I just woke up.

You're a bastard, you are 2 hours ahead of me and I've already been up for 5 hours :|

-Spy

I work nights. Trust me, I'd trade in a heartbeat.

I know, I don't expect the industry to just give up the old and bring in the new. I can't say that I would do it if I were in a position of power either. I'd just like to see what they come up with and how it changes the landscape of computing. Call it a social experiment.

 

[chsh1ca]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

So what? People have used MacOS, and it doesn't have C Drives or anything, (I'm talking MacOS <10).

One thing I would argue is that it is a PITA to reference a file location on any Mac OS, I think easier to do a "c:\dir\filename" than a "Mac OS/dir/filename", but of course that's just my personal preference and it has been almost a year now since I've had a Mac Box for myself to play around with.

-Spy

-Spy

Yes, but consider that most Mac users are in the same boat as most windows users. They never see a commandline, which is where the learning curve would be introduced. The fact that it will only affect power users, who should be able to easily grab new concepts only further justifies the argument for.

And by the way, are you employed by the Department of Redundancies Department?

 

[Spyro]

I hope the industry never makes a jump like that. How would I be able to play my old games then

 

[spyordie007]

And by the way, are you employed by the Department of Redundancies Department?

Nope...
...No

I hope the industry never makes a jump like that. How would I be able to play my old games then

We've already locked me out of C&C and X-COM, no need to take away more

-Spy

 

[Spyro]

We've already locked me out of C&C and X-COM, no need to take away more

Bah, all you need to do is downgrade

 

[Nothinman]

Dump x86 and create something better.

There have been a number of 'better' ISAs but they never get targetted at the desktop.

I hope the industry never makes a jump like that. How would I be able to play my old games then

The same way Opteron can run legacy x86 code.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Spyro

We've already locked me out of C&C and X-COM, no need to take away more

Bah, all you need to do is downgrade

Actually Im running XCom:TFTD as well as UFO:EU under Win2K, works fine save for a few sound problems

TFTD is such an amazingly kickass game, no 16->32 / DOS->NT transition is gonna take it away from me

 

[CTho9305]

Personal preference. If you absolutely hate drive letters, look at subst - it could be used to fake mount points.

 

[chsh1ca]

Originally posted by: CTho9305
Personal preference. If you absolutely hate drive letters, look at subst - it could be used to fake mount points.

Actually, subst (IIRC) only let you take a directory and fake that it was its own partition, not the reverse. A mount point can be really anywhere you choose to mount a file system (at least on unixes), whereas in Windows, the drive letters represent partitions except when subst is used, in which case it is simply a directory being represented as a partition.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Regarding the "find" command: that again is an application limitation. You could easily write a find program that has a switch to automatically search all drive letters. Even the "dir" command, if you use "dir c: d:" lists both drives. And again if the partitions are all mounted under directories in c: then the issue becomes moot. The fact that Linux happens to come with better command line tools is unrelated to the way the file system works.

As for DOS, Microsoft is doing its best to eliminate that entirely. But issues of drive letter assignments with RAMdrives or CD drivers is again an application limitation. A standard Win9x boot disk finds a CD drive and assigns a drive letter quite readily, whether you have 1 partition on a hard drive or 10, and a boot disk can be modified to assign CD drive letters from the end of the alphabet upwards if desired. (The 26 drive letter limit is hardly common to run into.)

 

[Nothinman]

As for DOS, Microsoft is doing its best to eliminate that entirely

I realize that, but a lot of places (my workplace included) use DOS boot disks for imaging and the like, so it'll be around for quite some time.

A standard Win9x boot disk finds a CD drive and assigns a drive letter quite readily,

Only if you load the atapi cdrom driver and even then there's no simple way to figure out what drive letter it assigned unless you set it statically in config.sys.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

The "Letters are entirely arbitrary and have zero correlation to what is on the actual drive" reason doesn't count?

Notice that I am not suggesting that MS should switch, in fact I'd rather see the opposite happen. The more bad design choices they make, the less fuel windows fanboys have for flaming.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Partition names on Unix are entirely arbitrary too. They may be conventionally assigned things like /home, /usr, et cetera, but they don't have to be. Yes, it's easier to assign a name based on what's on the partition, but drive labels do the same thing in Windows, again, talking about the GUI, not a command prompt. Windows default directories can also be modified to point to other locations, though not during install. So you could make a Program Files directory on the D drive rather than C, and put the user profiles on another drive, so the fact that Unix does that automatically is less different than it seems. Microsoft doesn't make it easy of course, but that's a separate design issue from the use of drive letters.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: chsh1ca

Originally posted by: CTho9305
Personal preference. If you absolutely hate drive letters, look at subst - it could be used to fake mount points.

Actually, subst (IIRC) only let you take a directory and fake that it was its own partition, not the reverse. A mount point can be really anywhere you choose to mount a file system (at least on unixes), whereas in Windows, the drive letters represent partitions except when subst is used, in which case it is simply a directory being represented as a partition.

Sorry, I meant "JOIN". It hasn't been recommended since win95, and may no longer exist, but it was the opposite.

link with some info.

By the way, IIRC NT does support "real" (*nix-style) mounting... the drive letter is arbitrary, but it is all hidden to keep the familiarity from DOS/9x.

 

[tokamak]

i've never used linux for more than about 5 minutes. my idea of what the "root" is is very vague, and most of the things discussed in this thread that pertain to linux are completely foreign to me. i do not care for command lines. what you guys seem to be forgetting is that the VAST majority of windows users have even less experience with computer than I do. while i feel confident that i could figure out something new given the time, dropping a:/, c:/ etc will just confuse your average computer user. the windows system is like the QWERTY keyboard - maybe its not the most efficient or "best" system, but it works, and it's what everyone has become accustomed to, so theres no need to change it...

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Partition names on Unix are entirely arbitrary too.

/dev/hda1 and /dev/wd0d are not arbitrary in the least. I can ascertain quite a few things just from the names.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: tokamak
i've never used linux for more than about 5 minutes. my idea of what the "root" is is very vague, and most of the things discussed in this thread that pertain to linux are completely foreign to me. i do not care for command lines. what you guys seem to be forgetting is that the VAST majority of windows users have even less experience with computer than I do. while i feel confident that i could figure out something new given the time, dropping a:/, c:/ etc will just confuse your average computer user. the windows system is like the QWERTY keyboard - maybe its not the most efficient or "best" system, but it works, and it's what everyone has become accustomed to, so theres no need to change it...

The change could be transparent. The average user would never know.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
/dev/hda1 and /dev/wd0d are not arbitrary in the least. I can ascertain quite a few things just from the names.

That's easy even for this inexperienced Linux user... /dev/hda1 is an IDE (hd) hard disk, the first one (a), specifically. The 1 refers to the partition number. Now see, that wasn't hard at all, was it? FWIW, SCSI drives are "sd" instead, but follow the same numbering scheme otherwise. IMHO, the UNIX way makes it a lot easier to keep track of which drive and/or partition is which than the Windows way of arbitrarily named drive letters does.

 

[tokamak]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: tokamak
i've never used linux for more than about 5 minutes. my idea of what the "root" is is very vague, and most of the things discussed in this thread that pertain to linux are completely foreign to me. i do not care for command lines. what you guys seem to be forgetting is that the VAST majority of windows users have even less experience with computer than I do. while i feel confident that i could figure out something new given the time, dropping a:/, c:/ etc will just confuse your average computer user. the windows system is like the QWERTY keyboard - maybe its not the most efficient or "best" system, but it works, and it's what everyone has become accustomed to, so theres no need to change it...

The change could be transparent. The average user would never know.

oh....i'm in way over my head here...*slowly backs away from thread*

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: tokamak

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: tokamak
i've never used linux for more than about 5 minutes. my idea of what the "root" is is very vague, and most of the things discussed in this thread that pertain to linux are completely foreign to me. i do not care for command lines. what you guys seem to be forgetting is that the VAST majority of windows users have even less experience with computer than I do. while i feel confident that i could figure out something new given the time, dropping a:/, c:/ etc will just confuse your average computer user. the windows system is like the QWERTY keyboard - maybe its not the most efficient or "best" system, but it works, and it's what everyone has become accustomed to, so theres no need to change it...

The change could be transparent. The average user would never know.

oh....i'm in way over my head here...*slowly backs away from thread*

*reaches out, grabs tokamak, and pulls him/her/it back in*

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

No one escapes us!