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

[drag]

The major thing about microsofts drive naming sceme that I don't like is just how little it actually relates to your hardware. I can go to any linux machine and find out were are the mounted volumes are and what their hardware or network source is by the df command. The /dev/* files tell me how the machine is configured. With windows there is no way for me to be able to tell anything about the hardware if I am unable to look at the icon pictures in the my computer screens.

Linux:
/dev/fd0 first floppy
/dev/fd1 2nd floppy

/dev/hda primary master ide device
/dev/hdb primary slave ide device
/dev/hdc secondary master ide device
/dev/hdd secondary slave ide device

/dev/sda first scsi drive
/dev/sdb second scsi drive
etc....

Then the partitions have numbers like this
/dev/hda1 first partition first harddrive
/dev/hdd5 this is a logical partition on the 4th drive
/dev/sdb3 this is the third partition on the 2nd scsi drive...

Ow.. my head aches from all this memorization.

Now how about Windows?

a: first floppy
b: second floppy
c: first partition first harddrive
d: 2nd partition first harddrive, or the first partition second drive, or network mount
e: 3rd partition first hd, 2 part. 2nd hd, 1 part. 3rd drive, or network mount
f: 4 part. 1 hd, 3 part. 2 hd, 2 part. 3 hd, 1 part. 4 drive, or network mount
g: 5 part. 1 hd, 4 part. 2 hd, 3 part. 3 hd, 2 part. 4 hd, or network mount
h: 6 part. 1 hd, 5 part. 2 hd, 4 part. 3 hd, 3 part. 4 hd, or network mount
i: 7 part. 1 hd, 6 part. 2 hd, 5 part. 3 hd, 4 part. 4 hd, or network mount
etc etc
<sarcasm>
Oh, now I see how easy it is to administrate a windows box with a previously unkown configuration. No memorization of the hardware is required. Very simple. No having to goto fdisk and memorizing the the partition tables at all... No wonder windows is so easy to use.
</sarcasm>

So if I had a windows box, What would d: be?
or f:?
or o:?

How about in linux.. What would /dev/hda3 be?

or you do type "df -h" and pressed enter. And had some entries like this:

drag $ df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5 38G 5.1G 33G 14% /
/dev/hda3 9.7G 1.3G 8.4G 13% /home
/dev/hda1 90M 1.6M 88M 2% /boot


What would that mean?

I means that people like Linux's sceme better not because Linux = god, but because it's usefull and makes sense. MS's sceme isn't just obsolete, it's just a plain crappy idea to begin with, Unix's mounting directory tree is older than MS's, but it's much more usefull.

Especially when dealing with users that don't have to know about the configuration of the machine. IF you make the home directory a NFS mount on a file server, it's not different than a local partition or even a simple directory. But to a admin, 3 keystrokes will give all the information that he will probably need for most anything involving the location of mounts and devices utilized.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: drag


I means that people like Linux's sceme better not because Linux = god, but because it's usefull and makes sense. MS's sceme isn't just obsolete, it's just a plain crappy idea to begin with, Unix's mounting directory tree is older than MS's, but it's much more usefull.

Right.

The things are completely fluid. You can tell exactly what /dev/hda1 means on my computer. What is Y:?

As far as the "it will break things" argument, put a feature in to symbolicly link (it's about time this was included with the OS anyway) c: to whatever it may be. So if I have a file called file.txt in / and c: was linked to it, I could refer to the file using either c:\file.txt or /file.txt.

After a few years, you could remove this if you wanted. There is no reason that they can't.

Speaking of file systems, we don't even have write capability on NTFS, and now we have a new file system coming out. Joy.

PS- Y: is my DVD-ROM. Z: is my CD-RW, even though the CD-RW is the master.

 

[Spyro]

As far as the "it will break things" argument, put a feature in to symbolicly link (it's about time this was included with the OS anyway) c: to whatever it may be. So if I have a file called file.txt in / and c: was linked to it, I could refer to the file using either c:\file.txt or /file.txt.

Adding symbolic links to windows?!?!

 

[drag]

BLASPHEMY!!!

You can't add symbolic links in Windows, because that will just confuse users...

 

[Nothinman]

NTFS supports links and they call them junctions for directories. You need a 3rd party tool or the Resource Kit to create them though, IIRC.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
NTFS supports links and they call them junctions for directories. You need a 3rd party tool or the Resource Kit to create them though, IIRC.

Yeah, I wonder why they didn't just include it with Windows.

Oh, well.

 

[ShawnD1]

i actually like drive letters, i gives a very good indication of where you are. something like /backup doesn't in any way imply that you are using a different drive but E:\ or E:/ definitely implies you are using a different drive.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
i actually like drive letters, i gives a very good indication of where you are. something like /backup doesn't in any way imply that you are using a different drive but E:\ or E:/ definitely implies you are using a different drive.

It doesn't imply it, for good reason. If you really want to find out, it's trivial to do so, but generally, you put mount points where you want them, you understand which drives are where, and it does make sense -- because you laid it out yourself. Typical unix vs. windows debate though, it's always like that. In unix you have to remember and know alot of stuff, but you are better off for it. In windows you don't need to learn much, but you pay for that by being relatively powerless.