programs

[mdchesne]

I was just thinking about how annoying it is trying to uninstall, let alone find, all the random programs and files I have on my computer. Call of Duty is totally dead thanks to all the mods and .pk3s people autodownloaded to my computer that it damaged the actual .dll files. I have all these files lying around that I can't get rid of becuase they were either corrupted uninstall files or partiall downloaded drivers and no matter what I try I can't get rid of them. No matter tho, because once i get suse working, windows can kiss it's @ss goodbye on my system. Which leads to my question: why is it that windows programs need to spread themselves throughout my system like weeds while mac programs simply stay in the same folder you install them to like potted plants? If you don't want a program, just find the folder and drag it to the trash. No uninstall files, no directory files that could become fragments, nothing. all nice and compact in one folder. Why doesn't windows do this? Do the linux distros do it this way too or what?

 

[hopejr]

The idea is to use common and shared libraries to prevent re-inventing the wheel. Unfortunately, Windows spreads these around the place (WINDOWS\SYSTEM, WINDOWS\SYSTEM32, WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\*, Program Files\Common Files, etc), and one never really knows where the related files are (unless one wrote the app).
On Linux/Unix, most of the shared libraries can be found in one place, i.e. /usr/lib, most of the time (rarely anywhere else). It's easy to find.
On OS X, the shared libraries are found in /System/Library/Frameworks. Apps don't add any to this area, because those libraries are usually sufficient. If they need anything extra, they are usually not shared, and are found in the app itself.

This post doesn't make any sense, but oh well. Maybe I should get some sleep.

 

[mdchesne]

how does it not? I was just wondering why windows needs to spread around the various files instead of putting them in one area. but you answered it, so thanks