Microsoft to intro checkpoint cumulative updates for Win 11 Microsoft is making yet another attempt to combat update bloat with checkpoint cumulative updates coming to both Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025. Windows Insiders on the Dev Channel can already preview what Microsoft is planning in build 26120.1252. Microsoft previously endeavored to reduce the size of updates via …
But I bet it has a lot to do with the registry.
On Linux you're just replacing a bunch of files. On Windows you're replacing a bunch of files but also having to update registry information since it uses that as a central store for everything and mostly avoids text configuration files.
The problem is that the registry is a single choke point, with no parallelism possible when updating it. If they want to improve the speed of patching, my guess would be making the registry into a proper database that allows multiple threads to make changes in parallel would be a far bigger win than anything that reduces the bandwidth consumed by downloading updates.
"If they want to improve the speed of patching, my guess would be making the registry into a proper database that allows multiple threads to make changes in parallel would be a far bigger win than anything that reduces the bandwidth consumed by downloading updates."
Changing the registry to a "proper database" wouldn't improve this much as the updating of the registry files would still be a bit of a bottleneck...
I think a better solution would be to revert back to INI files - say one for each of the various subsystems...
And think of the benefits... Backup one small INI file (a few kilobytes) before implementing a change and if the change stuffs up do a restore - much quicker than backup/restore of the 100 or so megabytes of registry...
And you could even use a text editor of your choice!
blink.
double blink.
well. duh... you know who's the greatest and bestest whizzzkid at Micros~1 these days? Kinda controversial guy, has had a past run in with linux? Not the one to fancy plain text, read- and editable ini files...
I mean, it DOES make a lot of sense to me, but ... that might be hard to sell with them.
And this "(text editor) of you choice" ... quite sure Micros~1 doesn't mean the same thing as we do do when it comes to "your" and "choice".
Urgh. The registry is evil. It stops you being able to back up your settings and restore them on a new machine. I can understand this for *some* bits of the system, but every damn application uses this for all of their settings, the vast majority of which have no relationship to what the machine you're running on is.
@may_i: “That's a very good question! I've long failed to understand why any windows update, differential or otherwise, takes several orders of magnitude more time to install than a bunch of updates on any Linux system that I run.”
Windows mixes functionality throughout the OS. Therefore making it difficult to clone. That also making it difficult to update. I've had problems uninstalling app(a) and app(b) decides it's become unlicensed. Windows, a right royal pain!
The mixing of applications and OS is a major design failing of Windows (and many other OSs).
To ensure better security (and efficiency), the OS should be as isolated from applications as possible, with only well-defined links between the 2.
And don't get me started on DLLs!
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