Registry Rot: Real or Myth?

[KingSpycrab]

While discussing the differences between Windows and Linux, those in support of Linux often mention "Registry Rot" as the major flaw with the Windows OS. From personal experience, I can attest that Post-Windows XP machines that run slow are usually because of bad software, and not because of the OS itself. What are your experiences? Do you think that Registry Rot is real, or just an excuse to tout Linux above Windows? Does Linux have an alternative to the Windows Registry that performs the same functions with equal efficiency? Do you think that machines slowing over time is because of the OS or 3^rd Party Software? I'd appreciate everyone's input on the matter, especially if you have experience using both Windows and Linux. Thanks!

[KingSpycrab]

After a quick Google search(should've done this first), I found that Linux's form of registry is kept in text files stored in several locations. What I want to know is if this is slower/faster than the Windows Registry and, as mentioned in the Techquickie video, if the use of text files hinders the ability of software to communicate with the OS and other software.

[Atmos]

Overtime, with my experience on windows 7 I've definitely had my fair share of os corruption. Though, almost 100% of the time it was because I done focked it up to begin with.

Files do not simply change without being modified unless theres damage to the storage medium. Linux is just as susceptible to a program fuckin up registry as windows is.

 

Can't exactly speak to the effectiveness of text > windows proprietary formatting for registry, but the majority of the time once again its almost entirely Dependant on the program being run, and its software level.

[vanished]

Well, I do know that in the days when people still used HDDs as the boot drive, Windows would absolutely slow down over time, and to an extreme degree; a absolutely brand new install of XP on a P4 machine would be literally less than 1 second, and a fairly new but actually "lived in" system would be many seconds, but it would easily get to the point over time (a year or two) where to log in and wait for everything to "settle" could take well over two minutes.  This is still true as far as I know - at work, I had an i3 machine with an HDD and Windows 7 and was quite impressed when I started there how well it performed.  A coworker was in a very similar situation with an i5.  16 months later (remember these were work machines so it's not like tons of random crap was getting installed, and believe me they were very clean to start) they were basically unusable: he was able to boot the computer, start the login process, wait 5 minutes, pull out his laptop, boot that and open outlook faster than the other computer could finish logging in.  Now the two interesting pieces of information are this: 1, Linux doesn't seem to do this, or at least does it to a tremendously smaller degree, and 2, using an SSD as a boot drive seems to eliminate it in Windows.

 

Take from this what you will

[stconquest]

This current install of Windows 7 I am using is two years old under heavy use.  I call bullshit.

 

I run a single 240GB SSD in my PC, so I am frequently uninstalling/installing software.

[Donut417]

On 5/11/2016 at 0:14 AM, KingSpycrab said:

While discussing the differences between Windows and Linux, those in support of Linux often mention "Registry Rot" as the major flaw with the Windows OS. From personal experience, I can attest that Post-Windows XP machines that run slow are usually because of bad software, and not because of the OS itself. What are your experiences? Do you think that Registry Rot is real, or just an excuse to tout Linux above Windows? Does Linux have an alternative to the Windows Registry that performs the same functions with equal efficiency? Do you think that machines slowing over time is because of the OS or 3^rd Party Software? I'd appreciate everyone's input on the matter, especially if you have experience using both Windows and Linux. Thanks!

From my understanding of the Windows is that when you uninstall stuff, it doesnt delete every thing. So you might get stuff stuffing up the Windows Registry. Im pretty sure Linus did a video about this recently. However over time the Registry gets big and bulky and can cause slow down. I know there are registry cleaners that should be able to help with this issue. 

 

Now I can tell you this, over time on a normal HDD windows will become slower, But as @stconquest points out in his post, SSD's are much faster, so you probably wont notice anything slowing down. Because I had a pretty old Windows 7 install before going to Windows 10.