Bellicose Bumpkin

I’ve been posting recently about my problems with Windows and touting Linux. One of the main benefits of Linux is that updates are centrally controlled so that you get updates to the base operating system(Linux) and all the applications as well. This is in contrast to Windows which has one mechanism for keeping Windows itself up to date and applications such as web browsers and email clients are left to fend for themselves.
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Once a week or so Linux automatically notifies me that updates are ready to install – like it did this morning. In this screenshot you can see updates to the very core of the OS – the kernel and a software development application – Eclipse. Press the button …. done.

As I recently posted – my Windows XP machine at home was infected with Antivir Solutions – an “antivirus” program that infects you with itself and then tries to get you to pay to remove it. That was three hours down the toilet.
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Yesterday my family informed me that the computer had been horribly slow lately so I started digging into things. I did all the usual – looking for extra services, removed extra programs, did some XP tuneup things that I found on the net and finally got to defragging the computer. “Defragging” is something that any experienced Windows user knows about but is virtually unheard of in Unix/Linux because their filesystems don’t suck. As your disk starts getting full, there is no one spot on disk large enough to add a large file so filesystem stores pieces of the file throughout the disk – this makes accessing the file slow. It also slows down other things that are waiting in line to access the disk. I had to go through some gyrations freeing up space because my main C: disk was nearly full.
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The computer is a Sony Vaio that we’ve had for probably 8 years. The thing came with a 70-80GB drive that was split up(partitioned) into 13GB C: drive and 64GB D: drive. As you may or may not know, when you create user accounts on Windows, it puts them in C:\Documents and Settings\UserName. Every file you download or application you run leaves things inside this directory. When you start getting involved in graphics and movies these directories can become huge and I have been battling a space shortage on C: for years. Dear Sony – I hate you. This insane artificial limitation on where user directories can be on Windows drives a Unix guy like me crazy. On Unix, user directories can be anywhere on the machine or network and can be moved at will. So – I decided that I would find a way to move my user directories off of C: or die trying. I learned a few things along the way that some of you might find interesting.
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First off – I’m talking about home computers running Windows XP – not networked computers like you might have at work that have profiles and such. After googling around, I found a couple of solutions – all of which had problems. When initially installing Windows, you can create some sort of file that will make it put user directories wherever you say – not an option for me since my computer is already installed. This still doesn’t mean you can put then anywhere – just that you can put them somewhere other than C:. Various people reported that you could get into some ugly hacking of the registry to get the directories elswhere – which looked dangerous and difficult. A coworker had a good suggestion – if I had another disk, you could make that partition appear as a folder anywhere in C: – say replacing C:\Documents and Settings with another drive. I wanted to use H:\Users as my user directory storage not H: – so I didn’t like that idea even though I probably could have made it work.
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So my solution was to use the Windows equivalent of a symbolic link. SymLinks are a very handy construct that have existed since time immemorial on Unix. The are a pointer to another location that might exist anywhere on the machine or network. They look feel and act like regular files and directories but just point to somewhere else. Windows only recently had something similar called “junctions” and in typical Microsoft fashion, they have to take something logical and known and give it their own stupid name – like calling directories “folders” or replacing the defacto directory separator – the slash / – and changing it to be the hard-to-reach backslash \. Junctions first came into being in Windows 2000 probably 30 years after Unix had links and are far less capable. A Windows junction can only point to a local file or directoy – not a location on the network. It was not until Windows Vista in 2006 that Microsoft released a real symbolic link that could point to networked locations. But I have Windows XP and was stuck with junction points.
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So my plan in case it isn’t obvious yet was to copy the user directories from C:\Documents and Settings to H:\Users. I am neither a “Document” or a “Setting”. Then I would create a junction point in “Documents and Settings” pointing to the new location on my H: drive. First I acquired junction.exe because obviously Microsoft couldn’t include something in the operating system that was actually useful. Then I used xcopy to copy the directories, renamed the original dirs, and set the link with junction. Here are the actual commands:

xcopy mjb H:\Users\mjb /O /X /E /H /K /C

rename mjb mjb.orig

junction "C:\Documents and Settings\mjb" H:\Users\mjb

I like this solution over the alternatives – junctions allow me to move any dirctory on my system to another location while maintaining the original path.
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While I was doing all this work, I installed a couple of programs to make Windows more useful and bearable. Curiously I find that Windows becomes more useable as you install more non-Microsoft software. First up was KpyM Telnet/SSH Server. This allows my to login to my XP machine from another computer – this just gives me a simple command line. I already have VNC that give me the whole desktop on a remote machine.
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After that I installed Console2. The windows command line interface cmd is total crap (Start-Run-cmd). It can’t be resized which never fails to infuriate me. Console2 is more like the terminals on Unix/Linux and include tabs.
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So there you go – my space issues are solved, I installed a couple of useful tools on my Windows machine, and I learned a nifty trick with junctions. Enjoy. If you want to really really really piss me – supply me a solution to moving user accounts that is easier – my solution took me quite a while to figure out.

Leave it to Microsoft Windows to suck so bad that it even ruins the productivity of people like me who don’t even use it.
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So I’m under the gun to get my next Middleboro Gazette column done, trying to rehearse for my next gig, and inundated at work. My wife – who is a very smart and careful computer user – gets this POS malware on her work laptop. The stuff apears to be rogue anti-virus software called Antivir Solutions. Every action you take launches a popup that says you have viruses and must buy their software. This stuff was a pain to remove. I tried several different web sites with removal instructions and finally one that worked. This all came at a cost of about 3 hours of time I didn’t have to spend.
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After I got that squared away, I booted into my beloved Linux laptop just a few minutes ago. My Ubuntu update manager informed me of the pending updates – which included a security update for Firefox. Click, auto-download, auto-install, done. You poor Micro$oft Windoze users will never know the worry-free joy of browsing the web, clicking on links, and email attachments with having any fear that your next click will send you into virus hell. True that Windows is targeted more than Linux, but it’s also true that Windows just plain sucks and is insecure by design. Beyond being less targeted, more powerful, easier to install, easier to update, cheaper, just plain cooler, Linux software management is so far superior to windows it’s just ridiculous. On Windows, each application (Firefox, Thunderbird, GoogleEarth, is responsible for updating itself. Windows has it’s own mechanism for updating the base operating system – and screw everybody else. On my Ubuntu machine, all the installation and updates are centralized and automatic. In fact when the next version of Ubuntu is released, I’ll be presented with a button to update to it if I choose. Can you imagine clicking on a button that seamlessly updated you from Windows XP to Windows 7. FFC – Fat Frackin’ Chance.
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Did I mention that I hate Windows?