Why does windows take up more space than Ubuntu?

[original_jamingrit]

If you really need windows, wait untill windows xp service pack 3 comes out (you might be able to get a beta now). Updating from service pack 2 will really bloat it up. Plus, sp3 is supposed to have native ogg support, so maybe the majority of computer users will be able to smarten up and stop using mp3s.

All of the updates on my clean install of xp just doubles that size. One could just reinstall it without autoupdates, and disable as many .dlls as possible.

It sounds like Vista is even worse.

[cogadh]

If never intend to uninstall the updates, you can also remove the leftover update files, which tend to pile up after a while.

[hessiess]

all windows programs are verry big compared to the linux equivalents eg, blender 11 meg, linux vertion. 3ds max 1 dvd, both programs have simaler functinlaty

[igknighted]

all windows programs are verry big compared to the linux equivalents eg, blender 11 meg, linux vertion. 3ds max 1 dvd, both programs have simaler functinlaty

Could this be due to linux' use of shared libraries? Every windows app keeps its libraries itself, while in linux you would download them once... could account for the difference in applications. As far as the base OS install, I doubt this is the culprit however.

Actually, it is an answer. The code for Windows is way more bloated than Linux. As ignighted just said, Windows is full of sloppy code. The Windows programmers only have to worry about making it work, not making it clean. The thousands of people who work on Linux are answerable to their peers for the state of the code and if someone writes something messy, someone else will likely clean it up. That doesn't really happen with Windows.

I sorta just take windows programmers writing bloated, crappy code as the given that we were discussing. I am more interested in whether the brass at redmond doesn't care, if they have reasons they want it that big (compiler optimizations so stuff runs better, selling more/larger HDs, whatever), or if the coders they have are just not capable of keeping the code manageable (be it due to a lack of overall skill or a lack of enough programmers)

[funrider]

dun get addict to *******, it will kill u

[cogadh]

I really don't think it has anything to do with a lack of skill, I'm sure Microsoft's programmers are quite skilled. I think it has much more to do with the whole closed source mentality. With a big corporate product like Windows, the only oversight is internal and as long as the end product produces the desired results, who cares what it looks like on the inside, the only people who are going to see it work for MS.

With Linux you have thousands of programmers worldwide looking at code that not only must produce the desired results, but must also be as simple as possible to understand for anyone who want to look at the code. To that end, Linux is constantly being cleaned up and optimized. In the end, the open source products will produce much cleaner, leaner code than the closed source product.

I speak of this out of my own experience in dealing with proprietary closed source software products that were developed by my former employer (not naming names, but it was nobody big). In addition to the software being completely bloated, the programmers themselves were embarrased by the state of the older parts of the code that no one had bothered to get back to and optimize. There was no driving force to do so, since the higher-ups just cared about whether it worked or not. It was the downside to the whole "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality.