Re: Reboot vs. Restart Windows

[Andrew DeFaria <Andrew at DeFaria dot com>]

Mike Maxwell wrote:
> Most of us don't look in the dictionary to find out what computer 
> terms--or any other words--mean.  I would guesstimate that you learned 
> 99% of your vocabulary, computer or otherwise, without looking it up. 
> So by that count, 99% of the words we know are our own arbitrary 
> definitions, made up by observing how words are used, or occasionally 
> by having someone tell you what a word means (and they probably 
> learned it the same way).
Let me get this straight, just because you're too lazy or perhaps proud 
to look up a word that you don't know the meaning to we should change 
terminology to fit your needs?!? Then you "guessitmate" (AKA pull a 
number out of your ass) that 99% of the population is as lazy or stupid. 
Said people are using computers and most likely the net too. Is it 
really too much trouble for you to do a google search or say search out 
on answers.com or wikipedia?!? Do you similarly campaign to have 
electricians or auto mechanics to change their terminology?!? This is 
the field of computers (used to be called computer science). You're 
welcome to come into our world but like any profession you gotta learn 
the jargon....
> Me, I learned "reboot" when I was operating a Cyber 170/750.  It meant 
> (IIRC) lifting a little door and operating a switch, at which point 
> the computer referred to the settings of a wall full of toggle 
> switches for the first few instructions to follow.  I'm sure I never 
> looked the word up in a dictionary.
>
> Besides, times change, but usage changes more slowly.  When I was in 
> the Navy, the term for starting up any piece of equipment, be it a 
> boiler or a computer, was "fire it up."
I'm willing to bet that that terminology was never allowed on a submarine!
> I assure you that even in those days, no one lit a fire under the 
> (analog) computer to start it, despite the words we used.  So it's not 
> inconceivable in these days of Windows, virtual OSs, etc., that we 
> might use the term 'reboot' to mean s.t. other than completely 
> restarting the computer.
>
> Also, remember that not everyone using CygWin is a geek, nor a native 
> speaker of English.  Why not make the msg clear to non-initiates?
I see no clearer benefit to using restart as opposed to reboot. Indeed 
reboot is a commonly accepted notion by most people in the business and 
now a days, most people not in the business but using computers themselves.
> > And if you close all running Cygwin apps and services as recommended,
> As you will have guessed from reading this far, I'm old enough that 
> it's quite possible my memory is fading.  But I don't recall seeing 
> any msg from the setup program telling me to close any running Cygwin 
> apps or services.  That would be a good addition, I suspect.  (I'm not 
> familiar with DLL programming, but wouldn't it be quite easy for setup 
> to tell whether Cygwin is running before the update starts, and tell 
> the user to shut it down?)
>
> OK, I just went through the update process.  Unless I need new reading 
> glasses, there really was no such recommendation.
It's difficult to say exactly what to shut down as Cygwin isn't normally 
started up as per say. The basic problem tends to be whenever you're 
updating cygwin1.dll. Just about all Cygwin processes use that thus it's 
loaded in memory and Windows does not allow it to be replaced when it's 
busy. If you, for example, installed services such as cron, inetd, etc. 
then cygwin1.dll will be loaded. I don't think there's an easy way to 
determine what caused cygwin1.dll to be loaded and to easily point the 
user saying "You have sshd configured as a service and it's using 
cygwin1.dll - you need to close that". It's probably doable to check to 
see if cygwin1.dll is replaceable *at this moment in time* but you 
cannot guarantee that it won't get used by the time you are about to 
replace it*! So, for example, setup.exe could check and see that 
nobody's using cygwin1.dll. Then it starts downloading/installing 
things. Meantime something happens to start a Cygwin process (let's say 
you have a Scheduled Task that fires off a bash script). So setup 
thought it was cool but when it came time to replace cygwin1.dll 
suddenly it's being used...

--

Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
Sex on television can't hurt you unless you fall off.


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