Re: "Windows became glacial on both systems" @AC
There was a power cut last month so my 'uptime' is only 22 days. Prior to that it was 200 or so.
The reason that Windows requires reboots on an update is that the file system cannot replace a file that is open, such as a dll. This means that the replacement files must be put in another place and a script written to move those files on the next reboot, which then must be done to complete the update.
Unix-like systems use a inode file system. This allows an open file to be replaced by creating a new inode for it and leaving the open file to be continued to be used through its own inode. When the old file has been closed by all programs then the old file is deleted and the disk space recovered - the OS keeps track of these file opens. It is only necessary to restart long running programs, such as web servers, to get them to use the new updated files.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
