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Delete shit running/loading in background?

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Calum:
actually i think you probably have!

in my opinion windows support threads should be answered intelligently with suggestions for how easy it would be to do the same thing under a more sensible and mature operating system, but some people might prefer to redirect the enquirer to the windowsbbs.com even though that site sucks and is run by blinkered morons who have been known to prune posts and ban IP addresses simply for using the word "linux".

Fett101:
For an interesting contrast. What would you do in Linux to acomplish the same thing?

Calum:
it depends which linux based system you are running. for red hat, see the link i posted above.

with linux systems, many distributions have different things that are set to run when the system boots, and more things that are set to run or not run at each runlevel. different runlevels are for different purposes, for example, runlevel two is usually multi-user but no networking, so typically none of the networking stuff'd be brought up if you booted into that runlevel, runlevel 3 is everything (including networking) and runlevel 4 or 5 is usually everything, plus a graphical user interface (it's runlevel 5 on mandrake, suse, red hat etc, and runlevel 4 on slackware for example). runlevel 6 is reboot, runlevel 0 is shutdown and runlevel 1 is single user, in case you're interested. you could add all the networking stuff to runlevel 2's startup scripts, but why bother? it's a nice working model as it is. when the computer starts up, the script /etc/inittab calls the relevant scripts for that runlevel and runs them. This loads all the kernel modules, services and whatever you want that you have (or your linux distributor has) specified to run under that runlevel.

now, different systems handle the actual startup scripts under each runlevel quite differently. on red hat, mandrake, suse and all (generally the red hat branch of linuces) they use the sysv init process, so called because it is the method used in AT&T's System V Unix. Basically there's a directory at /etc/rc.d/ which contains a subdirectory for each runlevel (called /etc/rc3.d and so on, or something like it) and upon starting in a particular runlevel, the system goes and runs all the scripts in that directory that are set to be executable. Each service that could start under that runlevel has its own startup script. So to switch something off (that you don't want to start at boot time) you just go to the directory for that runlevel and do "chmod -x ", this way you don't need to edit anything, you just switch the executable bit on or off for each service.

At the moment i am using slackware. it is a little different (though not much) in that it uses the BSD style init (so called because it's the system that Berkeley's Unix clone was using at about the time that System V came out). Slackware and its derivatives, as well as the three BSD derivatives are the only distributions that i know of that still use this method. It's the same, except that instead of a directory full of scripts for each runlevel, there's just one script for each runlevel, and to switch a service on or off for that runlevel, you have to edit the script yourself. Usually there are entries in those scripts for things you're going to want, so it's just a matter of commenting out things you want switched off, or uncommenting things you want switched on. Or if there's not an entry there already you can just add one, and type out all the commands you want to be executed next time that runlevel is started.

With many systems, there's a nice easy GUI tool to do this all for you. In Red Hat it's somewhere in your red hat start menu (and it's called SysV Init Editor or something equally imaginative), and i am sure mandrake and SUSE have something similar. Xandros (which is debian based, and uses some variant of the SysV method that i haven't quite figured out yet) has a simplified GUI for this in kcontrol (the KDE Control Center) so it'd be worth cheking there out on other distros if you want a nice GUI to do this for you. And all these GUIs are of course free. I doubt you'll find a piece of freeware to do this for you under windows (especially one that won't mess your registry up while doing so).

This sysv/bsd init stuff may all look terribly confusing but it's not once you get used to it (the same as anything in linux, taken from a windows user's perspective, i mean look at the windows registry, how confusing is that to somebody that's never heard of it before? *), and this system means that even if something like realplayer or whatever you install does set itself to start at boot time, you can easily go and sort it out yourself. instead of hundreds of pages of meaningless registry keys, you are faced with half a dozen directories, each containing maybe two or three dozen scripts, that you can switch on or off with a simple two word command (or in the case of a BSD style init, you just edit one of the scripts in /etc/rc.d they are all sensibly named and there are about 15 of them in total, so it's not hard). So once you know these basic facts, you're set to "delete shit running/loading in the background" in seconds. with one hand. you could just about do it in your sleep. and it requires no additional software either.

Sorry for the long answer, hope this answers your question...





* - very. and unnecessarily so, too.

JanusChrist:
Sometimes having Windows on your computer is like having a small penis: It sucks but there isn't much you can do about it.

Calum:
if you say so. i think it's more like having a stone in your shoe. you can get rid of it, and you know your life will be hell until you do, but you can't be assed to undo your laces, so instead you just hope it'll work its way round to the toe end where you can't feel it for a while.

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