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Windows always requires a reboot after updates or big programs are installed. Linux generally does not require reboots but occasionally does.

It seems to me that the OS should be able to touch/edit anything it needs to while it's running, or at a minimum shut down a process, update it, then start it up again with minimal interruption to the user.

  1. What is the computer doing technically that requires a reboot?
  2. Why can't it update or install programs without rebooting?
  3. Rhetorical question: Why hasn't Microsoft or others figured out how to update/install programs without reboots?
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  • Ha, I was looking all over for similar questions, I'm surprised I didn't see that one. I still feel like my question is a little more technical though.
    – tbenz9
    Sep 29, 2013 at 21:55
  • funnily enough in xp (I haven't tried it in 7) if you end task explorer.exe and make a new one, it is a bit like a restart but not as deep. I used to do it to recover from crashes.
    – barlop
    Sep 29, 2013 at 22:50

2 Answers 2

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Basically The Reboot would depend on the Changes made by the software. To answer your questions:

What is the computer doing technically that requires a reboot?

If the Software is installed on windows normally reboot would fix the registry changes of the software.

Why can't it update or install programs without rebooting?

Let me say your installation software creates one new user account, it cant be done without affecting/interrupting the actions of kernel. That is the changes made in software would interrupt the basic properties of os. In order to smoothen the process the software vendors force you to reboot.

Why hasn't Microsoft or others figured out how to update/install programs without reboots?

Its their core architecture. You might noticed the linux machines wont need reboot since:

From booby's answer:

The major reason for this behavior is that Linux doesn't lock executed files and libraries, which allows direct replacement of those files and does only require the applications to restart. For installations is the reason the package-management-systems, while in Windows every program installs all needed libraries (even if they're already installed, but when they are in use they are locked, which needs a restart to clear the situation) in Linux an application only references the needed packages which are installed once (and never again), reducing the overhead.

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Here's a good analogical explanation:

Say you have a bunch of people and a bunch of cars that they share. You have one place you keep the keys when someone isn't using a car. So you go to the storage area, grab a key, drive the car, and put the key back.

Now suppose you want to change where you keep the keys. You can't just have people change one at a time because you could wind up with car keys left where nobody will find them. The easiest and safest way is to destroy all the people and cars and start over with everyone using the new location. (Okay, the analogy breaks down a little bit.)

The short version is this -- you can't change to creating tracking of any kind in a new way until everything that might access that tracking understands the new way. That either means a reboot or a very complex migration plan.

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