[josteink]

> Speaking of which, why do so many things require reboot to update on Windows?

Can't speak for everyone else, but Windows fully supports shared file-access which prevents the kind of file-locks which causes reboot requirements.

The problem is that the default file-share permissions in the common Windows APIs (unless you want to get verbose in your code) is that the opening process demands exclusive access and locking to the underlying file for the lifetime of that file-handle.

So unless the programmer takes the time to research that 1. these file-share permissions exists, 2. which permissions are appropriate for the use-cases they have in their code, and 3. how to apply these more lenient permissions in their code...

Unless all that, you get Windows programs which creates exclusive file-locks, which again causes reboot-requirements upon upgrades. Not surprising really.

In Linux/UNIX, the default seems to be the other way around: Full-sharing, unless locked down, and people seem prepared to write defensive code to lock-down only upon need, or have code prepare for worst-case scenarios.