[esotericn]

> On Windows double clicking an exe file feels natural.

Isn't that just because the system is less structured in general, so you've been beaten into submission?

After spending years on Linux pretty much everything on Windows feels like it's potentially spewing ick all over the place (registry, arbitrary folders, etc, not to mention the lack of reproducibility)!

[TeMPOraL]

It's an issue of familiarity. I still feel that everything installed by distros' package manager or via "make install" is spewing ick all over /etc, /usr, /var, and God knows where. On Windows, almost everything only ever sticks to a) its installation folder, and b) the registry.

[biktor_gj]

Truth is, Windows is a mess when installing stuff also. Beside installation folder and registry, there is also user's AppData folder, \ProgramData in system drive, and then installers tend to leave some MSIs in \Windows\Installer, all the libraries in System32 and sometimes, they also place stuff in Program Files\Common files.

The best at isolation has historically been macis, and then again you have plenty of packages installing to /Library, kernel extensions, uninstallers being placed in Applications/Utilities, MS updater being placed in /System and so on

[com2kid]

This is how I feel when I use Linux!

Windows is moving towards apps living only in their own little containers, nice little isolated folders that they can't write outside of, with the exception of their reserved folder in AppData.

In contrast, *nix bunches executables up en-masse into a handful of folders.

It likely comes down largely to what you are used to.