i never use an ssd as a system drive when i build a pc. i use a high size/high speed hdd. my laptop`s main harddrive is one gigabyte while my desktop`s harddrive is 2 gigabytes.

The Mac installers more or less are tar.gz files. There's no executable; it just uses the system installer, or you can extract the files manually using xar and tar. Using 7zip does reduce the size but only by <10% (at least for the few games I tested). GOG used to have .dmg files for Mac versions where you just drag and drop the game icon to wherever, since Mac stuff doesn't really do the "spew files everywhere" thing. However it was changed to a .pkg installer years ago apparently because of Galaxy for some reason (gee thanks, Galaxy!). Although to be fair, DLC is easier to handle with an installer.

That's not very smart, to be honest. The fastest HDD doesn't compare to a SSD at all. Hard drives are good for mass storage and backup, but not much else. Those are the exact opposite of "high size" and would only be large enough to hold a small fraction of many games. I assume you meant terabyte, but those are still not "high size" by any stretch.

Bad practices in general?
- still hardcoded (non configurable) savegame + settings locations, so they'll scatter files in whatever dir or clutter your personal folders.
- some games are still FPS dependant

Normal applications usually only need one installation location per computer, but using registry to tell a game where it is installed and where it should store its settings and saves is really annoying for anyone who would like to experiment with different sets of mods for the same game, so with games the ideal solution would be to save the settings in the installation folder and one of the settings would be a path to the savegame folder, which by default would of course be the usual "%USERPROFILE%" path, but could now be easily changed to whatever other path would better suit the end user.

There only ever is one installation location. Registry is not an installation location. It is a one stop shop for all settings within Windows and it can be used by any other application that wishes to. Settings that can be easily exported and then merged into a single file with any basic text editor. Settings that are unified, and consistent, and easy to learn. I have written a custom .reg file that configures all of my settings with a simple double click whenever I get a new PC or reinstall Windows, without having to manually tinker with hundreds of GUI settings. This is far better than if the settings were all over the place, scattered trough hundreds of config files, or, even worse, in custom inconsistent install directories.

Sure Windows registry has a list of installed applications, but that is so that the OS would know what command to run and in what directory when trying to uninstall an application from a centralised control panel. That's not a "second installation location" or anything like that though.
I think the only reason Windows registry gets a bad rep sometimes is that application developers don't always implement proper cleanup in their uninstall applications. Even then though, those abandoned registry entries cause no harm, unless they were meant to add custom shell buttons, in which case that can lead to dead buttons in Windows Explorer. That's entirely the fault of the developer though, not the system itself. Windows registry is extremely useful once you learn it and if you use it properly.

Storing settings in installation location is a horrible and insecure practice from the days when every application ran elevated. Normally applications are installed in a protected location that cannot be edited without admin permissions. If you make a game store its saves or config in its install dir, then the game also needs admin permissions to be able to write there. There should be no need for a game to run in admin though and so this stupid practice was, thankfully, abandoned a long time ago.

If it's a small portable application, then it may be more convenient for it to carry its settings around with it, but otherwise, no installable application should ever store its data in its own install directory.

%LOCALAPPDATA% is just as common a location for game data as %USERPROFILE% these days, if not morose. Of course there are many other locations, 'cause, for some dumb reason, nobody wants to use the dedicated folder (%USERPROFILE%\Saved Games) created by Microsoft for that very purpose. Well perhaps they could make the installers more compartmentalised.
I always kinda thought that executable for every DLC were kinda unnecessary. They could just have a single executable for the game that acts as a package manager of some sort, like you say, and then we get a tick box to choose which DLC (or audio packs) we wish to install in one go. Think Visual Studio installer, I guess? It would certainly help for games with 20+ DLCs.

Especially if/when a game stores what should be a user serviceable setting in the registry, instead of just making it accessible in a local configuration. Or games like Close Combat 2, which are designed such that they fall apart if the registry can't be written to.

I guess you don't mod your games or only do it with games that don't require overwriting original files with modded files, as otherwise you would not be able to so easily sidestep the point I was making about the registry making modding unnecessary complicated when a game's installation folder is set in stone by the registry rather than the game being left free to assume that all the assets it needs can be found within relative folder paths from the the main executable.

Games really should not be installed under the Program Files folder, as that only teaches gamers to elevate rights for any game whenever something isn't working as was supposed to, rather than become very suspicious if only after installing mods, a game suddenly started to ask elevation.

The problems with the registry are things like this:
* You need a specialized tool to access it, as opposed to plain text files that can be opened with any text editor.
* If some program manages to corrupt it, it can cause loss of unrelated program settings, and could make the system not boot (except maybe in safe mode). Conversely, if each program uses a separate file, corruption of that file affects only that program's configuration/
* The existence of the registry means that simply backing up the files will not be enough to back up the software and/or its settings.
* Similarly, applications that touch the registry are essentially not portable, both in the sense that they won't run on other OSes, and they won't run properly if installed to removable storage and executed on another system.

I consider the registry to be a mistake, and one of the main technical issues with Window.

By the way, Linux puts the system-wide config files all under /etc, so they're all in one place.

Also, under WINE I believe the registry is implemented as a text file.

What specialist tool are you talking about? You can access the registry with:
The Registry Editor (Regedit.exe)
Command Prompt via Reg.exe
PowerShell

All 3 come with Windows. .Reg files themselves can be edited with any basic text editor and the syntax is simple and consistent, while config flies will be all over the place and potentially use different syntax for each application.

Applications mainly ever write to their own-created key (folder). If they're gonna corrupt something, it's themselves. If an application is stepping outside of its own bounds, then it is:
1) Adding buttons to the shell, in which case the only potential damage it can cause is some buttons that link to nothing if the app is uninstalled and the registry entry is not removed. It will not cause the system to not boot.
2) It is some stupid registry cleaner app that should never be used. People who do not understand Windows registry are much safer with some potentially redundant entries than letting some stupid app arbitrarily decide what is important and what is not. Either clean the registry yourself or not at all.
3) It is malicious.

Other than portable apps, even if the app does not utilise the registry, its settings would be stored in AppData and / or ProgramData. You would have to back up multiple directories anyway. Also, again, unless it is a portable application, why would you even want to back it up in an installed state, rather than backing up its installer?

So again, whether you back up the registry or a bunch of config files from AppData makes no difference. There is, like I mentioned previously, a massive benefit in restoration that registry provides. With regular files, you have to note down the intended directory for every single one of them. If you want to restore them all with one click, you have to write a comprehensive script.
With Registry, you can export the necessary keys (folders) to .reg files. You can then copy all that data into a single .reg file. for a very simple restoration. The location of data will be stored inside, there is no need to note it down separately, nor keep track of multiple files then.


Not every app needs to be portable. Also, unless the app contains executables for each OS, it's not gonna run on multiple OSes anyway. Windows supports portable applications, so it's not like the presence of the registry means you are forced to use it.

And I consider the Registry to be one of Windows' biggest strengths. Like I said, I can spin up a new machine and have it be completely customised with a single file in an instant. It's truly amazing. And I didn't even need to write no elaborate script either. Registry makes it very easy. For applications that do not use the registry, I have to deal with manual config file copying all over the place. That is far less effective.

People always portray the registry as this big scary place, yet it is very easy to understand and incredibly convenient.

If Linux also keeps various config files in a single directory, then what's stopping someone from messing all of those up? I fail to see the difference.

The fact that the program has to choose a specific file to open.

Or worse, they're not FPS dependant, yet they'll run up the framerate at an arbitrary maximum. Hope you like melted video cards!
But this is about GOG's tepid installers, not the games themselves.

the harddrives i mentioned is from 2013 and older. HDDs suffer less wear than SSDs. each time an SSD starts the operating system, it suffers massive wear. that is not the case with HDDs. there is a lot of unserious manufacturers however. i use seagate harddrives, they have never failed me. toshiba too is safe, if you are willing to pay extra. toshiba costs a lot more than seagate.

Er, the wear on SSDs is on writing, of which there is far less, while the mechanical wear on HDDs is on every operation.
What HDDs tend to still have over SSDs is what happens when they do fail. A HDD will often warn of an imminent (big) failure by having momentary problems, and when it does fail it may "revive" enough to allow backing up, or have only parts of it fail, and if need be the data on them is more likely to be recoverable (albeit possibly at quite a hefty cost) in case of a complete failure. When a SSD fails, it may well be sudden and complete.

As for brands, I used to have Seagates, but first one failed just before the warranty expired (the replacement's still around actually, but unused in several years), then another was a complete mess, fail after a year and a bit, replaced under warranty, first one was DoA, they replaced it again, that failed after 3 months. Since then I'm on these WDs, a 500 GB Black and a 250 GB VelociRaptor (discontinued series by now), working fine since 2012. Got the 250 GB SSD in 2018, but just has the games installed on it. (So people today would say they're tiny, but I manage... As long as, ahem, nothing big tries to use Temp, or anything else on the system partition, since I that should just be for the OS and space on it really is at a premium...)

It's more the risk of accidental damage that I'm thinking of.

(Of course, said risk is even lower on Android (and probably iOS), where each app has its own private storage.)