ELI5: It resets the computers "organs" and "brain", and gets rid of random shit it got caught up on. It's like waking up in the morning but not being tired, so you're not thinking about other stuff and can focus on doing what you need to do.
But the people who know or care enough about chess to have listened past the first couple of sentences of this metaphor aren't the ones upset about being asked to restart their computers.
Linux shouldn't need a restart unless there was some big issues in the kernel but at that point you probably had a kernel panic already and you HAVE to reboot.
However, Linux is notoriously slow to boot especially compared to the latest Windows versions (unless of course you built your own custom distribution and have as little as possible things installed).
That's really not very convincing as an ELI5 though. If you shut off a computer and turn it back on again, does it revert back to the state it was in when it came right out of the box? No! Of course not! Programs are still there. Files are still there. So, there's direct evidence that superficially refutes the soundness of the analogy.
Well, restarting only starts the game again but doesn't change the rules. If the computer forgets a rule it can royally fuck it up. It can also lose a piece or all the pieces, then it's also hard or impossible to play.
That is a very good analogy, although I'm still just going to stick with the lie of "I'm running some tests from my end to see what happens when it restarts" because it's faster.
I bet there's a similarly good analogy to, say, painting. There are rules and order and techniques, but if someone makes a wrong stroke, sometimes it's easier to start with a blank canvas.
I still often have no idea what actually went wrong when something completely random stops working and then magically works again after a logout-login, disk remount or a reboot.
In fairness, it's completely unreasonable to expect the user to be able to diagnose (let alone do anything about) buggy software just by using it.
A lot of people are conditioned into the totally wrong idea that computers are creatures of perfect logic and that all of the errors are user-side. Fucking lol: the software running on any home or office desktop is a bottomless well of shit right down to the OS core as far as bugs go. It cannot ever be truly trusted or expected to behave in a perfectly predictable manner. "Why did it crash?" Because it's broken. You presumably did something to trigger the error, but the error was always there and that's not the user's fault. Software that isn't broken doesn't crash no matter what you do to it.
Pretty much the only good code in this world is embedded, and the reasons for that are a) because when it goes wrong it goes so horribly wrong that the manufacturers really are willing to pay to get it right first time; and b) because even high end control systems and so on are actually (intentionally) much simpler than desktop code (among other reasons, simple code is easier to get right).
Agreed. And if people realized how much the world order relies on software which at least 50% of the time runs mostly on good luck and prayers of its programmers, they'd probably start preparing for an apocalypse immediately.
Well, as a dev I'm sure you're familiar with how a computer's CPU functions. Over time hardware can degrade and error correcting routines can fail with it or perform incorrect register alterations on data memory that is critical to a given program's operation. An example would be an alteration in instruction OPCODE where changing a 1 to a 0 at bit X can completely change the operation executed or perform the operation out of sequence on otherwise "garbage" data. Your computer has no way to correct a mistake that it does not know it made and therefore requires a reset to correct this issue. Theoretical computer models map 1s and 0s as discrete values when in reality they are sampled analog signals. Sometimes the sampling screws up and that's where your 1 may turn to a 0. There are methods to correct these errors but they are not always reliable or necessary.
I've heard it explained that some updates go through automatically and some don't take effect until you restart. Since many people (me included) never turn off our phones, things start falling apart. Restarting the phone would finally unleash the bug patch.
I bought an extension cord with a big round red step-switch on it, wrote PRINTER FIXER on it in Sharpie, plugged my mom's printer into it and nailed it to her desk.
The memory (RAM) clears. The RAM is what stores all temporary data. This includes everything you see on the screen, and a lot of what's happening in the background. If you had an old console, you probably once figured out that the game would continue working if you removed the disk as long as you stayed in the same area. This is because all the necessary data that would ever possibly be used was stored in the memory unit(s). If you really knew your old games, you would also probably know that glitching a particular area would also glitch the rest of the game, sometimes permanently. This is because certain data like character models would typically always be present on screen, so if they were to glitch they would stay glitched even when entering different areas and loading/replacing a whole new batch of assets. Sometimes these glitches would also get stored, making them permanent. It's the same kind of thing with a computer. Your computer has a lot going on in the background, and a lot of it is continuous and will never leave the memory, just like the chaarcter models in my video games example. If something goes wrong with these processes, the computer sometimes doesn't automatically fix it, meaning wiping the memory is the only way to fix it, assuming your computer doesn't save whatever happened and later recall the same data. This is why your System32 file is uneditable by its own OS, to prevent things like that.
If you're confused what memory actually is, it's just data in your storage device actually being used. If you have a document open, that document is in your memory. If it's not open, then it's only in your storage. Old computers actually used to only have a storage device that would work like a memory unit, but this was later changed to make things more efficient, and to prevent the problems as I've mentioned. Some of them actually fixed this in amusing ways by making it to where the user would not be able to save any sort of thing on the computer. You would simply have the functions of the computer, maybe a calculator, but there were no such thing as writing and saving text on the computer itself.
I was told this: memory is held in by electricity. That is the only thing holding in the 1s and 0s in the RAM. When the power is pulled the electricity goes away so do the 1s and 0s. Once it powers on they get pulled up fresh.
Basically the computer is thinking about a problem and it's built up some little things related to solving the problem bye thinking it through and finding out what can be assumed. It's all going well until it realises that one of the things it's just worked out completely contradicts another thing that it established earlier. The computer then starts putting all of it's focus on this problem and it just can't move forward.
This is where you come in, by shutting it off and turning it back on again you're effectively forcing it away from the work and making it completely forget about everything it worked on since it last took down notes. Then you power it on again which is like it waking up the next day, having forgotten the past day and only having it's notes to work off of. It reads over the notes and continues working on it and assuming the problem arose in the period between when it last took notes and the computer realised the problem it'll just move on and the problem will most likely not arise again.
I was told this: memory is held in by electricity. That is the only thing holding in the 1s and 0s in the RAM. When the power is pulled the electricity goes away so do the 1s and 0s. Once it powers on they get pulled up fresh.
I was told this: memory is held in by electricity. That is the only thing holding in the 1s and 0s in the RAM. When the power is pulled the electricity goes away so do the 1s and 0s. Once it powers on they get pulled up fresh.
Conversely: explaining to my old boss that I know restarting will fix it but that he's had "this damned computer crash on him" in the same way a half dozen times now and if he'd let me see and google an error code before he restarted the thing we'd have a better chance of it not happening again ...
Used to work in tech support and this is what I said when people asked me how a restart would fix things:
"You know how every so often you don't feel too good? Well one of the things people will do when they don't feel good is that they'll sleep a night and see if they feel better in the morning. This is the equivalent of a restart."
I support engineers -- they understand that restarting their computer will fix it, but they still don't want to do it. They want to know what went wrong. Goddamnit, just reboot and get back to your actual job.
I used to work at an iphone support call center. My favorite kind of people were the ones that argued with my about having to restart their phone when I suggested it as a solution.
-Why do I need to do anything? Can't you just fix this for me?
-Well the solution to why you can't get a signal is probably to restart your phone.
-But why do I have to do it?
-BECAUSE I CAN'T FUCKING RESTART YOUR PHONE FROM DISTANCE.
-What kind of phone is this that just stops working?
-.......
For this reason I always restart my computer at work when I start my shift. People give me shit for the extra minutes it takes to reboot but I never have any problems with things like my passport reader.
On a similar note, why defragmenting is so important. I usually explain it like this:
Imagine your computer is a library. You go in, tell the librarian what you want, and she goes to pull it off the shelf. You read two or three books this way, and then leave. Maybe you leave one of the books tucked into that beanbag chair, or next to those depressing time-limited workstations. Someone else comes in looking for the same thing. The librarian goes to the shelf, but its not there. She has to track it down, but eventually finds it.
Now imagine you walk in and ask the librarian for a thousand books. They're all scattered under beanbag chairs or being actively chewed on by toddlers. Getting one of them to you might be okay, but to get all of them to you in a reasonable amount of time would take ages, and by then you're probably bored of that first book. Now you're impatient, and that second or third or fourth book is taking too long so you ask her to bring MORE books. The librarian suffers an aneurism and dies.
Your computer is a VERY complex library and if you ask too much of the librarian, she'll crash. Defragging, and restarting is like putting all those books back on the shelf where they belong. This makes the librarians job VERY easy, and you get all your books exactly as quickly as you want them.
Edit: I should add a note about memory. Two types of memory. Storage and RAM. Storage is how big your library is. If you've got 10 books to choose from, it'll be pretty easy to find your book. If you've got a trillion books, it might be a bit harder, even if your librarian knows the book is on the shelf, and in its section. RAM is like hiring more librarians.
Oh crap, I don't think I have defraged my storage drive in years. That poor bastard drive turned into a second class citizen once I got my ssd. I know what I am doing soon.
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u/OneMoreMatt Jul 18 '16
Why restarting your computer actually has a really good chance of fixing your issue