Captain Format is a gentle way I found to call someone with simple and practical solutions, even if not always rational.

First of all, I use Linux and Windows. I like both and I speak well and poorly of both as well. So do not understand this post as a declaration of war.

The term comes from the ease that the technical support of some companies have in “condemning” your Windows. Slow or freezing computer, there is no other solution: format! There are known variations: before formatting, of course, all your problems are due to a lethal and unknown virus.

I think some even have a certain fetish for installing and reinstalling Windows. All very good, but what intrigues me is doing this almost automatically. One of the symptoms of Captain Format is solving everything with a boot and then with Format, of course. In Windows, this solution is quite normal, but I have seen this happen with Linux.

Linux is a system that is usually well-behaved. Except for some brilliant moments when you take down random and essential services for the good functioning of the system, Linux does not need a reboot. I have maintained and still maintain some Linux servers. What I find most amusing are suggestions like: the server X is not working, can I reboot it?

Sometimes it works. But in Linux, you run the risk of taking down all users, all services, waiting for the system to reboot and come back with the same problem. Thankfully, I have heard very few people saying to format Linux… but going back to Windows and defending some Captains Format that I know…

When man did not master the planting of food, we lived as nomads, moving from one place to another, as soon as food became scarce. There was no other solution, as we really did not know how to plant. The same thing happens with Windows. The system is so complex, as it runs or tries to run on anything that it becomes difficult to really understand it.

Windows suffers from excessive integration. Everything runs together, as closely as cards in a house of cards. Install two browsers and they will compete to be your default browser. Uninstall a software and suffer with its remnants in the registry forever. It is not a question of Linux being better or worse, but how it was developed by different people, it ends up having certain firebreak barriers for these cases. And what to do when you have a problem, but no rational solution to solve it? Format!

The Format reinstalls the system and leaves everything ready for you to mess it up again in two or three months :-) But that’s life. Nothing lasts forever, much less the sanity of your Registry. Be nice to the network staff, because like the nomads of our prehistory, the only solution is to build another house. The problem with Windows is that the house is always built in the same place :-)