The Future of Windows Graphic Technology 531
Ben writes 'Extremetech has an article discussing the future of Windows graphics technology. The article uses information from presentations at the recent WinHEC, and outlines the Windows Graphics Foundation and other technologies expected to make an appearance in Longhorn. Particularly interesting is the Longhorn Display Driver Model: 'With it, Microsoft is aiming for that ideal situation of 'graphics just works.' For example, if you upgrade a graphics driver today, you typically have to reboot the system. One example of the 'graphics just works' mantra is one of LDDM's goals of allowing installation of graphics drivers without needing to restart the system.'
Microsoft, the Leader in Technology (Score:4, Funny)
reboots? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:reboots? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the things I like about OS X is that I don't have to reboot to use most software. Some OS level upgrades do require a reboot though.
Detonator or Catalyst upgrades (Score:3, Interesting)
As it is, there is no means to hot-plug an AGP video card that I'm aware of
Aren't some video cards available in PCI, and don't some mainboards support PCI hot-plugging? And aren't there "thin client" monitors that work over Ethernet using X11, VNC, or some proprietary protocol?
so down time is required just to install that upgrade.
Not if it's from say, version 32.23 of a driver for a given card to say, version 43.45 of a driver for the same card.
I don't see rebooting for a very occasional upgrad
Re:Detonator or Catalyst upgrades (Score:5, Funny)
But this one that I remember clearly, didn't even bother to tell me. I had to ask what color her start button was, and she answered "green".
Re:Detonator or Catalyst upgrades (Score:3, Informative)
Re:reboots? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is increasingly becoming annoying to me as these installers are requiring admin privileges but can't relaunch the Finder? I get installers telling me I need to reboot for no reason. They're not installing anything that gets loaded only at boot time.
Mac OS X includes a kextload command. If your kernel extension is going to cause problems you need to label
Re:reboots? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:reboots? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:reboots? (Score:4, Insightful)
So yes, being able to do a change to something in the driver without rebooting would be infinitely useful.
But I'm part of a small crowd.
Re:reboots? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft, the Leader in Technology (Score:2, Interesting)
the Equivalent of Muzak (Score:3, Interesting)
which is what made Muzak so horrifying.
Microsoft seems to be walking in the same direction.
Re:the Equivalent of Muzak (Score:3, Interesting)
If not, you may be surprised to find you are surprisingly close to the truth. The basic story of music theory up until the 20th century was the increasing acceptance of the idea that dissonance was necessary; going from now-archaic single-melody lines, through melody lines with a second line always a perfect fifth above, and so on in very incremental (and, within the context of music theory, often extremely characterizable) steps. The era of Bach brings us the first music that w
Re:Microsoft, the Leader in Technology (Score:2)
Lets compare windows to linux (Score:5, Funny)
"The NVIDIA kernel module has a kernel interface layer which must be compiled specifically for the configuration and version of the kernel you are running. "
For the win.
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:5, Informative)
The open source 2D-only drivers install preconfigured, so most users don't even need to do this.
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Until Linux gets over their archaic install issues it'll never take off in a big way in consumer land.
(And yes, I like Linux, I try to have as much here at my workplace running on Linux when it makes sense... it's just not user friendly.)
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:3, Informative)
Open Up Synaptic -> type in your password -> click "Search" -> type in "nvidia" -> click "nvidia-glx" -> in the submenu click "install" -> log out of your computer -> log back in.
The thing is, we are typing all of this - it's much easier to give a few command line commands to copy-paste in than it is to describe the GUI.
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:3, Interesting)
I want it to work... I want to have a bunch of the desktops at my workplace runnin
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, great, another stupid reason to denounce Linux!
Jesus, some people simply shouldn't be allowed to have computers...
So you have to "reboot" to install a new driver! Big fucking deal! With Windows you have to reboot to FART, for Christ's sake - not to mention total system lockups you can't fix with a simple "reboot" of X.
Should OS's be able to update themselves without restarting ANYTHING? OF CO
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:5, Informative)
What we need is to modify xlib to support "server migration" - we could move all the windows from a xserver to a kind of
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Similarly an older utility called xmove basically did the same thing.
The main issue is they sucked. Now you ran two xservers, and hence twice the marshalling, hence twice the latency.
Your method of client transfer is pretty good, but it has a lot of
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:3, Interesting)
There is VNC [realvnc.com] which breaks the fixed association between an X session and an X display. I find this handy for long-running X programs (such as a bittorrent client) I might want to start from home, and pull up from another location (ok... work) later on.
Unfortunately, VNC is useless when you need high performance.
I was a bit jealous upon noticing
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:3, Insightful)
How many times per day do you update your libc, and does it requires rebooting? Why not? What about servers?
Besides, "server migration" is not useful just for this. It's needed for wireless connections - if you're using a remote X app and you move, suddenly your app breaks, it disconnected from your X server. The Right Thing to do would be to restore the communication when the connection
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd imagine that some code to 'ssupend/resume' the state of X might be a pretty neat project to undertake, but I'm not sure anyone has done it yet..
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:5, Insightful)
First, linux requires you to deal with source code. Fine for you techheads out there. Bad for consumers unless it is *invisible* (i.e. just part of the install process that they dont see), and right now it just aint - at least not on all distros.
Second, (and this one's just going to eat at Open source people) - many companies dont want to release their source code. It was hard to write, and often they had to invest millions to create it. Why should they release it for free?
I'm not going to start a flame war by arguing that this is right or wrong. It just is. I need to be able to create a single binary and installer that I can release to the linux world and expect it to work across (at least) most distros and recent versions. Thats commercial reality.
MS have got it right only because they have a slow moving platform and no fragmentation. You wrote a driver in 2000 for windows 2000. In 2001 you needed to update it for XP. The linux world is very fast moving - here we are preparing to take on the 12th release of the 2.6 tree - and that has created issues for driver manufacturers.
Re:Lets compare windows to linux (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft, the Leader in Technology (Score:3, Insightful)
Or am I missing something?
Get your facts straight !!! (Score:5, Funny)
You linux Zealots all sing the same refrain with your vague posts:
a new age of technology, the 90's.
Try substantiating your comments with FACTS! Your post _should_ have read:
a new age of technology, the mid 90's.
Re:NTFS is journaled (Score:3, Interesting)
Is Apple's HFS+ "full-fledged?" What does that even mean?
full-fledged journaling (Score:3, Informative)
According to this article [backupbook.com]:
Same line? (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't I hear the same "no rebooting" line with Win2k and with WinXP? Not that I wouldn't enjoy that, it's just that I've lost faith in these types of claims.
Longhorn graphics and Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
Win 2K and XP do seem to manage this on some (rare) occasions. The architecture seems to be there to support it, so I wouldn't be too surprised if Longhorn does what they say.
More importantly, though... it looks like Longhorn's graphics capabilities really are set to stand out from the Linux (and even OS X) crowd. It's a pity that Linux graphic teams haven't managed to unify and focus on getting an integrated "product" out. We hav
Re:Longhorn graphics and Linux (Score:5, Informative)
We have Xorg, and Cairo/SVG, and maybe GTK or Qt, but not a complete, end-to-end platform
Actually there has been a bunch of movement towards a better graphics architecture. Cairo is mostly driving things at the moment, because it provides a unified API for 2D graphics on X, Max OS X, Win32, and PDF/Printer output. Because of this Mozilla.org are planning on completely replacing all their graphics, not just SVG, in GFX 2.0 with Cairo (except possibly embedded stuff). I suspect that as they get going there will significant cross flow from the Mozilla side into improving Cairo and copying ideas and code from mozilla.org into Cairo.
GTK is also moving to a Cairo base, because it is also a big win for them, and there are some noises about QT...
One of the big features of Cairo is that it makes use of the Xgl/glitz pipeline, which accelerates 2D rendering in must the same way as Avalon. The final architecture still has to be worked out, but there's a good chance that Cairo will run directly on the hardware, with OpenGL/DRI support, and that much of the higher level X stuff in new Xorg releases with use Cairo for their rendering
Cairo is very much designed to be like Avalon on the API level, and to fill a similar role to Avalon and Core Image on the Mac. The only things not being addressed by Cairo are 3D (mostly OpenGL's area) and video.
Regards,
-Jeremy
Re:Longhorn graphics and Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
*Cue stale arguments about non-needed eyecandy etc, even though Longhorn sends its graphic stuff out to the video card.
Anyway, yeah, I think it's a good bet Longhorn's going to stand out. Anybody seen the recent keynote address Bill Gates made about Longhorn? They gave a couple of demos that were pretty interesting. Most of the graphics were vector based and sca
Re:Same line? (Score:3, Informative)
You didn't hear the same line. For win2k, "no reboots" applied to system services. For example, NT4 needed a reboot to change network information. Win2k fixed that and a lot of other administrative reboots. WinXP focused more and more on installation reboots, and a well-behaved installer now only needs to reboot the system now if it has to cha
Re:Same line? (Score:2, Informative)
No, it's not. There really is no equivalent to restarting X on Windows. You either reboot all of it, or you don't. The closest thing to semi-rebooting is logging out and back in, I guess, but obviously that's not similar to restarting the X server. With Windows 9x I guess you could say there is an equivalent, namely shutting down to DOS mode and starting Windows back up.
Sorry fo
Re:Same line? (Score:3, Insightful)
How many times did I heard people talking about Windows 95/98/ME: "It is not a new OS it is just a graphical frontend sitting in TEH OLDE M$DO$) and now you are telling that restarting X-Window over Bash is similar to the arcane Win 95, not intenting to be a Troll, I know the Linux Kernel is 32 bits per se, and all the other capabilites (I program propietary hardware driv
Re:Same line? (Score:2)
NT4 needed a reboot to change network information. Win2k fixed that
Not all network information. For instance domain or workgroup membership.
Well they made major headway (Score:5, Informative)
--Network changes don't need rebooting. You can change IPs, or even go from DHCP to static, etc with no rebooting.
--Non-essential drivers, like NIC drivers doesn't require a reboot, at least if the company isn't stupid. Try it with an Intel NIC someday, they install and you go, no reboot.
--USB/Firewire devices just work and need no rebooting, unless the manufacturer makes some speical driver that requires it.
--Many software installs that used to need reboots no longer require them. Things like video decoders, services, and so on are installed on the fly and made available. Many older peices of software that claim needing a reboot don't in reality.
There may be more, I haven't used 9x in years so I can't remember all the things that made it reboot. However they made significant headway with 2k/XP. Reboots are generally limited to system updates, and core driver updates. If they can get it to the point where thigns like graphics and sound drivers don't need reboots, all the better.
Is it so important? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is it so important? (Score:2)
Re:Is it so important? (Score:4, Interesting)
So... it isn't welcome then? I just rebuilt my gf's computer. I had to reboot a couple of times, one of them was simply to get the video driver going. Okay, it was another 30 seconds out of my day, but it still would have been pleasant if the screen just flickered a bit and suddenly everything was working.
It may not be the biggest time sink in the world, but I do like leaving my computer on for weeks at a time. (Yes, even in Windows, even though the uninformed still keep making 99'esque BSOD jokes.) Upgrading a video driver can be a little expensive if I've already got a bunch of things open in a state I'd like to get back to.
Re:Is it so important? (Score:3, Interesting)
No reboots (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember in my old Novell file server days that it was common to have Novell 3.12 servers with an uptime of 2 years or more. From what I understand, this is common among just about every operating system other than Windows Server (which is the primary operating system I deal with).
Re:No reboots (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No reboots (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No reboots (Score:2)
Re:No reboots (Score:2)
Re:No reboots (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No reboots (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to make the presumption that you're ignorant, as Windows 2003, and to a lesser degree 2000, is pretty well known for being rock solid operating systems (the whole "only up for x days!" argument is circa 1999 and is very, very stale).
What you may be talking about, and I've seen this mistake a few times, are uninformed admins that monitor their servers and note that SQL Server, or Exchange, as a couple of quick examples, keep consuming more and more memory until finally your machine is saturated.
Super diligent admins schedule regular reboots, all while muttering and complaining about those leaky MS apps.
Of course the reality is that the apps are proactively enlisting memory for cache, and if you haven't restricted them they'll use all available memory eventually (they'll release memory if other apps make memory demands).
Amazing how frequently that is misidentified as a "memory leak".
who cares about drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
I am amazed at how many software packages still require a reboot. IMHO this is much more annoying.
Re:who cares about drivers (Score:2)
Re:who cares about drivers (Score:2)
I always click on "restart later" (most often MUCH later
Re:who cares about drivers (Score:2)
Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
It just works!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
To: Steve (Score:5, Funny)
Subject: Re: Longhorn
Hey Steve,
Has the research team figured out why the *nix machines don't have to reboot all the time?
Bill
Re:To: Steve (Score:5, Funny)
From: Steve
Subject: Re: Longhorn
Hi Bill,
I'll forward your query to Linus.
Steve
P.S. How do you like the iPod I sent?
Re:To: Steve (Score:3, Funny)
Subject: Missing e-mail?
Bill,
Since I haven't gotten any e-mail from you recently, I just wanted to let you know that we think that the *nix machines don't require a reboot thanks to some magical code they stole from SCO. And by "we think," I mean "I think." And by "I think," I mean I have no fucking clue what's going on.
On a side note, where did you get that snazzy new iPod?
Steve B.
Ballmer's iPod (Score:3, Funny)
Repurcussions of Graphics-Intensive Desktops (Score:3, Interesting)
The first is that this can probably be exploited by malware/spyware to make "invisible" interfaces that sit over top of existing applications, happily monitoring everything you're doing. Or, kind of like those one-pixel GIFs that show up on the odd phishing page. No fun.
But by far the worst is going to be the end-user customization. Want transparent yellow spinning windows that change opacity based on the phase of the moon? Bet you can do that! It'll be like the old programs that let you add sounds to all the Windows events. When the average user got a hold of that, it was only a matter of seconds before their machine became the Box Of Annoyance. Thank Jeebus people finally grew out of that (mostly). But watch and see - it's coming again, only this time it's got GRAPHICS.
Now, it may open up a whole new world of "desktop modification pranks." Hmm.
Re:Repurcussions of Graphics-Intensive Desktops (Score:3, Insightful)
Transparent windows don't "see" the windows underneath them. Either you can capture the screen (which you can do in current Windows without having to display anything (cf. VNC)) or you can't.
But by far the worst is going to be the end-user customization. Want transparent yellow spinning windows that change opacity based
Re:Repurcussions of Graphics-Intensive Desktops (Score:2)
Exactly. Because if there's one thing software should NOT be about, it's choice.
There can be only One True Way, and it should be the unchangeable default.
Re:Repurcussions of Graphics-Intensive Desktops (Score:4, Insightful)
Your two things are: malware exploits, and aesthetically jarring end-user customization.
The first one I think is a bit panicky, as I fail to see why any manner of "3D" would be any more or less secure than a 2D interface. What does the extra math have to do with security?
The second one is a common complaint aired in many different ways. It is true that many end users will create ridiculous desktops using 3D - in fact they create ridiculous desktops today, using 2D. My sister has her old Aptiva loaded with every damn croaking, tweeping, fluttering rainforest-styled thing there is, complete with bad-animated-GIF desktop icons and a mouse cursor that squirms.
We all know those brutal, punishingly bad Flash animations that festoon the Intarweb. And we all moan about how bad Flash is, that it shouldn't exist, etc.
All of these arguments trace back to: people sort of suck most of the time at design and aesthetics. They're not trained for it, and they don't have an innate sense of what pleases most people. All the Longhorn Aero Glass and Macrodobe Flashter Effects in the world do is empower that flaming mediocrity into full-blown animations and desktop effects that they simply could not do before. A small (tiny, in fact) subset of people will create glorious things that we haven't dreamt of.
The Japanese way of designing things has always amused me, because it is so rigid and defined; and yet this is why we love them. They know the power of an unblemished white wall. North Americans want every little variable and control in the interface exposed so we can fuck with it to our heart's content (isn't that what we do with computers? That and minesweeper?) but the Japanese don't like to do this. Take the PSP. You cannot change the 'desktop' picture, and not only that the (very pleasing, very Mac-like) translucent wave pattern in the background has a specific colour tint. Mine was pink when I bought it. Lots of people's first comment when you turn it on was surprise: "Pink?" The background colour changes every month. There are 12 colours that have been chosen by the design samurai at Sony. You cannot change them, they are immutable. This Is How It Is Designed. We think its a bit fucked because we're used to being able to set Edwardian Dayglo Yellow Outline Dropshadowed emails but they just won't allow it. Anyways I digress a bit.
Forget worrying about whether Aero will make Windows uglier, it gets the job done by itself as it is. There will always be ways to make ugly stuff in spectacular ways with our spectacular computers, so there's no point in blaming the software for enabling spectacular Lameness.
Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
The future of Windows??? (Score:3, Insightful)
How many times have we seen breathless articles all slack-jawed over some new technology that Microsoft is getting ready to unveil
Vaporware anyone?
OS X - Quartz (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny, however, how the rendering scheme and virtualization of graphics card memmory sounds awfully like the new, and currently shipping, graphics engine in Apple's OS X. (Quartz and Quartz Extreme.)
Re:OS X - Quartz (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no! They are nothing like each other. If you look at the diagrams, you'll see that the Longhorn graphics pipelines run from top to bottom, whereas the Mac OS X graphics pipelines run left to right.
They're orthogonal to each other...
why DO we have to still reboot??? (Score:5, Interesting)
This brings a question to mind -- does anyone know exactly why Windows still requires reboots for these kinds of things? This makes my life positively MISERABLE.
A typical experience for me... I have all of my machines set up dual boot, all with some distro of linux, and either XP Home Edition, or XP Pro. I do most of (but not all) my work on the linux side, but when I do boot over to XP inevitably it's more than just one reboot, it's almost always at least 2, and many times it's 3! (not 3 factorial, just 3 exclamation). Typically this is a result of something in my XP environment updating itself, be it Windows itself, virus protection updates, or just the vendors download of updates. Invariably a download occurs (after granting permission), and then the update, and then the dreaded popup dialog box with some such message, "For the updates to take effect you must restart your computer. Restart now?"
And some of those dialog boxes offer no clickable option other than "OK" which means reboot and you have to jump through an extra cognitive hoop and remember to click the "X" in the corner of the dialog window (to defer the reboot).
On the other side... I don't remember the last time I've had to reboot my linux for any kind of updates, and I do get updates in linux on a pretty regular basis (as many as in Windows). What gives? I don't think the architecture for XP is so arcane it can't support recognizing and using updates without a reboot. Does anyone have solid commentary on this? (Not that my life's going to get any better around this anytime soon -- but it'd be nice to know if there's some bonified (sp?) reason for this step-into-the-twentieth-century XP behavior.)
Re:why DO we have to still reboot??? (Score:2)
Just because you asked, it's "bona fide", literally "good faith". If we were really speaking Latin it would be pronounced "BOH-nuh FEE-day", but somehow it entered English as "BOH-nuh FIED".
Though somehow, "bonified" seems appropriate as applied to Windows. As in, "I was really going to have my paper done on time, but just as I was going to save it Windows bonified me."
Re:why DO we have to still reboot??? (Score:2)
That's assuming the "X" in the corner actaully stops it rebooting and doesn't just reboot it anyway (ZoneAlarm I'm looking at you).
Re:why DO we have to still reboot??? File locks (Score:4, Informative)
In Windows, it is impossible to replace a file in use, so when an update touches a dll that is used by whatever else process, Windows has to reboot to get rid of the lock, replace the file on reboot, and continue.
Unix, however, lets you replace any file. The old version stays still on disk as long as an application has it open, so all running applications will continue to work just fine. They will use the new file as soon as they are restarted. This way, I can replace every library in the system without having to reboot.
The Windows approach has advantages too. I could do a security upgrade on my ssl-library, and if I dont restart sshd, sshd will still use the old, insecure library, and this, till it is restarted.
Personally, I prefere the Unix way. After all, other tools can restart applications after library updates, so this shouldn't be enforced by the OS.
Re:State of the disunion. (Score:2)
a very small percentage of the updates requesting reboots in my XP systems are kernel updates. consider:
Re:State of the disunion. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. They scan before the CreateFile function even returns.
Internet Explorer (which I never intentionally use)... why would that require a reboot?
Windows doesn't let you replace in use files, it doesn't have to be something kernel level. Since explorer is really internet explorer, you either need to shut down the interface or reboot.
Will Mac OS 10.5 be out before Longhorn? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Will Mac OS 10.5 be out before Longhorn? (Score:3, Informative)
Probably not. Apple said they would be slowing down their releases after Tiger, so don't expect 10.5 before 2007. Still, that doesn't mean 10.4 won't get significant improvements. For example, Quartz 2d Extreme and resolution independence can currently only be enabled using developer tools; I expect them to become fully supported in a point release.
Why Is Rebooting Such a Huge Deal, Anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Workservers (Score:2)
I can certainly understand refusing to reboot a server that needs to be on 24/7. Fine.
If you're trying to download a rawther big, rawther rare file off some P2P network, or you host a few web pages (small enough to remain under the radar of your ISP) on your computer, or you're participating in some distributed computing projects, then your computer is "a server that needs to be on 24/7."
Re:Why Is Rebooting Such a Huge Deal, Anyway? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why Is Rebooting Such a Huge Deal, Anyway? (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah.. Wait, you turn your computer off? And they let you have a UID here? Standards sure have been dropping lately..
Slightly off topic wrt their drivers (Score:3, Interesting)
We have a computer at work running XP that constantly hoses its USB drivers and every time I plug in my flash drive, it says it found and installed new hardware *AND* I have to reboot! I have to reboot because it had to figure out a flash drive again since the last time I rebooted it?
Why is it also that when you plug in a USB device on one port, it loads the driver and if you unplug it and plug it onto a separate USB controller it needs to install another instance of the driver? They don't automatically go away either. If the one goes away and a new one in a different spot shows up, the first one should 'just get recycled' and claimed again, regardless of what USB port it's plugged into. I can see a second one show up if you plug a second one in while the first is still plugged in, but who has two identical printers simulataneously connected? I have a parallel printer so I don't know the full intricacies of USB printers, but doesn't it show up as a second printer to applications?
I think microsoft has a very long way to go to make their drivers actually useful. At least they finally figured out how to change network settings without always having to reboot.
Re:Slightly off topic wrt their drivers (Score:3, Informative)
I get this with my printer if I plug it into another port...but Windows just reinstalls the driver - I don't have to reboot. That is sort of odd.
Also I like this from the page I linked:
Win95-Windows XP (Score:2)
Wow (Score:4, Funny)
Who needs reporters? (Score:2)
Step one: Break interface compatibility with the past.
Step two: Ensure interface lock-in with the future.
No problem. Profit, of course, will follow.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
I think I have seen this before... ;-) (Score:4, Informative)
Quartz Compositor [apple.com]
Note this has been around since before Mac OS X 10.0 (March 2001), gaining hardware acceleration for compositing in Mac OS X 10.2 (August 2002) and most recently hardware acceleration of 2D primitives in Mac OS X 10.4 (currently available to developers only).
A very large number of parallels exist between Apple's Quartz, Quartz 2D, and Apple's OpenGL model/abstractions and stuff coming in Longhorn.
Of course I can't fault them for running with a good idea and one that is a generally logical extension of OpenGL concepts mixed with ideas from the 2D world (PDF, painters model... good old SGI guys).
Re:Quartz2D vs what-the-heck Longhorn will do (Score:3, Informative)
You draw using primitives like paths which are mathematical descriptions of lines and curves that will get rendered to pixels in devic
I guess they're right (Score:5, Funny)
Good luck with that.
About Microsoft's new mantra... (Score:3, Funny)
I love the new Microsoft mantra.
Today while repeating it to coworkers (while trying to install windows (aaargh), I spouted it out in a far more accurate form.
Microsoft: it just works sometimes
Why should you ever upgrade the graphics driver? (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft created the upgrade problem to churn the customer base. It's purely a Microsoft-created problem.
At last, back to NT 3.51 we go (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows NT 4.0 dumped the security and stability of this arrangement for the dubious goal of faster graphics. Things haven't been the same since.
Perhaps this is a step back to stability? I sure would like to go back to the years of uptime I had when my main servers were NT 3.51, and the only down time was for hardware upgrades.
--Mike--
There is a mistake in the architecture (Score:3, Insightful)
This trick is essentially wrong: it requires vast amounts of graphics memory for no particular reason. Just as the article says, computers will require 512 MB, even 1 GB of graphics memory. This is plain silly! in order to have a few nice 3d fx (with questionable usability), there is gonna be tremendous memory requirements.
The same effects could be easily delivered to the user by not representing each window with a texture, but by vector graphics. The modern desktop consists of a few thousand lines/fills that can be easily handled by the 3d hardware. By using vector graphics only, there are huge benefits: a) the desktop is fully scalable, b) memory requirements are minimized, c) the screen can be rotated in a split second, d) the full range of effects is possible.
As for the feature of not rebooting while upgrading the graphics driver, it's a useless feature. It has only marketing value for Microsoft: since Unix is not rebooted to upgrade the graphics driver, Windows has to follow. But as the clever
Re:Shouldn't There Be A Microsoft Section??? (Score:2, Troll)
I agree. A nice, steaming turd would be appropriate.
Ok, this was a troll. I'm sorry. But it's an insightful troll; admit it!
Re:Don't you either way? (Score:2)
Re:no reboot huh (Score:2)
Re:The best quote from TFA: (Score:3, Funny)