Fresh Air For Windows? 645
jmcbain writes "The NY Times has an opinion piece on how the next Windows could be designed (even through Microsoft has already laid plans for Windows 7). The author suggests 'A monolithic operating system like Windows perpetuates an obsolete design. We don't need to load up our machines with bloated layers we won't use.' He also brings up the example of Apple breaking ties with its legacy OS when OS X was built. Can Windows move forward with a completely new, fast, and secure OS and still keep legacy application support?"
heh, normal version (Score:5, Informative)
The "7" refers to nothing in particular (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it stands for Windows NT 7.0. Here's a quick run-down:
NT 3.1
NT 3.5
NT 3.51
NT 4.0
NT 5.0 (aka Windows 2000)
NT 5.1 (aka Windows XP)
NT 5.2 (aka Windows 2003)
NT 6.0 (aka Windows Vista/2008)
Re:Wine? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:oh come on (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it's been done before (Score:5, Informative)
Windows NT had an emulation layer that handled 16-bit apps. OS X had Rosetta and the Classic environments. And Microsoft now owns Virtual PC.
They have the technology to make Windows a clean OS with emulation errors for doing whatever legacy OS you want. They just seem too lazy to do it.
Re:The "7" refers to nothing in particular (Score:2, Informative)
Actually it stands for Windows NT 7.0. Here's a quick run-down:
NT 3.1
NT 3.5
NT 3.51
NT 4.0
NT 5.0 (aka Windows 2000)
NT 5.1 (aka Windows XP)
NT 5.2 (aka Windows 2003)
NT 6.0 (aka Windows Vista/2008)
And subtract 2.1 since they started at 3.1. Math. MS should look into that stuff some day.
Re:Existing legacy support. Wait, what? (Score:5, Informative)
Any software that was created in the past few years which vista 'broke' were most likely poorly designed or were associated with managing or doing the functions expected of the OS itself (with a few exceptions.)
Vista really isn't that 'buggy.' It is top heavy and uses way too much resources if you are only using it for limited things, but as a general purpose OS it really isn't that bad. I would still prefer Windows XP on new computers simply because I can get away with more power with a smaller investment in hardware, but I'm not necessarily 'against' Vista.
Re:The "7" refers to nothing in particular (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0 [wikipedia.org]
Re:The "7" refers to nothing in particular (Score:3, Informative)
Windows 1.x/2.x/3.x/95/98/Me have no code in common with Windows NT
Re:Wine? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why Not for Linux? (Score:2, Informative)
Check out ReactOS. Clone of the NT kernel so it can use windows driver. Uses WINE for the windows API. Everything is clean reverse engineered and free as in speech.
Re:Not gonna work / we already have it (Score:5, Informative)
I would add that Apple did not do a full rewrite but, instead, adopted a stable, mature and very sophisticated OS from NeXT. Apart from that, OSX is very different from the classic MacOS and deeply incompatible. Any compatibility had to be bolted on its top.
Microsoft has nothing like it and will not buy an OS outside.
Or they could just grab any flavor of BSD, close it, build a Win32 susbsystem on top of it and sell it as Windows 8. They already did that with a TCP/IP stack.
Re:Short answer: no (Score:5, Informative)
Commercial versions of VMware allow multiple snapshots. The version you refer to is the freeware version.
Re:Windows done right from the ground up (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah... right... 16 processes, right?
CE is Windows done from the ground up, but it's not particularly elegant. And I _did_ write software for it. The 2002 model of the Brazilian electronic voting ballot runs Windows CE.
Writing for it is every bit as ugly as it is for desktop Windows.
Re:don't bother (Score:2, Informative)
The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., Chapter 5: The Second System Effect
Windows isn't monolithic (Score:4, Informative)
What a whole lot of trolling effort.
Windows isn't a monolithic design. Its a hybrid kernel, and with every release of Windows Microsoft has seperated out user space even further, including dll-hell to further improve the paradigm.
One of the main guys behind Windows NT was David Cutler, a renowed software engineer and designer for VMS. Go and Google him, I can't be bothered to look up the URL.
That should at least give you a clue as to the seriousness of the product and what they set out to achieve: the copy bits of the system that mattered most to Microsoft.
Re:Wine? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why Not for Linux? (Score:1, Informative)
Sigh! Why oh why is there always such a wealth of misinformation sprouted?
To install a legacy Windows application under Wine 1.0 or later (say running on Ubuntu), all that an end-user is required to do is to download & run the Windows install file just as one would using Windows. Ubuntu will even help after installation by putting the associated menu entries under the Wine section of the Ubuntu main menu for you.
Installing native software on Linux is a bit easier I grant you ... you don't have to search on the web for an install file to download since native Linux software is installed via a package manager which is far easier to use & search for stuff ... but nevertheless it is a very similar task on Linux under Wine to install legacy Windows applications as it is on Windows itself ... so Windows users should be able to cope with doing it.
Re:Fluff piece (Score:5, Informative)
The Microsoft Research site [microsoft.com] has a page on product contributions that have come from MS Research [microsoft.com].
Re:Meh. (Score:3, Informative)
Loading large amounts of legacy code that gets run doesn't cause bloat. That's caused by loading huge quantities of legacy code at boot that never gets run because you don't have the hardware it was written to support or none of your software needs the old API it implements. Getting rid of legacy support isn't the best answer to bloat. Better is to load only those parts of the legacy support that are needed at boot, bring in the old APIs as needed then get rid of them when the program exits. This would shorten boot time and cut down the RAM requirements at the expense of a slightly longer load time for legacy apps.
Re:Short answer: no (Score:5, Informative)
If by "These two code branches" you are referring to NT and Windows 9x, you are off by a release. They merged with XP, not 2000.
Re:Existing legacy support. Wait, what? (Score:5, Informative)
Having run Vista32 on this laptop when new, and just recently moved to Vista X64, I agree.
I turned most of the "eye candy" off on 32 bit, but 64 doesn't seem to get bogged down nearly as bad with the eye candy turned on. NOTHING else was changed, only the OS.
Anywho, yes, Vista is fine. Pisses me off that I can't run Win16 apps on Win64 (like, install C&C, for instance), but oh well.
I think I'll try 64 bit linux next.. Never tried a 64 bit rev... Any suggestions? I've always run Slackware since my first install, but it's not always the most "hardware friendly". It's a HP DV2000 based laptop, x64 1 gig ram.
--Toll_Free
Sorry, but (Score:5, Informative)
No. The code bases were to merge at Windows 2000 Professional. Windows 95/98/ME were based on DOS. Win2K was the merge point at server and 'desktop'. XP came after Win2K, sealing the fate. At Vista, support for 8/16-bit code using DOS functionality essentially died. Try Duke Nukem II if you're unsure.
Re:Short answer: no (Score:3, Informative)
Windows NT was a re-write of OS/2 when Microsoft divorced IBM
You're partly correct. Windows NT was written in response to OS/2, but was not a rewrite of it. Windows NT could be better stated as a GUI-driven rewrite of VMS. Dave Cutler was the architect of both systems, and was the result of a negotiated HR transfer (read "was poached") from Digital Equipment Corporation for that purpose.
For an exact chronology I'd suggest "Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM" by Paul Carroll (it's listed in Amazon) which book was a compendium of Wall Street Journal articles, if I remember correctly. The details on the OS/2 contention make a fascinating read. It's interesting how IBM "then" was so much like Microsoft "now"; bloated and in control of the marketers.
It's also worth mentioning as a cautionary tale, perhaps. IBM managed to re-invent themselves, and after a rather painful process of revolution became a reasonably healthy firm again. Can Microsoft?
Fresh Air: does it really need it? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Short answer: no (Score:5, Informative)
I worked with the code from OS/2 and from the original WinNT SDKs (55 floppies of it). Sorry, but conceptually, Cutler had little choice but to take the OS/2 APIs and turn them into Microsoft analogs. I have the code; Cutler had marching orders to one-up IBM and he did it. No argument except citing anything from the WSJ as a technical history source.
Re:The "7" refers to nothing in particular (Score:5, Informative)
The original plan was for MS to write OS/2 ver 1.x, IBM to write 2.x (basically making it 32 bit) and MS to write 3 ( a complete rewrite). Shortly after starting to write what would become NT they divorced IBM and changed plans from OS/2 NT ver 3 to WIN NT ver 3.x
Re:Windows done right from the ground up (Score:5, Informative)
WinCE done right?
I have written some software on the WinCE platform. It is NOT windows done right. Lets start with the evolution of the platform. It was designed for displays like 600x300. Full menus and dialogs. The OS has no concept of a "current directory". Every file has to be specified from the root of the drive every time. They figured the devices would have a touch display so no need for a mouse. So the standard Windows mouse API was ripped out. Essentially the only thing left was is a click or double click either left or right and where on screen it happened at.
They then "re-imaged" it to compete with Palm. So now it is redesigned to work on a device that is 240x320. The menu is at the top of the device. The pop up keyboard soft-input-device (sip) pops up from the bottom. There are issues with a window getting in the background not being able to be brought to the foreground.
Now we "re-image" again for the smart phone. With an even smaller display. Microsoft decides that a mouse is needed again. So they create a brand new API for dealing with a mouse, instead of using the win32 api
If you think the win95-98 api vs the Win NT code base api wars were a problem. Now kick it up a notch. Take your pick, drawing graphics, initializing windows, dealing with the SIP. What ever fun I had dealing with the Win32 API was ground out of me when I started working on WinCE
You want proof? Why did Microsoft extend the life of Windows XP for 3 more years for UMPC style devices to compete with Linux? Because WinCE in any incarnation is not up to the job. Microsoft is not even trying to pretend anyone will want it on a UMPC style device.
Lots of MSR technology ships (Score:4, Informative)
Eh?
Speaking for my own work in Microsoft, we get a ton of cool stuff from MSR in little ways. I've probably got a half-dozen interesting video things I'm talking with them about. None of which will be a product in itself, but would be incorporated into improvements to existing products and platforms.
One cool thing that came out of MSR in my own work is the new video deinterlacer in Expression Encoder 2. Huge improvement over the old one in Windows Media Encoder. It didn't get a big "Produced by Microsoft Research!" on the box or anything, but that's an example of MSR technlogy making it into a product.
Re:Existing legacy support. Wait, what? (Score:3, Informative)
Wait for July 3rd and get Ubuntu Hardy 8.04.1 amd64, that will almost certainly do what you want. It has a 32-bit WINE that runs 32-bit Windows apps, I've used it a bit, it's the same as 32-bit WINE on 32-bit Linux.
Flash... I use swfdec which is *really* unreliable, basically just a Youtube client. But if you elect to use the official Flash player, it will be wrapped in a 32-to-64 layer which means it will still work in 64-bit Firefox. I prefer not to use the binary blob player but I've heard it works fine for others.
Ubuntu Hardy wasn't so great when it was first released, but the updates since then have really improved it, and all of those updates will be rolled into the 8.04.1 CDs.
Re:Sorry, but (Score:5, Informative)
There was NT 4 workstation, and then 2000 Professional, and then XP. If you're talking about 'home' operating systems, XP was probably the one. The code base for developers merged at 2000. Look it up in 'historical' mags like Windows Magazine, or in other archives. I wrote seven books on Windows from 95-2000, not to mention others.
Re:Short answer: no (Score:5, Informative)
They merged with XP, not 2000.
No, XP was only a point release of 2000 (i.e. XP = WinNT 5.1, 2000 = WinNT 5.0). Win2K was the merge point. Anyone who was using NT before that remembers the pain of getting DOS/Win3.1 things to run properly under NT 4 (or 3.51!)
Re:Sorry, but (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wine? (Score:1, Informative)
One of the reasons Wine has taken so long is that the official MS documentation for the Windows API is frequently incomplete or flat out wrong. Some suspect a sneaky plot by Microsoft to keep the best API stuf secret, but I'm not so sure.
Y'know, there was this interesting story I heard years ago, back when Microsoft and Intel were still cool with each other. Microsoft had decided their previously whiz-bang everybody-should-use-it Video for Windows (VfW) layer wasn't cool anymore, and they were replacing it with ActiveMovie.
Thing was, Intel's Indeo codec wouldn't work with the new system, and they couldn't figure out why. Microsoft had them send a team of their engineers over for a sit-down to figure out why.
What really took them by surprise was that the Microsoft engineers were baffled by the MS code -- while they knew how it was supposed to work, none of them really understood how the overall subsystem actually worked, and it took them ages to pore over the code and figure out where the bug was that was stopping Intel's codec from running.
Basically, the MS code was so arcane and crufty, even the "new" parts, that MS employees had a hard time figuring out what went where.
I doubt this problem is much better today, considering how late and stripped-down Vista was. Code being rushed to market, refactored again and again to meet marketing bullet points and shifting management whims, and rotation of teams in and out can lead to bad code with worse documentation.
Re:Existing legacy support. Wait, what? (Score:2, Informative)
On Ubuntu, wine works just fine. Flash sort of works with nspluginwrapper, which Ubuntu automatically installs and configures when you install the flash plugin.
Re:Short answer: no (Score:3, Informative)
that's *if* your code is designed for 2 cores in the first place. In such cases, you'd expect it to scale to 4 quite happily (I always use the 80% rule here - 1 core, you get 100% relative performance, 2 cores you get 180% perf, etc).
The problem is that most code is designed for 1 core. Making it work for 2 is a paradigm shift for most developers.
Re:Short answer: no (Score:1, Informative)
384MB is nowhere near enough even for XP now. Up until a year ago I was running my main system for day to day stuff on a PIII 1.2Ghz with 512MB of memory. I would have upgraded to at least 1 GB a long time ago but this is on intel's 815 chipset which was crippled to only support 512MB of memory; probably their revenge for being forced to go back to SDRAM from RDRAM at the time.
Everything ran fine up until I upgraded to IE 7. All of the sudden everything slowed to a crawl after browsing for a bit. Fortunately Firefox 3.0 just came out, fixing their own bad memory usage problems, and it looked like I would be good for a bit longer. Now comes the second blow. MS, in all their wisdom, has decided to turn off their hotmail support for Outlook Express, my main email program. This in effect, combined with the lake of Outlook Express in Vista, pretty much forces users to "upgrade" to Windows Live Mail. First to be fair, Live Mail has some great improvements over Outlook Express. However I was already leery about two things that I knew about Live Mail. First of all it switches from the time tested Outlook Express database files to a Cyrus IMAP like mail system in that each individual mail file is stored in an individual file. Personally I had found Outlook Express' database files very, very stable and have never had any problem with them; unlike the PST files that the full Outlook uses. Heck, MS even handles hitting the 2 GB limit fairly well in Outlook Express' database files unlike what the full version of Outlook used to do. Recovery was never a problem either as I could easily find plenty of free tools to recover data from corrupted files, which in general actually over recovered by recovering deleted emails; again unlike Outlook's recovery tools. Even this was barely ever necessary as I only had OE's db files corrupt only a very few times in all the years I have used it at many clients. Its still to early to tell how Live Mail's new one email per file is going to work (although recoveries and backups should definitely be easier. I am very worried though that I did not notice any files nor options in Live Mail that indicate that Live Mail does any indexing while running and that it stores that data to the drive to speed up sorting. Very worried. Second problem is that there is no way to remove the various default folders for any particular email account without deleting the account. WTF. I have a bunch of addresses. The constantly used ones used to have rules to have different inboxes on my old setup so I already had this to a certain extent. However, for some almost never used email addresses I would probably prefer the option to keep the unified inbox. No option for that. Unfortunately, for this new mail program, I had a bunch of dead email accounts, stubs (only to send for yahoo, etc accounts through one of my relay servers), and a fake one to prevent accidental emails from going out. Well now all of these must have their own specific folders taking up screen space as well, even though I will probably never used them. Heck, to move the folders around so the dead ones don't clog up my screen is itself a cumbersome process as the options to moved the folders are only available on the right click menu and only move up or down, one at a time. ARG. But now comes the kicker. I noticed that my system was very, very slow once I loaded my shinny new install of Live Mail. By the way it started importing my OE accounts and data without asking and without any cancel option when it started up; a really, really, really slow process. Anyway, I decided on a lark to check its memory useage.
130MB!!!!
Outlook Express only uses 30MB.
WTF. Of course I should not be surprised. Live Mail is written in .NET, MS' answer to the problem of people not having any need to upgrade their computers. If anything its probably using much, much more than that 130MB as much of the .NET libraries memory usage is probably hi
Re:heh, normal version (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, it doesn't look that way for MOST of us.
NY Times won't block articles (require registration) from an IP address, not until they've seen XX articles read that day from your IP. Bug you could always google "NY Times register inconvenience" and use "bug me not" to get in.
NY Times is one of the world's best newspapers - I for one won't complain about their links (not unless it's replaced with a free NY Times syndicate feed ). Thanks for sharing. :-)
Re:Short answer: no (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Short answer: no (Score:3, Informative)
The filesystem is also very snapshot friendly, which makes backing up data from user mistakes very fast and easy.
Storage pooling/Mirroring/Raid-Z could become a new standard for home users, though, that aspect probably won't catch on in the consumer market
And all WinFS has is search. It doesn't have the ability to watch a hard disk for bitrot, it doesn't know when files get silently corrupted, etc
Re:heh, normal version (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Short answer: no (Score:4, Informative)
Same here.
I do consulting for small businesses and the only people that don't complain about vista are the ones that use it to play solitaire and check their email. (not computer literate in the least)
The ones that complain the loudest are those that picked up a brand new computer to replace their old one only to find out the new one runs much slower. I have 'upgraded' many vista laptops and desktops to XP in the last year each charging the same as a virus/rootkit removal plus MS license. Laptops are the worst, especially HP, it is like they are intentionally hiding XP drivers for things as simple as a sound cards. I'm still able to find workarounds but in all my years working with PCs I have never seen support for a predecessor OS being unsupported so quickly. Even with the push for 2k/XP there were several years of support for 9x users.
I still try to keep an open mind, I was skeptical of 2000 and XP when it first came out, but I am finding it very difficult to swallow vista.
My most recent endeavor trying to make vista work for someone was on a brand new state of the art quad core computer. It ran at a decent speed, no complaints other than the printer (brand new HP officejet pro) would intermittently fail to respond. The network card would work for 5 minutes and then go to 'Media Disconnected' status for no reason even after replacing the motherboard (on-board nic), building wiring, HP ProCurve module, patch cords, etc. I could boot a knoppix or ubuntu live CD and have no networking problems at all. Checked the latest Marvell drivers, Bios, etc. The only solution was to install XP.
I have yet to see with my own eyes a power user that is happy with vista. So far I only hear about it on the internet from fanboys. By power user I mean someone that runs multiple applications in a productive environment and are able to do so at the same speed or better than XP without having to know how their computer works.
I keep trying vista myself as it is my business to do so, but I haven't seen any compelling reason yet to recommend it to anyone. To me it is still a downgrade. I'll keep trying it as future updates come out.
Part of me thinks those touting it on the net are shills from MS. Just like aliens, until I see it with my own eyes I'm not going to believe it.
Re:Short answer: no (Score:2, Informative)
Don't some of the Windows games that currently run under WINE have more FPS than natively under Windows ?
No.
This has been another edition of Short Answers to Stupid Quesitons.