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Windows Operating Systems Graphics Software Technology

The Future of Windows Graphic Technology 531

Posted by Zonk from the more-than-just-looking-through-glass dept.
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.'
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The Future of Windows Graphic Technology More

The Future of Windows Graphic Technology

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  • Microsoft, the Leader in Technology (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @05:59PM (#12425607)
    Wow upgrading a driver without having to reboot? Amazing! This along with alpha transparency in IE7 and a full-fledged journaling file system should launch Microsoft into a new age of technology, the 90's.

    • reboots? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by prell ( 584580 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:02PM (#12425638) Homepage
      Is the ability to update without rebooting a side-effect feature, or a full-effect feature? It seems like something only a consumer PC (i.e. not a server) would have to do, and infrequently. Is it really a demand that people have?

      • Re:reboots? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:09PM (#12425734) Homepage Journal
        I don't mind a single reboot to install a graphics driver. As it is, there is no means to hot-plug an AGP video card that I'm aware of, so down time is required just to install that upgrade. I don't see rebooting for a very occasional upgrade. However, I don't think a reboot should be necessary for most software.

        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.

        • 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:reboots? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Queer Boy ( 451309 ) *

          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.

          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)

        by PitaBred ( 632671 )
        There are some silly people out there that run Windows servers... it'd be nice to update to a more stable graphics driver without a full reboot. But that's just conjecture, as I have no Windows servers, and like it that way.

      • Re:reboots? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) * <mark&seventhcycle,net> on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:41PM (#12426075) Homepage
        I have two NVIDIA GeForce 6800 cards running SLI. For gaming, I have to reboot the system to enable SLI mode. SLI mode only allows one monitor enabled at a time, and I have a dual monitor setup.

        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.

    • Even if I change the USB port my webcam is plugged into, I get the obligatory "Windows has found new drivers, would you like ot reboot". My prediction is, it's never gonna change. And that makes me a sad Panda!
    • I used to say that Muzak was music which had nothing wrong with it. and that is what the problem was, since while there was nothing wrong with it, there was nothing right with it either.

      which is what made Muzak so horrifying.

      Microsoft seems to be walking in the same direction.

      • Re:the Equivalent of Muzak (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jerf ( 17166 )
        Have you taken music theory?

        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
    • Now all we need is Duke Nukem Forever and flying cars, and we'll be set!

    • Lets compare windows to linux (Score:5, Funny)

      by ad0gg ( 594412 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:25PM (#12425901)
      Nvidia installation instructions [nvidia.com]

      "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)

        by natrius ( 642724 ) * <niran&niran,org> on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:50PM (#12426193) Homepage
        From the Ubuntu Binary Driver HOWTO: [ubuntulinux.org]
        1. sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx
        2. sudo nvidia-glx-config enable
        3. Restart X.
        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)

          by spoco2 ( 322835 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:01PM (#12426326)
          And you don't see how that is confusing as hell to the 'average joe' user? Hell, it's confusing to me, and I've been programming since I was seven years old... and that means I've been doing it for over 2 decades...

          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.)
          • sheesh why does everyone jump on someone for using command line commands? Very well, here's the GUI way:

            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:5, Informative)

        by diegocgteleline.es ( 653730 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:16PM (#12426505)
        Actually, upgrading drivers without rebooting IS difficult. We don't have this in the OSS field - in order to update a driver, be it 2D or 3D or whatever, you need at least to reboot X. That means switching off all your apps, and what current desktops that's pretty much like "rebooting" your computer. Yes, you're not rebooting, but with graphic apps in practice you're pretty much doing it.

        What we need is to modify xlib to support "server migration" - we could move all the windows from a xserver to a kind of /dev/null-like fake server, then update x.org drivers, rmmod the old drivers, insmod the new ones, launch xorg, and move all the windows to your new xserver, switch off the fake xserver. Or something like that. (Suggestions?)
        • There is already such a thing, but it is not quite up to par. NoMachine NX server and a client running on the same machine would work. Basically the server acts like an X server, and holds all connections, while the client gets the server redirected messages.

          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

        • ...in order to update a driver, be it 2D or 3D or whatever, you need at least to reboot X. ... What we need is to modify xlib to support "server migration"

          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:5, Insightful)

        by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:25PM (#12426618) Homepage Journal
        Are you implying that you have to reboot Linux in order to install the video driver? You certainly don't but then again to all the "but you don't have to rebootpeople -- you do have to restart X, which is something of a pain if you don't have a good session manager. To the desktop user, a crashed X is just as destructive as a crashed kernel, and likewise a restart of X is just as interruptive as having to reboot.

        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)

        by spagetti_code ( 773137 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:28PM (#12426656)
        I agree that there are at least two wins for MS here:

        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.

        • 1. Even Nvidia's installer "Just Works" and doesn't require me to type the traditional ./configure; make; make install. It does it for you, in the background, during the installation process. To me this mimicks what people see in Windows. For all the user nows in either case, the installer could be having a tea party in the background, it doesn't matter since it just installs and works. 2. Nvidia's Linux driver's are not fully open source. Sure there is a very small minority of FOSS people who are mi
    • As much as I hate Microsoft and Windows, to be fair... you can't upgrade your video driver in XFree/Xorg without restarting X at least. Granted it's not a full reboot so non-GUI daemons still run... but X needs to be restarted.

      Or am I missing something?

    • Get your facts straight !!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @08:52PM (#12427467) Homepage
      Wow upgrading a driver without having to reboot? Amazing! This along with alpha transparency in IE7 and a full-fledged journaling file system should launch Microsoft into a new age of technology, the 90's.

      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.

  • Same line? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Valiss ( 463641 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:02PM (#12425640) Homepage
    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.

    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.

    • Didn't I hear the same "no rebooting" line with Win2k and with WinXP?

      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)

        by reg ( 5428 ) <reg@freebsd.org> on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:01PM (#12426318) Homepage

        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

      • "More importantly, though... it looks like Longhorn's graphics capabilities really are set to stand out from the Linux (and even OS X) crowd."

        *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)

      by Osty ( 16825 )

      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.

      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)

        by moonbender ( 547943 )
        (consider updating the X driver for a video card -- you have to restart X to use it, which is equivalent to a reboot in Windows)

        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)

          by xtracto ( 837672 )
          QUOTE: With Windows 9x I guess you could say there is an equivalent, namely shutting down to DOS mode and starting Windows back up /QUOTE

          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

      • 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)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @08:06PM (#12427058)
      I don't know what they claimed, but here's what they did, off the top of my head:

      --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)

    by GoogolPlexPlex ( 412555 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:02PM (#12425651)
    How often does the average user update the video drivers in Windows? Do they really care that it requires a reboot? I would guess that less than 0.1% of my Windows reboots are prompted by updating the video drivers.
    • I agree of all the things to address in this space this is likely the least important of all, at least in my book.

    • Re:Is it so important? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:24PM (#12426601) Homepage Journal
      "How often does the average user update the video drivers in Windows? Do they really care that it requires a reboot? I would guess that less than 0.1% of my Windows reboots are prompted by updating the video drivers."

      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)

      by shird ( 566377 )
      I think its mostly important when rolling out updates to thousands of machines or automated installations etc, where the whole process is a lot smoother the less reboots that are required.

  • No reboots (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:02PM (#12425655)
    It's nice that I won't have to reboot to upgrade my video driver. Now if they could fix the memory leaks that seem to be so rampant in Windows Server and its applications I might have an average uptime that is longer than 1 month.

    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)

      by moz25 ( 262020 )
      My Linux servers usually have uptimes in the order of a few months at most as kernel upgrades do require reboots (still). Did Novell servers not have such issues with kernel-level patches?

      • Re:No reboots (Score:3, Informative)

        by bigtallmofo ( 695287 )
        One thing to keep in mind is that for the most part, Novell in its 3.x days (about 12 years ago) was used mostly for file and print serving. You didn't have to update the kernel very often to support that, and since they generally weren't connected to public networks you didn't have to worry as much about security updates.
      • What a few months? I still got my debian stable box running for three years now.. what do you mean there's a new kernel out?!
      • Several platforms out there have systems for bootstrapping new kernels over a running kernel. It's not an easy task, but it's not an impossible one either, at least if the kernels and system are designed for it, which linux just isn't.

    • Re:No reboots (Score:4, Informative)

      by dioscaido ( 541037 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:26PM (#12425917)
      Our production win2k3 servers have uptimes that are only interrupted by security upgrade reboots. What applications are you referring to when it comes to memory leaks?

    • Re:No reboots (Score:5, Informative)

      by ergo98 ( 9391 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:14PM (#12426480) Homepage Journal
      Now if they could fix the memory leaks that seem to be so rampant in Windows Server and its applications I might have an average uptime that is longer than 1 month.

      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)

    by avandesande ( 143899 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:03PM (#12425662) Journal
    how often do you load a new grafics driver?
    I am amazed at how many software packages still require a reboot. IMHO this is much more annoying.
    • I agree that lazy installers are more a problem than graphics drivers are. I recently installed Lotus Notes on Mac OS X, and it tried to reboot my machine! There is no way installing an application on Mac OS X should require a reboot.
    • My guess is that most applications simply use an install script that defaults to a reboot, and they dont disable it "because it cant hurt".

      I always click on "restart later" (most often MUCH later :) ), and it never prevented ANY programm that didnt install a kernel level driver from working.

  • Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Auckerman ( 223266 )
    Didn't BeOS do this? Don't a great deal of modern operating systems do this? I fail to see the innovation.

  • It just works!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by notmyeye ( 877399 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:05PM (#12425685)
    I'm a bit afraid if their approach to "it just works" begins at the graphics driver.

  • To: Steve (Score:5, Funny)

    by guitaristx ( 791223 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:05PM (#12425689) Journal
    From: Bill
    Subject: Re: Longhorn

    Hey Steve,
    Has the research team figured out why the *nix machines don't have to reboot all the time?

    Bill

  • Repurcussions of Graphics-Intensive Desktops (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DevolvingSpud ( 774770 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:08PM (#12425717)
    There are 2 big things coming over the horizon, once Longhorn lets us have advanced 3D graphics on our desktops.

    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.
    • 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.

      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
    • But by far the worst is going to be the end-user customization.

      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)

      by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:45PM (#12426853)
      There are 2 big things coming over the horizon, once Longhorn lets us have advanced 3D graphics on our desktops.

      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)

    by jpardey ( 569633 )
    So when I update my display drivers for Duke Nukem Forever, I won't have to restart!

  • The future of Windows??? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sfjoe ( 470510 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:12PM (#12425767)

    How many times have we seen breathless articles all slack-jawed over some new technology that Microsoft is getting ready to unveil .... only to have it never appear.
    Vaporware anyone?

  • OS X - Quartz (Score:2, Insightful)

    by shmlco ( 594907 )
    Wow. Yet another MS innovation coming soon to a computer near you.

    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)

      by mpaque ( 655244 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:04PM (#12426355)
      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.)


      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)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <yayagu@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:18PM (#12425820) Journal
    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.

    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.)

    • bonified (sp?)

      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."
    • "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). "

      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)

      by TekGoNos ( 748138 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:54PM (#12426946) Journal
      The most probably culprit I can think of are file locks.

      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.

  • Will Mac OS 10.5 be out before Longhorn? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:19PM (#12425834)
    Apple brought out 10.4 about 17 months after 10.3. I wonder if 10.5 will appear on a similar interval and be out in late 2006. I can see Steve Jobs raining on Bill's parade with another OS release.
    • I wonder if 10.5 will appear on a similar interval and be out in late 2006.

      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.
  • I can certainly understand refusing to reboot a server that needs to be on 24/7. Fine. But why do people get their panties in a bunch over rebooting their own personal machines? I run Fedora Core 3, yes it takes minutes for it to boot up, but when I do I usually don't sit there staring at it. When I turn my computer on in the morning I do something else while booting up, like brush my teeth. This development manager friend of mine looked at me strangely when I kept rebooting my laptop to fix networking issues. Why do you reboot your machine so much? Because I don't know how to selectively start and restart processes. Because I don't know which ones to start and restart. With names like ntpd, how would one know? If I restart processes, don't others depend on them? Won't they get hosed? Etc. Etc. Or I can waste a whole five minutes of my life not worrying about those things and just reboot the damn thing. And chat with my friends in the meanwhile.

    • 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."

    • With names like ntpd, how would one know? Well, offhand, I'd say that ntpd was the Network Time Protocol Daemon, and you probably don't need it. You know, the service names aren't really all that cryptic! httpd is the HTTP server, dhcpd is the DHCP server, nfsd is the NFS server, snmpd is the SNMP server... the only confusing thing is that Samba requires both smbd and nmbd.
    • When I turn my computer on in the morning

      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)

    by pg110404 ( 836120 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:23PM (#12425884)
    In some ways, I think microsoft goes out of their way to find the most cumbersome and assanine way of developing their drivers.

    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.

  • The ability to change settings without rebooting? Gee, that was the tag line of the dynamic .vxd's in Windows 95. Again, we were told the same in Windows 98, and ultimately we were guarenteed a month of uptime in WindowsXP before the need to reboot. I've successfully reached the month of no-reboot time for XP, but only when I don't update anything, at all. I hope Longhorn finally delivers on the 10 year old promises given to us by the 'technology providers' of Microsoft.

  • Wow (Score:4, Funny)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:29PM (#12425938) Homepage Journal
    Truly revolutionary. See what you're missing Linux and BSD users? AND I'll just bet Microsoft will add their own antivirus app to Longhorn so you can conveniently just send all of your moeny to one place. Top that, OSS hippies!
  • The future of graphics in the Windows world is easy to plot.

    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)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:36PM (#12426019)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I think I have seen this before... ;-) (Score:4, Informative)

    by shawnce ( 146129 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @06:58PM (#12426298) Homepage
    Desktop Window Manager [extremetech.com]

    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).

  • I guess they're right (Score:5, Funny)

    by toby ( 759 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:36PM (#12426755) Homepage Journal
    There are going to be so many other creative ways to have the system reboot, it makes sense to eliminate one of them.

    Good luck with that.

  • About Microsoft's new mantra... (Score:3, Funny)

    by francisew ( 611090 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @07:54PM (#12426943) Homepage

    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)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @10:01PM (#12428014) Homepage
    If it weren't for Microsoft endless Direct-X N upgrades, everything would just run OpenGL 2, which is well-defined, stable, and supports everything the current generation of hardware can do, including pixel and vertex shaders.

    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)

    by ka9dgx ( 72702 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @11:35PM (#12428572) Homepage Journal
    Windows NT 3.51 was, if I understand it correctly, the last secure kernel version of Windows. The folks in Redmond had learned from their adult mentors at IBM the wisdom of leaving graphics outside of the privileged ring. This was during the era when Microsoft was pushing the possibilty of a C2 securty rating for the OS.

    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)

    by master_p ( 608214 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @07:23AM (#12430336)
    The main trick that the new Windows graphic technology will pull in order to utilise the 3d part of a video card is to use a texture for each toplevel window. Then the desktop will be like a video game: each 60 frames per second, the textures will be rendered by the 3d hardware with various effects.

    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 /. crowd has already pointed, restaring the X-Server is almost like rebooting: all desktop apps need to be interrupted.

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