Could you have done better?

Glaucus · 30 Dec 2006 at 15:10

the-void said:
Baz, Vista is trying to emulate the methodology employed in linux (and almost every other modern OS) where users don't have Admin's credentials as default. (Also trying to ensure that applications don't expect users to have default admin rights). Even if Linux was as popular as windows this one fundamental difference means Linux is a lot harder to hack than windows. Isn't this one of the "features" of a more "secure" windows???

I wouldn't say linux is more secure. It just operates in a different way. Thus needs different ways to hack it. Once the new ways are understood. Then it's just as insecure as any other operating system. However its "more" secure because very few can be bothered to hack in new ways when linux has such a small %

FatRakoon · 30 Dec 2006 at 15:57

Una said:
Wtf? Most of linux is what your term a "crappy open source project", so of course it has a 3D accelerated desktops. XGL/AIGLX/Compiz/Beryl etc...
XGL/Beryl works on much lower spec hardware than what Aero requires and is far superior, both in look and feel and extensibility.

From using it though it was nice yet unproductive and nothing special but I guess that is what vista needs to attract all the technically illiterate people with eye candy.

csmager · 30 Dec 2006 at 16:05

I think 'Aero' is only seen as taxing on hardware because its requirement for Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware - something that wasn't on older/onboard cards. All just for some blurring. That wasn't the only requirement though - it needs a driver written for the new driver model.

The I had worst card ATI bothered to write a driver for - 9600SE. Works perfectly. Works on an fx5200 too - no problems. Anything lower than those either suffer from lack of drivers or lack of PS 2.0.

NathanE · 30 Dec 2006 at 17:50

Una said:
Wtf? Most of linux is what your term a "crappy open source project", so of course it has a 3D accelerated desktops. XGL/AIGLX/Compiz/Beryl etc...
XGL/Beryl works on much lower spec hardware than what Aero requires and is far superior, both in look and feel and extensibility.

No need to be stressy about it. I think you misunderstood what I was hinting at - that a 3D accelerated desktop that isn't properly "apart" of the OS is never going to have the integration/support that an official one does (like Vista's and OSX's for example - though OSX's isn't GPU accelerated.)

As for extensibility, well you're wrong. Do some research on this... keywords are "WPF" and "XAML" and you'll soon see why you're wrong. Even OSX doesn't have the extensibility that Vista's new display engine has. I made a bet with someone on this forum not long ago that Vista's display extensibility won't be matched for at least 5 years and I'll gladly take you up on it too

FatRakoon said:
Check out Looking Glass.

That's not what I meant really, but yeah it's a cool feature. Microsoft was toying with ideas like this for Longhorn back in 1999. One of their WinHEC demos was being able to drag windows around in a 3-dimensional space shaped as an 'arc'.

What I mean by 3D acceleration is that the OS uses the GPU to render the desktop. Every window (e.g. the taskbar, media players, notepad, IE/Firefox, everything) is stored as a texture in the graphics memory (with 2-stage paging to system RAM and page file possible). The GPU is used to render everything from simple block colour fills, to gradients, to glows, to pixel shading, to transparencies and so on.

Vista is the first mainstream OS to support this and has a massive development framework called WPF and a markup language (set to replace HTML/CSS) called XAML with which you can create GUI's that use all this new rendering power. With XAML you can do stuff like drawing lines, circles, beziers and so on, but also add common controls like buttons, lists of data, text boxes and so on (all custom renderable). But XAML also lets you play with more advanced stuff like transparency, pixel shaders and animation.

Una · 30 Dec 2006 at 18:02

NathanE said:
No need to be stressy about it. I think you misunderstood what I was hinting at - that a 3D accelerated desktop that isn't properly "apart" of the OS is never going to have the integration/support that an official one does (like Vista's and OSX's for example - though OSX's isn't GPU accelerated.)

Well with Xorg/XF86 and all the other client/server windows managers I would say they are separate from the OS. Thats why there are fully accelerated xservers out there.

Then you got the other way of allowing Compiz and other compositing window managers to be built on top of a traditional server with a small GLX extension rather than requiring a full Xgl server. Another advantage is that DRI bypass Xgl server (so it could not be accelerated), while with AIGLX everything is allowed to be composed.

NathanE said:
As for extensibility, well you're wrong. Do some research on this... keywords are "WPF" and "XAML" and you'll soon see why you're wrong. Even OSX doesn't have the extensibility that Vista's new display engine has.

Ah I didn't mean extensibility in the frameworks sense. I was more down the open source - anyone can hack away / fork the project and do what they like with the code and make improvements/extend it. With a closed codebase you are only going to be able to do what the API allows and thus stifle creativity/possible improvements. Ala Compiz -> Beryl.

NathanE · 30 Dec 2006 at 18:09

Una said:
Ah I didn't mean extensibility in the frameworks sense. I was more down the open source - anyone can hack away / fork the project and do what they like with the code and make improvements/extend it. With a closed codebase you are only going to be able to do what the API allows and thus stifle creativity/possible improvements. Ala Compiz -> Beryl.

That's not extensibility then

I've not used or read up on any of those projects but I'd guess that they only expose remedial non-OO APIs for developers to use. A stark contrast to what Vista's WPF/XAML offers.

How many people actually use those projects from day to day anyway? Are they stable for production use? Do they support a wide range of hardware?

Una · 30 Dec 2006 at 18:22

NathanE said:
How many people actually use those projects from day to day anyway? Are they stable for production use? Do they support a wide range of hardware?

People who use them from day to day:- Very few when the novelty's wears off.
Stable for production: No not really

Support a wide range of hardware:- I'm not sure but I would think XGL/AIGLX support a larger range of hardware than vista does at the moment. So long as the card supports the necessary hardware operations, anyone can write a patch if they posses the necessary skills.

This is a bit pointless anyhow, I think right now half the features of the composite renderer's are a little pointless and are just there for novelty value.

XAML sounds like a good idea however, not read about that before. Anyhow off out, happy new year all

Hades · 31 Dec 2006 at 00:42

If anyone who doesn't know what XGL is about, there's loads of videos on YouTube showing the various Linux 3D window managers. For example:

XGL demo - 3D hardware drawing the screen across dual TFT's

I've taken a look at Vista's Aero and it's nice but nothing that Linux hasn't had in various guises for some time now. I can't comment on the extensibility of it in comparison. But with XGL, AIGL, looking Glass, Compiz, Beryl, etc, etc, being open source then I expect that if it's missing then it will get added soonish anyway.

I use a dual boot XP and Linux (Ubuntu) machine. The GUI (of which there are many to choose from - Gnome is my favourite) has come along leaps and bounds in recent years. I'm now starting to prefer Linux/Gnome. Certainly I find the performance under Linux far better with my dual core CPU than under XP. It just feels more fluid.

The big issue for most users with Linux isn't really the GUI imho (which, as I've said is now not that far off XP/Vista and in some areas I think beats it). The issue is installing stuff and getting into dependency hell. But this issue stems from having such a wide choice of software to use.

For the vast majority of home users I'd say Linux is definitely an option for them. If all you need is a word processor, browser, email, etc, then does it matter whether you use OSX, XP, Vista or some Linux variant? In a few years the migration will be away from desktop apps and towards web based apps anyway.

I keep my XP partition for games. So there is a pressure on me to upgrade to Vista to get DX10. But I just can't see the cost being worth it. I may as well just buy a console instead. And if that happens then I may as well wipe XP too.

stoofa · 31 Dec 2006 at 04:47

Energize said:
They're going to have to make a lot of money to cover their 10bn capital, probably why it's such an insane price. At the price it costs I can't see any casual users upgrading soon.

Two out of two on the crazy statements - going for the hat-trick?

1. Vista never has been "XP with bits bolted on". It's a new OS from the ground up.
2. Vista isn't an insane price as many people have pointed out to you and many others time and time again.
Vista is as expensive as you want it to be with the version of most use to Home users being no more expensive than XP.

Nobody will be upgrading soon, well, depends if you call a month soon or not. What with the OS not being on the shelves yet.

Energize · 31 Dec 2006 at 07:31

Vistas functionality for my uses is the same as xp so It effectivley is xp with add-ons.

Somehow I doubt vista will be only £60 for the version that does everything xp mce does currently.

HEADRAT · 31 Dec 2006 at 08:58

Energize said:
Somehow I doubt vista will be only £60 for the version that does everything xp mce does currently.

Well MCE 2005 is OEM only (so you shouldn't really be able to buy it without a system) and costs £77.54

I think people are used to paying a little more for a new product.

Hades said:
The issue is installing stuff and getting into dependency hell.

I have to say this has been the biggest reason I've always tried but ulitimately been "put off" Linux, as a "literate" user I have been to "hell", for Joe Public they would have given up day one!

HEADRAT

FirebarUK · 31 Dec 2006 at 09:43

but they ended up writing majority of it from scratch, to make it more secure.

I very much doubt it. There will be plenty of dos-ish code left in there (not just to support backwards compatibility).

The only reason Linux isn't as user friendly as windows is because MS would sue them for IP copyright.

I doubt that's the case. It would probably be Apple sueing MS considering they basically ripped off the very early Apple OS' GUI.

FatRakoon · 31 Dec 2006 at 12:56

FirebarUK said:
I very much doubt it. There will be plenty of dos-ish code left in there (not just to support backwards compatibility).

I doubt that's the case. It would probably be Apple sueing MS considering they basically ripped off the very early Apple OS' GUI.

Yes, but then Even Apples GUI was basically a rip off from Xerox... The STAR OS, which came out a couple of years before that...Although Apple did release the first proper GUI that actually worked properly I suppose?

FirebarUK · 31 Dec 2006 at 12:58

Yeah Apple's was commercial for home users.

NathanE · 31 Dec 2006 at 13:26

Vista is not a rewrite/rebuild. They've simply taken the Windows Server 2003 as the basis and then improved it. This is called incremental development.

The key parts of Vista that have been "rewritten" is everything surrounding display/GUI, the networking stack and the audio stack.

There's also a hell of a lot of new functionality in the kernel (note: none of the kernel was rewritten, just improvements/tweaks/additions).

Windows NT was secure by design (and most professionals will agree that NT actually has a more secure design than Unix) however a lot of the security was turned off in 2000 Pro and XP to aid in migrating users from Windows 9x. Now that 9x is firmly in the past Microsoft has reenabled all the security features of NT and also created many new ones.

FirebarUK · 31 Dec 2006 at 13:35

Windows NT was practically made entirely by a team outside of microsoft (hired by), then with MS slapping in old DOS stuff. I think people will need to wait for Vienna or whatever for a real change (if their PR talk is anything to go by).

NathanE · 31 Dec 2006 at 13:40

It was written by the VMS guys (which Microsoft hired, including Dave Cutler, prior to starting the project) in cooperation with IBM. The project folded and both sides took the source code their own ways. IBM made OS/2 Warp and Microsoft made NT.

Vista, like Windows x64-variants, does not include any 16-bit DOS emulation what so ever. A lot of legacy crap has been culled in Vista, over and above what was removed in x64. The Win32API still remains, of course (because about 100 million bits of software rely on it), but I can imagine that being removed and replaced with an emulator in probably 5-10 years. Microsoft is pushing .NET very hard now for its frameworks. WinFX can already do almost everything the Win32API can but from a managed environment (.NET) that is completely free of any risks of buffer overflows and so on. A totally secure by design programming environment. Perhaps more important for developers themselves though, WinFX is completely object oriented unlike the Win32API which was flat and tiresome to work with.

FatRakoon · 31 Dec 2006 at 15:43

NathanE said:
They've simply taken the Windows Server 2003 as the basis and then improved it.

Which in turn is based on XP
Which in turn is based on 2K
Which in turn is based on NT
Which runs on a 8080 CPU which is also the basis for the ZX Spectrums

So... are we all running ZX80 Computers?

NathanE · 31 Dec 2006 at 17:29

If you squint enough, yup!

Energize · 31 Dec 2006 at 18:12

HEADRAT said:
Well MCE 2005 is OEM only (so you shouldn't really be able to buy it without a system) and costs £77.54 I think people are used to paying a little more for a new product.

You can get it for £60 and microsoft started allowing people to buy oem software without hardware ages ago, hence why ocuk sell it.