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Windows XP To Get Longhorn Technologies
SilentChris writes "According to CNet, Microsoft is revising their plan for Longhorn. In addition to scaling back WinFS, they will also have separate releases of Avalon (the new graphical system) and Indigo (a new network architecture) for Windows XP and 2003. If most of the updates will be available for current versions of Windows, what is the incentive to upgrade?"
I loved how the bangboy submitter called it a "new networking architecture". Indigo is a SOA stack that will bring .NET more into J2EE territory. It has less to do with "networking" than building distributed applications.
I hope this... ah... helps and all that =)
Nothing's forcing you not to use Vegas, Cleaner, and Combustion. All 3 blow the doors off the Adobe equivalent. Vote with your wallet.
Will Microsoft use activation to force me to upgrade? In other words, will Microsoft ever stop giving out activation codes for any of the products that require activation?
No, Microsoft will not use activation as a tool to force people to upgrade. Activation is merely an anti-piracy tool, nothing else.
Microsoft will also support the activation of Windows XP throughout its life and will likely provide an update that turns activation off at the end of the product's lifecycle so users would no longer be required to activate the product.
They're not scaling back WinFS. There's no where in the article it even states this. All it says is that it will be available in beta form upon the client release.
For some reason, Slashdot has trouble reporting anything accurately on WinfS. Anyone remember the previous case where Microsoft decided not to include some of the more esoteric features (like some networking functions). Slashdot, of course, picked it up and reported it as "WinFS cancelled," and other tech news sites picked it up. For months, people on Slashdot continued to refer to WinFS as cancelled, when they were blissfully ignorant to the fact it wasn't. Sigh. All it takes is a little basic research first.
What is easy to do is turn on automatic update so Microsoft can install and run anything they want on my machines anytime they want. No, thanks.
/., why don't you check your facts first? Aparently you missed options 2-4.
You're kidding right? The very first time automatic update tries to turn on, it asks you if you want to:
1. Have it download and install updates automatically (great for grandma)
2. Just download, but ask me before installing
3. Notify me, but don't download or install anything.
4. Totally turn off automatic updates
Before you join the, "windows sucks no matter what" group on
I don't understand what is so bad about NT GDI.
Scaling? World transformations that provide scaling, rotation and shearing have always (since NT3.1) existed. Why isn't it used more often? IDK, but I'm sure they could start using it without a complete rewrite.
Acceleration? Driver capability negotiation has always been implemented. DirectX also supports many optimizations.
Possible movement of the window manager into user mode? I'm sure that win32k.sys could be moved back into winsrv.dll like it was before NT4.
Graphics composition (IE caching of window data to avoid application refresh)? Trivial redirection of video ops to a memory DC and the fact that transparency is already supported without refreshing the lower window, tell me that this could be accomplished without a rewrite too. Besides, I don't know if I like the idea of spending all that memory on storing large bitmaps of how each window looks.
Vector based drawing? Enhanced Metafiles have always been supported in NT. You can easily redirect the output (all GDI commands can be recorded) of a progam into a EMF, view/edit the records and play it back any time, even with a world transformation.
Use 3d polygons instead of a 2d frame buffer? This would require considerable modification but only to the way that regions are computed; you can already put direct3d objects in a window with a polygonal region around the edges. One way or the other, you are still outputting to a 2d surface. And really, what is the point? Woo 3d icons.
Really, what is so broken about GDI that it needs to be replaced? IMO, there are far more important things to be overhauled in Windows than the video system. Rewriting a major component to provide eye candy should be a very low priority.
Another thing is that Avalon does not fill the same role as GDI does; Avalon also does what USER does and some shell stuff too. I'm saying that the important things in Avalon could be implemented using GDI.