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Avalon Preview Released for XP

Posted by michael on from the promised-land dept.

CliffH writes "For those that want to play with a preview release of Avalon (the November Community Technology Preview) and the SDK, head on over to this page and download to your heart's delight. It is 261MB+ and is already going slow so be warned."

10 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. Watch out! by kngthdn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    From the article...

    The company warns customers not to use it even on a primary development computer, with there being every likelihood of bugs and a pretty good chance developers will want to reinstall their system once they're done using the Avalon preview.

    If Microsoft thinks it's that buggy, I don't think I wanna see it yet.

    What really gets me down is the time I spent reading Charles Petzold's book on Win32 programming. 6 months of headscratching, all for nothing. I couldn't even sleep until the brain damage was complete.

    Now I have to do the whole freaking thing over...

    They must hate us more than we hate them.

  2. The nice thing about APIs is there's so many of em by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "The goal is give developers a consistent set of APIs," or application programming interfaces, Montgomery said.

    And they're doing this by adding ANOTHER set of graphics APIs to Windows, to complement the ones we have now, and the ones we had five years ago, and the ones we had five years before that, and the ones we had five years before THAT?

    I don't get it.

  3. Here comes the bashing... by bonch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Instead of discussing the technology (which is actually pretty cool...they do have smart engineers at Microsoft), I have a feeling this will be a bunch of +5 Funny Microsoft-bash posts.

    One third referencing some obscure GUI from the past where something almost like this has been done already, another third referencing some future project not released yet doing the same, and the rest a bunch of +5 Funny "jokes" rehashing old Microsoft jokes from the last eight years. Okay, I'm generalizing, but that's also what people will be doing about this. :)

    Seriously, it looks like interesting stuff, and I can't wait to not only develop with it, but develop with the competing technologies that will also spring up as a result.

    Oh, and for the record, before people say it--OS X does use the 3D card, but only for fast blitting. It is still 2D. Not actual 3D acceleration using hardware triangles like this, where you're dealing with a camera viewport and using meshes.

    1. Re:Here comes the bashing... by ZiZ · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Oh, and for the record, before people say it--OS X does use the 3D card, but only for fast blitting. It is still 2D. Not actual 3D acceleration using hardware triangles like this, where you're dealing with a camera viewport and using meshes.

      Speaking of this, I'd love to see a super-bloody-fast hardware accelerated 2D video card, with code and drivers optimized for doing 2D operations - skip the 3D stuff, but give me 2D layers, in-card pixel-perfect collision detection, et cetera, et cetera. You could expect it to be at a reasonable price, it would be /very/ useful for desktop, presentation, and even 2D gaming...and it would be far simpler to program efficiently.

      But regardless of that, parent has a solid point.

      Imagine if your windowing system dealt with windows-in-the-front merely by telling your graphics card 'this goes to the front'. Think how nice it would be to never have to manually rotate and scale images for display, but know that your desktop would know how to deal with it if you asked it to nicely. Picture hardware-accelerated mouse cursors that can be as dynamic and beautiful as software-rendered mouse cursors. If you like that sort of thing, anyway.

      --
      This flies in the face of science.
    2. Re:Here comes the bashing... by geomon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ...I have a feeling this will be a bunch of +5 Funny Microsoft-bash posts.

      That isn't the point as I see it.

      I don't know if Microsoft is the largest software company or just the most profitable, but their economic momentum is what many critics object to. What you perceive as craping and whinging (and there is some of that too) is instead, as we see it, our job as consumers. We are fulfilling our obligations to make our demands known ("Market Forces" and all that).

      I use Linux two reasons:

      1) it is cool techology that I personally find enjoyable to use and learn, and
      2) to provide Microsoft with an anti-monopoly alternative.

      The second one is something that Microsoft users should appreciate more than Linux users. Microsoft's record on product development in areas where they are market leader is abysmal. Without us nipping at his heals, he wouldn't be pushing out a new OS until 2012.

      Your post conveys to your readers that you are also obviously "impressed" by the company. There isn't anything particularly wrong with that, but don't dismiss our objections out of hand too easily. After all, every motivation of Microsoft should be scrutinized by the Linux community. They are our competitor; being suspicious is our #2 job.

      Gates/Ballmer have no love for Linux, either the code, or the developers. But I may be overly harsh with Microsoft. After all, the Microsoft organization *has* tried to win Linux users back. It is true. Bill and his Vice Presidents have accused us of being anti-American, socialists, and communists. I haven't read a news release from Microsoft lately, so they may have already accused us of being terrorists as well.

      I just wish Microsoft realized that we are more than we more than just anti-American, socialists, and communists. We are consumers too. We are telling Microsoft something without relying on focus groups, and without the sophisticated market research. The answers are right there - right in the source code. All Bill and Co. have to do is cram their front-end on it and they could be the largest software publisher of Linux on the planet.

      For the userbase that started using Linux less than five years after Torvald's usenet post, we have seen a small hobby project grow into a major contender in the software industry. We don't need Bill and Co. any more. Linux has smart engineers too, but the contributor-community just has a different philosophy about how software should be constructed. For me and other Linux users like me, we are not *just* interested in getting software for free (although it really beats paying). We just want software we like.

      And there is nothing more red-blooded, capitalist, jack-booted, international commerce rader-esque than that.

      --
      "Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
  4. Screenshots by Szentigrade · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't know about the rest of you but i would rather bypass downloading a 250MB file and would just like to see some interesting screenshots.

    --
    When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
  5. Re:Graphics and Avalon... by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    you can and should provide multiple icon sizes

    Why? You should only need one icon size.

    (You are storing the icon as vector graphics and not a bitmap, right...?)

  6. Re:Graphics and Avalon... by Trelane · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Why in hell does every Linux fanboy assume that all Windows processes run in kernel mode?
    Upon what information are you basing your assessment here? Parent said nothing about Linux.
    --

    --
    Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
  7. Re:Graphics and Avalon... by value_added · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Anyway, you can run GUI-less windows servers on 2003 today. And even if you do choose to use the GUI shell for administering a Windows server ..."

    This deserves a "Why does every MS apologist insist that Windows can be run without a GUI?"

    Or, more accurately, "Why does every MS apologist insist that their half-dozen Resource Kit utilities adds up to Remote Administration Without a GUI?"

  8. Re:Interesting by wuice · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Luckily for MS, businesses are less likely to do that. Of course, I've worked for places that did. Shamelessly.