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Avalon Preview Released for XP
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."
Longhorn originally had three major parts. It appears Microsoft has released two of those three now.
.NET framework and allows for integration into Longhorn, Microsoft's new OS.
WinFX is an object-oriented API that uses the
Win -> API
FX -> Framework
WinFS is the vaporware magical file system that includes a new abstraction layer for the files for sorting, searching, indexing, etc.
Monad/MSH is the new command line/shell scipting part of longhorn. It too can be downloaded and used in beta right now. It's probably the most useful aspect of longhorn to the average power-user.
If you are going to play with something that isn't going to scrub your system, I would start with monad. It sits happy on any installed system.
Simple answer: No.
.NET with the new technologies based on that. They're ditching Win32, though there will be binary compatibility for older apps. The kernel will remain mostly unchanged; it's the overlying technologies that are being rewritten. Not only will this make things much safer (.NET is garbage-collected, type-safe, etc.), but it allows for much easier development (compare MFC to, say, WinForms).
It's all going
Hate Microsoft or not, they're taking a step in the right direction with Longhorn by replacing all that "cruft" (my favorite term for such things). Of course, I still think Apple will just come out with something even better with Longhorn, but at the least, I'll be happy having the majority of people getting their computers into a managed memory environment where I don't have to worry as much about an app taking things down.
I wonder if it's really that graphic intensive (not gonna bother downloading it yet though). Seeing things like this get added to XP and things like WinFS taken out of LH, it's making it less and less attractive to ever upgrade to LH. For the first time in my life, I feel like either
1) lots of people will stick to XP, or
2) a lot of people will move on to linux instead.
I've been using pretty only windows in the last few years (ever since I got rid of my atari 1040 and older stuff), coding for it and all... But I'm really loosing interest in the "new" stuff they come out with (like, I got all the themes and such crap all off - "classic" look). It just seems more bloated, and they're trying to put some "nice" (they think it is, anyways) GUI so lusers aren't scared anymore, when in fact, I find it's becoming quite a mess - and an overly bloated one, that is.
I've tried knoppix 3.7 a couple days ago, and I must say it's a VERY viable option for most stuff. Yes, I had a few problems (enabling spdif out on sb lives, xmms wouldn't play mp3's off smb and small things), and it won't run all my usual apps (photoshop, ms office...), but I was very surprised nonetheless. There were some compilers in there, a CAD program (shocked me), OO loaded slow (of course) but it wasn't half bad... It was really easy to pick up and find everything.
Most people I know all love their windows/autocad/photoshop/etc (not that they know how to use it) - but that's mostly because they didn't pay the hefty price tag, but this does the most part, for free (legit). I'm starting to seriously consider "doing the switch", at least on one PC to give it a good try.
I think LH itself is what will make the most people switch to linux (especially combined with all the spyware and other crap most lusers have been crippled with lately). I only see bad in LH - and I'm mostly known as a M$-fanboy... But that's changing lately. I've been starting to convert myself to more open, portable (and perhaps more stable/secure) options (like using LAMP instead of ASP or ASP.Net/IIS/SQL Server like we use at work and such) and I'm liking it, a lot (cheap to host, too). Now if I could find a replacement for most apps (including VS.Net), I think I'd be sold.
To me, that MS-world is just unsustainable. Everybody I know only use it because they can use pirated everything for free. I don't think I know anyone who wants to - or can afford to buy a new windows, office, and everything else license every year (or even for every second version - and who wants to stick to old soft?). I don't mind paying a minimal fee for a good distro or such, but what I use daily on a win box cost me over a few months' salary... How much longer can we keep up with this dream of being afford to use all these apps that cost hundreds of $? (yes, I know, big corps can afford it... whatever).
///<sig
3d cards make for hell of 2d accelerators.
first 3d cards were JUST 2d accelerators for most stuff anyways, you would only draw zbuffered triangles(textured, shaded...) with them.
the normal 3d cards you see today are just perfect for that and _very_ affordable, windows just can't take much of advantage of it now(longhorn is intended to have a mode that would take advantage of it).
(mac osx takes use of the fast funky drawing for desktop stuff and effects, for one)
besides, there's a whole lot of "2d acceleration" going on in your normal windows too, if you don't believe it run your windows in plain vesa mode..
though, really, are you trolling? hardware accelerated mouse cursors? isn't that so.. hmm. 1980's? or 70's?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Well, they don't have all those bells and whistles, but Matrox has been concentrating on solid 2D performance for years now, and for everyday 2D applications they (at least, last time I checked) consistently outperform the massively expensive 3D cards.
i'm just a guy working in an office for a supermarket chain. linux is mainstream for us here, but the OS is easy to use and looks like fun so i've been reading/messing around.
here's a link i found on netcraft that was quite interesting:
http://www.business-linux.at/idc/linux.marketshar
another good read:
http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P1299
not sure i know what you're talking about, the food industry seems to be switching to linux, i don't know about others. they say it's more reliable and very popular. all the techy stuff you're talking about is over my head!
joe user
From what I gather, Avalon is Microsoft's version of Quartz. Has anyone compared the two in terms of capabilities, ease of programming etc.?
Worst, Idea, Ever. This sounds like it will be *terrible* for laptops, or any other place power useage is a concern :) Like I really need to run my CPU at 100% so word can lockup that much faster.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
After all i've read and seen about Avalon, i still don't get what the fuzz is all about. Yes, it looks flashy, but at the expense of unreasonable processing power (don't forget this is an integral part of the Longhorn kernel). And i consider myself a sucker for eye-candy.
I know it's not comparable, because we're talking windows, but Enlightenment 0.17 will (hopefully) do everything Avalon does, and pretty much everything new Longhorn does as well. Just check the information on the e17 foundation libraries. Amazing stuff.
It's way simpler to implement a windowsystem in software than on silicon.
It's also not like driving 3D chips is impossible. Normally you have acceleration for doing the regular 2D stuff (fill, copy and line with the standard 256 raster ops). If you want to do something like accelerated alpha blit then it's normally just drawing two textured triangles with the 3D engine (the hardest part of that is engine setup).
The hard stuff is in texture memory "VM" design (i.e.: efficiently using texture memory when allocated textures [or windows] are growing/shrinking).
I do not represent myself.
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?
That may be true in the high performance DirectX area (D3D and DDraw revisions frequently made large changes to the API), but in the normal application area we've been stuck with GDI since Windows was conceived. Only relatively recently has GDI+ come into play, although at a high level it's simply an OO wrapper around GDI, and likewise, MFC graphics classes are also GDI wrappers. At the core, Windows basically supports GDI for normal applications and DirectDraw/Direct3D for high performane graphics, and so the situation then isn't as complex as you make it to be. GDI itself currently is very underpowered when you compare it to things the Mac OS can do, so it makes sense to finally revise the API after 20 years of usage.
I can't possibly describe Avalon's capabilities here, but as a simple example, in GDI you draw rectangles, lines, etc., whereas in Avalon you define visual objects and Avalon automatically renders them as needed. In computer games and other applications that need a deeper level of control Avalon won't be that appropriate (although IIRC you can do simple 3D in Avalon), but for normal applications I think it'll be awesome. Death to GDI!
Of course after rereading my post it does seem like Windows has a bunch of graphics APIs. Just remember that all that application-side ones are reducible to the ancient and horribly underpowered GDI.
This is, I think, the typical "I-Tried-Installing-Linux-2-Years-Ago, Tried-Playing-with-it-for-10minute, And-found-it-suckz-because-none-of-my-1337-windows -apps-runs-on-it" user.
The user only remember a few surface stuff he noticed 5 years ago and doesn't stop complaining about them.
Most notably in the "A Decade Later
They both also succeeded replacing Windows-based server whose administrator got fed up with microsoft's products.
We see more Windows-to-Linux thant Linux-to-Windows server migration.
Linux and BSD are also used a lot in academics.
And Linux IS used on Dekstop even if it isn't as visible as it's other uses.
[CTRL] [ALT] [+] and [CTRL] [ALT] [-] since I installed my first distribution.
(You should have paid more attention to the manual).
Meanwhile, you had to use some hack to avoid rebooting Windows 95 in order the effect to take place...
Then FreeDesktop.org doesn't exist, I think...
It's not desktop's purpose to implement installations. (Just like it's not DirectX's job either).
...)
...) should watch and learn. They could win a lot of clients if they had a single point for software acquisition/update like this...
I think it's the exact opposite.
Almost all linux distributions have a package managment system (YaST, apt-get, emerge, drakrpm, yum
Unless you want to use new version of a sfotware that isn't available yet in your distribution, you got a SINGLE place to uninstall unneeded packages, install new softwares that are optimised for YOUR distribution, and you can easily get updates for them.
Compare to windows where you have your Installation CD, Windows Update, separate installer that you must download from separate website for each software you want.
You must track updates alone for every single software you installed (do you remembre that small plug-in you installed 6 months ago in WinAmp and for which there's now a patch against a buffer overflow ?)
I really think PC providers (like Dell, HP,
There's not only one, but a few of them. :
Notable one
- OpenGL : So good for 3D graphics that it's also used under Windows for games like thoses from ID software.
- SDL : 2D GFX/Audio library that is also used by windows programms (like emulators).
Most of the base of the design is borrowed from older Unices which where available long time before Windows.
KDE got most of them from the begining.
Even the parts that are inspired by Windows are much more configurable than windows.
1. Mono is not the only V
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
look, i admit that i am not a s/w developer-- i actually work in digital media. long story short, i installed this (all of it), and didn't notice anything different. did i just install a whole new set of programming tools expecting some eye candy, or is there something i'm missing?
Watching the video with Daniel L., it seems like programming
Avalon is about as simple as programming OpenGL.
Except it runs very slow. w00t
The world is everything that is the case
Objective-C is dynamically typed, and therefore is by definition type-safe. It is also garbage collected, although it is both reference counted and manual. But I know what you meant. You meant it isn't type-checked at compile time and automatically garbage collected. Which like any language feature debate has both pros and cons. Neither are key issues that you can judge the superiority of a whole OS on.
Apple leapfrogged Windows with OS X in 1999. Not until Longhorn will Microsoft have caught up on the technology. And given that there will likely be 2 OS X releases before Longhorn (Tiger and the next one) it would be crazy to decide now who will be ahead at that point.