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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."

3 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. 3 aspects by Davak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Longhorn originally had three major parts. It appears Microsoft has released two of those three now.

    WinFX is an object-oriented API that uses the .NET framework and allows for integration into Longhorn, Microsoft's new OS.

    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.

  2. Re:Here comes the bashing... by johannesg · · Score: 5, Funny
    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...

    ...and one idiot who thinks he can stave off all that by posting his insanely smart prediction about it.

  3. Re:Graphics and Avalon... by Thundersnatch · · Score: 5, Informative
    just what you want for the kernel of a server OS, isn't it?

    Why in hell does every Linux fanboy assume that all Windows processes run in kernel mode? Even Windows Explorer on NT4/Win2k/XP/2003 runs in user space, buddy.

    All of this UI stuff wil run in user space, with the exception of the actual video device driver code (which is done for performance). Windows video device drivers that are WHQL certified are typically rock solid and stable for general non-gaming use.

    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, when you log out, the processes for explorer.exe and pretty much everything else GUI are completely stopped (only GINA, the graphical login prompt, remains). You can verify this with any number of Windows remote administration tools.

    Finally, you can bet that the "eye candy" will be turned off by default on the server versions of longhorn, just as it is on Windows Server 2003 (which uses the same Luna GUI as XP, with almost all the animation/transparency/etc. options turned off).