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The Future of Windows Graphic Technology
Ben writes 'Extremetech has an article discussing the future of Windows graphics technology. The article uses information from presentations at the recent WinHEC, and outlines the Windows Graphics Foundation and other technologies expected to make an appearance in Longhorn. Particularly interesting is the Longhorn Display Driver Model: 'With it, Microsoft is aiming for that ideal situation of 'graphics just works.' For example, if you upgrade a graphics driver today, you typically have to reboot the system. One example of the 'graphics just works' mantra is one of LDDM's goals of allowing installation of graphics drivers without needing to restart the system.'
For example, if you upgrade a graphics driver today, you typically have to reboot the system. One example of the 'graphics just works' mantra is one of LDDM's goals of allowing installation of graphics drivers without needing to restart the system.
Didn't I hear the same "no rebooting" line with Win2k and with WinXP? Not that I wouldn't enjoy that, it's just that I've lost faith in these types of claims.
-Valiss
How often does the average user update the video drivers in Windows? Do they really care that it requires a reboot? I would guess that less than 0.1% of my Windows reboots are prompted by updating the video drivers.
how often do you load a new grafics driver?
I am amazed at how many software packages still require a reboot. IMHO this is much more annoying.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I'm a bit afraid if their approach to "it just works" begins at the graphics driver.
I don't mind a single reboot to install a graphics driver. As it is, there is no means to hot-plug an AGP video card that I'm aware of, so down time is required just to install that upgrade. I don't see rebooting for a very occasional upgrade. However, I don't think a reboot should be necessary for most software.
One of the things I like about OS X is that I don't have to reboot to use most software. Some OS level upgrades do require a reboot though.
I can certainly understand refusing to reboot a server that needs to be on 24/7. Fine. But why do people get their panties in a bunch over rebooting their own personal machines? I run Fedora Core 3, yes it takes minutes for it to boot up, but when I do I usually don't sit there staring at it. When I turn my computer on in the morning I do something else while booting up, like brush my teeth. This development manager friend of mine looked at me strangely when I kept rebooting my laptop to fix networking issues. Why do you reboot your machine so much? Because I don't know how to selectively start and restart processes. Because I don't know which ones to start and restart. With names like ntpd, how would one know? If I restart processes, don't others depend on them? Won't they get hosed? Etc. Etc. Or I can waste a whole five minutes of my life not worrying about those things and just reboot the damn thing. And chat with my friends in the meanwhile.
So yes, being able to do a change to something in the driver without rebooting would be infinitely useful.
But I'm part of a small crowd.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I don't tend to worry about video drivers on servers. I suppose if there's some issue of stability then I'd be forced, but other than that I usually just use remote admin and remote control tools, so it could be a low-end or older PCI card for all I care.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And you don't see how that is confusing as hell to the 'average joe' user? Hell, it's confusing to me, and I've been programming since I was seven years old... and that means I've been doing it for over 2 decades...
Until Linux gets over their archaic install issues it'll never take off in a big way in consumer land.
(And yes, I like Linux, I try to have as much here at my workplace running on Linux when it makes sense... it's just not user friendly.)
Are you implying that you have to reboot Linux in order to install the video driver? You certainly don't but then again to all the "but you don't have to rebootpeople -- you do have to restart X, which is something of a pain if you don't have a good session manager. To the desktop user, a crashed X is just as destructive as a crashed kernel, and likewise a restart of X is just as interruptive as having to reboot.
I'd imagine that some code to 'ssupend/resume' the state of X might be a pretty neat project to undertake, but I'm not sure anyone has done it yet..
First, linux requires you to deal with source code. Fine for you techheads out there. Bad for consumers unless it is *invisible* (i.e. just part of the install process that they dont see), and right now it just aint - at least not on all distros.
Second, (and this one's just going to eat at Open source people) - many companies dont want to release their source code. It was hard to write, and often they had to invest millions to create it. Why should they release it for free?
I'm not going to start a flame war by arguing that this is right or wrong. It just is. I need to be able to create a single binary and installer that I can release to the linux world and expect it to work across (at least) most distros and recent versions. Thats commercial reality.
MS have got it right only because they have a slow moving platform and no fragmentation. You wrote a driver in 2000 for windows 2000. In 2001 you needed to update it for XP. The linux world is very fast moving - here we are preparing to take on the 12th release of the 2.6 tree - and that has created issues for driver manufacturers.
Your two things are: malware exploits, and aesthetically jarring end-user customization.
The first one I think is a bit panicky, as I fail to see why any manner of "3D" would be any more or less secure than a 2D interface. What does the extra math have to do with security?
The second one is a common complaint aired in many different ways. It is true that many end users will create ridiculous desktops using 3D - in fact they create ridiculous desktops today, using 2D. My sister has her old Aptiva loaded with every damn croaking, tweeping, fluttering rainforest-styled thing there is, complete with bad-animated-GIF desktop icons and a mouse cursor that squirms.
We all know those brutal, punishingly bad Flash animations that festoon the Intarweb. And we all moan about how bad Flash is, that it shouldn't exist, etc.
All of these arguments trace back to: people sort of suck most of the time at design and aesthetics. They're not trained for it, and they don't have an innate sense of what pleases most people. All the Longhorn Aero Glass and Macrodobe Flashter Effects in the world do is empower that flaming mediocrity into full-blown animations and desktop effects that they simply could not do before. A small (tiny, in fact) subset of people will create glorious things that we haven't dreamt of.
The Japanese way of designing things has always amused me, because it is so rigid and defined; and yet this is why we love them. They know the power of an unblemished white wall. North Americans want every little variable and control in the interface exposed so we can fuck with it to our heart's content (isn't that what we do with computers? That and minesweeper?) but the Japanese don't like to do this. Take the PSP. You cannot change the 'desktop' picture, and not only that the (very pleasing, very Mac-like) translucent wave pattern in the background has a specific colour tint. Mine was pink when I bought it. Lots of people's first comment when you turn it on was surprise: "Pink?" The background colour changes every month. There are 12 colours that have been chosen by the design samurai at Sony. You cannot change them, they are immutable. This Is How It Is Designed. We think its a bit fucked because we're used to being able to set Edwardian Dayglo Yellow Outline Dropshadowed emails but they just won't allow it. Anyways I digress a bit.
Forget worrying about whether Aero will make Windows uglier, it gets the job done by itself as it is. There will always be ways to make ugly stuff in spectacular ways with our spectacular computers, so there's no point in blaming the software for enabling spectacular Lameness.
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