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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.'
Is the ability to update without rebooting a side-effect feature, or a full-effect feature? It seems like something only a consumer PC (i.e. not a server) would have to do, and infrequently. Is it really a demand that people have?
It's nice that I won't have to reboot to upgrade my video driver. Now if they could fix the memory leaks that seem to be so rampant in Windows Server and its applications I might have an average uptime that is longer than 1 month.
I remember in my old Novell file server days that it was common to have Novell 3.12 servers with an uptime of 2 years or more. From what I understand, this is common among just about every operating system other than Windows Server (which is the primary operating system I deal with).
I'm a big tall mofo.
There are 2 big things coming over the horizon, once Longhorn lets us have advanced 3D graphics on our desktops.
The first is that this can probably be exploited by malware/spyware to make "invisible" interfaces that sit over top of existing applications, happily monitoring everything you're doing. Or, kind of like those one-pixel GIFs that show up on the odd phishing page. No fun.
But by far the worst is going to be the end-user customization. Want transparent yellow spinning windows that change opacity based on the phase of the moon? Bet you can do that! It'll be like the old programs that let you add sounds to all the Windows events. When the average user got a hold of that, it was only a matter of seconds before their machine became the Box Of Annoyance. Thank Jeebus people finally grew out of that (mostly). But watch and see - it's coming again, only this time it's got GRAPHICS.
Now, it may open up a whole new world of "desktop modification pranks." Hmm.
Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
This brings a question to mind -- does anyone know exactly why Windows still requires reboots for these kinds of things? This makes my life positively MISERABLE.
A typical experience for me... I have all of my machines set up dual boot, all with some distro of linux, and either XP Home Edition, or XP Pro. I do most of (but not all) my work on the linux side, but when I do boot over to XP inevitably it's more than just one reboot, it's almost always at least 2, and many times it's 3! (not 3 factorial, just 3 exclamation). Typically this is a result of something in my XP environment updating itself, be it Windows itself, virus protection updates, or just the vendors download of updates. Invariably a download occurs (after granting permission), and then the update, and then the dreaded popup dialog box with some such message, "For the updates to take effect you must restart your computer. Restart now?"
And some of those dialog boxes offer no clickable option other than "OK" which means reboot and you have to jump through an extra cognitive hoop and remember to click the "X" in the corner of the dialog window (to defer the reboot).
On the other side... I don't remember the last time I've had to reboot my linux for any kind of updates, and I do get updates in linux on a pretty regular basis (as many as in Windows). What gives? I don't think the architecture for XP is so arcane it can't support recognizing and using updates without a reboot. Does anyone have solid commentary on this? (Not that my life's going to get any better around this anytime soon -- but it'd be nice to know if there's some bonified (sp?) reason for this step-into-the-twentieth-century XP behavior.)
Apple brought out 10.4 about 17 months after 10.3. I wonder if 10.5 will appear on a similar interval and be out in late 2006. I can see Steve Jobs raining on Bill's parade with another OS release.
"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."
So... it isn't welcome then? I just rebuilt my gf's computer. I had to reboot a couple of times, one of them was simply to get the video driver going. Okay, it was another 30 seconds out of my day, but it still would have been pleasant if the screen just flickered a bit and suddenly everything was working.
It may not be the biggest time sink in the world, but I do like leaving my computer on for weeks at a time. (Yes, even in Windows, even though the uninformed still keep making 99'esque BSOD jokes.) Upgrading a video driver can be a little expensive if I've already got a bunch of things open in a state I'd like to get back to.
"Derp de derp."