Slashdot Mirror
Vista's Graphics To Be Moved Out of the Kernel
Tiberius_Fel writes "TechWorld is running an article saying that Vista's graphics will not be in the kernel. The goal is obviously to improve reliability, alongside the plan to make most drivers run in user mode." From the article: "The shift of the UI into user mode also helps to make the UI hardware independent - and has already allowed Microsoft to release beta code of the UI to provide developers with early experience. IT also helps make it less vulnerable to kernel mode malware that could take the system down or steal data. In broader terms, this makes Windows far more like Linux and Unix - and even the MacOS - where the graphics subsystem is a separate component, rather than being hard-wired into the OS kernel."
It never ceases to amaze me how many incredible, fresh ideas come out of that powerhouse. This is easily the biggest development since the animated paper clip!
Um no.
They aren't moving anything out of the kernel that couldn't have already been replaced with a kernel mode driver (i.e. a video card driver).
Moving to usermode will just improve stabiltiy and make writing drivers easier.
Except X11 has ugly font rendering, poor antialiasing, and lacks many features of the Mac OS X graphics model. Even worse, most distros include truly heinous open source fonts of very poor quality. I mean, they couldn't even include a decent monospaced font with SuSE 9.1.
Ah, the old karmawhoring windows bash.
Come to Slashdot! Get a feedback reward for complying with groupthink! Impress a bunch of socially stunted rejects! You don't even need to know anything! Just recycle any one of a hundred old 'jokes.' It's a fucking blast!
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Despite the general feeling here, i'm starting to be really interested in vista...
It seems they have fixed almost everything that was wrong with windows. I mean:
Please don't make claims such as this (fixed almost everything) because it makes you sound like a M$ PR guy (or fanboy) which you probably are.
* Explorer rewriten from scratch. This was long, long overdue and that alone would make me interested in Vista. Explorer makes windows looks buggy sometimes but it's only explorer.exe which sucks...
I will agree, explorer does suck. But why did it take them this long to finally rewrite it? Knowing Microsoft and their coding practices, there will still be many bugs and just as many security holes as before. M$ has not been known for releasing stable / bug free / secure software. Now maybe they will prove me wrong, but honestly I don't care because I already have a stable and secure browser in Firefox. No need for me to try out a commercial product that comes bundled with a horrible OS when I have an OSS alternative that is much better and costs nothing.
* Monad. A real shell, which could possibly be much more powerfull than say bash+ standard Unix commands (or cygwin...)
Please expand on this... such as what commands will actually be useful and powerful compared to Linux/Unix where almost anything (even watching videos) can be done through the CLI.
* They're moving the graphics subsystems and all the bloody drivers in userland. That means it will be dead stable, period. 2000 and Xp are already at least as stable as Linux, and maybe more. After that i'm sorry but Linux will compare the same way to Windows that Win95 did to Linux...
How are the drivers "bloody?" Drivers, if you don't know, are what make your computer work. Without them, your computer would be pretty "bloody" useless. 2000 and XP as stable as Linux? Maybe more? Are you ignorant, or being payed off by M$? Windows has numerous problems with memory leaks and Windows boxes crash ALL the time. Maybe not from BSOD anymore, but leave a brand new Windows PC on for a few months, it will crash or get to a point where it runs extremely slow. Linux is known to have uptimes of multiple years, usually the only reason a linux server will go down is a hardware failure! I'd like to hear the same of a Windows box (not to mention the viruses and spyware which can destroy a Windows PC) Comparing Windows 95 to Linux? Back in '95? Yeah, I'm sure Windows was a little more polished, considering Linux had only been around for 4 years and was still a complete hobbyist project at the time...
* A hardware accelerated graphic system, ala Quartz. It should rock even if They'll probably make it look and act totally stupid out of the box, overusing their new power...
Big deal, a hardware rendered GUI. OS-X has been doing it for a while now, and there are projects in Linux for KDE and Gnome to have hardware accelerated graphics. Nothing new here, just MS hopping on the bandwagon again.
And people complain that there is nothing new in Vista, phew... I mean if they manage to do all those things, and do them the right way like they seem to be decided to (for once...) it will be damn worth a new release...
And no, i'm not a microsoft fanboy, i've been using Linux since 97 and I really like it where it shines. But if you have even a little objectivity you can't say the stuff they're putting here is not interesting...
No one is saying MS isn't putting anything new in Vista. We're just saying its similar to Windows ME, which really didn't fix any of the problems inherent in 98 & 95 (in fact made it worse) and just tacked a bunch of eyecandy and useless features that bloat the system. If you've been using Linux since 97, then why aren't you still using Linux? It has far surpassed Windows in terms of functionality and stability. It sounds to me like you "tried out" Linux in 97, were put off by