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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."
So this is like cell division. The bloat of Windows divides into the Kernel and UI pools.
Taking this article into account, it seems clear why the massive graphics card requirement. However, if this much is being pulled from the Kernel, then why still such a massive minimum RAM?
"if you hold down ctrl+shift+alt and tap the backspace you can watch a video of steve wrecking a chair"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Who needs the overhead of a windowing GUI on a server?
You know when they market this you'll see it as
New! - Microsoft's Exclusive Patented Technology allows for graphics outside the kernel, to provide higher stability.
New! - Microsoft's Revolutionary Technology allows for graphics outside the kernel, to provide higher stability.
Just wait.... they'll make it sound like a new concept. Rather than a copycat.
So, does this mean that MS's stated goal of "deprecating" OpenGL in favor of DirectX is now irrelevant? If the graphics subsystem is outside the kernel, it can be replaced by another driver that does not make OpenGL play second fiddle to DirectX. Perhaps this is a good thing?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Those who fail to understand UNIX are doomed to reimplement it. Poorly
Without an altenate way to access the console what is the value except for server configurations. If X windows or OS X window server locks up I can always ssh in and restart things. On linux I can just use an alternate console. Would be great if OS X had something similar. If Vista doesn't have something similar than a graphics system lock up is almost the same as a BSOD. Maybe you will still be able to do a controlled shutdown through the power button.
You seem to be confused. Yes there is still a kernel thing that talks to the hardware. Even in non-kernel X there is something in the Linux kernel that grants this process access to certain hardware. However you have to realize that this thing is TINY compared to a graphics server. Likely the difference in size is three or four orders of magnitude. Assumming bugs are evenly spread (which is probably false, there are probably fewer bugs than that in the hardware-talking layer), what NT (and X) has done is move 99.99% of the bugs out of the kernel!
I don't understand what makes a copycat these days. How is something basics like running graphics in usermode something where people can be called "copycats" for doing? You can run it in kernelmode or usermode, it's not like switching it from one to the other is an incredible innovation and people would never come to on their own. Clearly they looked at X11 and thought "what a magnificient technology! Let us copy its architecture..." or not...
/., but come on guys...
There are design tradeoffs made in doing operating system design. Back when NT4.0 came out, Microsoft decided that the performance of the kernel-mode graphics system was superior to that of the user-mode graphics system. Now that the hardware is so much faster, there's virtually no difference in performance...so now they're moving it back into userland.
I realize this is
But the vast majority of driver code lives in userspace; the size of the kernel interface is much smaller and therefore easier to debug.
Any bugs that exist in the kernel mode driver would yield the same problems in user mode. If a video driver incorrectly configures your graphics card, you're going to get a garbled display, period.
I don't think we're too worried about garbled displays here. If you have a kernel mode driver, it can do whatever the hell it likes with the entire kernel address space. Even if it isn't malicious, a badly written kernel driver can cause all sorts of corruption all over the place.
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
As far as gaming cheaters are concerned, it means almost nothing. The system hooks are still present and useable. The only thing that would stop cheaters are games that stop trusting the clients.
Yeah, running graphics drivers in kernel space is just plain ugly... Luckily for us Linux users, we can get full graphics acceleration by running the "userspace" NVIDIA kernel module
size
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The next obvious question would be: why doesn't X11 come properly configured with and get set up with good fonts to begin with? Why do we need to play this silly configuration game? You don't have to with every other major desktop-based operating system.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
is because enough high level graphics functionality is moving into and being required of the graphics hardware now that the performance loss on most machines will be acceptable. i.e. it is heavily tied to the hardware requirements Vista has added. If they couldn't do it without losing significant performance, they wouldn't. Performance sells before stability.
How many cycles the gui eats up is not the "big deal"
The big deal is eliminating a potential source of crashes. Right now, a video driver bug can (and often does) bring down the entire system. By putting the gui in a user process you can (in theory) avoid all that. What's more, you get that addes stability Whether you decide to use the gui or not