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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."
Who needs the overhead of a windowing GUI on a server?
MS hasn't bought Citrix. They do, however, license technology from them to provide Terminal Services/Remote Desktop.
In 2013 they'll put the graphics driver back in... and shake it all about.
Microsoft has already responded to this article by saying that nothing has changed: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,190 2540,00.asp
Slightly Incorrect. Doom 3 and Quake 4 both use OpenGL.
What does one cow say to the other? Moo.
NT borrowed heavily from DEC VMS, which if it were running on DOS would be like running VMS on top of RSTS.
Just my two cents because I get sick of morons bloviating this crap...
NT borrowed almost NOTHING from the VMS or *nix world. Culter was author of VMS and a brilliant *nix designer, but he also knew the shortcommings of both OS models. NT was designed specifically to be different and not be tied to a *nix or for that matter a VMS architecture.
(In fact Cutler could have made NT a full *nix Windows, as Microsoft owned Xenix at the time, and was willing to go with whatever the Cutler team decided would create the next great OS architecture.)
People can bitch about Windows and specfically Win32, but there is not a whole lof ot NT itself that is flawed or attackable in its design. It is still doing kernel and architectual concepts today that you cannot find any other consumer level OS. PERIOD.
For graphics and sound to work best, commonly used objects are stored in memory, ideally most rapidly accessible by the chipset which makes use of it. If you can pre-load a graphics card with most of your GUI toolkit you can do some amazingly fast rendering.
Ok, this partially true; however, the thing people seem to miss is that when Microsoft dropped Video to Ring0 with NT4 it was to improve video performance for games, specifically WinG and DirectDraw at the time. This was a major performance increase at the time because of the higher level GDI calls of Win32 that were mostly non-accelerated for gaming. ALso at the time 3D accelerated Video Cards were basically non-existent at the time, so machines didn't have a powerful GPU to utilize.
And what this means by them moving the Video back up from Ring0 is of course more stability, so the new NVidia beta build doesn't make the Windows machine lock up when it shouldn't, as most graphic drivers are the root of 99% of all system lockups with Windows, since most users don't run MS certified drivers and are running the latest incarnations.
Additionaly, with the new graphics subsystem concepts in Vista, having Video Drivers in Ring0 is far less important, as the entire WPF is designed to take advantage of the Video GPU from everything from off-screen buffering like OSX, to drawing the entire controls and 3D interfaces.
In fact with the new WPF in Vista, the GPU can even be used to accelerate printing, and creation of XPS graphical/display documents.
So there is no longer a need or reason for the small performance benefits by having the video in Ring0, since the GPU, even older GPUs by today's standards handle all the gaming and now even the new UI controls and 3D vecotoring of the UI.
Basically MS is saying, we are moving to where the GPU will do its job, so we no longer have to compensate software rendering and no longer need Video drivers to have Ring0 access.
Microsoft considered this move with WindowsXP, but with the driver changes needed and the UI still being GDI+ based for most applications, there was still a lot of software rendering taking place. It was only the games that it really didn't matter for as they were already doing DirectX and OpenGL for performance.
My two cents....
(And if you don't believe my post, please go look this stuff up - do your own reseach and not follow the rants of myself or other Slashdot Biases. - Truly, I don't profess to know everything, and my rant is short, you will probably learn more by looking up the stuff I talk about than just reading my or any post and believing it without the poster's personal basis).
SCO didn't purchase Unix rights until 1995, and Windows NT 3.1 was released in 1993. Plus, I've never heard of any agreement that would have prevented Windows NT from being a fully compliant Unix. They even built it with swappable OS subsystems so they could go that route if the market demanded it. There was even a third party vendor that sold a really good Unix subsystem several years ago, but the name escapes me.
As for advanced features, I think the GP is referring to things like the swappable OS subsystems; a hybrid micro-kernel; a strong and flexible access control model; a highly portable hardware abstraction layer supporting three widely different architectures; and an extremely versatile file-system. This was all really groundbreaking in the early 1990's and a lot of it is still very impressive from a design and engineering perspective. Plus this is back when MS was the versatile upstart that was challenging the clunky proprietary Unixes of its day. MS was much friendlier back in those days too, as they were doing a lot more embracing and a lot less extending.
The tragedy of Windows NT is that MS became too dominant and its direction changed. As a result many of the kernel's greatest features were never really visible through the layers of crap piled on top. The Win32 subsystem eliminated the competition and brought us abominations like pseudo-handles and a truly evil GDI. The hybrid micro-kernel became suspiciously monolithic as it absorbed the GDI, Win32 subsystem, and anything else in the name of performance. The exceptional access control model was all but ignored by the majority of software developers, with even enterprise developers doing a poor job of supporting secure multi-user access. The hardware abstraction layer slowly evaporated as support dwindled to only x86. The advanced functionality of the file-system was never utilized much, in order to maintain parity the bastard family line known as Win9x. And so the operating system crystallized to what it is today.
So I'm glad to see that Windows NT is finally headed back to its roots and picking up some old initiatives. Vista will finally push secure multi-user access (LUA) and kick the GDI's ass out of the kernel. I was very unimpressed by MS a few years ago, and I'm always extremely suspicious of them. But it really looks like they're headed in the right direction with respect to security and stability, and I don't think anyone should begrudge them that. That stated, I'm also very happy that we now have viable and, in some scenarios, superior and more affordable alternatives to the Windows platform. As far as I'm concerned the consumer's options are just continuing to get better.