Well Windows seems to have managed that pretty well. Windows3.1 programs run under wowexec, a 16bit compatiblity layer. It wraps up the cooperatively multitasked apps in a preemptively scheduled process. You can choose if you want all your 16bit apps to run in one wowexec process and share a memory space or run them in seperate wowexecs to prevent them interfering with one another.
Except that Longhorn/Avalon/WinFS is built with.Net, so all that training carries right over. The same framework, same languages, same development tools just a load more apis for the newer Longhorn features. The base libraries are the same, concepts and idioms, event models, the works. If people spend the time now to become proficient with.Net now and move their existing applications onto it, it only makes it all the easier to jump onto Longhorn. If you structure your application well such as using the MVC pattern you can swap in a new UI that uses Avalon rather than WinForms without having to alter your core business logic at all..Net is not going to go away, it's going to be at the core of the whole Windows platfom.
Hence Indigo to wrap up all that hard to understand SOAP stuff, and XAML to make rich clients as easy to author as web sites, and WinFS to tie users to the platform forever by locking in all their data with relationships and InfoAgent rules.
Well it does seem to have happened that way. The major developers from the Internet Explorer team moved into the Avalon team soon after Windows XP shipped. Avalon plans to do everything DHTML + Chrome + DirectShow3D did plus flash/svg plus xforms/xul plus pdf etc all in one unified display model and tightly linked into the windows graphics pipeline. It needed all their best graphics, layout, animation etc. developers working on that full time. Hence the announcement of no new versions of IE except for with future versions of Windows. There has been some recent work on it with the popup blocker + extensions manager and security tweaks for XP SP2, but no major work on the rendering engine. It seems likely that IEs web standards support will continue to stagnate even after Longhorn is released, there will be no SVG or xsl-fo etc. the best we can hope for is that they fix transparent pngs and css2.1, anything more complicated and interactive will need to be written as a web-installable.net application that uses web services to communicate with the server.
Well what about the one that pretended to be a preview of Word 2004. It might have only been a simple shell script but it is still a trojan, it did exist in the wild and it did cause damage to a few idiot's computers (wiping their home folder). What about it makes it "not a trojan"?
Except the difference with Avalon is it uses hardware to render the individual windows to their own textures, and then uses hardware again to composite the textures on the desktop. Everything that can be done in hardware will be, vectors, gradient fills, antialiased text, etc. with software fallback available only for features the hardware doesn't support. You can use hardware to render a texture too you know.
You can't delete a dll if it is in use, as the memory manager uses the file based copy for backup if it needs to page out the library. You can however rename the old file and replace it with a new one. The next process to start up will use the new version and the old version can be deleted when the process holding it ends.
Thats not strictly true either. You can replace the a file while a process is running, and the next time a process starts up it will use the new file. The existing processes that are using the file will go on using the old version until they are restarted. Because process creation on NT is slow processes tend to be few and long lived and use multiple threads, not like apache on linux where each request spawns a new worker process.
If you wanted to just patch a web server or something you could replace the files then stop and restart the service and all would be well.
However there are some services that windows heavily relies on, such as winlogon and lsass that will cause the operating system to restart if they fail, (hence the rebooting systems from the recent Blaster and Sasser worms)
If you want to replace a file that is used by one of these services, the only way to get it to start using the new version is to reboot the machine. Most of the time reboots are not really required, its simply an easy way to make sure that the services and programs in question are restarted so they are using the patched versions of the files.
See here for more detailed information on this issue.
They call it a microkernel in the sense that its internal design is very modular. The core kernel ntoskrnl.exe is the microkernel part, which concentrates entirely on process scheduling, memory management, interrupts and interprocess communication.
The other componants ntfs.sys, win32k.sys, etc all run in kernel space but are not part of the kernel image itself.
This design does not have the stability benifits as a "pure" microkernel where only the core kernel runs in kernel space, but it has provided good performance on a wide range of hardware for over a decade and been very adaptable to changes in hardware design over the years, now moving to 64bit, PCI Express, and EFI.
ntoskrnl itself has its own api, which other api systems call for kernel services. There is the Win32 API subsystem and the POSIX,now Interix/SFU subsystem, and previously there was an OS/2 subystem as well.
The browser is not and never has been part of the kernel nor does it run in kernel space, the portions of the media player that run in kernel space are to ensure the security of the DRM, called the Secure Audio Path, (drmk.sys drmkaud.sys)
Before NT 4.0 the windowing system and graphics drawing ran in a seperate user mode process, but the graphics drivers had always been run in kernel space. They had problems with the slowness of the interprocess communication and the memory overhead when trying to run the Windows95 shell on NT so they moved GDI and USER into kernel space as well.
See This whitepaper for a more detailed explanation of the change in design for NT4 and the kernel design.
Note: for Longhorn GDI is being removed from the kernel and the graphics subsystem is being redesigned to concentrate entirely on 3D acceleration and improve robustness.
Yes its something like that. The idea is to get back to a time when people felt free to try out lots of different applications without worrying about what it might do to their machines. The Windows95 release produced a huge rise in the number and diversity of software and many business made a lot of money by building on Microsofts platform, Longhorn is an attempt to recapture that effect and put the Windows PC back at the center.
They will not be removing the browser completely, it will still be there for normal browsing, searchig etc. Some sites will be augmented with Longhorn targeted smart clients. Following a link on the browser will start downloading an app which will then launch within the browser frame. The applications will have rich user interfaces, animation, video, drag-n-drop etc and will connect back to the server using web services.
The key factor will be the applications are sandboxed using the.Net CAS system, an app will start with a minimum set of permissions determined to be safe for all programs. The permissions can be elevated given administrator policy, code signing, user interactions etc. You will be able to do things like open and save files and provide contact details without the program itself being able to browse the file system. The program will only be able to access the files and contacts you have specifically chosen through the standard dialog boxes. XAML will be used to create the interfaces for these applications, and XAML can be used for static pages and documents, but to have any user interaction the pages must be compiled as a.Net program. A program will have the option of doing an "install", startmenu item, add-remove programs option etc, so that it can be used offline with a cached set of data, but it will still be able to be autoupdated when it is next online and uninstalled when required.
The download sizes for applications will be smaller given the majority of the code required will be included within the WinFX framework itself.
See Here for some demonstation videos of these sorts of applications in action
TCPA is still being developed for Longhorn, but it will be primarily targetted at corporations rather than home users in this generation.
Doesn't this sound familiar The boy nodded his understanding. "Can I ask you something?" The Jedi Master nodded. "What are midi-chlorians?" Wind whipped at Qui-Gon's long hair, blowing strands of it across his strong face. "Midi-chlorians are microscopic life-forms that reside within the cells of all living things and communicate with the Force." "They live inside of me?" the boy asked. "In your cells." Qui-Gon paused. "We are symbionts with the midi-chlorians." "Symbi-what?" "Symbionts. Life-forms living together for mutual advantage. Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. Our midi-chlorians continually speak to us, Annie, telling us the will of the Force." "They do?" Qui-Gon cocked one eyebrow. "When you learn to quiet your mind, you will hear them speaking to you." Anakin thought about it for a moment, then frowned. "I don't understand." Qui-Gon smiled, and his eyes were warm and secretive. "With time and training, Annie, you will."
I first read about it from the Google Groups Timeline I was reading "Modern Operating Systems" at university and I thought it funny that the guy who wrote a hugely popular operating system was having a massive row with the guy who wrote the book on operating system design.
It made me want to find out more about the differences between NT and Linux so I could more objectively compare them.
See Here for the white paper explaining the move to place GDI and USER in kernel space.
The example they give is that the 3D pinball game runs great on Windows95 but terrible on NT 3.5 on the same hardware. Putting GDI in kernel mode was important to bring NT up to equivelent performance. Personally I think they found they couldn't get Win95s more complicated shell to run fast enough on NT, and they wanted to have the same environment on both Consumer and Business OS after all the Marketing that Windows 95 got.
With Longhorn its moving back the other way. GDI is coming out of kernel space. Graphics device drivers will no longer have to implement GDI drawing accelerations and will concentrate entirely on Direct3D. All GDI operations will be performed in software within the applications process, and then passed through to the Desktop Compositer as a bitmap used as a Texture by Direct3D. This will reduce the performance of GDI operations, but they are only being kept on for legacy applications. New Longhorn applications will use the new Avalon model which will be renered entirely using the 3D graphics pipeline.
Fixed in Outlook 2003, does not show images in email unless requested or the sender is added to a safe sender list, and in Outlook Express included in XP SP2.
But whats the total download size to get up to date from 10.1? WindowsXP is a lot older than 10.3 you know. Is apple still providing free patches for 10.1?
Then you can thank Microsoft for handing out the service pack on free cds at retail outlets and heavily promoting it through TV Ads etc. Seriously come September EVERYONE is going to be hearing all about SP2 and how to get hold of it and install it.
Has anyone tried playing this game? On my Athlon 1.33, 512Mb, GeforceFX 5600 256Mb, it is barely playable at 800x600 with all the details turned right down. It uses up to 300mb of ram and takes ages to load in all the textures etc.
I think I'll try again in a couple of years when I have a faster PC.
That is already part of the specification, and it apparently works well on some machines. The OS, through ACPI can update the RTC wake up time in the BIOS before going to sleep. It works with task scheduler in windows, and there is probably an API for setting it programatically. But it is not supported by the bios in all machines.
To see what capabilities your system has download this utility from microsoft and enter "dumppo cap" ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Products/Oemtest/v1. 1/WOST est/Tools/Acpi/dumppo.exe
Well a large part of the new Subsystems and all the new APIs ARE being written in.Net. Probably C# rather than VB but it comes out much the same thing anyway.
You also need to install the patch to stop the shutdown from happening. Or block access to the LSASS port, or change the service properties for LSASS so it doesn't shut down when the service crashes.
Slashdot Mirror
Well Windows seems to have managed that pretty well. Windows3.1 programs run under wowexec, a 16bit compatiblity layer. It wraps up the cooperatively multitasked apps in a preemptively scheduled process. You can choose if you want all your 16bit apps to run in one wowexec process and share a memory space or run them in seperate wowexecs to prevent them interfering with one another.
Nt 's WOW Subsystem
Larry Osterman
Except that Longhorn/Avalon/WinFS is built with .Net, so all that training carries right over. .Net now and move their existing applications onto it, it only makes it all the easier to jump onto Longhorn. .Net is not going to go away, it's going to be at the core of the whole Windows platfom.
The same framework, same languages, same development tools just a load more apis for the newer Longhorn features. The base libraries are the same, concepts and idioms, event models, the works.
If people spend the time now to become proficient with
If you structure your application well such as using the MVC pattern you can swap in a new UI that uses Avalon rather than WinForms without having to alter your core business logic at all.
Hence Indigo to wrap up all that hard to understand SOAP stuff, and XAML to make rich clients as easy to author as web sites, and WinFS to tie users to the platform forever by locking in all their data with relationships and InfoAgent rules.
Well it does seem to have happened that way. The major developers from the Internet Explorer team moved into the Avalon team soon after Windows XP shipped. Avalon plans to do everything DHTML + Chrome + DirectShow3D did plus flash/svg plus xforms/xul plus pdf etc all in one unified display model and tightly linked into the windows graphics pipeline. It needed all their best graphics, layout, animation etc. developers working on that full time. .net application that uses web services to communicate with the server.
Hence the announcement of no new versions of IE except for with future versions of Windows. There has been some recent work on it with the popup blocker + extensions manager and security tweaks for XP SP2, but no major work on the rendering engine.
It seems likely that IEs web standards support will continue to stagnate even after Longhorn is released, there will be no SVG or xsl-fo etc. the best we can hope for is that they fix transparent pngs and css2.1, anything more complicated and interactive will need to be written as a web-installable
Well what about the one that pretended to be a preview of Word 2004. It might have only been a simple shell script but it is still a trojan, it did exist in the wild and it did cause damage to a few idiot's computers (wiping their home folder). What about it makes it "not a trojan"?
macosxhints
slashdot
Except the difference with Avalon is it uses hardware to render the individual windows to their own textures, and then uses hardware again to composite the textures on the desktop. Everything that can be done in hardware will be, vectors, gradient fills, antialiased text, etc. with software fallback available only for features the hardware doesn't support.
You can use hardware to render a texture too you know.
You can't delete a dll if it is in use, as the memory manager uses the file based copy for backup if it needs to page out the library. You can however rename the old file and replace it with a new one. The next process to start up will use the new version and the old version can be deleted when the process holding it ends.
Thats not strictly true either. You can replace the a file while a process is running, and the next time a process starts up it will use the new file. The existing processes that are using the file will go on using the old version until they are restarted. Because process creation on NT is slow processes tend to be few and long lived and use multiple threads, not like apache on linux where each request spawns a new worker process.
If you wanted to just patch a web server or something you could replace the files then stop and restart the service and all would be well.
However there are some services that windows heavily relies on, such as winlogon and lsass that will cause the operating system to restart if they fail, (hence the rebooting systems from the recent Blaster and Sasser worms)
If you want to replace a file that is used by one of these services, the only way to get it to start using the new version is to reboot the machine.
Most of the time reboots are not really required, its simply an easy way to make sure that the services and programs in question are restarted so they are using the patched versions of the files.
See here for more detailed information on this issue.
They call it a microkernel in the sense that its internal design is very modular. The core kernel ntoskrnl.exe is the microkernel part, which concentrates entirely on process scheduling, memory management, interrupts and interprocess communication.
The other componants ntfs.sys, win32k.sys, etc all run in kernel space but are not part of the kernel image itself.
This design does not have the stability benifits as a "pure" microkernel where only the core kernel runs in kernel space, but it has provided good performance on a wide range of hardware for over a decade and been very adaptable to changes in hardware design over the years, now moving to 64bit, PCI Express, and EFI.
ntoskrnl itself has its own api, which other api systems call for kernel services. There is the Win32 API subsystem and the POSIX,now Interix/SFU subsystem, and previously there was an OS/2 subystem as well.
The browser is not and never has been part of the kernel nor does it run in kernel space, the portions of the media player that run in kernel space are to ensure the security of the DRM, called the Secure Audio Path, (drmk.sys drmkaud.sys)
Before NT 4.0 the windowing system and graphics drawing ran in a seperate user mode process, but the graphics drivers had always been run in kernel space. They had problems with the slowness of the interprocess communication and the memory overhead when trying to run the Windows95 shell on NT so they moved GDI and USER into kernel space as well.
See This whitepaper for a more detailed explanation of the change in design for NT4 and the kernel design.
Note: for Longhorn GDI is being removed from the kernel and the graphics subsystem is being redesigned to concentrate entirely on 3D acceleration and improve robustness.
Yes its something like that. The idea is to get back to a time when people felt free to try out lots of different applications without worrying about what it might do to their machines. The Windows95 release produced a huge rise in the number and diversity of software and many business made a lot of money by building on Microsofts platform, Longhorn is an attempt to recapture that effect and put the Windows PC back at the center.
.Net CAS system, an app will start with a minimum set of permissions determined to be safe for all programs. The permissions can be elevated given administrator policy, code signing, user interactions etc. You will be able to do things like open and save files and provide contact details without the program itself being able to browse the file system. The program will only be able to access the files and contacts you have specifically chosen through the standard dialog boxes. .Net program.
They will not be removing the browser completely, it will still be there for normal browsing, searchig etc. Some sites will be augmented with Longhorn targeted smart clients. Following a link on the browser will start downloading an app which will then launch within the browser frame. The applications will have rich user interfaces, animation, video, drag-n-drop etc and will connect back to the server using web services.
The key factor will be the applications are sandboxed using the
XAML will be used to create the interfaces for these applications, and XAML can be used for static pages and documents, but to have any user interaction the pages must be compiled as a
A program will have the option of doing an "install", startmenu item, add-remove programs option etc, so that it can be used offline with a cached set of data, but it will still be able to be autoupdated when it is next online and uninstalled when required.
The download sizes for applications will be smaller given the majority of the code required will be included within the WinFX framework itself.
See Here for some demonstation videos of these sorts of applications in action
TCPA is still being developed for Longhorn, but it will be primarily targetted at corporations rather than home users in this generation.
Doesn't this sound familiar
The boy nodded his understanding. "Can I ask you something?" The Jedi Master nodded. "What are midi-chlorians?"
Wind whipped at Qui-Gon's long hair, blowing strands of it across his strong face. "Midi-chlorians are microscopic life-forms that reside within the cells of all living things and communicate with the Force."
"They live inside of me?" the boy asked.
"In your cells." Qui-Gon paused. "We are symbionts with the midi-chlorians."
"Symbi-what?"
"Symbionts. Life-forms living together for mutual advantage. Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. Our midi-chlorians continually speak to us, Annie, telling us the will of the Force."
"They do?"
Qui-Gon cocked one eyebrow. "When you learn to quiet your mind, you will hear them speaking to you."
Anakin thought about it for a moment, then frowned. "I don't understand."
Qui-Gon smiled, and his eyes were warm and secretive. "With time and training, Annie, you will."
I first read about it from the Google Groups Timeline I was reading "Modern Operating Systems" at university and I thought it funny that the guy who wrote a hugely popular operating system was having a massive row with the guy who wrote the book on operating system design.
It made me want to find out more about the differences between NT and Linux so I could more objectively compare them.
See Here for the white paper explaining the move to place GDI and USER in kernel space.
The example they give is that the 3D pinball game runs great on Windows95 but terrible on NT 3.5 on the same hardware. Putting GDI in kernel mode was important to bring NT up to equivelent performance. Personally I think they found they couldn't get Win95s more complicated shell to run fast enough on NT, and they wanted to have the same environment on both Consumer and Business OS after all the Marketing that Windows 95 got.
With Longhorn its moving back the other way. GDI is coming out of kernel space. Graphics device drivers will no longer have to implement GDI drawing accelerations and will concentrate entirely on Direct3D. All GDI operations will be performed in software within the applications process, and then passed through to the Desktop Compositer as a bitmap used as a Texture by Direct3D.
This will reduce the performance of GDI operations, but they are only being kept on for legacy applications. New Longhorn applications will use the new Avalon model which will be renered entirely using the 3D graphics pipeline.
See "Windows Longhorn Display Driver Model" session presentation from WinHEC.
Fixed in Outlook 2003, does not show images in email unless requested or the sender is added to a safe sender list, and in Outlook Express included in XP SP2.
But whats the total download size to get up to date from 10.1? WindowsXP is a lot older than 10.3 you know. Is apple still providing free patches for 10.1?
Then you can thank Microsoft for handing out the service pack on free cds at retail outlets and heavily promoting it through TV Ads etc. Seriously come September EVERYONE is going to be hearing all about SP2 and how to get hold of it and install it.
Has anyone tried playing this game?
On my Athlon 1.33, 512Mb, GeforceFX 5600 256Mb, it is barely playable at 800x600 with all the details turned right down. It uses up to 300mb of ram and takes ages to load in all the textures etc.
I think I'll try again in a couple of years when I have a faster PC.
That is already part of the specification, and it apparently works well on some machines.
. 1/WOST est/Tools/Acpi/dumppo.exe
The OS, through ACPI can update the RTC wake up time in the BIOS before going to sleep. It works with task scheduler in windows, and there is probably an API for setting it programatically.
But it is not supported by the bios in all machines.
To see what capabilities your system has download this utility from microsoft and enter "dumppo cap"
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Products/Oemtest/v1
cmd.exe is just a shell dos compatibility is through NTVDM and command.com
They already have. stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2665883
The web browser is not part of the kernel in Windows. It is just part of the explorer shell which is a user mode process.
Well a large part of the new Subsystems and all the new APIs ARE being written in .Net. Probably C# rather than VB but it comes out much the same thing anyway.
You also need to install the patch to stop the shutdown from happening. Or block access to the LSASS port, or change the service properties for LSASS so it doesn't shut down when the service crashes.