Because the press has blamed Linux for everything (including things which clearly are not Linux's fault), and they couldn't withstand the public pressure any more. Note that 80% of the users were satisfied with the new desktop, and a further 10% just complained about transient problems
You make it sound like end users just being picky, when it is about end users not being able to do their job or the OS/Apps not being capable of providing the features they need. This is also not about application lock in, but about fundamental shortcomings in Linux that will not be addressed without a lot of bandaids from people that spend time outside the Linux world and go, oh, we can't do that, or that, or that.
Additionally, it was not just about the end user results. The process of getting to where they are even today was horribly painful.
These are the same flaws that non-fans see everyday and deal with everyday and have to sort out and deal with users everyday.
I think people have left Windows and other options for far too long, this is no longer 2000, and WinME is the alternative.
Windows7 does some pretty impressive feats on a rather robust kernel model, that is often faster. NTFS still is offering features that takes several layers of software on Linux to copy, and the WDDM/Video subsystem is still years ahead of anything in the Linux or any OS's world, with fairly advanced rendering features, but important things like GPU scheduling so that the OS controls the GPU and application usage and allows for non-graphical GPU processing without worry that games or the application UIs will suffer, stall, and fail to render.
Users are not only giving up features from 2001 they are used to, but they are also missing out on a ton of features that are years off in the Linux world, that Microsoft has been shipping since Vista was released.
Linux had a huge chnace here and instead demonstrated what many of us find all too often, for an old kernel model, and an old OS model, and an old graphical protocol, it is not a mature OS for the mainstream. Good concepts, but dated, and too many bandaids to try to bring these to modern computing effectively.
Install Windows Live PhotoGallery from the Windows Live Essentials. This is exactly what it is designed for and can do smart tagging.
Even though Win7 doesn't install the 'Essentials' applications, they really are 'Essential' to get the most out of Windows7. There is also a download link for them in the Start Menu, and you can pick and choose what you want easily.
Doing all your tagging via Explorer is functional, but not the optimal way of dealing with Photos in Windows 7. In Photogallery you just drag and drop to tag photos or use the face identification system.
(The June beta of the next generation of Live Essentials and PhotoGallery should be along soon as well with several new tricks that pulls in several of the MS Photo R&D work.)
*Don't waste your time with 'Album' or other tagging software that shoves your photos into their file structure, which is a LOT of them.
Is it me, or are the libraries in Windows 7 stupid?
I wouldn't say you are stupid...
However, once you 'grasp' the basic concept of the libraries and don't overthink them they are a handy feature, especially for the average home/office user.
Vista had featurs likes the Libraries, they were not something MS set up for the users. They are a variation of a 'Saved Search' or 'Search Folder' except they just return the contents of 'locations' based on the type you specify.
You can make your own libraries for things like Books, Presentations, etc.
You can also do like you could in Vista and use a 'Search Folder/Saved Search' to open a folder than 'returns' a criteria of content from specified locations. For example, create a Search for MP3 that looks everyone on your hard drive, and it will open a folder showing you all your MP3s as if they were in a single folder, no matter where you stored them.
Libraries are a bit too simplistic for advanced users, and that is where you use Search Folders to produce your own location and content results.
Do you have anything to back these two howlers up?
Ya, it is called reading the news or you can Google:
iPad browser speed iPad crashes
The iPad overall and browser speed is 2X the iPhone, which is 20x slower than a low end netbook for page rendering, thus making the iPad still 10x slower than a low end netbook for Web Page Rendering. The best comparison has it at 5X slower than two year old Atom based Netbook. Look it up, or do the tests yourself.
As for crashing, even in the Mac world of reviews, almost every report stated the device or applications crashed during their initial tests. This is further demonstrated with a simple search, show everything from video to even the browser itself crashing about once a day for average users.
You act like people like myself don't have the money or time to test these devices ourselves as well, and I can assure you the iPad is FAR FROM crash free, and FAR FROM the stability of Windows7.
If you want to find more information of crashes and failures in document usage, just Google: iPad iWorks
The iPad is a good device, but in comparison to a full OS Tablet with handwriting and voice recognition technology that might weigh 8oz more with 2hrs less battery life is not a great trade off for the loss of speed and functionality.
I hope you love your iPad, but don't tell me how the iPad sitting on my desk performs based on your 'love' of the device.
Even though people like to tout Objective-C as Object Oriented, technically it is only Object Based just like C++.
If you want a real OO language you have to look to C# or many other more mature languages that understand the difference between the two.
It may seem simple, but there is a big difference between Object Based and true Object Oriented.
Side Note:
Sadly this is something I have come across a lot in the past few years, and wonder if it is the OSS movement or just the lack of general education that teaches true Object Oriented thinking and programming.
Even C++ and what Object Based abilities it offers are so often lost when a C programmer just mangles together code from a C perspective that only has the appearance of having any object based design.
The OS and software development architectures of Linux and BSD are not object based let alone object oriented frameworks and even the upper layer library sets reflect this non-object thinking. This also occurs in the Win32/Windows world, which is sad considering NT is an object based OS model and by nature the API sets are conducive to thinking in object principles.
It really comes down to people not understanding object based programming.
Even the basic concepts of C++ are simple object programming concepts and without a full understanding of object programming it becomes a cumbersome and poorly implemented set of code, especially when implemented by C programmers that have don't think in terms of objects or understand the relationships.
I have also listened to smart developers complain about C#, when they don't have a clue of what the difference is between an object based language like C++ and what an object oriented language like C# offers.
What surprises me the most is that literally 20 years ago our university was strong in defining the differences, strengths and giving a full understanding of object based and object oriented models not only in programming but also with regard to IPC mechanisms and even OS design theories.
Looking back, I think our university was more cutting edge than I realized, as over the years it is hard to find even mediocre training/classes in object based design even today.
It also seems to come from the OSS world were object based/oriented concepts are the red headed stepchild; which would also explain the complete lack of understanding in the OSS world of object based/oriented OS technologies like NT and how beneficial these designs are in an OS.
20 years later we will still be waiting for the next generation of OS and programming model designs and all the new 'kiddies' then will be digging out XNU/Darwin and Linux as the great new OS concept, bandaids and all to make them work just like I have watched every 'kiddie' do with Linux and XNU over the past 15 years.
All these companies seem to be saying to themselves "Wow, Apple sold 2M units and their product doesn't even have a camera or a USB port, and can't play Flash. If we make sure our product has those, we'll be rich!"
Or if you live in reality, you can find videos of devices like this in Microsoft 'future tech' presentations going back to 2002/2003.
The reason these devices are NOW becoming popular is a very simple economic concept. PRICE. Prior to this last year good Touch and Pen based display technologies were EXPENSIVE. Now that the quality of display has caught up and the cost isn't adding $1000 to the device, cheap and easy touch and pen tablet devices are NOW POSSIBLE.
As for the iPad, it got more WRONG than right. For example, the iPad is highly underpowered and THIS DOES MATTER when it is rendering web pages and navigating the web 10x slower than the cheapest netbook running Windows7. No design reasons, battery life reasons, etc are worth the total loss of performance a user gets when using an iPad.
Why even wait for the screen redraws on an iPad and the slow performance and loss of multi-tasking when you can get nearly the same battery life, on a faster CPU and a faster GPU run an OS that can run the new touch apps or even go old school and open up any application you have.
Just browsing the internet the difference between these devices and the iPad is laughable and it makes you feel sorry for the iPad users that think their experience is 'ideal' when touch based netbook users are flying around the net with a full experience.
1) If you think these are 'copying' the iPad you have been living under a rock. 2) If you think these even try to compare to the iPad you are living under a rock.
(Heck they have full handwriting recognition and even voice recognition, does an iPad?) 3) If you don't understand that it is about the 'cost' of the parts to make these devices and the more powerful CPUs getting cheaper and more advanced for heat and battery, you are still living under a rock.
PS It is funny that you call these device 'buggy'. Do you realize how often an iPad crashes? iPads crash on average more than once a day, which is worse than Windows7 and even worse than Vista. They are inherently buggy and glitchy, as any review you will find on them has to admit.
Before I read through the posts, I just wanted to mention that Reagan pushed for the total elimination and use of nuclear weapons.
Not sure who tagged this Jimmy Carter, but it should be tagged Ronald Reagan, as he was more progressive about the elimination of Nuclear weapons than Jimmy Carter.
I wish I had time to continue this conversation fully.
One thing of note to think about:
Let me put it another way: video is also part of HTML5 and also generally a 'box'. Can you think of how it could be any other way?
Yes I can. With Video there are basic properties that are standard elements that can be accessed via CSS, although Chrome does not properly handle them yet. (Chrome doesn't even handle applying things like CSS transparency to a video object properly yet.)
Because there are things 'known' about the basics of a video they can and should be accessible in HTML5.
With a Canvas, there is a limited set of 'known' things about the canvas, being pretty much the box, with no knowledge or control of what is in the box.
The difference is why HTML5 video is important, because if there was no difference, there would be no need for any HTML5 video standards exposed in the DOM and the specification would be to just use a generic canvas object with X,Y, or Z codec.
This is even a good example of why the individual standards are important and their 'interaction/mingling' is important to making HTML5 happen.
Google should really be looking at treating all HTML5 content like they treat WebGL, and heck even use OpenGL to render HTML5 on the hardware, as it is a far better solution and significantly more progessive that just exposing an OpenGL subset to be painted on a canvas instead. They can still work with WebGL or other 3D viewport concepts, but can flip them out in XML and know their browser will have the hardware performance to handle it, which is where things like VRML failed in the past.
As I said before, I truly hope Google and all the other browser players 'get it' or we will see a world where IE9 becomes preferred for advanced HTML5 content and will either make IE king again or kill good HTML5 progress on the web.
WebGL isn't a library, it's a binding. It does bind to native OpenGL (if the browser supports that)...it is in line with the HTML5 goals
Yes, and if the browser doesn't support it, it is a plugin. Again if Microsoft 'embeds' Silverlight into IE then because it is no longer a plugin and 'it is in line with HTML5 goals'? And according to your definition, Silverlight is also crossplatform, as it runs on...
Windows, Linux, and OS X, at the very least, and likely on the iPhone
as well. (Yes iPhone is a stretch as technically it is just being used to re-encode video at the server side for now.)
And for what it's worth, it is useful that it ends up on a Canvas. Unless I'm mistaken, that means it is composited with the rest of the document, meaning you could (for example) draw your HUD using standard HTML and only use the GL for the 3D. Please explain why this is a bad thing.
The canvas isn't bad, the point is that it ends up being an external rendering to a square space.
HTML5 is trying to break from square box controls and external standards. If of an SVG circle or triangle and text flowing around it, this is the direction not square canvases that use masking tricks to fit on the page in anything but a 'box'.
You also have the object access level, and WebGL is wrapped in code, you can't reach out and set the transparecy of an 'internal' object being rendered in the scene outside via CSS. Again this is opposite of the HTML5 goals, where SVG and Video and everything that are objects should be accessible to CSS and other objects on the page.
Final note...
I don't dislike WebGL, although I would rather put more effort into getting GPU accelerated browsers rather than adding in WebGL to basically embed 3D accelerated objects into a page. Having SVG and other good things of HTML5 and dynamic rendering running on the GPU already then there really isn't a need for WebGL.
What bothers me about this article and news story is that Google and users are acting like Chrome is rendering Quake in HTML5, which it is not doing, it is only doing the final paint to an HTML5 canvas. This is not a demonstration of HTML5 or Chrome being good at HTML5.
In fact if you look at HTML5 concept pages, even the ones from MS's IE9 work, Chrome can barely render them at 1fps on a high end system, where a browser that is inherently GPU assisted (like IE9) can run the demos easily on a Netbook with 30fps without even breathing hard.
Yes these are Microsoft based tests, but they bring up important points that Google and Firefox and everyone needs to be thinking about, because without taking all of the rendering to the GPU HTML5 will be crappy and/or make IE9 the king of the web, which really will suck.
Also, it's not really about Quake or FPS so much as HTML5.
No, in fact this is almost ANTI HTML5.
The only HTML5 here is the final rendering is occuring in an HTML5 Canvas. This is NOT HTML5 and this is not truly running the game in a browser as you suggest as it is relying on WebGL and other libraries to produce a final render to the HTML5 Canvas.
If this was an HTML5 demonstration, it would be using PNGs, SVG, and CSS to create the game not just rendering to a square HTML5 canvas element.
On Windows Vista or Windows7, I could write code in a couple of minutes using the DWM (Thumbnail preview) that without a pluging that could render Mass Effect 2 or any game or application to an HTML5 Canvas.
HTML5 is about breaking OUTSIDE the Canvas/BOX based rendering that Flash and ActiveX and JAVA are all designed around, as they have no INTERACTION with the other elements on the page beyond the CANVAS. And this example is just as limited as well.
This is a Google, "we can't do high performance HTML5 dynamic content," so we are going to get some press by rendering with the GPU to the HTML 5 canvas. Wow, almost as impressive as using activex rendering DirectX content that we first saw in the freaking 1990s.
The trick between the no plug-in comparison is they are using the HTML5 canvas instead of a plug-in, which is disturbing that anyone thinks this is impressive or fundamentally different. WebGL embedded in a browser or used as a plug-in is NOT the browser's rendering engine doing the work. If Microsoft embeds XBAP or Silverlights rendering engines into IE and then uses the HTML5 canvas to display the content, does this make WPF/.NET/Silverlight all HTML5 and browser rendered too? NO...
What are you babbling about. IT IS A BROWSER. Other browsers can support standards on XP, so why can't they? Opera/Firefox/Chome do it on various OS'es at the same time. So why can't MS?
Well maybe you should be paying attention to technology a bit more instead of ranting about crap you have no idea about.
IE9 uses an internal GPU assisted framework and GPU assitsted composer. This is why IE9 can animate complex SVG and HTML5 content on pages that make OTHER BROWSERS choke.
Since IE9 depends on the GPU 'assistance' it uses the framework and driver models of Vista and Win7 that allo the OS to share system RAM with the VRAM and gives the OS control over the 'scheduling' of the GPU.
These things do not exist on XP.
These are also not things other browsers do, and if the other browsers don't get their crap together and up the performance of dynamic graphical content as one example, HTML5 will be either a BUST or were the world moves back to IE9 as it is the ONLY BROWSER that is fast enough to render this rich content.
Think of it like this IE9 is treating the web like Vista treats XAML, and is accelerating the crap out of it, and YES it does need the Vista WDDM concepts or the GPU would tied to one process or choke when left to yeilding multi-tasking GPU concepts like OpenGL uses.
(See in Vista, with the WDDM, the OS pre-emptively multi-tasks the GPU and gets the final say on the GPU and the scheduling, thus allowing it to flip out threads doing some computation (see DX10) and threads to one application needing rendering, etc.
Somehow the advantages of the WDDM concepts went over most people's heads and apparently even when used in proof of concept in Win7 and newer applications like IE9, people still don't get what this new model gave Windows that DOES NOT EXIST ON ANY OTHER OS PLATFORM.)
Make sense yet or should we get a Windows for Dummies book in here for you?
An MS apologists commented on the last article that it was impossible to run IE9 under XP because of the hardware rendering... clearly he doesn't know that A: DirectX entire point was to abstract hardware to the point it also (used to) support it purely running in software mode" and B: That all the other browsers have no such problem.
This is where people get confused so easily. For IE9 to work on XP, they would have to recreate the WDDM for XP. And when you do that, there are things in the WDDM that other levels of the OS do not have or understand, so essentially you are having to build XP into Vista.
This is why DX10 was impossible on XP as well, as the XPDM does not handle the low level video functions the same way nor do they have the features that are expected that the WDDM provides like VRAM virtualization and GPU Scheduling/Threading.
For Microsoft to build IE9 for XP they would either have to mire themselves in old code, which you admit would be stupid or rebuild XP's graphical model from the ground up, essentially makding Vista once again.
Why would you want XP to be catered to and the new technologies in Vista and Win7 should never be used because they can't work on XP. There truly are some BIG fundamental changes between the WDDM and XPDM and this is the key difference between Vista/Win7 and XP that prevents XP from getting DX10/11 and applications like IE9 with Direct2D, etc.
Good points, all. I guess I should point out that the applications which seem to have the worst stalls, and which affect each other the worst are Outlook, Word, Excel, and IE. If one's locked, then I pretty much can't do anything with the others
Ok, if this is happening, even on a single core Pentium 200mhz, then you have problems.
Seriously, I'm sure you mean well, but your system is very much NOT running like 99.99% of other people's computers, and instead of just assuming this is a 'windows thing' you should address the problem, heck even try a clean install if you are going to stick with XP, but highly consider Win7.
You could have anything from a bad block on your hard drive to even some strange utility hooking in to the applications in a way that it shouldn't.
This is where even Win7 has impacted Flash developers because of no way to handle the OS's multi-touch API sets 'easily'.
Silverlight is built to use the Touch APIs since v3 at least, giving it a big heads up of attention for people thinking about touch devices and Win7 over Flash.
This is also why Silverlight was a natural 'light' choice for UI development for WM Phone Series7, as it knows and handles touch well.
The shift in concepts are manageable, Flash just doesn't address alternatives. Even the UI on the Zune HD handles MouseOver for example, you can run your finger all over the screen, it is only when you 'press' or place more 'implied pressure' on the screen does it actually click.
Running Win7 on Netbooks for over a year now, and they all play HD video content just fine.
Plaing WMV/VC1/h.264 via Media Player or Media Center (yes even Media Center) plays 720p just fine without frame drops.
The only exceptions is using a Flash HD player, then the player shoots the HT Atom CPU to 100% for no real reason. The other exception is Silverlight streaming 1080, you only get about 22-24fps (which is not a large drop in FPS), and a bit of overkill on a 1024x600 screen.
Wow, articles like this are disburbing, as it will have people ripping out the default H.264 codecs from Win7 and then later on have problems.
Try reality for a moment, it wasn't until Oct '09 that the iPhone passed Windows Mobile Phones, MS is not a major underdog here, and have a lot more money to throw at this than anyone else in the game.
The product could be crap and burn, but seriously debasing it because it is 'too late' [sic] is a bit insane.
"Microsoft has come a long way in securing their OS, but they still have a long way to go before claiming that their product is as secure as, say, FreeBSD or OSX."
Microsoft only has to get people to look at the numbers and give up the myths.
Go look at any set of numbers from the last two years. (Essentailly look at Vista and IE7 and newer.)
From quality of code and number of patches to the number of exploits used to compromise machines, Windows Vista and Win7 fairs better than OS X, OpenBSD, or any Linux distribution.
These are real numbers, you just have to pay attention.
In the server breaches over the past couple of years from government sites to universities, 99.9% of them have been OS X, OpenBSD (Even on Berkley's campus), and Linux.
There are still very OLD exploints in most *nixs that people use all the time to crack a system, and the real myth is that *nix gives people security like you mention. Our techs have several *nix exploits tools that work remotely and locally that they use to crack servers/desktops locked by employess leaving companies. The tools work from various angles in old TCP/IP exploits all the way to using XWindows exploits, as it runs at root, and you can use it to gain 'esculated privledges' to root with a couple of click from a standard user account.
I challenge anyone here. Go to ANY security site. Use any metric, Windows Vista/Win7 and IE7/IE8 and Windows 2008 are by far the most secure and least breached systems in the last two/three years.
Also look at other Microsoft technology like Silverlight, where there has been virtually NO flaws, and compare that to the patch happy and very insecure Flash...
It is just perception and people that stopped paying attention to the facts and the numbers.
Microsoft has been trying to kill AVI for years because of the lack of features compared to more robust options.
I like the MK4 move, but truly don't get the move to Apple's MP4 format, which is just as obsolete in terms of features as AVI, let alone Apple's control/influence of the format.
Unlike 5 years ago, Microsoft is now a strong advocate on codec neutrality, even though they are the original designer of VC1/WMV. Look at Microsoft's support of HTML5 and even Silverlight as an example as the latest versions handle any codec and is also being used server side to provide Flash video content to the iPhone. (Something Microsoft hasn't even given their own products like the ZuneHD yet.)
I have never been a big fan of the whole DivX and even XVid movement because of the quality and bandaid additions to the format over the years. However in torrent world, it is still king, sadly. The code for DivX XVid (MPEG4 P2) are taken from Microsoft's early MPEG4 reference implementation from around 1998, and the quality hasn't improved much since then, while Microsoft's WMV/VC1 and the final MPEG4 (P4) formats progressed almost a whole generation.
I personally think that since Microsoft gave over VC1 tot he VC1 standards group (like 20 companies) it again needs to be considered by the OSS world as a strong format, as it doesn't have the licensing restrictions of MPEG4p4, and there are many OSS codec tools and encoders and players now available, and it gives you variable bitrate packaging with native BluRay HD from most studios.
There are some other good OSS codecs and packages out there, but it is probably time to give VC1 a chance even if Microsoft invented it.
Even if the exploit is successful on IE8 on Vista or Win7, the reduced security mode that it runs in will prevent it from actually doing anything.
Sure it may be able to crash the browser, or maybe screw with a favorite, but it can't access user files and especially can't do anything to the OS even if the exploit works.
So saying it is a 'problem' on Vista or Win7 is stretching the truth.
If you want low power, look at any of the Netbook and low power 'portable' market devices.
They run on a few Watts compared to something even like a Mini-ATX or Mac Mini desktop solution.
Pick an OS that knows how to handle the device's power management - some distributions suck at this, and some are smooth as butter. (Use something like Windows7 -trial copy- to baseline the power usage to help pick a distribution that gets close to what Windows7 does with power usage or beats it, as it is a good all around consumer baseline OS that does try to manage every power management trick in the book.)
You can even stick to a bland x86 architecture, making things a lot easier for you.
If you pick a netbook or low end laptop, use USB 'selective suspend' devices for storage, DVD/CDROM, etc. Also some of the low end power efficient laptops have eSATA, ExpressCard, etc.
Low power is what these devices were designed to do. (One caveat, make sure they have a 'smart' AC adapter, if not, the AC adapter will not cycle down, and so all the laptop side power saving won't have as dramatic gain.)
PS for a Server, a low end laptop is rather smart, as it can be folded away on your bookshelf next to your hub out of the way, and they also have built in battery backup for power outages and smart shutdown/restart - perfect for servers.
If you want "close to the metal" POSIX API compatibility then there's Cygwin
Ok, but this is borderline 1990s thinking or a bit insane...
You would be better off telling the person to just use the SUA of NT and develop a full *nix OSS solution and ignore Win32. As this is effectively what you are getting with Cygwin, except the SUA of NT is a full BSD subsystem that DOES RUN AT METAL 'so to speak' and doesn't have all the horrible 'kludges' of Cygwin.
I mean seriously, I think people forget that NT does a very good V5 and BSD Unix already, that is far beyond POSIX compliance and yes even beyond Cygwin crap.
----
To give a good answer to the OP, it would help to know what they are doing a bit more, as just knowing if they ware writing GUI or non-GUI code makes a BIG difference in picking a common or easily portable library. Also performance, what kind of performance do they need? Depending on what they are doing I could recommended truly using the SUA or Java or *gasp*.NET via Mono or QT or a ton of other solutions that do work and work well. Hell they might be doing an application can should be shoved into something like Silverlight.
The Xenos GPU is more than a DirectX 9.0c subset, even though this is what the average person will find if they only have Wiki information. The reason it was ORIGINALLY described as a DX9 subset, is that there was no equivalent terminology to describe the DirectX featureset used in the XBox 360 platform.
The Xenos was the first Unified Shader GPU and has all the hardware requirements of a DX10 and even most of a DX11 GPU technology. If you go look at DX11, you will see it is the FIRST PC Side DirectX technology that brings it on par with the XBox 360 feature set.
This means the Xenos of the XBox 360 is doing some DX10 functions and some of the DX11 features.
For example the XBox 360's development platform support GPU calculations which is what is in DX10 and the precursor to the more robust Direct Compute of DX11.
The XBox 360 also does tessellation, which is a feature of DX11 and something far beyond what a DX9 or DX10 card will do.
So I stand by what I said about the XBox 360.
Also NVidia's fight with Microsoft and DX10 was several battles that degraded the DX10 requirements along the process, and is why DX10.1 was introduced so some of the original DX10 features could still be offered by ATI as their hardware was ready.
NVidia's fight wasn't just about memory virtualization, which is one argument they lost, as Vista does do GPU memory virtualization, even on old hardware as it is not a DX10 technology.
Most of the 'newsy' fights about NVidia and Microsoft where about Vista Drivers on issues like the WDM implementation that gave more GPU scheduler control to the OS and Vista at a lower level. This is why there is a WDM 1.0, 1.1, and upcoming 2.0...
There have also been recent fights about Windows7 driver certification, as Microsoft wants WDM 1.1 fully implemented for Windows7 requirements, and are allowing NVidia extra time to get the WDM 1.1 drivers for the pre-8xxx series of their GPUs, which means the 6xxx and 7xxx series are still using WDM 1.0 drivers on Windows7 and knowing NVidia, they will kill off support these cards before they ever get WDM 1.1 fully implemented, even though the hardware is capable, but take a bit more work as they are not unified shader GPUs.
NVidia fought a lot of the DX10 features, and even didn't want to support the DX10's increased texture size and wanted to keep the DX9 texture limitations, which was insane, and they lost that fight.
So you have two areas where NVidia and Microsoft go back and forth, the DX10 and DX11 hardware requirements and the Vista and Win7 WDDM driver specifications.
PS Go look up more on the Xenos and the DX11 technologies and the articles about porting more easily between the platforms because of DX11 finally catches up to fully support the XBox 360 DirectX feature set.
So even if you want to call the XBox 360 and the Xenos running a Direct9.0c 'subset', considering it can do tessellation and many of the DX10 unified shader and computational tricks, it really is more of a 'superset' and closer to DX11 than any of the PC DirectX versions.
This is the official begining of the death of PhysX...
NVidia fought DirectX10 GPU computing/physics technologies, and got Microsoft to scale back DX10, which originally looked more like DX11, as DX11 is basically the technology the XBox 360 is using and what Microsoft wanted to make DX10.
However, NVidia threw a fit and because the 8xxx series of cards would not have been DX10 based on the first DX10 specifciations, Microsoft gave in when they should could have really messed up a full generation of NVidia GPU technology. (ATI has been ready to go with consume DX11 GPUs for several years, because they have the XBox 360 GPU technology Microsoft developed and gave back to ATI. -Although DX11 does have a few more features now that a few years have passed.)
When developers are already using Havok and DirectX technologies, and even DX10 will do quite a bit of GPU computing already, there is no need for PhysX anymore.
Developers will look at this move, and either abandon PhysX out of disgust or take NVidia at their word that PhysX is bugging, and can't be trusted to run on a system with another GPU rendering the video. (And neither view of NVidia is a good one.)
Slashdot Mirror
Because the press has blamed Linux for everything (including things which clearly are not Linux's fault), and they couldn't withstand the public pressure any more. Note that 80% of the users were satisfied with the new desktop, and a further 10% just complained about transient problems
You make it sound like end users just being picky, when it is about end users not being able to do their job or the OS/Apps not being capable of providing the features they need. This is also not about application lock in, but about fundamental shortcomings in Linux that will not be addressed without a lot of bandaids from people that spend time outside the Linux world and go, oh, we can't do that, or that, or that.
Additionally, it was not just about the end user results. The process of getting to where they are even today was horribly painful.
These are the same flaws that non-fans see everyday and deal with everyday and have to sort out and deal with users everyday.
I think people have left Windows and other options for far too long, this is no longer 2000, and WinME is the alternative.
Windows7 does some pretty impressive feats on a rather robust kernel model, that is often faster. NTFS still is offering features that takes several layers of software on Linux to copy, and the WDDM/Video subsystem is still years ahead of anything in the Linux or any OS's world, with fairly advanced rendering features, but important things like GPU scheduling so that the OS controls the GPU and application usage and allows for non-graphical GPU processing without worry that games or the application UIs will suffer, stall, and fail to render.
Users are not only giving up features from 2001 they are used to, but they are also missing out on a ton of features that are years off in the Linux world, that Microsoft has been shipping since Vista was released.
Linux had a huge chnace here and instead demonstrated what many of us find all too often, for an old kernel model, and an old OS model, and an old graphical protocol, it is not a mature OS for the mainstream. Good concepts, but dated, and too many bandaids to try to bring these to modern computing effectively.
http://download.live.com/
Install Windows Live PhotoGallery from the Windows Live Essentials. This is exactly what it is designed for and can do smart tagging.
Even though Win7 doesn't install the 'Essentials' applications, they really are 'Essential' to get the most out of Windows7. There is also a download link for them in the Start Menu, and you can pick and choose what you want easily.
Doing all your tagging via Explorer is functional, but not the optimal way of dealing with Photos in Windows 7. In Photogallery you just drag and drop to tag photos or use the face identification system.
(The June beta of the next generation of Live Essentials and PhotoGallery should be along soon as well with several new tricks that pulls in several of the MS Photo R&D work.)
*Don't waste your time with 'Album' or other tagging software that shoves your photos into their file structure, which is a LOT of them.
Is it me, or are the libraries in Windows 7 stupid?
I wouldn't say you are stupid...
However, once you 'grasp' the basic concept of the libraries and don't overthink them they are a handy feature, especially for the average home/office user.
Vista had featurs likes the Libraries, they were not something MS set up for the users. They are a variation of a 'Saved Search' or 'Search Folder' except they just return the contents of 'locations' based on the type you specify.
You can make your own libraries for things like Books, Presentations, etc.
You can also do like you could in Vista and use a 'Search Folder/Saved Search' to open a folder than 'returns' a criteria of content from specified locations. For example, create a Search for MP3 that looks everyone on your hard drive, and it will open a folder showing you all your MP3s as if they were in a single folder, no matter where you stored them.
Libraries are a bit too simplistic for advanced users, and that is where you use Search Folders to produce your own location and content results.
Do you have anything to back these two howlers up?
Ya, it is called reading the news or you can Google:
iPad browser speed
iPad crashes
The iPad overall and browser speed is 2X the iPhone, which is 20x slower than a low end netbook for page rendering, thus making the iPad still 10x slower than a low end netbook for Web Page Rendering. The best comparison has it at 5X slower than two year old Atom based Netbook. Look it up, or do the tests yourself.
As for crashing, even in the Mac world of reviews, almost every report stated the device or applications crashed during their initial tests. This is further demonstrated with a simple search, show everything from video to even the browser itself crashing about once a day for average users.
You act like people like myself don't have the money or time to test these devices ourselves as well, and I can assure you the iPad is FAR FROM crash free, and FAR FROM the stability of Windows7.
If you want to find more information of crashes and failures in document usage, just Google: iPad iWorks
The iPad is a good device, but in comparison to a full OS Tablet with handwriting and voice recognition technology that might weigh 8oz more with 2hrs less battery life is not a great trade off for the loss of speed and functionality.
I hope you love your iPad, but don't tell me how the iPad sitting on my desk performs based on your 'love' of the device.
Even though people like to tout Objective-C as Object Oriented, technically it is only Object Based just like C++.
If you want a real OO language you have to look to C# or many other more mature languages that understand the difference between the two.
It may seem simple, but there is a big difference between Object Based and true Object Oriented.
Side Note:
Sadly this is something I have come across a lot in the past few years, and wonder if it is the OSS movement or just the lack of general education that teaches true Object Oriented thinking and programming.
Even C++ and what Object Based abilities it offers are so often lost when a C programmer just mangles together code from a C perspective that only has the appearance of having any object based design.
The OS and software development architectures of Linux and BSD are not object based let alone object oriented frameworks and even the upper layer library sets reflect this non-object thinking. This also occurs in the Win32/Windows world, which is sad considering NT is an object based OS model and by nature the API sets are conducive to thinking in object principles.
It really comes down to people not understanding object based programming.
Even the basic concepts of C++ are simple object programming concepts and without a full understanding of object programming it becomes a cumbersome and poorly implemented set of code, especially when implemented by C programmers that have don't think in terms of objects or understand the relationships.
I have also listened to smart developers complain about C#, when they don't have a clue of what the difference is between an object based language like C++ and what an object oriented language like C# offers.
What surprises me the most is that literally 20 years ago our university was strong in defining the differences, strengths and giving a full understanding of object based and object oriented models not only in programming but also with regard to IPC mechanisms and even OS design theories.
Looking back, I think our university was more cutting edge than I realized, as over the years it is hard to find even mediocre training/classes in object based design even today.
It also seems to come from the OSS world were object based/oriented concepts are the red headed stepchild; which would also explain the complete lack of understanding in the OSS world of object based/oriented OS technologies like NT and how beneficial these designs are in an OS.
20 years later we will still be waiting for the next generation of OS and programming model designs and all the new 'kiddies' then will be digging out XNU/Darwin and Linux as the great new OS concept, bandaids and all to make them work just like I have watched every 'kiddie' do with Linux and XNU over the past 15 years.
All these companies seem to be saying to themselves "Wow, Apple sold 2M units and their product doesn't even have a camera or a USB port, and can't play Flash. If we make sure our product has those, we'll be rich!"
Or if you live in reality, you can find videos of devices like this in Microsoft 'future tech' presentations going back to 2002/2003.
The reason these devices are NOW becoming popular is a very simple economic concept. PRICE. Prior to this last year good Touch and Pen based display technologies were EXPENSIVE. Now that the quality of display has caught up and the cost isn't adding $1000 to the device, cheap and easy touch and pen tablet devices are NOW POSSIBLE.
As for the iPad, it got more WRONG than right. For example, the iPad is highly underpowered and THIS DOES MATTER when it is rendering web pages and navigating the web 10x slower than the cheapest netbook running Windows7. No design reasons, battery life reasons, etc are worth the total loss of performance a user gets when using an iPad.
Why even wait for the screen redraws on an iPad and the slow performance and loss of multi-tasking when you can get nearly the same battery life, on a faster CPU and a faster GPU run an OS that can run the new touch apps or even go old school and open up any application you have.
Just browsing the internet the difference between these devices and the iPad is laughable and it makes you feel sorry for the iPad users that think their experience is 'ideal' when touch based netbook users are flying around the net with a full experience.
1) If you think these are 'copying' the iPad you have been living under a rock.
2) If you think these even try to compare to the iPad you are living under a rock.
(Heck they have full handwriting recognition and even voice recognition, does an iPad?)
3) If you don't understand that it is about the 'cost' of the parts to make these devices and the more powerful CPUs getting cheaper and more advanced for heat and battery, you are still living under a rock.
PS It is funny that you call these device 'buggy'. Do you realize how often an iPad crashes? iPads crash on average more than once a day, which is worse than Windows7 and even worse than Vista. They are inherently buggy and glitchy, as any review you will find on them has to admit.
Before I read through the posts, I just wanted to mention that Reagan pushed for the total elimination and use of nuclear weapons.
Not sure who tagged this Jimmy Carter, but it should be tagged Ronald Reagan, as he was more progressive about the elimination of Nuclear weapons than Jimmy Carter.
(Not a fan, just trying to keep it factual.)
I wish I had time to continue this conversation fully.
One thing of note to think about:
Let me put it another way: video is also part of HTML5 and also generally a 'box'. Can you think of how it could be any other way?
Yes I can. With Video there are basic properties that are standard elements that can be accessed via CSS, although Chrome does not properly handle them yet. (Chrome doesn't even handle applying things like CSS transparency to a video object properly yet.)
Because there are things 'known' about the basics of a video they can and should be accessible in HTML5.
With a Canvas, there is a limited set of 'known' things about the canvas, being pretty much the box, with no knowledge or control of what is in the box.
The difference is why HTML5 video is important, because if there was no difference, there would be no need for any HTML5 video standards exposed in the DOM and the specification would be to just use a generic canvas object with X,Y, or Z codec.
This is even a good example of why the individual standards are important and their 'interaction/mingling' is important to making HTML5 happen.
Google should really be looking at treating all HTML5 content like they treat WebGL, and heck even use OpenGL to render HTML5 on the hardware, as it is a far better solution and significantly more progessive that just exposing an OpenGL subset to be painted on a canvas instead. They can still work with WebGL or other 3D viewport concepts, but can flip them out in XML and know their browser will have the hardware performance to handle it, which is where things like VRML failed in the past.
As I said before, I truly hope Google and all the other browser players 'get it' or we will see a world where IE9 becomes preferred for advanced HTML5 content and will either make IE king again or kill good HTML5 progress on the web.
Take care and thanks for the comments.
WebGL isn't a library, it's a binding. It does bind to native OpenGL (if the browser supports that)...it is in line with the HTML5 goals
Yes, and if the browser doesn't support it, it is a plugin. Again if Microsoft 'embeds' Silverlight into IE then because it is no longer a plugin and 'it is in line with HTML5 goals'? And according to your definition, Silverlight is also crossplatform, as it runs on...
Windows, Linux, and OS X, at the very least, and likely on the iPhone
as well. (Yes iPhone is a stretch as technically it is just being used to re-encode video at the server side for now.)
And for what it's worth, it is useful that it ends up on a Canvas. Unless I'm mistaken, that means it is composited with the rest of the document, meaning you could (for example) draw your HUD using standard HTML and only use the GL for the 3D. Please explain why this is a bad thing.
The canvas isn't bad, the point is that it ends up being an external rendering to a square space.
HTML5 is trying to break from square box controls and external standards. If of an SVG circle or triangle and text flowing around it, this is the direction not square canvases that use masking tricks to fit on the page in anything but a 'box'.
You also have the object access level, and WebGL is wrapped in code, you can't reach out and set the transparecy of an 'internal' object being rendered in the scene outside via CSS. Again this is opposite of the HTML5 goals, where SVG and Video and everything that are objects should be accessible to CSS and other objects on the page.
Final note...
I don't dislike WebGL, although I would rather put more effort into getting GPU accelerated browsers rather than adding in WebGL to basically embed 3D accelerated objects into a page. Having SVG and other good things of HTML5 and dynamic rendering running on the GPU already then there really isn't a need for WebGL.
What bothers me about this article and news story is that Google and users are acting like Chrome is rendering Quake in HTML5, which it is not doing, it is only doing the final paint to an HTML5 canvas. This is not a demonstration of HTML5 or Chrome being good at HTML5.
In fact if you look at HTML5 concept pages, even the ones from MS's IE9 work, Chrome can barely render them at 1fps on a high end system, where a browser that is inherently GPU assisted (like IE9) can run the demos easily on a Netbook with 30fps without even breathing hard.
Seriously check out:
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Default.html
Yes these are Microsoft based tests, but they bring up important points that Google and Firefox and everyone needs to be thinking about, because without taking all of the rendering to the GPU HTML5 will be crappy and/or make IE9 the king of the web, which really will suck.
Also, it's not really about Quake or FPS so much as HTML5.
No, in fact this is almost ANTI HTML5.
The only HTML5 here is the final rendering is occuring in an HTML5 Canvas. This is NOT HTML5 and this is not truly running the game in a browser as you suggest as it is relying on WebGL and other libraries to produce a final render to the HTML5 Canvas.
If this was an HTML5 demonstration, it would be using PNGs, SVG, and CSS to create the game not just rendering to a square HTML5 canvas element.
On Windows Vista or Windows7, I could write code in a couple of minutes using the DWM (Thumbnail preview) that without a pluging that could render Mass Effect 2 or any game or application to an HTML5 Canvas.
HTML5 is about breaking OUTSIDE the Canvas/BOX based rendering that Flash and ActiveX and JAVA are all designed around, as they have no INTERACTION with the other elements on the page beyond the CANVAS. And this example is just as limited as well.
This is a Google, "we can't do high performance HTML5 dynamic content," so we are going to get some press by rendering with the GPU to the HTML 5 canvas. Wow, almost as impressive as using activex rendering DirectX content that we first saw in the freaking 1990s.
The trick between the no plug-in comparison is they are using the HTML5 canvas instead of a plug-in, which is disturbing that anyone thinks this is impressive or fundamentally different. WebGL embedded in a browser or used as a plug-in is NOT the browser's rendering engine doing the work. If Microsoft embeds XBAP or Silverlights rendering engines into IE and then uses the HTML5 canvas to display the content, does this make WPF/.NET/Silverlight all HTML5 and browser rendered too? NO...
Get it?
What are you babbling about. IT IS A BROWSER. Other browsers can support standards on XP, so why can't they? Opera/Firefox/Chome do it on various OS'es at the same time. So why can't MS?
Well maybe you should be paying attention to technology a bit more instead of ranting about crap you have no idea about.
IE9 uses an internal GPU assisted framework and GPU assitsted composer. This is why IE9 can animate complex SVG and HTML5 content on pages that make OTHER BROWSERS choke.
Since IE9 depends on the GPU 'assistance' it uses the framework and driver models of Vista and Win7 that allo the OS to share system RAM with the VRAM and gives the OS control over the 'scheduling' of the GPU.
These things do not exist on XP.
These are also not things other browsers do, and if the other browsers don't get their crap together and up the performance of dynamic graphical content as one example, HTML5 will be either a BUST or were the world moves back to IE9 as it is the ONLY BROWSER that is fast enough to render this rich content.
Think of it like this IE9 is treating the web like Vista treats XAML, and is accelerating the crap out of it, and YES it does need the Vista WDDM concepts or the GPU would tied to one process or choke when left to yeilding multi-tasking GPU concepts like OpenGL uses.
(See in Vista, with the WDDM, the OS pre-emptively multi-tasks the GPU and gets the final say on the GPU and the scheduling, thus allowing it to flip out threads doing some computation (see DX10) and threads to one application needing rendering, etc.
Somehow the advantages of the WDDM concepts went over most people's heads and apparently even when used in proof of concept in Win7 and newer applications like IE9, people still don't get what this new model gave Windows that DOES NOT EXIST ON ANY OTHER OS PLATFORM.)
Make sense yet or should we get a Windows for Dummies book in here for you?
An MS apologists commented on the last article that it was impossible to run IE9 under XP because of the hardware rendering... clearly he doesn't know that A: DirectX entire point was to abstract hardware to the point it also (used to) support it purely running in software mode" and B: That all the other browsers have no such problem.
This is where people get confused so easily. For IE9 to work on XP, they would have to recreate the WDDM for XP. And when you do that, there are things in the WDDM that other levels of the OS do not have or understand, so essentially you are having to build XP into Vista.
This is why DX10 was impossible on XP as well, as the XPDM does not handle the low level video functions the same way nor do they have the features that are expected that the WDDM provides like VRAM virtualization and GPU Scheduling/Threading.
For Microsoft to build IE9 for XP they would either have to mire themselves in old code, which you admit would be stupid or rebuild XP's graphical model from the ground up, essentially makding Vista once again.
Why would you want XP to be catered to and the new technologies in Vista and Win7 should never be used because they can't work on XP. There truly are some BIG fundamental changes between the WDDM and XPDM and this is the key difference between Vista/Win7 and XP that prevents XP from getting DX10/11 and applications like IE9 with Direct2D, etc.
Good points, all. I guess I should point out that the applications which seem to have the worst stalls, and which affect each other the worst are Outlook, Word, Excel, and IE. If one's locked, then I pretty much can't do anything with the others
Ok, if this is happening, even on a single core Pentium 200mhz, then you have problems.
Seriously, I'm sure you mean well, but your system is very much NOT running like 99.99% of other people's computers, and instead of just assuming this is a 'windows thing' you should address the problem, heck even try a clean install if you are going to stick with XP, but highly consider Win7.
You could have anything from a bad block on your hard drive to even some strange utility hooking in to the applications in a way that it shouldn't.
Good luck, and don't accept this as normal.
This is where even Win7 has impacted Flash developers because of no way to handle the OS's multi-touch API sets 'easily'.
Silverlight is built to use the Touch APIs since v3 at least, giving it a big heads up of attention for people thinking about touch devices and Win7 over Flash.
This is also why Silverlight was a natural 'light' choice for UI development for WM Phone Series7, as it knows and handles touch well.
The shift in concepts are manageable, Flash just doesn't address alternatives. Even the UI on the Zune HD handles MouseOver for example, you can run your finger all over the screen, it is only when you 'press' or place more 'implied pressure' on the screen does it actually click.
Running Win7 on Netbooks for over a year now, and they all play HD video content just fine.
Plaing WMV/VC1/h.264 via Media Player or Media Center (yes even Media Center) plays 720p just fine without frame drops.
The only exceptions is using a Flash HD player, then the player shoots the HT Atom CPU to 100% for no real reason. The other exception is Silverlight streaming 1080, you only get about 22-24fps (which is not a large drop in FPS), and a bit of overkill on a 1024x600 screen.
Wow, articles like this are disburbing, as it will have people ripping out the default H.264 codecs from Win7 and then later on have problems.
comeback ??
Try reality for a moment, it wasn't until Oct '09 that the iPhone passed Windows Mobile Phones, MS is not a major underdog here, and have a lot more money to throw at this than anyone else in the game.
The product could be crap and burn, but seriously debasing it because it is 'too late' [sic] is a bit insane.
"Microsoft has come a long way in securing their OS, but they still have a long way to go before claiming that their product is as secure as, say, FreeBSD or OSX."
Microsoft only has to get people to look at the numbers and give up the myths.
Go look at any set of numbers from the last two years. (Essentailly look at Vista and IE7 and newer.)
From quality of code and number of patches to the number of exploits used to compromise machines, Windows Vista and Win7 fairs better than OS X, OpenBSD, or any Linux distribution.
These are real numbers, you just have to pay attention.
In the server breaches over the past couple of years from government sites to universities, 99.9% of them have been OS X, OpenBSD (Even on Berkley's campus), and Linux.
There are still very OLD exploints in most *nixs that people use all the time to crack a system, and the real myth is that *nix gives people security like you mention. Our techs have several *nix exploits tools that work remotely and locally that they use to crack servers/desktops locked by employess leaving companies. The tools work from various angles in old TCP/IP exploits all the way to using XWindows exploits, as it runs at root, and you can use it to gain 'esculated privledges' to root with a couple of click from a standard user account.
I challenge anyone here. Go to ANY security site. Use any metric, Windows Vista/Win7 and IE7/IE8 and Windows 2008 are by far the most secure and least breached systems in the last two/three years.
Also look at other Microsoft technology like Silverlight, where there has been virtually NO flaws, and compare that to the patch happy and very insecure Flash...
It is just perception and people that stopped paying attention to the facts and the numbers.
"AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete"
Yep...
Microsoft has been trying to kill AVI for years because of the lack of features compared to more robust options.
I like the MK4 move, but truly don't get the move to Apple's MP4 format, which is just as obsolete in terms of features as AVI, let alone Apple's control/influence of the format.
Unlike 5 years ago, Microsoft is now a strong advocate on codec neutrality, even though they are the original designer of VC1/WMV. Look at Microsoft's support of HTML5 and even Silverlight as an example as the latest versions handle any codec and is also being used server side to provide Flash video content to the iPhone. (Something Microsoft hasn't even given their own products like the ZuneHD yet.)
I have never been a big fan of the whole DivX and even XVid movement because of the quality and bandaid additions to the format over the years. However in torrent world, it is still king, sadly. The code for DivX XVid (MPEG4 P2) are taken from Microsoft's early MPEG4 reference implementation from around 1998, and the quality hasn't improved much since then, while Microsoft's WMV/VC1 and the final MPEG4 (P4) formats progressed almost a whole generation.
I personally think that since Microsoft gave over VC1 tot he VC1 standards group (like 20 companies) it again needs to be considered by the OSS world as a strong format, as it doesn't have the licensing restrictions of MPEG4p4, and there are many OSS codec tools and encoders and players now available, and it gives you variable bitrate packaging with native BluRay HD from most studios.
There are some other good OSS codecs and packages out there, but it is probably time to give VC1 a chance even if Microsoft invented it.
Even if the exploit is successful on IE8 on Vista or Win7, the reduced security mode that it runs in will prevent it from actually doing anything.
Sure it may be able to crash the browser, or maybe screw with a favorite, but it can't access user files and especially can't do anything to the OS even if the exploit works.
So saying it is a 'problem' on Vista or Win7 is stretching the truth.
Because Nouveau works on a more architectures than Windows has ever been ported to.
Technically not true, especially in the context of any platform that has NVidia hardware.
If you want low power, look at any of the Netbook and low power 'portable' market devices.
They run on a few Watts compared to something even like a Mini-ATX or Mac Mini desktop solution.
Pick an OS that knows how to handle the device's power management - some distributions suck at this, and some are smooth as butter. (Use something like Windows7 -trial copy- to baseline the power usage to help pick a distribution that gets close to what Windows7 does with power usage or beats it, as it is a good all around consumer baseline OS that does try to manage every power management trick in the book.)
You can even stick to a bland x86 architecture, making things a lot easier for you.
If you pick a netbook or low end laptop, use USB 'selective suspend' devices for storage, DVD/CDROM, etc. Also some of the low end power efficient laptops have eSATA, ExpressCard, etc.
Low power is what these devices were designed to do. (One caveat, make sure they have a 'smart' AC adapter, if not, the AC adapter will not cycle down, and so all the laptop side power saving won't have as dramatic gain.)
PS for a Server, a low end laptop is rather smart, as it can be folded away on your bookshelf next to your hub out of the way, and they also have built in battery backup for power outages and smart shutdown/restart - perfect for servers.
Good Luck...
If you want "close to the metal" POSIX API compatibility then there's Cygwin
Ok, but this is borderline 1990s thinking or a bit insane...
You would be better off telling the person to just use the SUA of NT and develop a full *nix OSS solution and ignore Win32. As this is effectively what you are getting with Cygwin, except the SUA of NT is a full BSD subsystem that DOES RUN AT METAL 'so to speak' and doesn't have all the horrible 'kludges' of Cygwin.
I mean seriously, I think people forget that NT does a very good V5 and BSD Unix already, that is far beyond POSIX compliance and yes even beyond Cygwin crap.
----
To give a good answer to the OP, it would help to know what they are doing a bit more, as just knowing if they ware writing GUI or non-GUI code makes a BIG difference in picking a common or easily portable library. Also performance, what kind of performance do they need? Depending on what they are doing I could recommended truly using the SUA or Java or *gasp* .NET via Mono or QT or a ton of other solutions that do work and work well. Hell they might be doing an application can should be shoved into something like Silverlight.
The Xenos GPU is more than a DirectX 9.0c subset, even though this is what the average person will find if they only have Wiki information. The reason it was ORIGINALLY described as a DX9 subset, is that there was no equivalent terminology to describe the DirectX featureset used in the XBox 360 platform.
The Xenos was the first Unified Shader GPU and has all the hardware requirements of a DX10 and even most of a DX11 GPU technology. If you go look at DX11, you will see it is the FIRST PC Side DirectX technology that brings it on par with the XBox 360 feature set.
This means the Xenos of the XBox 360 is doing some DX10 functions and some of the DX11 features.
For example the XBox 360's development platform support GPU calculations which is what is in DX10 and the precursor to the more robust Direct Compute of DX11.
The XBox 360 also does tessellation, which is a feature of DX11 and something far beyond what a DX9 or DX10 card will do.
So I stand by what I said about the XBox 360.
Also NVidia's fight with Microsoft and DX10 was several battles that degraded the DX10 requirements along the process, and is why DX10.1 was introduced so some of the original DX10 features could still be offered by ATI as their hardware was ready.
NVidia's fight wasn't just about memory virtualization, which is one argument they lost, as Vista does do GPU memory virtualization, even on old hardware as it is not a DX10 technology.
Most of the 'newsy' fights about NVidia and Microsoft where about Vista Drivers on issues like the WDM implementation that gave more GPU scheduler control to the OS and Vista at a lower level. This is why there is a WDM 1.0, 1.1, and upcoming 2.0...
There have also been recent fights about Windows7 driver certification, as Microsoft wants WDM 1.1 fully implemented for Windows7 requirements, and are allowing NVidia extra time to get the WDM 1.1 drivers for the pre-8xxx series of their GPUs, which means the 6xxx and 7xxx series are still using WDM 1.0 drivers on Windows7 and knowing NVidia, they will kill off support these cards before they ever get WDM 1.1 fully implemented, even though the hardware is capable, but take a bit more work as they are not unified shader GPUs.
NVidia fought a lot of the DX10 features, and even didn't want to support the DX10's increased texture size and wanted to keep the DX9 texture limitations, which was insane, and they lost that fight.
So you have two areas where NVidia and Microsoft go back and forth, the DX10 and DX11 hardware requirements and the Vista and Win7 WDDM driver specifications.
PS Go look up more on the Xenos and the DX11 technologies and the articles about porting more easily between the platforms because of DX11 finally catches up to fully support the XBox 360 DirectX feature set.
So even if you want to call the XBox 360 and the Xenos running a Direct9.0c 'subset', considering it can do tessellation and many of the DX10 unified shader and computational tricks, it really is more of a 'superset' and closer to DX11 than any of the PC DirectX versions.
This is the official begining of the death of PhysX...
NVidia fought DirectX10 GPU computing/physics technologies, and got Microsoft to scale back DX10, which originally looked more like DX11, as DX11 is basically the technology the XBox 360 is using and what Microsoft wanted to make DX10.
However, NVidia threw a fit and because the 8xxx series of cards would not have been DX10 based on the first DX10 specifciations, Microsoft gave in when they should could have really messed up a full generation of NVidia GPU technology. (ATI has been ready to go with consume DX11 GPUs for several years, because they have the XBox 360 GPU technology Microsoft developed and gave back to ATI. -Although DX11 does have a few more features now that a few years have passed.)
When developers are already using Havok and DirectX technologies, and even DX10 will do quite a bit of GPU computing already, there is no need for PhysX anymore.
Developers will look at this move, and either abandon PhysX out of disgust or take NVidia at their word that PhysX is bugging, and can't be trusted to run on a system with another GPU rendering the video. (And neither view of NVidia is a good one.)