This is different from Longhorn. I don't think people realize, Longhorn will sport a fully 3D-rendered interface codenamed "Aero Glass." The interfaces shown in today's alphas are placeholder interfaces. OS X uses the GPU for its compositing but does not render its interface that way. OS X uses PDF format for its interface. Longhorn will actually be using polygons and rendering its interface through the 3D graphics card, unless you don't want it to or you have a lower-end system. Then it will fall back to today's standard 2D compositing.
So the next time someone says, "B-but OS X already does this!" feel free to let them know there's a difference.
It's a moot point anymore to argue who "stole" what from whom. Lots of people come up with these ideas. I'm sure all of us at some point in time have thought, "It would be cool if my entire desktop was 3D accelerated," or "They should keep track of all my running applications using buttons or something" (taskbar).
The point is who implements the the best. I say this because OSS has little room to complain, considering most of use desktop emulators running taskbars, start menus, and even integrated filesystem/WWW browsers. KDE even got the ability to draw shadows beneath icon labels on the desktop. Though the effect is so ugly, I prefer XP's much more.
Where is all that being implemented together in an actual desktop environment? You've basically pointed me to OSS vaporware. "In progress," as you put it.
And then you lie about not being able to try the in-progress Longhorn. I assume you've never heard of the PDC and how they gave out Longhorn builds to attendees.
, it was Apple, all MS did was market it in a way that disillusioned people who didn't do much research thought that it Microsofts idea
Ah, yes. Because the Apple menu is so much like the Windows Start menu. So instead of ripping off Microsoft, we ripped off Apple?
Composite/Xdamage: One thing that has kept us behind Microsoft for a while graphics wise. These allow real transparencies. they are 1 month off..
Transparencies and alpha-blending have been a part of Windows since 2000.
Enlightenment 17: This has amazing graphics already (try entrance.. it works already), and blows away anything I have ever seen. The people who code enlightenment are also well known as technical geniuses and are excellent at optimisation, so they can do high quality graphics VERY fast, and very efficiently.
Okay, so somebody made some nice bitmap graphics. What does that have to do with this?
Dashboard: While Microsoft is bragging about their integrated search technologies, unknown to many, this is already available in linux too.. http://www.nat.org/dashboard . In fact, Microsoft stole the idea from that......while KDE stole the idea of start menus, taskbars, integrated filesystem/net browsers, and so on from Microsoft.
It amuses me that you think Microsoft stole the idea from this project, as though this project was the first to do it. Displaying things in that way isn't a new idea. The way Microsoft is doing it is, though, and I guarantee their unified development model will mean more people will be coding for it than for some random Linux version.
Full hardware accellerated window: The accelleration system is being changed now, and I'm guessing that within 2 Xorg releases, there will be nothing left that isn't accellerated.
Always more reference to the future. That was my point--where is this stuff now? 2 Xorg releases?? Do you realize how long it takes for new Xorg releases to even come out?
"DirectX shading" Let me ruin your disillusions about the magical directx.. Its behind, its always been behind, and whatever it can do, opengl can do a lot easier.
Wow, I sure can't argue with that kind of research. "OpenGL is better, because I said so! So there!"
Did you RTFA? Do you have GPU-sharing? Do you have a unified shader model? There's a reason Direct3D won the battle.
XUL: Our new XAML like thing.. Its being developed for Mozilla. Do you even know what that is???
When did I even mention XAML in this discussion? And where else is XUL majorly being used other than in Mozilla? Are you saying in the future that KDE and GNOME will integrate XUL into their desktops? How many years will that take?
And about your comment about no desktops using the new features.. do more research!!! You'll notice that everyone has been migrating to SVG type graphics already and cairo is the most likely method that will be used to accellerate them.
Wow, "everyone" has been migrating? Who? What distros out there fully run on Cairo now? Where is this technology being used?
Like I said, we can point to half-finished alpha projects all day, but Microsoft is the one actually finishing things.
You obviously haven't noticed this though.. Because I bet you haven't touched CVS though, so have no idea whats really going on.
You have me so figured out. Actually, I've known about all the projects you mentioned. Like I said, the fact that these half-finished things exist in CVS doesn't mean a thing.
Now, heres the thing you prove you haven't done your research on.. What about stuff like SElinux that Linux has but Microsoft doesn't eh. Microsoft is bragging about the new stack smashing protection in SP2, but just about every Nix distro/type has had it for years.
The article isn't about compositing. It's about the revamped DirectX and driver structure. GPU-sharing, snapback error recovery, and a unified shader model that removes the seperation between vertex and pixel shaders.
For the second time, Avalon is barely even mentioned. Why do you keep going on about the compositing? I don't see how you can say it's stuff we've seen before...where have we seen it for Linux? I'm talking a usable 1.0 release, not some 0.1 alpha project that has been sitting around for years.
And the majority of consumers don't use NT. Consumer technology is exactly what we're talking about here in large part.
According to Google Zeitgeist as well as all other surveys, the majority of users are on Windows XP and 2000. I assume you didn't know 2000 and XP are NT-based.
I don't need it. Dave Butler began work on the NT kernel back in 1989. NT has always been a seperate line of kernel from the DOS series, long before Windows 95's grafting of GUI and DOS kernel. Its kernel is based on VMS, and in fact there are several VMS function calls still around. NT has nothing to do with DOS; this is common knowledge. And yes, many government and academic universities have access to the Windows source code. Microsoft often outsources it to researchers and companies for a fee.
My signature doesn't suck. You just love Michael Moore so much that it pisses you off someone dares point out all of his lies. The man even COMPLETELY FAKED a newspaper headline from the Pantagraph. In the film, a newspaper headline is shown declaring that Gore won the election. If you view the actual issue of the paper cited in the movie, guess what it actually was? A LETTER TO THE EDITOR ON THE OPINION PAGE.
Michael Moore retyped it, made the title much larger, and displayed it in a way to make it appears as a large front-page hard news article, when it was actually someone's opinion letter on the letters page. Geez...
Even the DNC wants to distance itself from Michael Moore. That should tell you something. Yes, I've seen the "Kopel lies" page, and it was ridiculous and hardly addressed anything. I could also link you to the lies in Bowling for Columbine (complete with spliced speeches a year apart...Heston's tie changes midway through), but it doesn't matter to you. If the conservative right put out a documentary that actually changed people's speeches and made up false newspaper articles and so on, you'd be all over it. But when ultra-liberal Michael Moore does it...strangely, you find it okay. Revel in your bias. Doesn't matter to me.
Maybe that's because this is the first time someone has replied with it?
For the record, I have read that site and it was ridiculous. I understand that you're a Michael Moore fanboy, but he is so known for outright, flat-out lying, that he hurts the left.
John Kerry has made sure to distance himself from Michael Moore. Shouldn't that tell you something?
Look at the justifications. "This isn't really a Firefox vulnerability."
IE allowing random ActiveX to execute is considered a vulnerability, but Firefox executing random XUL isn't?
I think this recognition that Mozilla/Firefox is far from perfect is LONG overdue. Too bad it required a security exploit to do it. But so many people lack perspective around here, it's amazing.
I've always known Mozilla to be less than the perfection that Slashdotters have paraded it around as. Now that all these security vulnerabilities are being discovered...well, nothing's changed for me because I use Opera.
No pointless XUL, no reimplemented widgets, no cute little XPI spoofs. Just a native web browser that is the fastest and leanest out there.
It's interesting to watch the conflicts of posters today. On one hand, they want to keep using Firefox and supporting it. On the other hand, they know that if this was an IE vulnerability, they'd be all over it and crying out about "why would anybody still be using IE, especially if this was known for five years!!"
Just an amusing illustration of double-standards on some people's parts. Not everyone...just the hardcore zealots who like to post here. This trend of Mozilla holes is a nice way for them to gain a little perspective on the matter.
Now, imagine if Mozilla had IE's marketshare right now! These holes would be blown apart by hackers, and I imagine dozens more would be discovered. Already, the trend is rising.
Y is not a bitmap windowing system. It's vector-based and contains its own widgets and plans to be an entire unified desktop environment (as opposed to hacks on top of an X server, which is what KDE and GNOME are...sorry, it's true).
There will be an X compatibility layer, but the idea is to finally replace X and learn from the mistakes of the past.
1.) Typing "M$" doesn't make you clever or witty. 2.) NT isn't based on DOS at all. Nobody knows what you're talking about there. 3.) Select HTML format next time. 4.) This technology is not "unimpressive." Only to elitist Slashdot snobs who think XFCE is still a cool idea. The rest of the world wants to move to a modern, 3D-based compositing architecture. Where is that happening in Linux? 2006 is just a year and a half away. Well?
Because it's not just hard accelerated compositing. It's an entire revamp of the DirectX graphics architecture. Did you read anything about the Common Shader Core model or the GPU-sharing driver model? This article is about more than Avalon. In fact, it hardly mentions Avalon.
Windows Longhorn is far, far more than just vector-based drawing. Rattling off OS X and beta X.org releases because they use the GPU to blit 2D graphics doesn't invalidate what they're doing.
Just dont take all of Microsofts noise too seriously, just be aware that by 2006, linux will have completely equivilent technologies (in many cases we already do), and just cause we dont make much noise about it, dont think that they dont exist, or aren't planned for the near future.
Really? 2006 is just two years away. Where are these mysterious technologies you talk about? Yeah, I can name random projects like Cairo all day long. What desktops use them?
I'd sure love to see Linux having implemented all these technologies before Longhorn. Sadly, I know that will be far, far from the truth. Hell, we're still busy moving our distros over to an XFree86 fork. I'd love to see all this technology you speak of magically write itself in time for 2006. Linux has dozens upon dozens of never-completed projects, but Microsoft is actually getting these things done and in a unified manner. I don't find your reassurance very...reassuring. This is the community that still thinks a taskbar and start menu is a neat idea to rip off from Windows 95.
The difference is that one is a "suggestion" while the other is a company actually getting off their asses and implementing it system-wide. Where is that happening in OSS right now?
I've been saying this since Longhorn's features were announced, Linux desktops will be severely behind if they don't hurry up and move into the modern age that Longhorn and future versions of OS X are competing in. But no, we're still stuck with deskop emulators hacked on top of an ancient X protocol server with no unified development API. Hell, not even a way to install and uninstall things, because it's not really a seamless desktop but a cludging-together of 20 different projects in order to emulate a desktop operating system instead of actually being one.
How many years will it take for OSS people to stubbornly claim there is no need for 3D desktop acceleration before they finally begrudgingly clone a half-assed version of it several years too late.
Right, since because DC Comics' logo being on it for legal reasons mean they approved of it creatively.
Warner Bros. has their arms wrapped around DC's necks via contract rights. DC did not want what happened to Catwoman to happen. They did not like the direction the last two Batmans took either. Think a little next time.
That's because there aren't any. Yes, I once interned there and saw the Windows 2000 Server rooms myself (now the Windows Server 2003 rooms). I love Slashdot rumors. "Last I heard..." People regurgitate things as fact because they once saw some random +5 post implying they were true. Remember when Linux desktop usage was supposed to overtake Mac desktop usage within a year? Yeah.
Thank goodness the majority of the OSS community isn't this loony.
WinFS is more than just a databased filesystem. Did IBM integrate a search engine into their desktop?
That's why I "strangely" don't credit them for the idea. Because that's what I was talking about. Slashdot would be a much smarter place if people actually read the posts they're knee-jerk responding to.
Hotmail's been running on Windows servers for a long time now. Lots of rumors flew around about FreeBSD, but those were mostly relegated to Slashdot posts (of course).
Microsoft's been pretty open about the conversion process they undertook. They even wrote a paper about it and released it online.
For the last year, search results have been close to useless for me, because I often get those "search_term_in_url.html" results. Google's algorithm places higher relevance on pages whose filenames contain your search terms, so this gets me a lot of completely irrelevant junk sites that are just spamming Google with their ugly URL names.
Google should disregard URL filenames. It's the content of the site that matters, right? Not the filename. Google does need some competition, and I bet Microsoft is just smart enough to provide.
Also, I wonder if anyone's made the connection that the new MSN search and the WinFS local search in Longhorn will probably share technologies? You'll probably be searching the web and searching your hard drive using the same engine.
Slashdot Mirror
This is different from Longhorn. I don't think people realize, Longhorn will sport a fully 3D-rendered interface codenamed "Aero Glass." The interfaces shown in today's alphas are placeholder interfaces. OS X uses the GPU for its compositing but does not render its interface that way. OS X uses PDF format for its interface. Longhorn will actually be using polygons and rendering its interface through the 3D graphics card, unless you don't want it to or you have a lower-end system. Then it will fall back to today's standard 2D compositing.
So the next time someone says, "B-but OS X already does this!" feel free to let them know there's a difference.
It's a moot point anymore to argue who "stole" what from whom. Lots of people come up with these ideas. I'm sure all of us at some point in time have thought, "It would be cool if my entire desktop was 3D accelerated," or "They should keep track of all my running applications using buttons or something" (taskbar).
The point is who implements the the best. I say this because OSS has little room to complain, considering most of use desktop emulators running taskbars, start menus, and even integrated filesystem/WWW browsers. KDE even got the ability to draw shadows beneath icon labels on the desktop. Though the effect is so ugly, I prefer XP's much more.
Where is all that being implemented together in an actual desktop environment? You've basically pointed me to OSS vaporware. "In progress," as you put it.
And then you lie about not being able to try the in-progress Longhorn. I assume you've never heard of the PDC and how they gave out Longhorn builds to attendees.
well, you've really done your research..
...while KDE stole the idea of start menus, taskbars, integrated filesystem/net browsers, and so on from Microsoft.
For starters, MS didn't invent the start menu
Did I say they did?
, it was Apple, all MS did was market it in a way that disillusioned people who didn't do much research thought that it Microsofts idea
Ah, yes. Because the Apple menu is so much like the Windows Start menu. So instead of ripping off Microsoft, we ripped off Apple?
Composite/Xdamage: One thing that has kept us behind Microsoft for a while graphics wise. These allow real transparencies. they are 1 month off..
Transparencies and alpha-blending have been a part of Windows since 2000.
Enlightenment 17: This has amazing graphics already (try entrance.. it works already), and blows away anything I have ever seen. The people who code enlightenment are also well known as technical geniuses and are excellent at optimisation, so they can do high quality graphics VERY fast, and very efficiently.
Okay, so somebody made some nice bitmap graphics. What does that have to do with this?
Dashboard: While Microsoft is bragging about their integrated search technologies, unknown to many, this is already available in linux too.. http://www.nat.org/dashboard . In fact, Microsoft stole the idea from that...
It amuses me that you think Microsoft stole the idea from this project, as though this project was the first to do it. Displaying things in that way isn't a new idea. The way Microsoft is doing it is, though, and I guarantee their unified development model will mean more people will be coding for it than for some random Linux version.
Full hardware accellerated window: The accelleration system is being changed now, and I'm guessing that within 2 Xorg releases, there will be nothing left that isn't accellerated.
Always more reference to the future. That was my point--where is this stuff now? 2 Xorg releases?? Do you realize how long it takes for new Xorg releases to even come out?
"DirectX shading" Let me ruin your disillusions about the magical directx.. Its behind, its always been behind, and whatever it can do, opengl can do a lot easier.
Wow, I sure can't argue with that kind of research. "OpenGL is better, because I said so! So there!"
Did you RTFA? Do you have GPU-sharing? Do you have a unified shader model? There's a reason Direct3D won the battle.
XUL: Our new XAML like thing.. Its being developed for Mozilla. Do you even know what that is???
When did I even mention XAML in this discussion? And where else is XUL majorly being used other than in Mozilla? Are you saying in the future that KDE and GNOME will integrate XUL into their desktops? How many years will that take?
And about your comment about no desktops using the new features.. do more research!!! You'll notice that everyone has been migrating to SVG type graphics already and cairo is the most likely method that will be used to accellerate them.
Wow, "everyone" has been migrating? Who? What distros out there fully run on Cairo now? Where is this technology being used?
Like I said, we can point to half-finished alpha projects all day, but Microsoft is the one actually finishing things.
You obviously haven't noticed this though.. Because I bet you haven't touched CVS though, so have no idea whats really going on.
You have me so figured out. Actually, I've known about all the projects you mentioned. Like I said, the fact that these half-finished things exist in CVS doesn't mean a thing.
Now, heres the thing you prove you haven't done your research on.. What about stuff like SElinux that Linux has but Microsoft doesn't eh. Microsoft is bragging about the new stack smashing protection in SP2, but just about every Nix distro/type has had it for years.
The article isn't about compositing. It's about the revamped DirectX and driver structure. GPU-sharing, snapback error recovery, and a unified shader model that removes the seperation between vertex and pixel shaders.
For the second time, Avalon is barely even mentioned. Why do you keep going on about the compositing? I don't see how you can say it's stuff we've seen before...where have we seen it for Linux? I'm talking a usable 1.0 release, not some 0.1 alpha project that has been sitting around for years.
And the majority of consumers don't use NT. Consumer technology is exactly what we're talking about here in large part.
According to Google Zeitgeist as well as all other surveys, the majority of users are on Windows XP and 2000. I assume you didn't know 2000 and XP are NT-based.
I don't need it. Dave Butler began work on the NT kernel back in 1989. NT has always been a seperate line of kernel from the DOS series, long before Windows 95's grafting of GUI and DOS kernel. Its kernel is based on VMS, and in fact there are several VMS function calls still around. NT has nothing to do with DOS; this is common knowledge. And yes, many government and academic universities have access to the Windows source code. Microsoft often outsources it to researchers and companies for a fee.
I know how to do simple research. Do you?
My signature doesn't suck. You just love Michael Moore so much that it pisses you off someone dares point out all of his lies. The man even COMPLETELY FAKED a newspaper headline from the Pantagraph. In the film, a newspaper headline is shown declaring that Gore won the election. If you view the actual issue of the paper cited in the movie, guess what it actually was? A LETTER TO THE EDITOR ON THE OPINION PAGE.
Michael Moore retyped it, made the title much larger, and displayed it in a way to make it appears as a large front-page hard news article, when it was actually someone's opinion letter on the letters page. Geez...
Even the DNC wants to distance itself from Michael Moore. That should tell you something. Yes, I've seen the "Kopel lies" page, and it was ridiculous and hardly addressed anything. I could also link you to the lies in Bowling for Columbine (complete with spliced speeches a year apart...Heston's tie changes midway through), but it doesn't matter to you. If the conservative right put out a documentary that actually changed people's speeches and made up false newspaper articles and so on, you'd be all over it. But when ultra-liberal Michael Moore does it...strangely, you find it okay. Revel in your bias. Doesn't matter to me.
Maybe that's because this is the first time someone has replied with it?
For the record, I have read that site and it was ridiculous. I understand that you're a Michael Moore fanboy, but he is so known for outright, flat-out lying, that he hurts the left.
John Kerry has made sure to distance himself from Michael Moore. Shouldn't that tell you something?
Look at the justifications. "This isn't really a Firefox vulnerability."
IE allowing random ActiveX to execute is considered a vulnerability, but Firefox executing random XUL isn't?
I think this recognition that Mozilla/Firefox is far from perfect is LONG overdue. Too bad it required a security exploit to do it. But so many people lack perspective around here, it's amazing.
I've always known Mozilla to be less than the perfection that Slashdotters have paraded it around as. Now that all these security vulnerabilities are being discovered...well, nothing's changed for me because I use Opera.
No pointless XUL, no reimplemented widgets, no cute little XPI spoofs. Just a native web browser that is the fastest and leanest out there.
It's interesting to watch the conflicts of posters today. On one hand, they want to keep using Firefox and supporting it. On the other hand, they know that if this was an IE vulnerability, they'd be all over it and crying out about "why would anybody still be using IE, especially if this was known for five years!!"
Just an amusing illustration of double-standards on some people's parts. Not everyone...just the hardcore zealots who like to post here. This trend of Mozilla holes is a nice way for them to gain a little perspective on the matter.
Now, imagine if Mozilla had IE's marketshare right now! These holes would be blown apart by hackers, and I imagine dozens more would be discovered. Already, the trend is rising.
Someone is a right-wing moron if they disagree with the tactics of Michael Moore? That's rather absolutist.
This is off-topic but I had to respond.
Y is not a bitmap windowing system. It's vector-based and contains its own widgets and plans to be an entire unified desktop environment (as opposed to hacks on top of an X server, which is what KDE and GNOME are...sorry, it's true).
There will be an X compatibility layer, but the idea is to finally replace X and learn from the mistakes of the past.
1.) Typing "M$" doesn't make you clever or witty.
2.) NT isn't based on DOS at all. Nobody knows what you're talking about there.
3.) Select HTML format next time.
4.) This technology is not "unimpressive." Only to elitist Slashdot snobs who think XFCE is still a cool idea. The rest of the world wants to move to a modern, 3D-based compositing architecture. Where is that happening in Linux? 2006 is just a year and a half away. Well?
Because it's not just hard accelerated compositing. It's an entire revamp of the DirectX graphics architecture. Did you read anything about the Common Shader Core model or the GPU-sharing driver model? This article is about more than Avalon. In fact, it hardly mentions Avalon.
Windows Longhorn is far, far more than just vector-based drawing. Rattling off OS X and beta X.org releases because they use the GPU to blit 2D graphics doesn't invalidate what they're doing.
Just dont take all of Microsofts noise too seriously, just be aware that by 2006, linux will have completely equivilent technologies (in many cases we already do), and just cause we dont make much noise about it, dont think that they dont exist, or aren't planned for the near future.
Really? 2006 is just two years away. Where are these mysterious technologies you talk about? Yeah, I can name random projects like Cairo all day long. What desktops use them?
I'd sure love to see Linux having implemented all these technologies before Longhorn. Sadly, I know that will be far, far from the truth. Hell, we're still busy moving our distros over to an XFree86 fork. I'd love to see all this technology you speak of magically write itself in time for 2006. Linux has dozens upon dozens of never-completed projects, but Microsoft is actually getting these things done and in a unified manner. I don't find your reassurance very...reassuring. This is the community that still thinks a taskbar and start menu is a neat idea to rip off from Windows 95.
The difference is that one is a "suggestion" while the other is a company actually getting off their asses and implementing it system-wide. Where is that happening in OSS right now?
I've been saying this since Longhorn's features were announced, Linux desktops will be severely behind if they don't hurry up and move into the modern age that Longhorn and future versions of OS X are competing in. But no, we're still stuck with deskop emulators hacked on top of an ancient X protocol server with no unified development API. Hell, not even a way to install and uninstall things, because it's not really a seamless desktop but a cludging-together of 20 different projects in order to emulate a desktop operating system instead of actually being one.
Y-Windows. A replacement for X that is fully hardware-accelerated and can upgrade its own drivers without a restart.
If people want to beat Microsoft with this technology, Y is the place to go and help out.
How many years will it take for OSS people to stubbornly claim there is no need for 3D desktop acceleration before they finally begrudgingly clone a half-assed version of it several years too late.
Right, since because DC Comics' logo being on it for legal reasons mean they approved of it creatively.
Warner Bros. has their arms wrapped around DC's necks via contract rights. DC did not want what happened to Catwoman to happen. They did not like the direction the last two Batmans took either. Think a little next time.
That's because there aren't any. Yes, I once interned there and saw the Windows 2000 Server rooms myself (now the Windows Server 2003 rooms). I love Slashdot rumors. "Last I heard..." People regurgitate things as fact because they once saw some random +5 post implying they were true. Remember when Linux desktop usage was supposed to overtake Mac desktop usage within a year? Yeah.
Thank goodness the majority of the OSS community isn't this loony.
WinFS is more than just a databased filesystem. Did IBM integrate a search engine into their desktop?
That's why I "strangely" don't credit them for the idea. Because that's what I was talking about. Slashdot would be a much smarter place if people actually read the posts they're knee-jerk responding to.
If anything, Apple ripped off Microsoft's idea. Not that it will change Slashdotter minds or anything, but sorry, WinFS was announced years ago.
Hotmail's been running on Windows servers for a long time now. Lots of rumors flew around about FreeBSD, but those were mostly relegated to Slashdot posts (of course).
Microsoft's been pretty open about the conversion process they undertook. They even wrote a paper about it and released it online.
For the last year, search results have been close to useless for me, because I often get those "search_term_in_url.html" results. Google's algorithm places higher relevance on pages whose filenames contain your search terms, so this gets me a lot of completely irrelevant junk sites that are just spamming Google with their ugly URL names.
Google should disregard URL filenames. It's the content of the site that matters, right? Not the filename. Google does need some competition, and I bet Microsoft is just smart enough to provide.
Also, I wonder if anyone's made the connection that the new MSN search and the WinFS local search in Longhorn will probably share technologies? You'll probably be searching the web and searching your hard drive using the same engine.